Web Sites and Democracy
The Internet has the potential to enhance democracy by making information about government accessible to every citizen and by providing every citizen with a forum to express his or her ideas. The Internet offers the government the chance to provid e universal access to information about how decisions are made. The Internet also offers every citizen, especially those who disagree with their government, an easy and cheap way to express their opinions. The Internet will be able to achieve this poten tial only if access to the Internet is universal and opinions expressed on the Internet are not censored.
This web site provides a collection of links to web sites providing information about the governments, political parties and political candidates of the United States and the State of Mississippi, and web sites concerning freedom of speech.
www.whitehouse.gov provides information about President Clinton and Vice President Gore, links to federal agencies, and transcripts of white-house press conferences.
www.senate.gov provides information about the U.S. Senate, including links to Senator’s web-sites, weekly schedules of Senate and Senate committee actions, and the text an d status of all bills being considered. Also provided are records of all roll call votes.
www.house.gov is the web site of the U.S. House of Representatives. The site provides information about voting records, links to representative’s web sites, weekly schedul es of upcoming votes, and the full text of all bills being considered. The site also provides access to all committee reports and reports submitted to committees, such as the Starr report that was so popular last year.
vls.law.vill.edu/students/orgs/law-review/ provides links to every federal appellate court in the U.S. as well as the full text of every opinion issued by those courts since 1991 . New opinions are added on the day they are issued. The site also provides links to the U.S. Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal, and District Courts and the texts of the Federal Rules of Civil, Criminal, and Appellate Procedure and the local rules of Cour t of each District Court.
www.democrats.org and www.rnc.org are the official web sites of the Democrat and Republican Pa rties. Each of these sites are updated daily to provide the party spin on the news of the day. The sites also provide links to office holders and links to allow web surfers to contact the parties and volunteer time or money. www.msgop.org is the web site of the Mississippi Republican Party. There is no web site for the Mississippi Democratic Party.
www.govoff.state.ms.us/index.html is the web site of the Governor of the State of Mississippi. The web site provides separate links to the governor and the first lady, a directory of state government officials, and links to State agencies.
www.ls.state.ms.us/ is the web site of the Mississippi legislature. The site provides access to the calendars and the status of bills before both the House and Senate and links to each Senator and Representative.
www.mssc.state.ms.us/ is the web site of the Mississippi Supreme Court. The site provides access to the text of all decisions of the Mississippi Supreme Court and the Mississippi Court of Appeals, the dockets and calendar of these courts, links to all of the Circuit and Chancery Courts of the States, links to the Mississippi Bar Association, and a directory of all lawyers licensed to practice law on the state.
Presidential candidates with web sites include Steve Forbes (
www.forbes2000.com ), Lamar Alexander ( www .lamaralexander.com ), George W. Bush ( www.georgewbush.com ), Elizabeth Dole ( www.dolein2000.org ), Dan Quayle ( www.quayle.org ), Pat Buchanan ( www.gopatgo.org ), and Bill Bradley ( www.billbradley.com ). Al Gore, the "inventor of the internet" has no official campaign web site, although he has his link on the offic ial white house site and a large number of unauthorized sites that feature "pictures" of him and Monica Lewinski of which Tipper Gore would not approve.Candidates for governor of the State of Mississippi with web sites include Ronnie Musgrove (
www.ronniemusgrove.com ), James Roberts ( www.roberts.org ), Dan Gibson ( www.dangibson.org ), Eddie Briggs ( www.briggs99.com ), Mike Parker ( www.parker99.com ), and Charlie Williams (Earlier I made reference to web sites that published fake pictures of Al Gore and Monica Lewinski. The pictures were obvious fakes and were clearly intended to poke fun at Al Gore in a way many reasonable people would find offensive. Some may be offended at the amount of skin shown in some of the pictures. This type of web site raises questions about the conflict between free speech and propriety or decency. The internet is effective only because it is universal, but not everyone can tolerate the same level of free speech when it comes to nudity or crudity.
Many web sites are concerned with protection of free speech rights on the Internet. Some of these sites are
www.hotwired.com/special/lawsuit/index.htmlCongress has tried to limit free speech on the web, but a federal court struck down the law because it did not provide a clear definition of what is forbidden. At present, there is no enforceable law regulating free speech on the net. There is no t likely to be such a law unless and until someone is able to define obscenity.
Fortunately, technology may provide an answer to this problem. Software provided by companies such as net-nanny (
www.netnanny.com ) or surfwatch ( www.surfwatch.com ) allow owners of computers to prevent them from being used to access sites that may corrupt weak minds or interfere with good work habits. These companies provide software fil ters that prevent access to information about drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, hate speech, sex, or violence. Access can also be blocked to web sites about astrology, mysticism, entertainment, job searches, motor vehicles, personal ads or dating, real estate, hobbies, sports, travel, games, general news, glamour or intimate apparel, shopping, or Usenet news. This technology preserves free speech rights and protects the rights of computer owners not to hear or see things they do not want to hear or see . The technology also allows employers to control what their employees see or do on the Internet on company time.