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According to the [[Reporters Without Borders]] Press Freedom Index, the United States is currently ranked 48th in the world.<ref>http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025</ref> Certain forms of speech, such as [[Obscenity#United States obscenity law|obscenity]] and [[slander and libel|defamation]], are restricted in major media outlets by the government or by the industry on its own. However, in general [[freedom of speech]] is considered an integral American value, as reflected by the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution]]. |
According to the [[Reporters Without Borders]] Press Freedom Index, the United States is currently ranked 48th in the world.<ref>http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025</ref> Certain forms of speech, such as [[Obscenity#United States obscenity law|obscenity]] and [[slander and libel|defamation]], are restricted in major media outlets by the government or by the industry on its own. However, in general [[freedom of speech]] is considered an integral American value, as reflected by the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution]]. |
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This freedom has caused controversy at times. For instance, it is legal to |
This freedom has caused controversy at times. For instance, it is legal to express certain forms of [[hate speech]] so long as one does not engage in the acts being described or urge others to commit illegal acts. The country strives to maintain the oftentimes delicate balance between the right to individual expression and the supposed [[common good]]. |
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== History == |
== History == |
Revision as of 03:42, 30 November 2007
According to the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, the United States is currently ranked 48th in the world.[1] Certain forms of speech, such as obscenity and defamation, are restricted in major media outlets by the government or by the industry on its own. However, in general freedom of speech is considered an integral American value, as reflected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This freedom has caused controversy at times. For instance, it is legal to express certain forms of hate speech so long as one does not engage in the acts being described or urge others to commit illegal acts. The country strives to maintain the oftentimes delicate balance between the right to individual expression and the supposed common good.
History
A celebrated legal case in 1734-1735 involved John Peter Zenger, a New York newspaper printer that was taken to court and charged for seditious libel and assailed the corrupt royal governor of New York. His lawyer Andrew Hamilton defended him well, and was made famous for his speech “truth cannot be libel”. This court case paved the freedom of press in America to be adopted in the constitution.
Sedition
There have been a number of attempts in the United States to regulate speech that has been deemed seditious. In 1798, President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts, the fourth of which, the Sedition Act or "An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States" set out punishments for publishing of up to two years' imprisonment for "opposing or resisting any law of the United States" or writing or publishing "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the President or Congress (but specifically not the Vice-President). The act was allowed to expire in 1801 after the election of Thomas Jefferson, Vice President at the time of the Act's passage.
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act (18 U.S.C. § 2385) of 1940 is a United States federal statute that made it a criminal offense for anyone to
knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association.
It also required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government; within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered under the Act's provisions.
The Act is best known for its use against political organizations and figures, mostly on the left. From 1941 to 1957, hundreds of socialists were prosecuted under the Smith Act. The first trial, in 1941, focused on Trotskyists, the second trial in 1944 prosecuted alleged fascists and, beginning in 1949, leaders and members of the Communist Party USA were targeted. Prosecutions continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional. The statute remains on the books, however.
World War II
The Office of Censorship, an emergency wartime agency, heavily censored reporting during World War II. On December 19, 1941 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." Byron Price was selected as the Director of Censorship. However, censorship was not limited to reporting. "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."[2] Since that time war censorship had been relatively light until the advent of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. In 1991, during the U.S.-led UN invasion of Iraq during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, the Pentagon placed restrictions on media coverage of the ground war, in order to protect confidential military information.[3]
Second Red Scare
McCarthyism is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the[…] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association". Hundreds of Communists were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were charged and convicted under the Smith Act in 1949. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. All of the defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and were also given prison sentences. In 1951, twenty-three other leaders of the party were indicted including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. By 1957 over 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law.[4]
In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.
The Communist Control Act of 1954 was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies".
Nuclear proliferation
Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 and the Atomic Energy Act of 1956, patents may be withheld and kept secret on grounds of national security.
In 1979, the magazine The Progressive was sued by the U.S. government (United States v. The Progressive, Inc.) and temporarily blocked from publishing an article that purported to reveal the "secret" of the hydrogen bomb. The article was eventually published.
In 1997, Congress voted unanimously to add an amendment to a Department of Defense spending bill forbidding the distribution of instructions that teach "the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction" if those instructions are intended to assist in the actual building and use of such a device. This was known as Feinstein Amendment SP 419.
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen); non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.
Several past controversies were the failed attempt to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War and the daily televising of the Iran Hostage Crisis by the national broadcast media, that is believed to have led to the re-election loss of Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Export of sensitive software
The export of cryptography software is regulated as a munition under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, although in recent years the regulations have relaxed, due in part to industry lobbying.
In 1995, Daniel J. Bernstein challenged the regulations (see Bernstein v. United States) on First Amendment grounds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. [5] However, some regulations remain. See also: export of cryptography.
Freedom of Religion
In the United States, freedom of religion is a constitutionally guaranteed right provided in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion is also closely associated with separation of church and state, a concept which was written of by Thomas Jefferson.[6]
The Supreme Court has consistently held fast to the rule of strict separation of church and state when matters of prayer are involved. In Engel v. Vitale (1962) the Court ruled that the recitation in public schools of a twenty-two word nondenominational prayer was unconstitutional. In Lee v. Weisman (1992), the Court ruled that the saying of prayer at a middle school graduation was also unconstitutional, and in Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe (2000) it ruled that student-led prayer during high school football games violated the establishment clause.
On December 15, 2006, the Fourth Circuit Court in Child Evangelism Fellowship v. Anderson School District Five, ruled 3-0 that a South Carolina school district violated Child Evangelism Fellowship's [CEF] constitutional rights by charging the group a fee while allowing other groups to use district facilities at no cost. CEF sponsors after-school "Good News Clubs" in elementary schools. The appeals court ruled the district policy unconstitutional, stating that "government may not bar religious perspectives on otherwise permitted subjects ... [and] communities of faith may not be arbitrarily excluded from the protections of the Free Speech Clause ... Government need not fear an Establishment Clause violation from allowing religious groups to speak under the same reasonable, viewpoint-neutral terms as other private parties ... In sum, speech is not to be selectively permitted or proscribed according to official preference."[7]
Broadcast Censorship
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates "indecent" free-to-air broadcasting. It can issue fines if, for example, the broadcaster employs certain swear words. Radio personality Howard Stern has been a frequent target of fines. This led to his leaving broadcast radio and signing on with Sirius Satellite Radio in 2006. The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy increased the political pressure on the FCC to vigorously police the airwaves. In addition, Congress increased the maximum fine the FCC may levy from US $268,500 to US $375,000 per incident.
In February 2004, a study was released by the national media watchdog group FAIR. According to the study, which took place during October of 2003, current or former government or military officials accounted for 76 percent of all 319 sources for news stories about Iraq which aired on network news channels. On March 23, 2006, under pressure from AIPAC[8], the US designated the Hizbullah affiliated media, Al-Nour Radio and Al-Manar TV station, as "terrorist entities" through legislative language as well as support of a letter to President Bush signed by 51 senators.[9]
Critics [who?] of television broadcast media throughout the latter half of the 20th century on into the 21st have expressed their concerns regarding the filtration of content being offered to citizens of the United States through the modern-day journalism platform. They argue that media conglomerates within the U.S. are responsible for painting a very limited/pointed picture of U.S. government involvement throughout the world, and further argue that this causes uninformed political support by U.S. citizens. [citation needed] In addition, certain corporations have been accused of paying news channels to have their products displayed in a positive light, while attacking direct competitors and products that could compete with the company's products. The pharmaceutical industry and fast food industry have been singled-out by critics for influencing the media. [citation needed]
Censorship of pornography
US courts have ruled that the First Amendment protects "indecent" pornography from regulation, but not "obscene" pornography. People convicted of distributing obscene pornography face long prison terms and asset forfeiture.
In 1996, Congress passed Communications Decency Act, with the aim of restricting Internet pornography. Court rulings have struck down much of the law, however.
A widely publicized case of prosecuting alleged obscenity occurred in 1990, when the Cincinnati Arts Center agreed to hold an art show featuring the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. His work included several artistic nude photographs of males and was deemed offensive by some people for this reason. This resulted in the prosecution of the center and its director, who were later acquitted.
In the early 1990s, Mike Diana became the first American artist to be convicted for obscenity for drawing cartoons that were judged legally obscene.
Ban on divestment support
A law passed by the US Congress in 1977 prohibits all U.S. persons, defined to include individuals and companies located in the United States and their foreign affiliates, from supporting the boycott of Israel and prohibits actions that encourage or support the boycott, with penalties that include a five year imprisonment.[10] On this basis, some American businesses have been punished for answering their customers' question about origin of their products.[11][12] Furthermore, some pro-Israeli activists have pressured the US Anti-Boycott Office to prosecute divestment campaigners against Israel, in accordance with that law.[13]
Some have criticized these lobbies for their efforts to punish those that promote divestment campaigns, as an act of suppression of American freedom, comparing support of Israeli divestment to recent French boycott and Iranian sanctions.[14]
Libel
Although not considered protected speech in most cases under United States Law, libel and slander are considered civil offenses which can constitute the basis of a lawsuit. Although some states still carry criminal libel laws on the books, these are very infrequently used and so, for all intents and purposes, libel is a civil offense and not a criminal offense in the United States.
In the Internet era, libel laws are increasingly being used against individuals expressing their views in public forums. Although it is difficult to win a libel case in the U.S., it can still be an effective means of intimidation and deterrence, since defending oneself against a lawsuit is expensive and time consuming. See also SLAPP.
Since the 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, public figures like entertainers and politicians must prove actual malice was intended as opposed to simple negligence to win a libel or slander suit. For instance, public officials cannot file a lawsuit if someone makes a caricature of them or insults them.
Persons engaged in legislative debate in Congress are granted complete immunity from libel and slander suits so long as they are speaking from the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives.
Documents sealed by court order
On January 4, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein issued a temporary restraining order forbidding a number of activists and their organizations in the psychiatric survivors movement, including MindFreedom International and the Alliance for Human Research Protection from disseminating ostensibly leaked documents purporting to show that Eli Lilly and Company knowingly concealed information on potentially lethal side-effects of Zyprexa for years [3]. The "Zyprexa documents" had been sealed by an earlier court order in a mass tort case; they were widely disseminated after Alaska attorney James Gottstein issued a subpoena for them in an unrelated case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation came to the defense of one of the parties silenced by the restraining order to defend the First Amendment right of internet journalists to post links to relevant documents on wikis, blogs, and other web pages [4]. While Eli Lilly maintains that the documents were obtained unlawfully and should not be part of the public domain, critics cite the leaked Pentagon Papers as precedent for the right of individuals to report on the existence and contents of such documents, and in this particular case, maintain that court sealing of documents should never be allowed to protect individuals or corporations from criminal liability [5].
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an extension to United States copyright law passed unanimously on May 14, 1998, which criminalizes the production and dissemination of technology that allows users to circumvent technical copy-restriction methods. Under the Act, circumvention of a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work is illegal if done with the primary intent of violating the rights of copyright holders.
Although the Act contains an exception for research, the exception is subject to vague qualifiers that do little to reassure the research community. Cf., 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201(g). The DMCA has had an impact on the worldwide cryptography research community, because many fear that their cryptanalytic research violates, or might be construed to violate, the DMCA. The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov in 2001, for alleged infringement of the DMCA, was a highly publicized example of the law's use to prevent or penalize development of anti-DRM measures. Sklyarov was arrested in the United States after a presentation at DEF CON, and subsequently spent several months in jail. The DMCA has also been cited as chilling to non-criminal inclined users, such as students of cryptanalysis (including, in a well-known instance, Professor Felten and students at Princeton[15]), and security consultants such as the Netherlands based Niels Ferguson, who has declined to publish information about vulnerabilities he discovered in an Intel secure-computing scheme because of his concern about being arrested under the DMCA when he travels to the US.
See also: AACS encryption key controversy
War on Terrorism
The "War on terror" has been seen as a pretext for reducing civil liberties.
Within the United States, critics argue that the Bush Administration and lower governments have restricted civil liberties and created a "culture of fear". Bush introduced the USA PATRIOT Act legislation to the United States Congress shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, which significantly expanded U.S. law enforcement's power. It has been criticized as being too broad and having been abused for purposes unrelated to counter-terrorism. President Bush had also proposed Total Information Awareness, a federal program to collect and process massive amounts of data to identify behaviors consistent with terrorist threats. It was heavily criticized as being an "Orwellian" case of mass surveillance.
Many opponents focus on the domestic aspects, complaining that the government is systematically removing civil liberties from the population or engaging in racial profiling. They also allege that this approach increases public hostility to dissenting voices by encouraging the view that such people are being unpatriotic or even treasonous for simply disagreeing with the administration. Some, such as Giorgio Agamben, criticize a "generalised state of exception", which could be followed by a more or less deliberate strategy of tension (using false flags terrorist attacks and other ruse of war tactics).
On September 11, 2005 the American Civil Liberties Union reported:
- 30,000 National Security Letters Issued Annually Demanding Information about Americans: Patriot Act Removed Need for FBI to Connect Records to Suspected Terrorists
- [...] According to the Washington Post, universities and casinos have received these letters and been forced to comply with the demands to turn over private student and customer information. Anyone who receives an NSL is gagged - forever - from telling anyone that the FBI demanded records, even if their identity has already been made public.
- In New York and Connecticut, the ACLU has challenged the NSL provision that was dramatically expanded by Section 505 of the Patriot Act. The legislation amended the existing NSL power by permitting the FBI to demand records of people who are not connected to terrorism and who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. [...]
Free speech zone
Free speech zones (also known as First Amendment Zones, Free speech cages, and Protest zones) are areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of free speech in the United States. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The existence of free speech zones is based on U.S. court decisions stipulating that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression.
Free speech zones have been used at a variety of political gatherings. The stated purpose of free speech zones is to protect the safety of those attending the political gathering, or for the safety of the protesters themselves. Critics, however, suggest that such zones are "Orwellian",[16][17] and that authorities use them in a heavy-handed manner to censor protesters by putting them literally out of sight of the mass media, hence the public, as well as visiting dignitaries. Though authorities generally deny specifically targeting protesters, on a number of occasions, these denials have been contradicted by subsequent court testimony. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a number of lawsuits on the issue.
The most prominent examples are those created by the United States Secret Service for President George W. Bush and other members of his administration.[18] While free speech zones existed in limited forms prior to the Presidency of George W. Bush, it has been during Bush's presidency that their scope has been greatly expanded.[19]
Internet censorship
Private Internet connections in the US are not subject to technical censorship such as content-control software imposed by the government, but private businesses, schools, libraries and government offices may make use of such filtering software at their discretion, although in such cases courts have ruled the use of such software is not censorship.[20]
ISP Censorship
Comcast, an internet service provider "actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally."[21] Legal controversy ensued when Comcast blocked Bit Torrent by sending a RST packet claiming to be Bit Torrent, and denying the connection. Now there is also evidence of Comcast using RST packets on groupware applications that have nothing to do with file sharing. Kevin Kanarski, who works as a Lotus Notes messaging engineer, noticed some strange behavior with Lotus Notes dropping emails when hooked up to a Comcast connection and has managed to verify that Comcast's reset packets are the culprit.[22]
Recently, Comcast customers have also reported a sporadic inability to use Google because forged RST packets are also interfering with HTTP access to google.com [23], which has further angered users.[24]
Network Neutrality
Some broadband providers have proposed to start charging content providers in return for higher levels of service, creating what is known as a Tiered Internet. Packets originating from providers who pay the additional fees would in some fashion be given better than "neutral" handling, while those content providers who do not pay the higher fees would get a lesser level of service. Given this ability to accelerate the handling of selected packets, the service providers would perhaps give Quality of Service guarantees to given senders or recipients.
Advocates of network neutrality contend that any non-neutral scheme could allow ISPs to unfairly discriminate and control which data they prioritize, such as data from their own sponsors or media interests:
- "[These companies] want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all"..."tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data."..."to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors"..."to reserve express lanes for their own content and services.[25]
AT&T Censorship
In August 2007, the band Pearl Jam performed in Chicago at Lollapalooza which was being web-broadcast by AT&T. The band, while playing the song "Daughter", started playing a version of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but with altered lyrics critical of president George Bush. These lyrics included "George Bush, leave this world alone!" and, "George Bush, find yourself another home!". Listeners to AT&T's web broadcast only heard the first line because the rest was censored[26] although, "AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said that the silencing was a mistake"[27]
References
- ^ http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025
- ^ Fiset, Louis. Return to Sender: U.S. Censorship of Enemy Alien Mail in World War II, Prologue Magazine Spring 2001, Vol. 33, No. 1. Retrieved from U.S. Government National Archives.
- ^ The Press: It Was a Public Relations Rout Too, Time, 11 March 1991
- ^ Fried, Albert (1997). McCarthyism, The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509701-7.
- ^ [1]
- ^
Jefferson, Thomas (1802-01-01). "Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists". U.S. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2006-11-30.
{{cite web}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help) - ^ http://www.nsba.org/site/doc_cosa.asp?TRACKID=&VID=50&CID=465&DID=39887
- ^ http://www.aipac.org/about_AIPAC/default.asp
- ^ http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/js4134.htm
- ^ http://www.bis.doc.gov/AntiboycottCompliance/oacrequirements.html#whatsprohibited
- ^ http://www.bis.doc.gov/AntiboycottCompliance/Default.htm
- ^ http://www.unknownnews.net/0626-2.html#below
- ^ http://www.boycottwatch.org/abi/divest001.htm
- ^ http://lowonlow.wordpress.com/the-boycott-of-israel/
- ^ RIAA challenges SDMI attack 2002-01-07, Retrieved on 2007-02-26
- ^ Bailey, Ronald. Orwellian "Free Speech Zones" violate the constitution. Reason, February 4, 2004. Retrieved on January 3, 2007.
- ^ McNulty, Rebecca. Fla. College Student Successfully Fights Campus 'Free Speech Zone'. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Student Press Law Center, June 28, 2005. Retrieved January 3, 2007.
- ^ Hightower, Jim. Bush Zones Go National. The Nation, July 29, 2004. Retrieved on December 20, 2006.
- ^ Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 America. March 28, 2003.
- ^ "US v. ALA 539 U.S. 194, 2003". FindLaw. Retrieved 2007-03-21.
- ^ The Associated Press, Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic
- ^ http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071021-comcast-traffic-blocking-even-more-apps-groupware-clients-affected.html Ars Technica, Comcast traffic blocking: even more apps, groupware clients affected]
- ^ "Problems loading Google (DSL Reports Forums)"
- ^ Google Caught in Comcast Traffic Filtering?, Slashdot, retrieved 31 October 2007
- ^ [2]
- ^ Grossberg, Josh (2007-08-09). "AT&T's Pearl Jamming?". E Online. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
- ^ Roberts, Michelle (2007-08-10). "AT&T: Pearl Jam edit a mistake". Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
See also
- Civil liberties of the United States
- Corporate media
- First Amendment to the United States Constitution
- Freedom of speech in the United States
- Freedom of the press
- List of prominent cases argued by Floyd Abrams
- Manufacturing Consent
- United States obscenity law
- Political correctness
- Prior restraint
- Westmoreland v. CBS
Documentary films
Censorship in the past
Rating systems and industry self-regulation
- MPAA film rating system
- Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)
- Comics Code Authority
- TV Parental Guidelines
- Parental Advisory (music)
Related techniques of suppression
Free speech advocates
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Center for Democracy and Technology
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- International Freedom of Expression Exchange
- American Library Association
- National Coalition Against Censorship
- Fans of X-Rated Entertainment