Digirati Protest Congressional Crackdown on Indecency

Armed with signs reading “Uncle Sam Stay Out of My Home Page,” “Cyber Rights Now” and “Save the First Amendment,” several hundred of the digirati gathered in San Francisco on Thursday to protest a congressional proposal to crack down on the transmission of indecent material over the Internet.

The rally, a rather sedate affair as protests go, was held at South Park, in a part of San Francisco known as “Multimedia Gulch.” One attendee joked that Wired magazine, co-sponsor of the event, had closed its offices to send about 200 employees to the park.

The majority of the crowd was made up of twentysomethings fashionably clad in black, trendily accessorized with earrings in some not-so-obvious places--and too hip to show much enthusiasm. Cheering was polite and sporadic. Booing and hissing lacked fire.

Many leaned against trees and hid behind dark glasses. “Look, this is not a rock concert,” said Mark Neadows, a 27-year-old who works for a firm that designs sites on the Internet. “We’re dealing with a group of people who aren’t used to shouting and jumping up and down.”

Part of the problem may be that many are more comfortable doing their talking with their keyboard. One of the speakers, Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, exhorted the crowd to “leave your keyboard. You have to go outside. You have to take to the streets.”

Not to say that the rally didn’t have its moments. There was a bit of guerrilla theater. A man in an Al Gore mask burned a placard with “1st Amendment” emblazoned in large black letters. Another with a mask of Tele-Communications Inc. Chief Executive John Malone wore a T-shirt that said “US Out of My URL.”

Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lobbying group started by Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitch Kapor, asked whether senators and members of Congress had “ever surfed the [World Wide] Web? Have they ever made a friend on the Net?”

He ended his speech by reading from Allen Ginsberg’s book “Howl,” telling the crowd that “this is what ‘indecency’ sounds like.”

The congressional measure, part of a sweeping telecommunications bill being considered by a House-Senate conference committee, would ban the transmission of indecent material that is accessible to children.