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NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT
(Senate - November 08, 1997)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S12144-S12179] NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, today I introduce the Northern Ireland/ Border Counties Free Trade, Development and Security Act. This legislation is a carbon copy of S. 1976, legislation that I introduced in the 104th Congress. Joining me as original cosponsors are my friends and colleagues, the senior Senator from Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun and the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran. The Northern Ireland Free Trade, Development and Security Act reintroduced today will--by University of Ulster estimates, create 12,000 jobs within the twelve counties of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. It will produce an additional $1.5 billion into that economy annually. The new jobs it will create will be targeted to those areas that need the most, areas where the current unemployment rate ranges between 30 percent and 50 percent, areas that have never felt the effects of real economic expansion or growth. Further, this legislation will provide those jobs and hope without any discernable impact upon our nations trade or budget deficit, as was the case with Gaza/West Bank legislation. This bill will operate in harmony with stated goals of the European Union, United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. It will additionally comport with the requirements of the World Trade Organization. Mr. President, the paradox of Northern Ireland is that she has given so much to other cultures and lands but has been incapable of fully reaping the rewards of her own peoples skills and strengths at home. The unfortunate reality is that as in the Republic of Ireland, a large majority of the North's highly educated and skilled younger generation has been forced to emigrate due to high unemployment levels which are as high as 70 percent in some areas. These disadvantaged areas are the ones which this legislation has been especially designed to target. Joint cooperation and joint economic development between the United States, Northern Ireland and the European Union will integrate the most distressed parts of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties into a dynamic economy that--while firmly rooted in the European Union-- continues to expand and cement new trading relationships beneficial to all trading partners. Northern Ireland's peace process must move forward and the aspirations and goodwill of the vast majority of its citizens must be accompanied by hard work and endeavor. A more prosperous economy with more evenly spread and meaningful job opportunities can only serve to bridge the social and economic disparities that exist in this region. In conclusion this opportunity cannot be overlooked, after 25 years since the outbreak of the ``troubles,'' the people of Northern Ireland have suffered enough violence and depravity. Now it is time to embark on a rebuilding process that will give no chance to the terrorist but every chance to peace and reconciliation. Mr. President, it is time to roll up our sleeves and do something real and substantive for all the people of Northern Ireland. This legislation goes far beyond symbolic gestures and grand statements of concern. It will provide a real and solid foundation that the people of Northern Ireland can use to build that new and brighter future. This legislation represents the Senate's down payment on that future. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a public statement of support from Minister James McDaid, the Minister of Tourism and Trade for the Republic of Ireland, found in today's Irish News--be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Irish News] Minister Gives Backing to U.S. Free Trade Bill for North (By Jim Fitzpatrick) The Republic's tourism minister Dr. Jim McDaid has given his backing to the American free trade bill for Northern Ireland and the border counties. The Irish News reported last month that the proposed bill, which a University of Ulster study concluded would create at least 12,000 jobs, was facing opposition from officials in London, Dublin and Brussels. But Fianna Fail minister Dr. McDaid gave his unqualified backing to the proposal yesterday, saying that he felt special measures were necessary to redress the economic imbalance on the island. The bill would allow companies based in the northern twelve counties of Ireland to sell products directly into the U.S. without any tariffs. Its backers argue that it would be a massive boost for foreign investment and create thousands of jobs because it would allow companies free access the two largest markets in the world--north America and Europe. But the legislation, which is in the early stages of development in the U.S. Congress, has faced opposition from some sections of the Irish political establishment. Dr. McDaid's predecessor, Fine Gael minister Enda Kenny who also held responsibility for trade, said the bill would require customs posts to be set up within the Republic along the border of the zone. But Dr. McDaid rejected that suggestion: ``I don't agree that this bill will mean the `re-partition of Ireland'. The bill addresses an area which has already been recognized by the European Union and the International Fund for Ireland as needing special assistance.'' He said there was a need for ``positive discrimination'' and a radical economic plan to tackle the economic problems of the northern part of Ireland so that the ``whole of the island'' can share in its economic success. He said the bill would undoubtedly be a boost to the peace process, and help redress the economic imbalance crested by the years of violence in the north. Dr. McDaid said he felt that the free trade status would probably have to be granted on a time-limited basis--perhaps for 25 years or more. It's understood that support for the free trade bill has been growing within Irish political circles, although the Irish government has not taken a formal position on the matter. A number of senators and MEPs from border counties have submitted letters of support to the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congressman pushing the bill wrote to the Irish News recently calling on people in the region to publicly support the initiative. Massachusetts Congressman Marty Meehan praised the Clinton administration's current efforts to bring new investment to the north, and called on the people of the north to work with the influential American politicians who are backing the free trade initiative. ``I encourage the people of Northern Ireland and the border counties to work with me through trade associations, councils and elected representatives to help pass this bill as well as other related measures. Together, we can help lay the groundwork for a sound economic future in Northern Ireland,'' he wrote. Mr. Meehan stressed in his letter that, contrary to some of the criticisms levelled against the bill, his legislation would comply fully with European Union law. ______ By Mr. D'AMATO: S. 1477. A bill to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States to provide that certain goods may be reimported into the United States without additional duty; to the Committee on Finance. U.S. CATALOGUE MERCHANTS EXPORT PROMOTION ACT OF 1997 Mr. D'AMATO. Mr President, I rise today to introduce legislation necessary to correct a problem faced by an important segment of the American exporting community, catalogue merchants. Catalogue merchants are multi-billion dollar export businesses in New York State and across the nation. Due to an anomaly in our customs law, some products sold by these merchants face double duties when the goods are returned to them by customers abroad. The bill I am introducing today seeks to correct this problem by making sure that duties are only assessed once--as the law intended--the first time a product comes into this country from abroad. If I may Mr. President, let me explain the problem by first telling you how the system is supposed to work. When a catalogue merchant imports a product directly from abroad, as the [[Page S12145]] importer of record, he pays a duty on the product. Let's say the product is a pair of trousers from Taiwan. A merchant in the United States takes direct delivery of a pair of pants from a company in Taipei, and pays duties to the U.S. Treasury on the trousers when they enter the United States. The merchant then sells the pants to a customer in Montreal, Canada. But, the pants are the wrong size, and the customer returns the same pair of trousers directly to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. In that case, properly, is no duty paid on the returned trousers. After all, a duty was properly paid on the trousers when they were first imported into the U.S. That is how the law works when the catalogue merchant is also the official importer of record. Now, take the same situation, but add a broker here in the United States, (the way most catalogue merchants import merchandise into the United States) who is officially the importer of record. The trousers come into the United States from Taipei, but this time, instead of going directly to the merchant, they are imported by a U.S. distributer. The distributer, who is the importer of record, properly pays the duty on the pants, and then transfers the trousers to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. The catalogue merchant then sells the trousers to the customer in Montreal, who subsequently returns the trousers to the U.S. merchant (via a return clearinghouse in Canada, that is set up to ship returned products back to the U.S. in bulk). That is where the problem comes in. When the trousers come back to the United States (as part of a bulk shipment), duty has to be paid on the trousers a second time. Officially, that is because the catalogue merchant is not the original importer of record, and thus a second duty is assessed on the trousers. Clearly, this makes no sense. A second duty should not have to be paid on the same pair of trousers, just because the U.S. catalogue seller is not the original U.S. importer of record. What this amendment says, essentially, is that it doesn't matter who the original importer of record is; as long as the proper duty is paid when an article first enters the U.S., a duty is not assessed the second time the article enters the U.S., when it re-enters the U.S. as a sales return. The President may know that I have sought this change in law for more than a year, and it is my hope that when the Senate next turns to miscellaneous trade matters, this very minor provision can be included. The U.S. Customs Service has told importers that legislation is the only remedy to correct this anomaly. Furthermore, the measure should be deemed ``revenue neutral'' because importers can already avoid the double duty by simply shipping the returns back by (inefficiently) shipping the returns back to the U.S. individually rather than (efficiently) consolidating the shipments. This measure is a common-sense, good government measure which promotes U.S. exports, and correspondingly keeps companies from moving good jobs in distribution and logistics offshore. ______ By Ms. SNOWE (for herself and Mr. Breaux): S. 1480. A bill to authorize appropriations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct research, monitoring, education and management activities for the eradication and control of harmful algal blooms, including blooms of Pfiesteria piscicida and other aquatic toxins; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. the harmful algal bloom research and control act of 1997 Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation designed to address a serious national problem affecting our coasts. The recent outbreak of Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay has garnered a lot of media attention, and deservedly so. But Pfiesteria is actually just one example of a larger phenomenon--Harmful algal blooms. These damaging outbreaks of often toxic algae affect every U.S. coastal State and territory. In my State of Maine, we have outbreaks of paralytic shellfish poisoning every year which require the closure of clam flats along the coast, and the loss of millions of dollars in potential income. On Georges Bank off the New England coast, harmful algal blooms cause $3 million to $5 million worth of damage every year. In Washington in 1991, an outbreak resulted in losses of razor clams exceeding $15 million. And off Alaska, which has our Nation's most pristine coastline, an estimated $50 million worth of shellfish remain unexploited each year due to these outbreaks. What is frightening is that these blooms have been increasing over the last 30 years with no sign of abatement--and science cannot explain why. Nor do we have any other way of addressing the problem besides closing areas to swimming and fishing. My bill is designed to address this problem with focused and appropriate Federal action. NOAA, the lead Federal agency on harmful algal blooms, currently has the major Federal research program to address the problem--the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms project, or ECO-HAB. It is part of NOAA's Coastal Ocean Program, but it does not have a specific authorization. My bill would give this program a specific authorization for $10.5 million annually during fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, providing it with a more certain future as the next century approaches. The bill would also authorize the following activities for the next 3 years--$5 million per year for NOAA to upgrade its research lab capabilities to more effectively study the problem; $3 million annually for education and extension services through the Sea Grant colleges; $5.5 million annually to augment Federal and State monitoring programs to help detect harmful algal blooms early; and $8 million annually in grants to the States through the Coastal Zone Management Act [CZMA] programs to help States control blooms in their area. My bill represents a coordinated strategy for attacking this serious problem. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed, in the Record, as follows: S. 1480 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Harmful Algal Bloom Research and Control Act of 1997''. SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The Congress finds that-- (1) the recent outbreak of the harmful microbe Pfiesteria piscicida in the coastal waters of the United States is one of the larger set of potentially harmful algal blooms that appear to be increasing in abundance and intensity in the Nation's coastal waters; (2) in recent years, harmful algal blooms have resulted in massive fish kills, the deaths of numerous endangered West Indian manatees, beach closures, and threats to public health and safety; (3) other recent occurrences of harmful algal blooms include red tides in the Gulf of Mexico and the southeast, brown tides in New York and Texas, and shellfish poisonings in the Gulf of Maine, the Pacific northwest and the Gulf of Alaska; (4) harmful algal blooms have been responsible for an estimated $1,000,000,000 in economic losses during the past decade; (5) harmful algal blooms are composed of naturally occurring species that reproduce explosively when the natural system is out of balance; (6) under certain circumstances, harmful algal blooms can lead directly to other damaging marine conditions such as hypoxia, as has been found in the Gulf of Mexico; (7) factors thought to cause or contribute to harmful algal blooms include excessive nutrients and toxins from polluted runoff; (8) there is a strong need for a national strategy to identify better means of controlling polluted runoff; (9) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce, through its ongoing research, grant, and coastal resource management programs, possesses a full range of capabilities necessary to support a near and long-term comprehensive effort to control and eradicate harmful algal blooms; and (10) funding for NOAA's research and related programs will aid in improving the Nation's understanding and capabilities for addressing the human and environmental costs associated with harmful algal blooms. SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR ALGAL BLOOM ERADICATION AND CONTROL. There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary of Commerce for activities related to the research, eradication, and control of harmful algal blooms $32,000,000 in [[Page S12146]] each of fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, to remain available until expended. Of such amounts for each fiscal year-- (1) $5,000,000 may be used to enable the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to carry out research activities, including procurement and maintenance of research facilities, of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Ocean Service; (2) $10,500,000 may be used to carry out the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECO-HAB) project and related research under the Coastal Ocean Program established under section 201(c) of Public Law 102-567. (3) $3,000,000 may be used for outreach, education and advisory services administrated by the National Sea Grant Office established under subsection 204(a) of the National Sea Grant College Program Act (33 U.S.C. 1123(a)); (4) $5,500,000 may be used to carry out federal and state annual monitoring and analysis activities administered by the Office of Resource Conservation and Assessment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and (5) $8,000,000 may be used for grants under sections 306, 306A and 310 of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1455, 1455a and 1456c). ______ By Mr. DeWINE: S. 1481. A bill to amend the Social Security Act to eliminate the time limitation on benefits for immunosuppressive drugs under the Medicare Program, to provide for continued entitlement for such drugs for certain individuals after Medicare benefits end, and to extend certain Medicare secondary payer requirements; to the Committee on Finance. the immunosuppressive drugs coverage act of 1997 Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that will help organ transplant recipients maintain access to drugs that they need to prevent their immune systems from rejecting transplanted organs. This bill is the product of many conversations I have had with folks in the organ and tissue transplant community, including many people from Ohio. I have worked with people interested in organ and tissue donation for quite some time to increase awareness and education about transplant issues. Organs are very scarce, and we work hard to raise awareness so we can increase donation. Despite our efforts, more than 55,000 Americans are on the organ transplant waiting list--where they wait, and wait, and some of them die. Others are lucky--they get one of the precious organs, allowing them to live a healthier, longer life. Because of the wonderful gift these lucky few have been given, it is particularly tragic that some can't afford the drugs--called immunosuppressive drugs--that help ensure that their immune systems won't reject their new organs. That is why I am introducing the ``Immunosuppressive Drugs Coverage Act of 1997.'' This bill makes sure that the 75,000 people that have received an organ transplant covered by Medicare always have access to immunosuppressive drugs. Medicare currently limits coverage for immunosuppressive drugs to 30 months after a transplant. In 1998, the limit will rise to 36 months under current law. But then what? After Medicare coverage ends, the transplant recipient must find some other way to pay for these essential drugs. Many transplant recipients may not be able to get other insurance coverage or be able to afford to pay out-of-pocket for the drugs, which average around $5,000 annually and can cost in excess of $10,000. Without a way to pay for them, these patients may be forced to stop taking the immunosuppressive drugs. Others will ration use of the drugs and take them irregularly. In either case, the risk of rejection for the transplant organ is much greater. If a transplanted organ is rejected, the recipient may die or may need intensive, life-sustaining medical care, which Medicare often does pay for. And yet, it won't pay for the drugs to prevent these life- threatening episodes. For kidney recipients, who make up the vast majority of Medicare transplant recipients, immune rejection means an immediate return to renal dialysis at a cost to Medicare of around $30,000 a year. For some kidney patients and all other Medicare transplant recipients, rejection means a return to the transplant waiting list, and a need for expensive life-sustaining care. If they are lucky, they will get a second transplant, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My bill simply makes sure that everyone who receives an organ transplant through Medicare will have continued access to immunosuppressive drugs. This bill will help people who cannot pay for life-preserving immunosuppressive drugs and, at the same time, will help Medicare avoid the huge additional costs currently incurred when organs are rejected. When working with people to write this bill, I wanted to make sure the cost was as low as possible, while still getting the job done. That is why my bill contains safeguards that say that if any patient has private insurance coverage, it is the private insurance plan--and not Medicare--that pays for the immunosuppressive drugs. Someday, immunosuppressive drugs may not be necessary. We are beginning to see some promising research in this area. But today's transplant recipients need help now. They need this bill. The miracle of transplantation gives people the ``Gift of Life.'' It does not make sense to put this gift at risk because the recipient is unable to pay for immunosuppressive drugs. I urge every Senator to consider cosponsoring and supporting this bill. ______ By Mr. COATS: S. 1482. A bill to amend section 223 of the Communications Act of 1934 to establish a prohibition on commercial distribution on the World Wide Web of material that is harmful to minors, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. PORN LEGISLATION Mr. COATS. Mr. President, during Senate consideration of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 I, along with Senator James Exon, introduced an amendment to the Act which came to be known as the Communications Decency Act or CDA. This amendment held forth a basic principle, that children should be sheltered from obscene and indecent pornography. There was spirited debate on the amendment. However, ultimately the Senate adopted the CDA by an overwhelming margin of 84 to 16. On the very day that the President signed the Telecommunications Act into law, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association, along with America On-Line and other representatives of the computer industry, filed a law suit against the CDA in District Court. In short, the case ultimately came before the Supreme Court, where it was struck down. Mr. President, however much I disagree with the ruling of the Supreme Court, it is reality and as such, I have studied the opinion of the Court and come before my colleagues today to introduce legislation that reflects the parameters laid out by the Court's opinion. Mr. President, during Congressional consideration of the CDA, opponents of the measure took what I like to call an ostrich approach. They stuck their head in the sand and their rear end in the air. With companies like America on Line and Microsoft in the forefront, there came an indignant claim from the computer industry that there was no problem with pornography on the Internet. They claimed that there was very little pornography, and that what exists is difficult to find. However incredulous, this is what they claimed. Well, Mr. President, this ostrich appears to have extricated its head from the sand. For after the Supreme Court's ruling, the computer industry, along with so-called civil liberties groups, gathered for a White House summit to address the issue of pornography on the net, and what could be done about it. There are now panels and working groups, media discussions and industry alternatives all designed to address this problem of the proliferation of pornography on the Internet and the threat it poses to our children. Mr. President, let me congratulate the computer industry, and welcome them to the real world. And what is this real world? Mr. President, I turn now to the February 10 edition of U.S. News and World Report. The cover story is entitled, ``The Business of Porn.'' The article outlines in rather disturbing clarity the issue of pornography in America. ``Last year'' [[Page S12147]] it states, ``America spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances combined.'' This is truly alarming, and reflects poorly on the moral direction of the country. And, Mr. President, as the Internet continues to grow as a medium of communication and commerce in our society, its role in expanding the commerce of pornography increases exponentially. The Article goes on to say that: ``In much the same way that hard- core films on videocassette were largely responsible for the rapid introduction of the VCR, porn on and CD-ROM and on the Internet has hastened acceptance of these new technologies. Interactive adult CD- ROMS, such as Virtual Valarie and the Penthouse Photo Shoot, create interest in multimedia equipment among male computer buyers.'' It goes on: ``Porn companies have established elaborate Web sites to lure customers . . . Playboy's web site, which offers free glimpses of its Playmates, now averages about 5 million hits a day.'' The Article quotes Larry Flint, who says he ``imagines a future in which the TV and the personal computer have merged. Americans will lie in bed, cruising the Internet with their remote controls and ordering hard-core films at the punch of a button. The Internet promises to combine the video store's diversity of choices with the secrecy of purchases through the mail.'' Mr. President, there has been a virtual explosion of commerce in pornography on the Internet. Adult book stores, live peep shows, adult movies, you name it and it is there. It is available, Mr. President, not just to adults, but to children. And what does the computer industry, the ACLU, and the American Library Association tout as a solution to this problem? They tout self- ratings systems and blocking software. Opponents of the CDA, companies like America On-Line, the ACLU, the American Library Association, Larry Flint, have argued that there is no role for government in protecting children, that the Internet can regulate itself. The primary solution these people promote is system called PICs (Platform for Internet Content Selection), a type of self-ratings system. This would allow the pornographer to rate his own page, and browsers, the tool used to search the Internet, would then respond to these ratings. Aside from the ludicrous proposition of allowing the pornographer to self-rate, Mr. President, there is no incentive for compliance. I now turn to an editorial by writers in PC Week Magazine, a very prominent voice in the computer industry. The editorial is titled: ``Web Site Ratings--Shame on Most of Us.'' The column discusses the lack of voluntary compliance by content providers with the PICs system: ``We and many others in the computer industry and press have decried the Communications Decency Act and other government attempts to regulate the content of the Web. Instead, we've all argued, the government should let the Web rate and regulate its own content. Page ratings and browsers that respond to those ratings, not legislation, are the answers we've offered.'' The article goes on, ``Too bad we left the field before the game was over.'' the article says, ``We who work around the Web have done little to rate our content.'' it states that, in a search of the Web, they found ``few rated sites.'' And that rated sites were the ``exception to the rule'' In other words, PICs does not work. It does not work, because there is no incentive for pornographers to comply. And what about blocking software? Mr. President, let me begin by pointing out the amazing level of deceit that proponents of this solution are willing to go to. The American Library Association, a principal opponent of the CDA, lined up with plaintiffs in challenging the Constitutionality of the Act. It was a central argument of the Library Association and their cohorts, that blocking software presented a non-governmental solution to the problem. However, Mr. President, if one logs onto the American Library Association Web site one finds quite a surprise. Contained on the site is a resolution, adopted by the ALA Council on July 2, 1997, that resolves: ``That the American Library Association affirms that the use of filtering software by libraries to block access . . . violates the Library Bill of Rights.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this Resolution be inserted into the Record. So, here we find the true agenda of the American Library Association. They represent to the Court that everything is O.K., that all we need is blocking software. Then, they turn around and implement a policy that says no-way. And what are the implications? I quote now from a February 12, 1997 article in the Boston Herald. ``John Hunt, a parent from Dorchester, said he was furious to learn his 11-year-old daughter was able to view pornography yesterday while working on a school essay at the BPL's Copley Square branch.'' The article goes on: ``She said all the boys were around the computer and they were laughing and called the girls over to look at the pictures of naked people,'' Hunt said. ``I want to find out from these library officials what is going on.'' The article goes on to tell the story of another parent, Susan Sullivan who said she was stunned when her 10-year-old son spent the afternoon researching a book report on the computer in the BPL's Adams Street branch, but ended up looking through explicit photographs instead. Ms. Sullivan says: ``I'm very, very upset because I have no idea what he saw on the screen. He said he was using the Internet to do a book report on Indians and he was able to access dirty pictures, pictures of naked people.'' When the library spokesman was asked about parent's concerns, he dismissed them saying, ``We do have children's librarians but we do not have Internet police.'' So here is the genuine concern of the American Library Association for children and their genuine support for blocking software as a solution. Again, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be made part of the record. However, Mr. President, this is a side issue. As I pointed out earlier, in the case of the computer industry, deceit and denial are tactics regularly employed by opponents of real child protections. The fact is, Mr. President, that the software does not work. In fact, it is particularly dangerous because it creates a false sense of security for parents, teachers, and children. I have here a transcript from Morning Edition on National Public Radio. It is from the September 12, 1997 program. The host, Brooke Gladstone is interviewing a 12-year-old named Jack. Ms. Gladstone asks Jack what he does when he bumps up against Net Nanny, a popular blocking software program. Jack replies: ``You go to hacking sites such as the Undernet, which is a site which you pay money to go a member{sic . And then, after that, you have full access to all these hacking, cracking and phreaking and credit card fraud and all these other tools.'' Ms. Gladstone then asks Jack if kids use these services. Jack replies: ``A lot. I mean, you have kids at school who bring in 3.5 inch disks saying hey, buddy, come here. I'll sell you this disk for $10 dollars. There's all the hacking stuff you'll ever need. Ms. Gladstone then goes on to discuss with Jack how he made money down-loading pornography and selling it to his school-mates, making $30. Jack describes the various methods by which he defeats the blocking software his parents have installed. Later in the interview, Ms. Gladstone interviews Jay Friedland, founder of Surf Watch, another well-hyped blocking software program. Mr. Friedland readily concedes that his software can be broken, even describing the ways to hack the program. In describing the security his product offers parents, he says: ``It's a little bit like suntan lotion. It allows you to stay out in the sun longer, but you can still get sunburnt.'' Mr. President, this does not sound very reassuring to me. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted into the Record at the appropriate place. [[Page S12148]] The bottom line here is money. There are millions upon millions of dollars being made on the Internet in the pornography business. There is even more money being made marketing software to terrified parents, software that does not work. Let's look at the situation. You have the computer industry working to defeat laws designed to prohibit distribution of pornography to children. The solution that they promote is blocking software, manufactured by themselves. They are making tens- of-millions of dollars off of it. However, what we find out is that the software doesn't work. And all the while, you have companies like America On- Line out there, head in the sand, telling parents, schools, Congress, and the American public that there isn't a problem with pornography on the Internet. And the Internet Access Providers are pulling in the big bucks, providing access to the red light district. ``The Erotic Allure of Home Schooling,'' that is the name of an article, published in the September 8 edition of Fortune Magazine. Mr. President, I have long been an advocate of home schooling. But, I must confess that its erotic allure has never been one of my motivations. It begins: ``Here's one of the Web's dirtiest words: Mars. Try searching for sites about the red planet lately, and you could land on a porn purveyor's on-line playground. What next?'' the article asks, ``Smut linked to the keywords`home schooling'? Don't look now--it's already happened.'' The article goes on: ``Perverse as these connections seem, they're right out of Economics 101, specifically the part about competition. Pornography sites are among the Web's few big moneymakers. There are thousands of them, from the R-rated to the boundlessly perverse. They compete furiously, and their main battleground for market share is search engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, and Infoseek. Web surfers looking for porn typically tap into such search services and use keywords like ``sex'' and ``XXX.'' But so many on- line sex shops now display those words that their presence won't make a site stand out in a list resulting from a user's query. To get noticed, pornographers increasingly try to trick search engines into giving them top billing-- sometimes called `spoofing'.'' The article points out that: ``Search engine companies like Infoseek constantly develop new filters to defeat spoofing. But calls still come in from irate mothers and grade-school teachers who click on innocent- looking search results and find themselves on a page too exotic to mention.'' The article concludes: ``The Clinton Administration is encouraging efforts based on`voluntary restraint.' That's a lot to ask in the Web's open bazaar, where market share is the name of the game.'' I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted in the record at the appropriate place. Mr. President, it is not just a lot to ask. It is foolish and futile to ask. The bottom line is that, unless commercial distributors of pornography are met with the force of law, they will not act responsibly. I am here today to introduce legislation that will provide just such force of law. As I stated in my opening comments, the legislation I introduce today is designed to accommodate the concerns of the Supreme Court. This legislation is specifically targeted at the commercial distribution of materials harmful to minors on the World Wide Web. It states simply that ``Whoever in interstate or foreign commerce in or through the World Wide Web is engaged in the business of the commercial distribution of material that is harmful to minors shall restrict access to such material by persons under 17 years of age.'' It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that the defendant restricted access to such material by requiring use of a verified credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult personal identification number. The bill also calls upon the FCC to prescribe alternative procedures. The FCC is expressly restricted from regulation of the Internet, or Internet Speech. Further, the FCC and the Justice Department are directed to post on their Web sites information as is necessary to inform the public of the meaning of the term ``harmful to minors.'' As I know that it will be of some concern to my colleagues that any legislation dealing with this topic takes into account the Supreme Court's ruling in the CDA, I would like to take some time now to examine the key precedents which the Court considered in its opinion on the CDA and how they relate to this bill. Central to the construction of this legislation is the Ginsberg case. This Court ruling upheld the constitutionality of a New York statute that prohibited the selling to minors under 17 years of age material that was considered obscene as to them even if not obscene as to adults. In Ginsberg, the Court rejected the defendant's argument that ``the scope of the constitutional freedom of expression secured to a citizen to read or see material concerned with sex cannot be made to depend on whether the citizen is an adult or a minor.'' In Ginsberg, the Court relied on both the state's interest in protecting the well-being of children, but also on the principle that ``the parent's claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their own children is basic in the structure of our society.'' In the Court's opinion on the CDA, they laid out four differences between the CDA and the question contained in the Ginsberg case. As you will see, the legislation I introduce today carefully addresses each of these concerns. First, the Court points out that in the New York statute examined in Ginsberg, ``the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children.'' The Court interpreted the CDA to prohibit such activity. Though I must confess to my colleagues that I find it a disturbing proposition that a parent should so desire to purchase pornographic material for their children's consumption, it seems that this is a right that this Court feels compelled to protect. The legislation I introduce today places no restriction on a parent's right to purchase such material, and to provide it to their children, or anyone else. In fact, it places no restriction on any potential consumer of pornography. Rather, it simply requires the commercial purveyor of pornography to cast their message in such a way as not to be readily available to children. The Court's second issue relating to the Ginsberg case is that the New York statute applied only to commercial transactions. As I have previously stated, my legislation deals only with commercial transactions. Third, the Court points out that in Ginsberg, the New York statute combined its definition of harmful to minors with the requirement that it be ``utterly without redeeming social importance for minors.'' The Court goes on to express that the CDA omits any requirement that the material covered in the statute lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This concern is addressed directly in my legislation, with a specific plank of the definition of harmful to minors requiring that the material in question ``lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'' Mr. President, I do not believe that it is possible to address a concern more directly. Finally, the Court states that the New York statute considered in Ginsberg defined a minor as a person under the age of 17, whereas the CDA applied to children under the age of 18, citing concern that by extending protection to those under 18, the CDA reached ``those nearest the majority.'' Mr. President, here again I am confused my the rationale of the Court. For it is common practice in federal statute to recognize minors as those under the age of 18 years. However, the legislation I introduce today contains the same under 17 requirement established under Ginsberg. The second case of importance as relates to the Supreme Court ruling on the CDA is the Pacifica case. Though the specifics of this case are well- known to most by now, a summary might be helpful. In the Pacifica case, the Supreme Court upheld a declaratory order of the FCC relating to the broadcast of a recording of a monologue entitled ``Filthy Words.'' The Commission found that the use of certain words referring to excretory or sexual activities or organs ``in an afternoon broadcast when children are in the audience was patently offensive'' and thus inappropriate for broadcast. [[Page S12149]] In considering the precedent established in Pacifica, and their relationship to the CDA, the Court outlined 3 concerns. First, the Court stated that, unlike in Pacifica where the content in question was regulated as to the time it was broadcast, the CDA made no such distinction. Further, the Court makes a rather curious distinction in stating that the regulation in question in the Pacifica case had been promulgated by an agency with ``decades'' of experience in regulating the medium. On the first point, the regulation of Internet content in the context of time is irrelevant, as a child may access or be inadvertently exposed to pornography any time he or she logs onto the Internet. That could be in the evening, when doing a research paper, or during class-- working on an assignment, or at the public library. The simple fact that a child runs the risk of exposure any time presents a more substantial potential for harm than the time regulation approach approved in Pacifica, and calls for a higher level of control, not lower as the Court concluded. On the question of regulation by an agency with decades of experience, given the fact that the Internet is a very new medium of communication, it is a rather ludicrous distinction to make. No agency, short of the Defense Department, could demonstrate the historical relationship to the Internet that the FCC can with broadcast radio. Surely the Supreme Court would not advocate Defense Department regulation of the Internet. Further, given the concern among supporters of the Internet regarding government regulation of the medium, it would seem preferable to have a clearly defined statute, enforced by the Justice Department, as opposed to a regulatory regime, which would be enforced by an unaccountable federal agency and subject to bureaucratic creep. During debate and negotiations on passage of the CDA, opponents raised strong concerns that the FCC not be given any regulatory authority over the Internet. It was this opposition to a regulatory solution that resulted in a very restricted agency roll. Though the FCC is expressly prohibited from regulating content under the legislation I introduce today, a specific provision is made for the FCC to prescribe a method of restricting access that would function as an affirmative defense to prosecution. As such, this legislation provides the benefit and flexibility of an evolving agency regulation, whereby as technology evolved and new and more effective means of access restriction emerge, the Commission could modify the regulation, without the creation of a regulatory regime with expansive FCC authority over the Internet and speech. The Court goes on to point out that in Pacifica, the Commission's declaratory order was not punitive, whereas there were penalties under the CDA. Here, it is important to distinguish the difference in scope between this legislation and the CDA. A principal concern of the Court with the CDA, was that the CDA dealt with both commercial and non-commercial communications. As such, the cost and technology burdens necessary to restrict access that would be imposed by the CDA on non-commercial speakers, according to the opinion of the Court, would be prohibitive. The result would be, in the Opinion of the Court, that speech would be chilled. The legislation I introduce today is strictly limited to the commercial distribution of pornography on the World Wide Web. The commercial distributors of pornography on the Web already use the very mechanisms (credit cards and PIN numbers) that are required under this bill. The difference between the status quo and this bill is that pornography distributors would be required to cease to give away the freebies that any child with a mouse could gain access to. As such, Court concerns regarding the potential chilling effect to non-commercial speech that they perceived under the CDA is moot. The scope of this legislation does not extend to the non-commercial speaker. Secondly, this legislation imposes no new technological or economic burden on the commercial operator. It simply imposes a control on the manner of distribution and provides penalties for violations. Mr. President, there is a long tradition of fines and penalties for violations of laws governing the commercial distribution of pornography. This legislation is simply a continuation of these principles. In fact, the very treatment of fines in penalties under this legislation, mirrors those under dial-a-porn, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Finally, under an examination of Pacifica, the Court points out the differences between the level of First Amendment protection extended to broadcast and the Internet. Mr. President, I must say that however much I differ with the opinion of the Court on this question in general, I would simply point out that the harmful to minors standard has traditionally been used, and has been constitutionally upheld, as a standard for regulating print media. Print media is extended the highest level of First Amendment protection. As such, this legislation clearly accounts for the Supreme Court's concerns in this area. The Court also examines the precedents established under Renton. The Renton case dealt with a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theaters out of residential neighborhoods. It did so based on the ``secondary effects'' of the theaters--such as crime and deteriorating property values. It was the Court's opinion that the CDA treated the entire universe of cyberspace rather than specific areas or zones. Further, the Court seemed preoccupied that the CDA dealt with the primary, not the secondary effects of pornography. The legislation I introduce today deals with a narrow zone of the Internet, commercial activity on the World Wide Web. Though there is tremendous economic activity in pornography on the Web. The cyber- geography of this bill is very limited. Mr. President, on this question of primary and secondary effects, I must differ with the Court and would like to go into this question in some detail. The underlying principle which the Senate supported by a vote of 84 to 16 in adopting the CDA, and which is embodied in the legislation I introduce today is articulated in New York versus. Ferber: ``It is evident beyond the need for elaboration that the State's interest in `safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor' is compelling.'' There is no question that exposure to pornography harms children. A child's sexual development occurs gradually through childhood. Exposure to pornography, particularly the type of hard-core pornography available on the Internet, distorts the natural sexual development of children. Essentially, pornography shapes children's sexual perspective by providing them information on sexual activity. However, the type of information provided by pornography does not provide children with a normal sexual perspective. As pointed out in Enough is Enough's brief to Court on the CDA, pornography portrays unhealthy or antisocial kinds of sexual activity, such as sadomasochism, abuse, and humiliation of females, involvement of children, incest, group sex, voyeurism, sexual degradation, bestiality, torture, objectification, that serve to teach children the rudiments of sex without adult supervision and moral guidance. Ann Burgess, Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, states that children generally do not have a natural sexual capacity until between 10 and 12 years old. Pornography unnaturally accelerates that development. By short-circuiting the normal development process and supplying misinformation about their own sexuality, pornography leaves children confused, changed and damaged. As if the psychological threat of pornography does not present a sufficient compelling interest, there is a significant physical threat. As I have stated, pornography develops in children a distorted sexual perspective. It encourages irresponsible, dehumanized sexual behavior, conduct that presents a genuine physical threat to children. In the United States, about one in four sexually active teenagers acquire a sexually transmitted disease (STD) every year, resulting in 3 million STD cases. Infectious syphilis rates have more than doubled among teenagers since the mid-1980's. One million American teenage girls become pregnant each year. A report entitled ``Exposure to Pornography, Character and Sexual [[Page S12150]] Deviance'' concluded that as more and more children become exposed not only to soft-core pornography, but also to explicit deviant sexual material, society's youth will learn an extremely dangerous message: sex without responsibility is acceptable. However, there is a darker and more ominous threat. For research has established a direct link between exposure and consumption of pornography and sexual assault, rape and molesting of children. As stated in Aggressive Erotica and Violence Against Women, ``Virtually all lab studies established a causal link between violent pornography and the commission of violence. This relationship is not seriously debated in the research community.'' What is more, pedophiles will often use pornographic material to desensitize children to sexual activity, effectively breaking down their resistance in order to sexually exploit them. A study by Victor Cline found that child molesters often use pornography to seduce their prey, to lower the inhibitions of the victim, and as an instruction manual. Further, a W.L. Marshal study found that: ``87 percent of female child molesters and 77 percent of male child molesters studied admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography.'' Given these facts, Mr. President, any distinction the Court makes regarding the effects of pornography on children seems to miss the very point of the state's compelling interest. For the sanctity and security of childhood is what these efforts are all about. As I have stated before in addressing this subject, childhood must be defended by parents and society as a safe harbor of innocence. It is a privileged time to develop values in an environment that is not hostile to them. But this foul material on the Internet invades that place and destroys that innocence. It takes the worst excesses of the red-light district and places it directly into a child's bedroom, on the computer their parents bought them to help them with their homework. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and yield the floor. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 10, 1997] The Business of Pornography (By Eric Schlosser) Most of the outsize profits being generated by pornography today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry John Stagliano is a wealthy entrepreneur, a self-made man whose rise to the top could happen only in America. Raised in a conservative, Midwestern household, Stagliano read the books of Ayn Rand and was greatly influenced by their heroes, rugged individualists willing to defy conventional opinion. He attended the University of California--Los Angeles hoping to become a professor of economics. Instead, he studied modern dance, struggled to find work as an actor, became one of the original Chippendale dancers, performed occasionally in hard-core films, and used the prize money won during a cable television strip contest to finance and direct a porn film of his own. Today, Stagliano is the nation's leading director of hard- core videos, a porn auteur whose distinctive cinema verite style of filmmaking has been widely imitated. His videos cost about $8,000 to produce--and often earn him 30 times that amount. Stagliano shoots without a crew, edits the films himself, and performs in them. He also is a major contributor to the Cato Institute, a well-known think tank in Washington, D.C., where he regularly discusses policy issues with its economists. Stagliano's company, Evil Angel Video, has become a veritable United Artists of porn, distributing the work of other top directors. Evil Angel sold about half a million videos last year. At its modern Southern California warehouse, hundreds of VCRs, stacked floor to ceiling, run 24 hours a day, five days a week, churning out copies of hard- core films. A great deal has been written about pornography, both pro and con. A new movie about the life of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, has once again raised the issue of pornography and the First Amendment. But much less attention has been given to the underlying economics of porn, to porn as a commodity, the end product of a modern industry that arose in this country after the Second World War and has grown enormously ever since. Critics of the sex industry have long attacked it for being ``un-American''--and yet there is something quintessentially American about it: the heady mix of sex and money, the fortunes quickly made and lost, the new identities assumed and then discarded, the public condemnations of a private obsession. Largely fueled by loneliness and frustration, the sex industry has been transformed from a minor subculture on the fringes of society into a major component of American popular culture. Meese formation. More than a decade ago, Attorney General Edwin Meese III's Commission on Pornography issued its controversial report, asserting that sexually explicit materials were harmful and calling for strict enforcement of the federal obscenity laws. The report prompted President Ronald Reagan to launch one of the most far-reaching assaults on porn in the nation's history, a campaign that continued under President George Bush. Hundreds of producers, distributors, and retailers in the sex industry were indicted and convicted. Many were driven from the business and imprisoned. The Reagan-Bush war on pornography coincided, however, with a dramatic increase in America's consumption of sexually explicit materials. According to Adult Video News, an industry trade publication, the number of hard-core-video rentals rose from 75 million in 1985 to 490 million in 1992. The total climbed to 665 million, an all-time high, in 1996. Last year Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual vices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances--combined. Porn has become so commonplace in recent years that one can easily forget how strictly it was prohibited not long ago. The sociologist Charles Winick has noted that the sexual content of American culture changed more in two decades than it had in the previous two centuries. Twenty-five years ago, a federal study of pornography estimated that the total retail value of all the hard-core porn in the United States was no more than $10 million, and perhaps less than $5 million. Durng the 1980s, the advent of adult movies on videocassette and on cable television, as well as the huge growth in telephone sex services, shifted the consumption of porn from seedy movie theaters and bookstores into the home. As a result, most of the profits being generated by porn today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry--by mom and pop video stores; by long-distance carriers like AT by cable companies like Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc.; and by hotel chains like Marriott, Hyatt, and Holiday Inn that now reportedly earn million of dollars each year supplying adult films to their guests. America's porn has become one more of its cultural exports, dominating overseas markets. Despite having some of the toughest restrictions on sexually explicit materials of any Western industrialized nation, the United States is now by far the world's leading producer of porn, churning out hard-core videos at the astonishing rate of about 150 new titles a week. Parallel universe. In the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, near Universal City and the Warner Bros. back lot, an X-rated-movie industry has emerged, an adult dream factory, with its own studios, talent agencies, and stars, its own fan clubs and film critics. Perhaps three quarters of the hard-core films made in the United States today come from Los Angeles County. Sound stages, editing facilities, and printing plants are tucked away in middle- and working-class neighborhoods, amid a typical Southern California landscape of palm trees, shopping malls, car washes, and fast-food joints. You could hardly choose a more unexceptional spot for the world capital of porn. Nevertheless, strange things are happening in the valley, behind closed doors. Every few weeks, in the upscale suburb of Sherman Oaks, there's an open casting call at the industry's top talent agency. Scores of young men and women crowd its small offices, undressing for producers and directors who audition promising newcomers and inspect them for tattoos. At the sleek headquarters of an adult-film company in Chatsworth, the hallways are lined with autographed basketball and hockey jerseys, expensively framed. There is not an obscene image in sight. It could be the headquarters of ESPN. In addition to hard-core videos, the company's start-of-the-art, $30 million duplicating equipment also copies videos for government agencies and local church groups. At a factory in Panorama City, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, shelves are lined with plaster casts of the buttocks and genitalia of famous porn stars. The casts are used to make sexual devices, lifelike reproductions packaged with celebrity endorsements. A rival L.A. company sells a plastic, inflatable woman that speaks with an English accent. The factory calls to mind the set of a science fiction movie: Wires peek from battery- powered devices; metal cages on the floor are filled with rubber body parts. The distribu

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NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT
(Senate - November 08, 1997)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S12144-S12179] NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, today I introduce the Northern Ireland/ Border Counties Free Trade, Development and Security Act. This legislation is a carbon copy of S. 1976, legislation that I introduced in the 104th Congress. Joining me as original cosponsors are my friends and colleagues, the senior Senator from Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun and the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran. The Northern Ireland Free Trade, Development and Security Act reintroduced today will--by University of Ulster estimates, create 12,000 jobs within the twelve counties of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. It will produce an additional $1.5 billion into that economy annually. The new jobs it will create will be targeted to those areas that need the most, areas where the current unemployment rate ranges between 30 percent and 50 percent, areas that have never felt the effects of real economic expansion or growth. Further, this legislation will provide those jobs and hope without any discernable impact upon our nations trade or budget deficit, as was the case with Gaza/West Bank legislation. This bill will operate in harmony with stated goals of the European Union, United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. It will additionally comport with the requirements of the World Trade Organization. Mr. President, the paradox of Northern Ireland is that she has given so much to other cultures and lands but has been incapable of fully reaping the rewards of her own peoples skills and strengths at home. The unfortunate reality is that as in the Republic of Ireland, a large majority of the North's highly educated and skilled younger generation has been forced to emigrate due to high unemployment levels which are as high as 70 percent in some areas. These disadvantaged areas are the ones which this legislation has been especially designed to target. Joint cooperation and joint economic development between the United States, Northern Ireland and the European Union will integrate the most distressed parts of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties into a dynamic economy that--while firmly rooted in the European Union-- continues to expand and cement new trading relationships beneficial to all trading partners. Northern Ireland's peace process must move forward and the aspirations and goodwill of the vast majority of its citizens must be accompanied by hard work and endeavor. A more prosperous economy with more evenly spread and meaningful job opportunities can only serve to bridge the social and economic disparities that exist in this region. In conclusion this opportunity cannot be overlooked, after 25 years since the outbreak of the ``troubles,'' the people of Northern Ireland have suffered enough violence and depravity. Now it is time to embark on a rebuilding process that will give no chance to the terrorist but every chance to peace and reconciliation. Mr. President, it is time to roll up our sleeves and do something real and substantive for all the people of Northern Ireland. This legislation goes far beyond symbolic gestures and grand statements of concern. It will provide a real and solid foundation that the people of Northern Ireland can use to build that new and brighter future. This legislation represents the Senate's down payment on that future. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a public statement of support from Minister James McDaid, the Minister of Tourism and Trade for the Republic of Ireland, found in today's Irish News--be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Irish News] Minister Gives Backing to U.S. Free Trade Bill for North (By Jim Fitzpatrick) The Republic's tourism minister Dr. Jim McDaid has given his backing to the American free trade bill for Northern Ireland and the border counties. The Irish News reported last month that the proposed bill, which a University of Ulster study concluded would create at least 12,000 jobs, was facing opposition from officials in London, Dublin and Brussels. But Fianna Fail minister Dr. McDaid gave his unqualified backing to the proposal yesterday, saying that he felt special measures were necessary to redress the economic imbalance on the island. The bill would allow companies based in the northern twelve counties of Ireland to sell products directly into the U.S. without any tariffs. Its backers argue that it would be a massive boost for foreign investment and create thousands of jobs because it would allow companies free access the two largest markets in the world--north America and Europe. But the legislation, which is in the early stages of development in the U.S. Congress, has faced opposition from some sections of the Irish political establishment. Dr. McDaid's predecessor, Fine Gael minister Enda Kenny who also held responsibility for trade, said the bill would require customs posts to be set up within the Republic along the border of the zone. But Dr. McDaid rejected that suggestion: ``I don't agree that this bill will mean the `re-partition of Ireland'. The bill addresses an area which has already been recognized by the European Union and the International Fund for Ireland as needing special assistance.'' He said there was a need for ``positive discrimination'' and a radical economic plan to tackle the economic problems of the northern part of Ireland so that the ``whole of the island'' can share in its economic success. He said the bill would undoubtedly be a boost to the peace process, and help redress the economic imbalance crested by the years of violence in the north. Dr. McDaid said he felt that the free trade status would probably have to be granted on a time-limited basis--perhaps for 25 years or more. It's understood that support for the free trade bill has been growing within Irish political circles, although the Irish government has not taken a formal position on the matter. A number of senators and MEPs from border counties have submitted letters of support to the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congressman pushing the bill wrote to the Irish News recently calling on people in the region to publicly support the initiative. Massachusetts Congressman Marty Meehan praised the Clinton administration's current efforts to bring new investment to the north, and called on the people of the north to work with the influential American politicians who are backing the free trade initiative. ``I encourage the people of Northern Ireland and the border counties to work with me through trade associations, councils and elected representatives to help pass this bill as well as other related measures. Together, we can help lay the groundwork for a sound economic future in Northern Ireland,'' he wrote. Mr. Meehan stressed in his letter that, contrary to some of the criticisms levelled against the bill, his legislation would comply fully with European Union law. ______ By Mr. D'AMATO: S. 1477. A bill to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States to provide that certain goods may be reimported into the United States without additional duty; to the Committee on Finance. U.S. CATALOGUE MERCHANTS EXPORT PROMOTION ACT OF 1997 Mr. D'AMATO. Mr President, I rise today to introduce legislation necessary to correct a problem faced by an important segment of the American exporting community, catalogue merchants. Catalogue merchants are multi-billion dollar export businesses in New York State and across the nation. Due to an anomaly in our customs law, some products sold by these merchants face double duties when the goods are returned to them by customers abroad. The bill I am introducing today seeks to correct this problem by making sure that duties are only assessed once--as the law intended--the first time a product comes into this country from abroad. If I may Mr. President, let me explain the problem by first telling you how the system is supposed to work. When a catalogue merchant imports a product directly from abroad, as the [[Page S12145]] importer of record, he pays a duty on the product. Let's say the product is a pair of trousers from Taiwan. A merchant in the United States takes direct delivery of a pair of pants from a company in Taipei, and pays duties to the U.S. Treasury on the trousers when they enter the United States. The merchant then sells the pants to a customer in Montreal, Canada. But, the pants are the wrong size, and the customer returns the same pair of trousers directly to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. In that case, properly, is no duty paid on the returned trousers. After all, a duty was properly paid on the trousers when they were first imported into the U.S. That is how the law works when the catalogue merchant is also the official importer of record. Now, take the same situation, but add a broker here in the United States, (the way most catalogue merchants import merchandise into the United States) who is officially the importer of record. The trousers come into the United States from Taipei, but this time, instead of going directly to the merchant, they are imported by a U.S. distributer. The distributer, who is the importer of record, properly pays the duty on the pants, and then transfers the trousers to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. The catalogue merchant then sells the trousers to the customer in Montreal, who subsequently returns the trousers to the U.S. merchant (via a return clearinghouse in Canada, that is set up to ship returned products back to the U.S. in bulk). That is where the problem comes in. When the trousers come back to the United States (as part of a bulk shipment), duty has to be paid on the trousers a second time. Officially, that is because the catalogue merchant is not the original importer of record, and thus a second duty is assessed on the trousers. Clearly, this makes no sense. A second duty should not have to be paid on the same pair of trousers, just because the U.S. catalogue seller is not the original U.S. importer of record. What this amendment says, essentially, is that it doesn't matter who the original importer of record is; as long as the proper duty is paid when an article first enters the U.S., a duty is not assessed the second time the article enters the U.S., when it re-enters the U.S. as a sales return. The President may know that I have sought this change in law for more than a year, and it is my hope that when the Senate next turns to miscellaneous trade matters, this very minor provision can be included. The U.S. Customs Service has told importers that legislation is the only remedy to correct this anomaly. Furthermore, the measure should be deemed ``revenue neutral'' because importers can already avoid the double duty by simply shipping the returns back by (inefficiently) shipping the returns back to the U.S. individually rather than (efficiently) consolidating the shipments. This measure is a common-sense, good government measure which promotes U.S. exports, and correspondingly keeps companies from moving good jobs in distribution and logistics offshore. ______ By Ms. SNOWE (for herself and Mr. Breaux): S. 1480. A bill to authorize appropriations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct research, monitoring, education and management activities for the eradication and control of harmful algal blooms, including blooms of Pfiesteria piscicida and other aquatic toxins; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. the harmful algal bloom research and control act of 1997 Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation designed to address a serious national problem affecting our coasts. The recent outbreak of Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay has garnered a lot of media attention, and deservedly so. But Pfiesteria is actually just one example of a larger phenomenon--Harmful algal blooms. These damaging outbreaks of often toxic algae affect every U.S. coastal State and territory. In my State of Maine, we have outbreaks of paralytic shellfish poisoning every year which require the closure of clam flats along the coast, and the loss of millions of dollars in potential income. On Georges Bank off the New England coast, harmful algal blooms cause $3 million to $5 million worth of damage every year. In Washington in 1991, an outbreak resulted in losses of razor clams exceeding $15 million. And off Alaska, which has our Nation's most pristine coastline, an estimated $50 million worth of shellfish remain unexploited each year due to these outbreaks. What is frightening is that these blooms have been increasing over the last 30 years with no sign of abatement--and science cannot explain why. Nor do we have any other way of addressing the problem besides closing areas to swimming and fishing. My bill is designed to address this problem with focused and appropriate Federal action. NOAA, the lead Federal agency on harmful algal blooms, currently has the major Federal research program to address the problem--the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms project, or ECO-HAB. It is part of NOAA's Coastal Ocean Program, but it does not have a specific authorization. My bill would give this program a specific authorization for $10.5 million annually during fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, providing it with a more certain future as the next century approaches. The bill would also authorize the following activities for the next 3 years--$5 million per year for NOAA to upgrade its research lab capabilities to more effectively study the problem; $3 million annually for education and extension services through the Sea Grant colleges; $5.5 million annually to augment Federal and State monitoring programs to help detect harmful algal blooms early; and $8 million annually in grants to the States through the Coastal Zone Management Act [CZMA] programs to help States control blooms in their area. My bill represents a coordinated strategy for attacking this serious problem. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed, in the Record, as follows: S. 1480 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Harmful Algal Bloom Research and Control Act of 1997''. SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The Congress finds that-- (1) the recent outbreak of the harmful microbe Pfiesteria piscicida in the coastal waters of the United States is one of the larger set of potentially harmful algal blooms that appear to be increasing in abundance and intensity in the Nation's coastal waters; (2) in recent years, harmful algal blooms have resulted in massive fish kills, the deaths of numerous endangered West Indian manatees, beach closures, and threats to public health and safety; (3) other recent occurrences of harmful algal blooms include red tides in the Gulf of Mexico and the southeast, brown tides in New York and Texas, and shellfish poisonings in the Gulf of Maine, the Pacific northwest and the Gulf of Alaska; (4) harmful algal blooms have been responsible for an estimated $1,000,000,000 in economic losses during the past decade; (5) harmful algal blooms are composed of naturally occurring species that reproduce explosively when the natural system is out of balance; (6) under certain circumstances, harmful algal blooms can lead directly to other damaging marine conditions such as hypoxia, as has been found in the Gulf of Mexico; (7) factors thought to cause or contribute to harmful algal blooms include excessive nutrients and toxins from polluted runoff; (8) there is a strong need for a national strategy to identify better means of controlling polluted runoff; (9) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce, through its ongoing research, grant, and coastal resource management programs, possesses a full range of capabilities necessary to support a near and long-term comprehensive effort to control and eradicate harmful algal blooms; and (10) funding for NOAA's research and related programs will aid in improving the Nation's understanding and capabilities for addressing the human and environmental costs associated with harmful algal blooms. SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR ALGAL BLOOM ERADICATION AND CONTROL. There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary of Commerce for activities related to the research, eradication, and control of harmful algal blooms $32,000,000 in [[Page S12146]] each of fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, to remain available until expended. Of such amounts for each fiscal year-- (1) $5,000,000 may be used to enable the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to carry out research activities, including procurement and maintenance of research facilities, of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Ocean Service; (2) $10,500,000 may be used to carry out the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECO-HAB) project and related research under the Coastal Ocean Program established under section 201(c) of Public Law 102-567. (3) $3,000,000 may be used for outreach, education and advisory services administrated by the National Sea Grant Office established under subsection 204(a) of the National Sea Grant College Program Act (33 U.S.C. 1123(a)); (4) $5,500,000 may be used to carry out federal and state annual monitoring and analysis activities administered by the Office of Resource Conservation and Assessment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and (5) $8,000,000 may be used for grants under sections 306, 306A and 310 of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1455, 1455a and 1456c). ______ By Mr. DeWINE: S. 1481. A bill to amend the Social Security Act to eliminate the time limitation on benefits for immunosuppressive drugs under the Medicare Program, to provide for continued entitlement for such drugs for certain individuals after Medicare benefits end, and to extend certain Medicare secondary payer requirements; to the Committee on Finance. the immunosuppressive drugs coverage act of 1997 Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that will help organ transplant recipients maintain access to drugs that they need to prevent their immune systems from rejecting transplanted organs. This bill is the product of many conversations I have had with folks in the organ and tissue transplant community, including many people from Ohio. I have worked with people interested in organ and tissue donation for quite some time to increase awareness and education about transplant issues. Organs are very scarce, and we work hard to raise awareness so we can increase donation. Despite our efforts, more than 55,000 Americans are on the organ transplant waiting list--where they wait, and wait, and some of them die. Others are lucky--they get one of the precious organs, allowing them to live a healthier, longer life. Because of the wonderful gift these lucky few have been given, it is particularly tragic that some can't afford the drugs--called immunosuppressive drugs--that help ensure that their immune systems won't reject their new organs. That is why I am introducing the ``Immunosuppressive Drugs Coverage Act of 1997.'' This bill makes sure that the 75,000 people that have received an organ transplant covered by Medicare always have access to immunosuppressive drugs. Medicare currently limits coverage for immunosuppressive drugs to 30 months after a transplant. In 1998, the limit will rise to 36 months under current law. But then what? After Medicare coverage ends, the transplant recipient must find some other way to pay for these essential drugs. Many transplant recipients may not be able to get other insurance coverage or be able to afford to pay out-of-pocket for the drugs, which average around $5,000 annually and can cost in excess of $10,000. Without a way to pay for them, these patients may be forced to stop taking the immunosuppressive drugs. Others will ration use of the drugs and take them irregularly. In either case, the risk of rejection for the transplant organ is much greater. If a transplanted organ is rejected, the recipient may die or may need intensive, life-sustaining medical care, which Medicare often does pay for. And yet, it won't pay for the drugs to prevent these life- threatening episodes. For kidney recipients, who make up the vast majority of Medicare transplant recipients, immune rejection means an immediate return to renal dialysis at a cost to Medicare of around $30,000 a year. For some kidney patients and all other Medicare transplant recipients, rejection means a return to the transplant waiting list, and a need for expensive life-sustaining care. If they are lucky, they will get a second transplant, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My bill simply makes sure that everyone who receives an organ transplant through Medicare will have continued access to immunosuppressive drugs. This bill will help people who cannot pay for life-preserving immunosuppressive drugs and, at the same time, will help Medicare avoid the huge additional costs currently incurred when organs are rejected. When working with people to write this bill, I wanted to make sure the cost was as low as possible, while still getting the job done. That is why my bill contains safeguards that say that if any patient has private insurance coverage, it is the private insurance plan--and not Medicare--that pays for the immunosuppressive drugs. Someday, immunosuppressive drugs may not be necessary. We are beginning to see some promising research in this area. But today's transplant recipients need help now. They need this bill. The miracle of transplantation gives people the ``Gift of Life.'' It does not make sense to put this gift at risk because the recipient is unable to pay for immunosuppressive drugs. I urge every Senator to consider cosponsoring and supporting this bill. ______ By Mr. COATS: S. 1482. A bill to amend section 223 of the Communications Act of 1934 to establish a prohibition on commercial distribution on the World Wide Web of material that is harmful to minors, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. PORN LEGISLATION Mr. COATS. Mr. President, during Senate consideration of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 I, along with Senator James Exon, introduced an amendment to the Act which came to be known as the Communications Decency Act or CDA. This amendment held forth a basic principle, that children should be sheltered from obscene and indecent pornography. There was spirited debate on the amendment. However, ultimately the Senate adopted the CDA by an overwhelming margin of 84 to 16. On the very day that the President signed the Telecommunications Act into law, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association, along with America On-Line and other representatives of the computer industry, filed a law suit against the CDA in District Court. In short, the case ultimately came before the Supreme Court, where it was struck down. Mr. President, however much I disagree with the ruling of the Supreme Court, it is reality and as such, I have studied the opinion of the Court and come before my colleagues today to introduce legislation that reflects the parameters laid out by the Court's opinion. Mr. President, during Congressional consideration of the CDA, opponents of the measure took what I like to call an ostrich approach. They stuck their head in the sand and their rear end in the air. With companies like America on Line and Microsoft in the forefront, there came an indignant claim from the computer industry that there was no problem with pornography on the Internet. They claimed that there was very little pornography, and that what exists is difficult to find. However incredulous, this is what they claimed. Well, Mr. President, this ostrich appears to have extricated its head from the sand. For after the Supreme Court's ruling, the computer industry, along with so-called civil liberties groups, gathered for a White House summit to address the issue of pornography on the net, and what could be done about it. There are now panels and working groups, media discussions and industry alternatives all designed to address this problem of the proliferation of pornography on the Internet and the threat it poses to our children. Mr. President, let me congratulate the computer industry, and welcome them to the real world. And what is this real world? Mr. President, I turn now to the February 10 edition of U.S. News and World Report. The cover story is entitled, ``The Business of Porn.'' The article outlines in rather disturbing clarity the issue of pornography in America. ``Last year'' [[Page S12147]] it states, ``America spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances combined.'' This is truly alarming, and reflects poorly on the moral direction of the country. And, Mr. President, as the Internet continues to grow as a medium of communication and commerce in our society, its role in expanding the commerce of pornography increases exponentially. The Article goes on to say that: ``In much the same way that hard- core films on videocassette were largely responsible for the rapid introduction of the VCR, porn on and CD-ROM and on the Internet has hastened acceptance of these new technologies. Interactive adult CD- ROMS, such as Virtual Valarie and the Penthouse Photo Shoot, create interest in multimedia equipment among male computer buyers.'' It goes on: ``Porn companies have established elaborate Web sites to lure customers . . . Playboy's web site, which offers free glimpses of its Playmates, now averages about 5 million hits a day.'' The Article quotes Larry Flint, who says he ``imagines a future in which the TV and the personal computer have merged. Americans will lie in bed, cruising the Internet with their remote controls and ordering hard-core films at the punch of a button. The Internet promises to combine the video store's diversity of choices with the secrecy of purchases through the mail.'' Mr. President, there has been a virtual explosion of commerce in pornography on the Internet. Adult book stores, live peep shows, adult movies, you name it and it is there. It is available, Mr. President, not just to adults, but to children. And what does the computer industry, the ACLU, and the American Library Association tout as a solution to this problem? They tout self- ratings systems and blocking software. Opponents of the CDA, companies like America On-Line, the ACLU, the American Library Association, Larry Flint, have argued that there is no role for government in protecting children, that the Internet can regulate itself. The primary solution these people promote is system called PICs (Platform for Internet Content Selection), a type of self-ratings system. This would allow the pornographer to rate his own page, and browsers, the tool used to search the Internet, would then respond to these ratings. Aside from the ludicrous proposition of allowing the pornographer to self-rate, Mr. President, there is no incentive for compliance. I now turn to an editorial by writers in PC Week Magazine, a very prominent voice in the computer industry. The editorial is titled: ``Web Site Ratings--Shame on Most of Us.'' The column discusses the lack of voluntary compliance by content providers with the PICs system: ``We and many others in the computer industry and press have decried the Communications Decency Act and other government attempts to regulate the content of the Web. Instead, we've all argued, the government should let the Web rate and regulate its own content. Page ratings and browsers that respond to those ratings, not legislation, are the answers we've offered.'' The article goes on, ``Too bad we left the field before the game was over.'' the article says, ``We who work around the Web have done little to rate our content.'' it states that, in a search of the Web, they found ``few rated sites.'' And that rated sites were the ``exception to the rule'' In other words, PICs does not work. It does not work, because there is no incentive for pornographers to comply. And what about blocking software? Mr. President, let me begin by pointing out the amazing level of deceit that proponents of this solution are willing to go to. The American Library Association, a principal opponent of the CDA, lined up with plaintiffs in challenging the Constitutionality of the Act. It was a central argument of the Library Association and their cohorts, that blocking software presented a non-governmental solution to the problem. However, Mr. President, if one logs onto the American Library Association Web site one finds quite a surprise. Contained on the site is a resolution, adopted by the ALA Council on July 2, 1997, that resolves: ``That the American Library Association affirms that the use of filtering software by libraries to block access . . . violates the Library Bill of Rights.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this Resolution be inserted into the Record. So, here we find the true agenda of the American Library Association. They represent to the Court that everything is O.K., that all we need is blocking software. Then, they turn around and implement a policy that says no-way. And what are the implications? I quote now from a February 12, 1997 article in the Boston Herald. ``John Hunt, a parent from Dorchester, said he was furious to learn his 11-year-old daughter was able to view pornography yesterday while working on a school essay at the BPL's Copley Square branch.'' The article goes on: ``She said all the boys were around the computer and they were laughing and called the girls over to look at the pictures of naked people,'' Hunt said. ``I want to find out from these library officials what is going on.'' The article goes on to tell the story of another parent, Susan Sullivan who said she was stunned when her 10-year-old son spent the afternoon researching a book report on the computer in the BPL's Adams Street branch, but ended up looking through explicit photographs instead. Ms. Sullivan says: ``I'm very, very upset because I have no idea what he saw on the screen. He said he was using the Internet to do a book report on Indians and he was able to access dirty pictures, pictures of naked people.'' When the library spokesman was asked about parent's concerns, he dismissed them saying, ``We do have children's librarians but we do not have Internet police.'' So here is the genuine concern of the American Library Association for children and their genuine support for blocking software as a solution. Again, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be made part of the record. However, Mr. President, this is a side issue. As I pointed out earlier, in the case of the computer industry, deceit and denial are tactics regularly employed by opponents of real child protections. The fact is, Mr. President, that the software does not work. In fact, it is particularly dangerous because it creates a false sense of security for parents, teachers, and children. I have here a transcript from Morning Edition on National Public Radio. It is from the September 12, 1997 program. The host, Brooke Gladstone is interviewing a 12-year-old named Jack. Ms. Gladstone asks Jack what he does when he bumps up against Net Nanny, a popular blocking software program. Jack replies: ``You go to hacking sites such as the Undernet, which is a site which you pay money to go a member{sic . And then, after that, you have full access to all these hacking, cracking and phreaking and credit card fraud and all these other tools.'' Ms. Gladstone then asks Jack if kids use these services. Jack replies: ``A lot. I mean, you have kids at school who bring in 3.5 inch disks saying hey, buddy, come here. I'll sell you this disk for $10 dollars. There's all the hacking stuff you'll ever need. Ms. Gladstone then goes on to discuss with Jack how he made money down-loading pornography and selling it to his school-mates, making $30. Jack describes the various methods by which he defeats the blocking software his parents have installed. Later in the interview, Ms. Gladstone interviews Jay Friedland, founder of Surf Watch, another well-hyped blocking software program. Mr. Friedland readily concedes that his software can be broken, even describing the ways to hack the program. In describing the security his product offers parents, he says: ``It's a little bit like suntan lotion. It allows you to stay out in the sun longer, but you can still get sunburnt.'' Mr. President, this does not sound very reassuring to me. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted into the Record at the appropriate place. [[Page S12148]] The bottom line here is money. There are millions upon millions of dollars being made on the Internet in the pornography business. There is even more money being made marketing software to terrified parents, software that does not work. Let's look at the situation. You have the computer industry working to defeat laws designed to prohibit distribution of pornography to children. The solution that they promote is blocking software, manufactured by themselves. They are making tens- of-millions of dollars off of it. However, what we find out is that the software doesn't work. And all the while, you have companies like America On- Line out there, head in the sand, telling parents, schools, Congress, and the American public that there isn't a problem with pornography on the Internet. And the Internet Access Providers are pulling in the big bucks, providing access to the red light district. ``The Erotic Allure of Home Schooling,'' that is the name of an article, published in the September 8 edition of Fortune Magazine. Mr. President, I have long been an advocate of home schooling. But, I must confess that its erotic allure has never been one of my motivations. It begins: ``Here's one of the Web's dirtiest words: Mars. Try searching for sites about the red planet lately, and you could land on a porn purveyor's on-line playground. What next?'' the article asks, ``Smut linked to the keywords`home schooling'? Don't look now--it's already happened.'' The article goes on: ``Perverse as these connections seem, they're right out of Economics 101, specifically the part about competition. Pornography sites are among the Web's few big moneymakers. There are thousands of them, from the R-rated to the boundlessly perverse. They compete furiously, and their main battleground for market share is search engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, and Infoseek. Web surfers looking for porn typically tap into such search services and use keywords like ``sex'' and ``XXX.'' But so many on- line sex shops now display those words that their presence won't make a site stand out in a list resulting from a user's query. To get noticed, pornographers increasingly try to trick search engines into giving them top billing-- sometimes called `spoofing'.'' The article points out that: ``Search engine companies like Infoseek constantly develop new filters to defeat spoofing. But calls still come in from irate mothers and grade-school teachers who click on innocent- looking search results and find themselves on a page too exotic to mention.'' The article concludes: ``The Clinton Administration is encouraging efforts based on`voluntary restraint.' That's a lot to ask in the Web's open bazaar, where market share is the name of the game.'' I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted in the record at the appropriate place. Mr. President, it is not just a lot to ask. It is foolish and futile to ask. The bottom line is that, unless commercial distributors of pornography are met with the force of law, they will not act responsibly. I am here today to introduce legislation that will provide just such force of law. As I stated in my opening comments, the legislation I introduce today is designed to accommodate the concerns of the Supreme Court. This legislation is specifically targeted at the commercial distribution of materials harmful to minors on the World Wide Web. It states simply that ``Whoever in interstate or foreign commerce in or through the World Wide Web is engaged in the business of the commercial distribution of material that is harmful to minors shall restrict access to such material by persons under 17 years of age.'' It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that the defendant restricted access to such material by requiring use of a verified credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult personal identification number. The bill also calls upon the FCC to prescribe alternative procedures. The FCC is expressly restricted from regulation of the Internet, or Internet Speech. Further, the FCC and the Justice Department are directed to post on their Web sites information as is necessary to inform the public of the meaning of the term ``harmful to minors.'' As I know that it will be of some concern to my colleagues that any legislation dealing with this topic takes into account the Supreme Court's ruling in the CDA, I would like to take some time now to examine the key precedents which the Court considered in its opinion on the CDA and how they relate to this bill. Central to the construction of this legislation is the Ginsberg case. This Court ruling upheld the constitutionality of a New York statute that prohibited the selling to minors under 17 years of age material that was considered obscene as to them even if not obscene as to adults. In Ginsberg, the Court rejected the defendant's argument that ``the scope of the constitutional freedom of expression secured to a citizen to read or see material concerned with sex cannot be made to depend on whether the citizen is an adult or a minor.'' In Ginsberg, the Court relied on both the state's interest in protecting the well-being of children, but also on the principle that ``the parent's claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their own children is basic in the structure of our society.'' In the Court's opinion on the CDA, they laid out four differences between the CDA and the question contained in the Ginsberg case. As you will see, the legislation I introduce today carefully addresses each of these concerns. First, the Court points out that in the New York statute examined in Ginsberg, ``the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children.'' The Court interpreted the CDA to prohibit such activity. Though I must confess to my colleagues that I find it a disturbing proposition that a parent should so desire to purchase pornographic material for their children's consumption, it seems that this is a right that this Court feels compelled to protect. The legislation I introduce today places no restriction on a parent's right to purchase such material, and to provide it to their children, or anyone else. In fact, it places no restriction on any potential consumer of pornography. Rather, it simply requires the commercial purveyor of pornography to cast their message in such a way as not to be readily available to children. The Court's second issue relating to the Ginsberg case is that the New York statute applied only to commercial transactions. As I have previously stated, my legislation deals only with commercial transactions. Third, the Court points out that in Ginsberg, the New York statute combined its definition of harmful to minors with the requirement that it be ``utterly without redeeming social importance for minors.'' The Court goes on to express that the CDA omits any requirement that the material covered in the statute lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This concern is addressed directly in my legislation, with a specific plank of the definition of harmful to minors requiring that the material in question ``lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'' Mr. President, I do not believe that it is possible to address a concern more directly. Finally, the Court states that the New York statute considered in Ginsberg defined a minor as a person under the age of 17, whereas the CDA applied to children under the age of 18, citing concern that by extending protection to those under 18, the CDA reached ``those nearest the majority.'' Mr. President, here again I am confused my the rationale of the Court. For it is common practice in federal statute to recognize minors as those under the age of 18 years. However, the legislation I introduce today contains the same under 17 requirement established under Ginsberg. The second case of importance as relates to the Supreme Court ruling on the CDA is the Pacifica case. Though the specifics of this case are well- known to most by now, a summary might be helpful. In the Pacifica case, the Supreme Court upheld a declaratory order of the FCC relating to the broadcast of a recording of a monologue entitled ``Filthy Words.'' The Commission found that the use of certain words referring to excretory or sexual activities or organs ``in an afternoon broadcast when children are in the audience was patently offensive'' and thus inappropriate for broadcast. [[Page S12149]] In considering the precedent established in Pacifica, and their relationship to the CDA, the Court outlined 3 concerns. First, the Court stated that, unlike in Pacifica where the content in question was regulated as to the time it was broadcast, the CDA made no such distinction. Further, the Court makes a rather curious distinction in stating that the regulation in question in the Pacifica case had been promulgated by an agency with ``decades'' of experience in regulating the medium. On the first point, the regulation of Internet content in the context of time is irrelevant, as a child may access or be inadvertently exposed to pornography any time he or she logs onto the Internet. That could be in the evening, when doing a research paper, or during class-- working on an assignment, or at the public library. The simple fact that a child runs the risk of exposure any time presents a more substantial potential for harm than the time regulation approach approved in Pacifica, and calls for a higher level of control, not lower as the Court concluded. On the question of regulation by an agency with decades of experience, given the fact that the Internet is a very new medium of communication, it is a rather ludicrous distinction to make. No agency, short of the Defense Department, could demonstrate the historical relationship to the Internet that the FCC can with broadcast radio. Surely the Supreme Court would not advocate Defense Department regulation of the Internet. Further, given the concern among supporters of the Internet regarding government regulation of the medium, it would seem preferable to have a clearly defined statute, enforced by the Justice Department, as opposed to a regulatory regime, which would be enforced by an unaccountable federal agency and subject to bureaucratic creep. During debate and negotiations on passage of the CDA, opponents raised strong concerns that the FCC not be given any regulatory authority over the Internet. It was this opposition to a regulatory solution that resulted in a very restricted agency roll. Though the FCC is expressly prohibited from regulating content under the legislation I introduce today, a specific provision is made for the FCC to prescribe a method of restricting access that would function as an affirmative defense to prosecution. As such, this legislation provides the benefit and flexibility of an evolving agency regulation, whereby as technology evolved and new and more effective means of access restriction emerge, the Commission could modify the regulation, without the creation of a regulatory regime with expansive FCC authority over the Internet and speech. The Court goes on to point out that in Pacifica, the Commission's declaratory order was not punitive, whereas there were penalties under the CDA. Here, it is important to distinguish the difference in scope between this legislation and the CDA. A principal concern of the Court with the CDA, was that the CDA dealt with both commercial and non-commercial communications. As such, the cost and technology burdens necessary to restrict access that would be imposed by the CDA on non-commercial speakers, according to the opinion of the Court, would be prohibitive. The result would be, in the Opinion of the Court, that speech would be chilled. The legislation I introduce today is strictly limited to the commercial distribution of pornography on the World Wide Web. The commercial distributors of pornography on the Web already use the very mechanisms (credit cards and PIN numbers) that are required under this bill. The difference between the status quo and this bill is that pornography distributors would be required to cease to give away the freebies that any child with a mouse could gain access to. As such, Court concerns regarding the potential chilling effect to non-commercial speech that they perceived under the CDA is moot. The scope of this legislation does not extend to the non-commercial speaker. Secondly, this legislation imposes no new technological or economic burden on the commercial operator. It simply imposes a control on the manner of distribution and provides penalties for violations. Mr. President, there is a long tradition of fines and penalties for violations of laws governing the commercial distribution of pornography. This legislation is simply a continuation of these principles. In fact, the very treatment of fines in penalties under this legislation, mirrors those under dial-a-porn, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Finally, under an examination of Pacifica, the Court points out the differences between the level of First Amendment protection extended to broadcast and the Internet. Mr. President, I must say that however much I differ with the opinion of the Court on this question in general, I would simply point out that the harmful to minors standard has traditionally been used, and has been constitutionally upheld, as a standard for regulating print media. Print media is extended the highest level of First Amendment protection. As such, this legislation clearly accounts for the Supreme Court's concerns in this area. The Court also examines the precedents established under Renton. The Renton case dealt with a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theaters out of residential neighborhoods. It did so based on the ``secondary effects'' of the theaters--such as crime and deteriorating property values. It was the Court's opinion that the CDA treated the entire universe of cyberspace rather than specific areas or zones. Further, the Court seemed preoccupied that the CDA dealt with the primary, not the secondary effects of pornography. The legislation I introduce today deals with a narrow zone of the Internet, commercial activity on the World Wide Web. Though there is tremendous economic activity in pornography on the Web. The cyber- geography of this bill is very limited. Mr. President, on this question of primary and secondary effects, I must differ with the Court and would like to go into this question in some detail. The underlying principle which the Senate supported by a vote of 84 to 16 in adopting the CDA, and which is embodied in the legislation I introduce today is articulated in New York versus. Ferber: ``It is evident beyond the need for elaboration that the State's interest in `safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor' is compelling.'' There is no question that exposure to pornography harms children. A child's sexual development occurs gradually through childhood. Exposure to pornography, particularly the type of hard-core pornography available on the Internet, distorts the natural sexual development of children. Essentially, pornography shapes children's sexual perspective by providing them information on sexual activity. However, the type of information provided by pornography does not provide children with a normal sexual perspective. As pointed out in Enough is Enough's brief to Court on the CDA, pornography portrays unhealthy or antisocial kinds of sexual activity, such as sadomasochism, abuse, and humiliation of females, involvement of children, incest, group sex, voyeurism, sexual degradation, bestiality, torture, objectification, that serve to teach children the rudiments of sex without adult supervision and moral guidance. Ann Burgess, Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, states that children generally do not have a natural sexual capacity until between 10 and 12 years old. Pornography unnaturally accelerates that development. By short-circuiting the normal development process and supplying misinformation about their own sexuality, pornography leaves children confused, changed and damaged. As if the psychological threat of pornography does not present a sufficient compelling interest, there is a significant physical threat. As I have stated, pornography develops in children a distorted sexual perspective. It encourages irresponsible, dehumanized sexual behavior, conduct that presents a genuine physical threat to children. In the United States, about one in four sexually active teenagers acquire a sexually transmitted disease (STD) every year, resulting in 3 million STD cases. Infectious syphilis rates have more than doubled among teenagers since the mid-1980's. One million American teenage girls become pregnant each year. A report entitled ``Exposure to Pornography, Character and Sexual [[Page S12150]] Deviance'' concluded that as more and more children become exposed not only to soft-core pornography, but also to explicit deviant sexual material, society's youth will learn an extremely dangerous message: sex without responsibility is acceptable. However, there is a darker and more ominous threat. For research has established a direct link between exposure and consumption of pornography and sexual assault, rape and molesting of children. As stated in Aggressive Erotica and Violence Against Women, ``Virtually all lab studies established a causal link between violent pornography and the commission of violence. This relationship is not seriously debated in the research community.'' What is more, pedophiles will often use pornographic material to desensitize children to sexual activity, effectively breaking down their resistance in order to sexually exploit them. A study by Victor Cline found that child molesters often use pornography to seduce their prey, to lower the inhibitions of the victim, and as an instruction manual. Further, a W.L. Marshal study found that: ``87 percent of female child molesters and 77 percent of male child molesters studied admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography.'' Given these facts, Mr. President, any distinction the Court makes regarding the effects of pornography on children seems to miss the very point of the state's compelling interest. For the sanctity and security of childhood is what these efforts are all about. As I have stated before in addressing this subject, childhood must be defended by parents and society as a safe harbor of innocence. It is a privileged time to develop values in an environment that is not hostile to them. But this foul material on the Internet invades that place and destroys that innocence. It takes the worst excesses of the red-light district and places it directly into a child's bedroom, on the computer their parents bought them to help them with their homework. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and yield the floor. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 10, 1997] The Business of Pornography (By Eric Schlosser) Most of the outsize profits being generated by pornography today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry John Stagliano is a wealthy entrepreneur, a self-made man whose rise to the top could happen only in America. Raised in a conservative, Midwestern household, Stagliano read the books of Ayn Rand and was greatly influenced by their heroes, rugged individualists willing to defy conventional opinion. He attended the University of California--Los Angeles hoping to become a professor of economics. Instead, he studied modern dance, struggled to find work as an actor, became one of the original Chippendale dancers, performed occasionally in hard-core films, and used the prize money won during a cable television strip contest to finance and direct a porn film of his own. Today, Stagliano is the nation's leading director of hard- core videos, a porn auteur whose distinctive cinema verite style of filmmaking has been widely imitated. His videos cost about $8,000 to produce--and often earn him 30 times that amount. Stagliano shoots without a crew, edits the films himself, and performs in them. He also is a major contributor to the Cato Institute, a well-known think tank in Washington, D.C., where he regularly discusses policy issues with its economists. Stagliano's company, Evil Angel Video, has become a veritable United Artists of porn, distributing the work of other top directors. Evil Angel sold about half a million videos last year. At its modern Southern California warehouse, hundreds of VCRs, stacked floor to ceiling, run 24 hours a day, five days a week, churning out copies of hard- core films. A great deal has been written about pornography, both pro and con. A new movie about the life of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, has once again raised the issue of pornography and the First Amendment. But much less attention has been given to the underlying economics of porn, to porn as a commodity, the end product of a modern industry that arose in this country after the Second World War and has grown enormously ever since. Critics of the sex industry have long attacked it for being ``un-American''--and yet there is something quintessentially American about it: the heady mix of sex and money, the fortunes quickly made and lost, the new identities assumed and then discarded, the public condemnations of a private obsession. Largely fueled by loneliness and frustration, the sex industry has been transformed from a minor subculture on the fringes of society into a major component of American popular culture. Meese formation. More than a decade ago, Attorney General Edwin Meese III's Commission on Pornography issued its controversial report, asserting that sexually explicit materials were harmful and calling for strict enforcement of the federal obscenity laws. The report prompted President Ronald Reagan to launch one of the most far-reaching assaults on porn in the nation's history, a campaign that continued under President George Bush. Hundreds of producers, distributors, and retailers in the sex industry were indicted and convicted. Many were driven from the business and imprisoned. The Reagan-Bush war on pornography coincided, however, with a dramatic increase in America's consumption of sexually explicit materials. According to Adult Video News, an industry trade publication, the number of hard-core-video rentals rose from 75 million in 1985 to 490 million in 1992. The total climbed to 665 million, an all-time high, in 1996. Last year Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual vices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances--combined. Porn has become so commonplace in recent years that one can easily forget how strictly it was prohibited not long ago. The sociologist Charles Winick has noted that the sexual content of American culture changed more in two decades than it had in the previous two centuries. Twenty-five years ago, a federal study of pornography estimated that the total retail value of all the hard-core porn in the United States was no more than $10 million, and perhaps less than $5 million. Durng the 1980s, the advent of adult movies on videocassette and on cable television, as well as the huge growth in telephone sex services, shifted the consumption of porn from seedy movie theaters and bookstores into the home. As a result, most of the profits being generated by porn today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry--by mom and pop video stores; by long-distance carriers like AT by cable companies like Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc.; and by hotel chains like Marriott, Hyatt, and Holiday Inn that now reportedly earn million of dollars each year supplying adult films to their guests. America's porn has become one more of its cultural exports, dominating overseas markets. Despite having some of the toughest restrictions on sexually explicit materials of any Western industrialized nation, the United States is now by far the world's leading producer of porn, churning out hard-core videos at the astonishing rate of about 150 new titles a week. Parallel universe. In the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, near Universal City and the Warner Bros. back lot, an X-rated-movie industry has emerged, an adult dream factory, with its own studios, talent agencies, and stars, its own fan clubs and film critics. Perhaps three quarters of the hard-core films made in the United States today come from Los Angeles County. Sound stages, editing facilities, and printing plants are tucked away in middle- and working-class neighborhoods, amid a typical Southern California landscape of palm trees, shopping malls, car washes, and fast-food joints. You could hardly choose a more unexceptional spot for the world capital of porn. Nevertheless, strange things are happening in the valley, behind closed doors. Every few weeks, in the upscale suburb of Sherman Oaks, there's an open casting call at the industry's top talent agency. Scores of young men and women crowd its small offices, undressing for producers and directors who audition promising newcomers and inspect them for tattoos. At the sleek headquarters of an adult-film company in Chatsworth, the hallways are lined with autographed basketball and hockey jerseys, expensively framed. There is not an obscene image in sight. It could be the headquarters of ESPN. In addition to hard-core videos, the company's start-of-the-art, $30 million duplicating equipment also copies videos for government agencies and local church groups. At a factory in Panorama City, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, shelves are lined with plaster casts of the buttocks and genitalia of famous porn stars. The casts are used to make sexual devices, lifelike reproductions packaged with celebrity endorsements. A rival L.A. company sells a plastic, inflatable woman that speaks with an English accent. The factory calls to mind the set of a science fiction movie: Wires peek from battery- powered devices; metal cages on the floor are filled with rubber body parts. Th

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NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT
(Senate - November 08, 1997)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S12144-S12179] NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, today I introduce the Northern Ireland/ Border Counties Free Trade, Development and Security Act. This legislation is a carbon copy of S. 1976, legislation that I introduced in the 104th Congress. Joining me as original cosponsors are my friends and colleagues, the senior Senator from Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun and the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran. The Northern Ireland Free Trade, Development and Security Act reintroduced today will--by University of Ulster estimates, create 12,000 jobs within the twelve counties of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. It will produce an additional $1.5 billion into that economy annually. The new jobs it will create will be targeted to those areas that need the most, areas where the current unemployment rate ranges between 30 percent and 50 percent, areas that have never felt the effects of real economic expansion or growth. Further, this legislation will provide those jobs and hope without any discernable impact upon our nations trade or budget deficit, as was the case with Gaza/West Bank legislation. This bill will operate in harmony with stated goals of the European Union, United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. It will additionally comport with the requirements of the World Trade Organization. Mr. President, the paradox of Northern Ireland is that she has given so much to other cultures and lands but has been incapable of fully reaping the rewards of her own peoples skills and strengths at home. The unfortunate reality is that as in the Republic of Ireland, a large majority of the North's highly educated and skilled younger generation has been forced to emigrate due to high unemployment levels which are as high as 70 percent in some areas. These disadvantaged areas are the ones which this legislation has been especially designed to target. Joint cooperation and joint economic development between the United States, Northern Ireland and the European Union will integrate the most distressed parts of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties into a dynamic economy that--while firmly rooted in the European Union-- continues to expand and cement new trading relationships beneficial to all trading partners. Northern Ireland's peace process must move forward and the aspirations and goodwill of the vast majority of its citizens must be accompanied by hard work and endeavor. A more prosperous economy with more evenly spread and meaningful job opportunities can only serve to bridge the social and economic disparities that exist in this region. In conclusion this opportunity cannot be overlooked, after 25 years since the outbreak of the ``troubles,'' the people of Northern Ireland have suffered enough violence and depravity. Now it is time to embark on a rebuilding process that will give no chance to the terrorist but every chance to peace and reconciliation. Mr. President, it is time to roll up our sleeves and do something real and substantive for all the people of Northern Ireland. This legislation goes far beyond symbolic gestures and grand statements of concern. It will provide a real and solid foundation that the people of Northern Ireland can use to build that new and brighter future. This legislation represents the Senate's down payment on that future. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a public statement of support from Minister James McDaid, the Minister of Tourism and Trade for the Republic of Ireland, found in today's Irish News--be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Irish News] Minister Gives Backing to U.S. Free Trade Bill for North (By Jim Fitzpatrick) The Republic's tourism minister Dr. Jim McDaid has given his backing to the American free trade bill for Northern Ireland and the border counties. The Irish News reported last month that the proposed bill, which a University of Ulster study concluded would create at least 12,000 jobs, was facing opposition from officials in London, Dublin and Brussels. But Fianna Fail minister Dr. McDaid gave his unqualified backing to the proposal yesterday, saying that he felt special measures were necessary to redress the economic imbalance on the island. The bill would allow companies based in the northern twelve counties of Ireland to sell products directly into the U.S. without any tariffs. Its backers argue that it would be a massive boost for foreign investment and create thousands of jobs because it would allow companies free access the two largest markets in the world--north America and Europe. But the legislation, which is in the early stages of development in the U.S. Congress, has faced opposition from some sections of the Irish political establishment. Dr. McDaid's predecessor, Fine Gael minister Enda Kenny who also held responsibility for trade, said the bill would require customs posts to be set up within the Republic along the border of the zone. But Dr. McDaid rejected that suggestion: ``I don't agree that this bill will mean the `re-partition of Ireland'. The bill addresses an area which has already been recognized by the European Union and the International Fund for Ireland as needing special assistance.'' He said there was a need for ``positive discrimination'' and a radical economic plan to tackle the economic problems of the northern part of Ireland so that the ``whole of the island'' can share in its economic success. He said the bill would undoubtedly be a boost to the peace process, and help redress the economic imbalance crested by the years of violence in the north. Dr. McDaid said he felt that the free trade status would probably have to be granted on a time-limited basis--perhaps for 25 years or more. It's understood that support for the free trade bill has been growing within Irish political circles, although the Irish government has not taken a formal position on the matter. A number of senators and MEPs from border counties have submitted letters of support to the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congressman pushing the bill wrote to the Irish News recently calling on people in the region to publicly support the initiative. Massachusetts Congressman Marty Meehan praised the Clinton administration's current efforts to bring new investment to the north, and called on the people of the north to work with the influential American politicians who are backing the free trade initiative. ``I encourage the people of Northern Ireland and the border counties to work with me through trade associations, councils and elected representatives to help pass this bill as well as other related measures. Together, we can help lay the groundwork for a sound economic future in Northern Ireland,'' he wrote. Mr. Meehan stressed in his letter that, contrary to some of the criticisms levelled against the bill, his legislation would comply fully with European Union law. ______ By Mr. D'AMATO: S. 1477. A bill to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States to provide that certain goods may be reimported into the United States without additional duty; to the Committee on Finance. U.S. CATALOGUE MERCHANTS EXPORT PROMOTION ACT OF 1997 Mr. D'AMATO. Mr President, I rise today to introduce legislation necessary to correct a problem faced by an important segment of the American exporting community, catalogue merchants. Catalogue merchants are multi-billion dollar export businesses in New York State and across the nation. Due to an anomaly in our customs law, some products sold by these merchants face double duties when the goods are returned to them by customers abroad. The bill I am introducing today seeks to correct this problem by making sure that duties are only assessed once--as the law intended--the first time a product comes into this country from abroad. If I may Mr. President, let me explain the problem by first telling you how the system is supposed to work. When a catalogue merchant imports a product directly from abroad, as the [[Page S12145]] importer of record, he pays a duty on the product. Let's say the product is a pair of trousers from Taiwan. A merchant in the United States takes direct delivery of a pair of pants from a company in Taipei, and pays duties to the U.S. Treasury on the trousers when they enter the United States. The merchant then sells the pants to a customer in Montreal, Canada. But, the pants are the wrong size, and the customer returns the same pair of trousers directly to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. In that case, properly, is no duty paid on the returned trousers. After all, a duty was properly paid on the trousers when they were first imported into the U.S. That is how the law works when the catalogue merchant is also the official importer of record. Now, take the same situation, but add a broker here in the United States, (the way most catalogue merchants import merchandise into the United States) who is officially the importer of record. The trousers come into the United States from Taipei, but this time, instead of going directly to the merchant, they are imported by a U.S. distributer. The distributer, who is the importer of record, properly pays the duty on the pants, and then transfers the trousers to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. The catalogue merchant then sells the trousers to the customer in Montreal, who subsequently returns the trousers to the U.S. merchant (via a return clearinghouse in Canada, that is set up to ship returned products back to the U.S. in bulk). That is where the problem comes in. When the trousers come back to the United States (as part of a bulk shipment), duty has to be paid on the trousers a second time. Officially, that is because the catalogue merchant is not the original importer of record, and thus a second duty is assessed on the trousers. Clearly, this makes no sense. A second duty should not have to be paid on the same pair of trousers, just because the U.S. catalogue seller is not the original U.S. importer of record. What this amendment says, essentially, is that it doesn't matter who the original importer of record is; as long as the proper duty is paid when an article first enters the U.S., a duty is not assessed the second time the article enters the U.S., when it re-enters the U.S. as a sales return. The President may know that I have sought this change in law for more than a year, and it is my hope that when the Senate next turns to miscellaneous trade matters, this very minor provision can be included. The U.S. Customs Service has told importers that legislation is the only remedy to correct this anomaly. Furthermore, the measure should be deemed ``revenue neutral'' because importers can already avoid the double duty by simply shipping the returns back by (inefficiently) shipping the returns back to the U.S. individually rather than (efficiently) consolidating the shipments. This measure is a common-sense, good government measure which promotes U.S. exports, and correspondingly keeps companies from moving good jobs in distribution and logistics offshore. ______ By Ms. SNOWE (for herself and Mr. Breaux): S. 1480. A bill to authorize appropriations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct research, monitoring, education and management activities for the eradication and control of harmful algal blooms, including blooms of Pfiesteria piscicida and other aquatic toxins; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. the harmful algal bloom research and control act of 1997 Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation designed to address a serious national problem affecting our coasts. The recent outbreak of Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay has garnered a lot of media attention, and deservedly so. But Pfiesteria is actually just one example of a larger phenomenon--Harmful algal blooms. These damaging outbreaks of often toxic algae affect every U.S. coastal State and territory. In my State of Maine, we have outbreaks of paralytic shellfish poisoning every year which require the closure of clam flats along the coast, and the loss of millions of dollars in potential income. On Georges Bank off the New England coast, harmful algal blooms cause $3 million to $5 million worth of damage every year. In Washington in 1991, an outbreak resulted in losses of razor clams exceeding $15 million. And off Alaska, which has our Nation's most pristine coastline, an estimated $50 million worth of shellfish remain unexploited each year due to these outbreaks. What is frightening is that these blooms have been increasing over the last 30 years with no sign of abatement--and science cannot explain why. Nor do we have any other way of addressing the problem besides closing areas to swimming and fishing. My bill is designed to address this problem with focused and appropriate Federal action. NOAA, the lead Federal agency on harmful algal blooms, currently has the major Federal research program to address the problem--the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms project, or ECO-HAB. It is part of NOAA's Coastal Ocean Program, but it does not have a specific authorization. My bill would give this program a specific authorization for $10.5 million annually during fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, providing it with a more certain future as the next century approaches. The bill would also authorize the following activities for the next 3 years--$5 million per year for NOAA to upgrade its research lab capabilities to more effectively study the problem; $3 million annually for education and extension services through the Sea Grant colleges; $5.5 million annually to augment Federal and State monitoring programs to help detect harmful algal blooms early; and $8 million annually in grants to the States through the Coastal Zone Management Act [CZMA] programs to help States control blooms in their area. My bill represents a coordinated strategy for attacking this serious problem. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed, in the Record, as follows: S. 1480 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Harmful Algal Bloom Research and Control Act of 1997''. SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The Congress finds that-- (1) the recent outbreak of the harmful microbe Pfiesteria piscicida in the coastal waters of the United States is one of the larger set of potentially harmful algal blooms that appear to be increasing in abundance and intensity in the Nation's coastal waters; (2) in recent years, harmful algal blooms have resulted in massive fish kills, the deaths of numerous endangered West Indian manatees, beach closures, and threats to public health and safety; (3) other recent occurrences of harmful algal blooms include red tides in the Gulf of Mexico and the southeast, brown tides in New York and Texas, and shellfish poisonings in the Gulf of Maine, the Pacific northwest and the Gulf of Alaska; (4) harmful algal blooms have been responsible for an estimated $1,000,000,000 in economic losses during the past decade; (5) harmful algal blooms are composed of naturally occurring species that reproduce explosively when the natural system is out of balance; (6) under certain circumstances, harmful algal blooms can lead directly to other damaging marine conditions such as hypoxia, as has been found in the Gulf of Mexico; (7) factors thought to cause or contribute to harmful algal blooms include excessive nutrients and toxins from polluted runoff; (8) there is a strong need for a national strategy to identify better means of controlling polluted runoff; (9) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce, through its ongoing research, grant, and coastal resource management programs, possesses a full range of capabilities necessary to support a near and long-term comprehensive effort to control and eradicate harmful algal blooms; and (10) funding for NOAA's research and related programs will aid in improving the Nation's understanding and capabilities for addressing the human and environmental costs associated with harmful algal blooms. SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR ALGAL BLOOM ERADICATION AND CONTROL. There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary of Commerce for activities related to the research, eradication, and control of harmful algal blooms $32,000,000 in [[Page S12146]] each of fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, to remain available until expended. Of such amounts for each fiscal year-- (1) $5,000,000 may be used to enable the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to carry out research activities, including procurement and maintenance of research facilities, of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Ocean Service; (2) $10,500,000 may be used to carry out the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECO-HAB) project and related research under the Coastal Ocean Program established under section 201(c) of Public Law 102-567. (3) $3,000,000 may be used for outreach, education and advisory services administrated by the National Sea Grant Office established under subsection 204(a) of the National Sea Grant College Program Act (33 U.S.C. 1123(a)); (4) $5,500,000 may be used to carry out federal and state annual monitoring and analysis activities administered by the Office of Resource Conservation and Assessment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and (5) $8,000,000 may be used for grants under sections 306, 306A and 310 of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1455, 1455a and 1456c). ______ By Mr. DeWINE: S. 1481. A bill to amend the Social Security Act to eliminate the time limitation on benefits for immunosuppressive drugs under the Medicare Program, to provide for continued entitlement for such drugs for certain individuals after Medicare benefits end, and to extend certain Medicare secondary payer requirements; to the Committee on Finance. the immunosuppressive drugs coverage act of 1997 Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that will help organ transplant recipients maintain access to drugs that they need to prevent their immune systems from rejecting transplanted organs. This bill is the product of many conversations I have had with folks in the organ and tissue transplant community, including many people from Ohio. I have worked with people interested in organ and tissue donation for quite some time to increase awareness and education about transplant issues. Organs are very scarce, and we work hard to raise awareness so we can increase donation. Despite our efforts, more than 55,000 Americans are on the organ transplant waiting list--where they wait, and wait, and some of them die. Others are lucky--they get one of the precious organs, allowing them to live a healthier, longer life. Because of the wonderful gift these lucky few have been given, it is particularly tragic that some can't afford the drugs--called immunosuppressive drugs--that help ensure that their immune systems won't reject their new organs. That is why I am introducing the ``Immunosuppressive Drugs Coverage Act of 1997.'' This bill makes sure that the 75,000 people that have received an organ transplant covered by Medicare always have access to immunosuppressive drugs. Medicare currently limits coverage for immunosuppressive drugs to 30 months after a transplant. In 1998, the limit will rise to 36 months under current law. But then what? After Medicare coverage ends, the transplant recipient must find some other way to pay for these essential drugs. Many transplant recipients may not be able to get other insurance coverage or be able to afford to pay out-of-pocket for the drugs, which average around $5,000 annually and can cost in excess of $10,000. Without a way to pay for them, these patients may be forced to stop taking the immunosuppressive drugs. Others will ration use of the drugs and take them irregularly. In either case, the risk of rejection for the transplant organ is much greater. If a transplanted organ is rejected, the recipient may die or may need intensive, life-sustaining medical care, which Medicare often does pay for. And yet, it won't pay for the drugs to prevent these life- threatening episodes. For kidney recipients, who make up the vast majority of Medicare transplant recipients, immune rejection means an immediate return to renal dialysis at a cost to Medicare of around $30,000 a year. For some kidney patients and all other Medicare transplant recipients, rejection means a return to the transplant waiting list, and a need for expensive life-sustaining care. If they are lucky, they will get a second transplant, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My bill simply makes sure that everyone who receives an organ transplant through Medicare will have continued access to immunosuppressive drugs. This bill will help people who cannot pay for life-preserving immunosuppressive drugs and, at the same time, will help Medicare avoid the huge additional costs currently incurred when organs are rejected. When working with people to write this bill, I wanted to make sure the cost was as low as possible, while still getting the job done. That is why my bill contains safeguards that say that if any patient has private insurance coverage, it is the private insurance plan--and not Medicare--that pays for the immunosuppressive drugs. Someday, immunosuppressive drugs may not be necessary. We are beginning to see some promising research in this area. But today's transplant recipients need help now. They need this bill. The miracle of transplantation gives people the ``Gift of Life.'' It does not make sense to put this gift at risk because the recipient is unable to pay for immunosuppressive drugs. I urge every Senator to consider cosponsoring and supporting this bill. ______ By Mr. COATS: S. 1482. A bill to amend section 223 of the Communications Act of 1934 to establish a prohibition on commercial distribution on the World Wide Web of material that is harmful to minors, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. PORN LEGISLATION Mr. COATS. Mr. President, during Senate consideration of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 I, along with Senator James Exon, introduced an amendment to the Act which came to be known as the Communications Decency Act or CDA. This amendment held forth a basic principle, that children should be sheltered from obscene and indecent pornography. There was spirited debate on the amendment. However, ultimately the Senate adopted the CDA by an overwhelming margin of 84 to 16. On the very day that the President signed the Telecommunications Act into law, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association, along with America On-Line and other representatives of the computer industry, filed a law suit against the CDA in District Court. In short, the case ultimately came before the Supreme Court, where it was struck down. Mr. President, however much I disagree with the ruling of the Supreme Court, it is reality and as such, I have studied the opinion of the Court and come before my colleagues today to introduce legislation that reflects the parameters laid out by the Court's opinion. Mr. President, during Congressional consideration of the CDA, opponents of the measure took what I like to call an ostrich approach. They stuck their head in the sand and their rear end in the air. With companies like America on Line and Microsoft in the forefront, there came an indignant claim from the computer industry that there was no problem with pornography on the Internet. They claimed that there was very little pornography, and that what exists is difficult to find. However incredulous, this is what they claimed. Well, Mr. President, this ostrich appears to have extricated its head from the sand. For after the Supreme Court's ruling, the computer industry, along with so-called civil liberties groups, gathered for a White House summit to address the issue of pornography on the net, and what could be done about it. There are now panels and working groups, media discussions and industry alternatives all designed to address this problem of the proliferation of pornography on the Internet and the threat it poses to our children. Mr. President, let me congratulate the computer industry, and welcome them to the real world. And what is this real world? Mr. President, I turn now to the February 10 edition of U.S. News and World Report. The cover story is entitled, ``The Business of Porn.'' The article outlines in rather disturbing clarity the issue of pornography in America. ``Last year'' [[Page S12147]] it states, ``America spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances combined.'' This is truly alarming, and reflects poorly on the moral direction of the country. And, Mr. President, as the Internet continues to grow as a medium of communication and commerce in our society, its role in expanding the commerce of pornography increases exponentially. The Article goes on to say that: ``In much the same way that hard- core films on videocassette were largely responsible for the rapid introduction of the VCR, porn on and CD-ROM and on the Internet has hastened acceptance of these new technologies. Interactive adult CD- ROMS, such as Virtual Valarie and the Penthouse Photo Shoot, create interest in multimedia equipment among male computer buyers.'' It goes on: ``Porn companies have established elaborate Web sites to lure customers . . . Playboy's web site, which offers free glimpses of its Playmates, now averages about 5 million hits a day.'' The Article quotes Larry Flint, who says he ``imagines a future in which the TV and the personal computer have merged. Americans will lie in bed, cruising the Internet with their remote controls and ordering hard-core films at the punch of a button. The Internet promises to combine the video store's diversity of choices with the secrecy of purchases through the mail.'' Mr. President, there has been a virtual explosion of commerce in pornography on the Internet. Adult book stores, live peep shows, adult movies, you name it and it is there. It is available, Mr. President, not just to adults, but to children. And what does the computer industry, the ACLU, and the American Library Association tout as a solution to this problem? They tout self- ratings systems and blocking software. Opponents of the CDA, companies like America On-Line, the ACLU, the American Library Association, Larry Flint, have argued that there is no role for government in protecting children, that the Internet can regulate itself. The primary solution these people promote is system called PICs (Platform for Internet Content Selection), a type of self-ratings system. This would allow the pornographer to rate his own page, and browsers, the tool used to search the Internet, would then respond to these ratings. Aside from the ludicrous proposition of allowing the pornographer to self-rate, Mr. President, there is no incentive for compliance. I now turn to an editorial by writers in PC Week Magazine, a very prominent voice in the computer industry. The editorial is titled: ``Web Site Ratings--Shame on Most of Us.'' The column discusses the lack of voluntary compliance by content providers with the PICs system: ``We and many others in the computer industry and press have decried the Communications Decency Act and other government attempts to regulate the content of the Web. Instead, we've all argued, the government should let the Web rate and regulate its own content. Page ratings and browsers that respond to those ratings, not legislation, are the answers we've offered.'' The article goes on, ``Too bad we left the field before the game was over.'' the article says, ``We who work around the Web have done little to rate our content.'' it states that, in a search of the Web, they found ``few rated sites.'' And that rated sites were the ``exception to the rule'' In other words, PICs does not work. It does not work, because there is no incentive for pornographers to comply. And what about blocking software? Mr. President, let me begin by pointing out the amazing level of deceit that proponents of this solution are willing to go to. The American Library Association, a principal opponent of the CDA, lined up with plaintiffs in challenging the Constitutionality of the Act. It was a central argument of the Library Association and their cohorts, that blocking software presented a non-governmental solution to the problem. However, Mr. President, if one logs onto the American Library Association Web site one finds quite a surprise. Contained on the site is a resolution, adopted by the ALA Council on July 2, 1997, that resolves: ``That the American Library Association affirms that the use of filtering software by libraries to block access . . . violates the Library Bill of Rights.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this Resolution be inserted into the Record. So, here we find the true agenda of the American Library Association. They represent to the Court that everything is O.K., that all we need is blocking software. Then, they turn around and implement a policy that says no-way. And what are the implications? I quote now from a February 12, 1997 article in the Boston Herald. ``John Hunt, a parent from Dorchester, said he was furious to learn his 11-year-old daughter was able to view pornography yesterday while working on a school essay at the BPL's Copley Square branch.'' The article goes on: ``She said all the boys were around the computer and they were laughing and called the girls over to look at the pictures of naked people,'' Hunt said. ``I want to find out from these library officials what is going on.'' The article goes on to tell the story of another parent, Susan Sullivan who said she was stunned when her 10-year-old son spent the afternoon researching a book report on the computer in the BPL's Adams Street branch, but ended up looking through explicit photographs instead. Ms. Sullivan says: ``I'm very, very upset because I have no idea what he saw on the screen. He said he was using the Internet to do a book report on Indians and he was able to access dirty pictures, pictures of naked people.'' When the library spokesman was asked about parent's concerns, he dismissed them saying, ``We do have children's librarians but we do not have Internet police.'' So here is the genuine concern of the American Library Association for children and their genuine support for blocking software as a solution. Again, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be made part of the record. However, Mr. President, this is a side issue. As I pointed out earlier, in the case of the computer industry, deceit and denial are tactics regularly employed by opponents of real child protections. The fact is, Mr. President, that the software does not work. In fact, it is particularly dangerous because it creates a false sense of security for parents, teachers, and children. I have here a transcript from Morning Edition on National Public Radio. It is from the September 12, 1997 program. The host, Brooke Gladstone is interviewing a 12-year-old named Jack. Ms. Gladstone asks Jack what he does when he bumps up against Net Nanny, a popular blocking software program. Jack replies: ``You go to hacking sites such as the Undernet, which is a site which you pay money to go a member{sic . And then, after that, you have full access to all these hacking, cracking and phreaking and credit card fraud and all these other tools.'' Ms. Gladstone then asks Jack if kids use these services. Jack replies: ``A lot. I mean, you have kids at school who bring in 3.5 inch disks saying hey, buddy, come here. I'll sell you this disk for $10 dollars. There's all the hacking stuff you'll ever need. Ms. Gladstone then goes on to discuss with Jack how he made money down-loading pornography and selling it to his school-mates, making $30. Jack describes the various methods by which he defeats the blocking software his parents have installed. Later in the interview, Ms. Gladstone interviews Jay Friedland, founder of Surf Watch, another well-hyped blocking software program. Mr. Friedland readily concedes that his software can be broken, even describing the ways to hack the program. In describing the security his product offers parents, he says: ``It's a little bit like suntan lotion. It allows you to stay out in the sun longer, but you can still get sunburnt.'' Mr. President, this does not sound very reassuring to me. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted into the Record at the appropriate place. [[Page S12148]] The bottom line here is money. There are millions upon millions of dollars being made on the Internet in the pornography business. There is even more money being made marketing software to terrified parents, software that does not work. Let's look at the situation. You have the computer industry working to defeat laws designed to prohibit distribution of pornography to children. The solution that they promote is blocking software, manufactured by themselves. They are making tens- of-millions of dollars off of it. However, what we find out is that the software doesn't work. And all the while, you have companies like America On- Line out there, head in the sand, telling parents, schools, Congress, and the American public that there isn't a problem with pornography on the Internet. And the Internet Access Providers are pulling in the big bucks, providing access to the red light district. ``The Erotic Allure of Home Schooling,'' that is the name of an article, published in the September 8 edition of Fortune Magazine. Mr. President, I have long been an advocate of home schooling. But, I must confess that its erotic allure has never been one of my motivations. It begins: ``Here's one of the Web's dirtiest words: Mars. Try searching for sites about the red planet lately, and you could land on a porn purveyor's on-line playground. What next?'' the article asks, ``Smut linked to the keywords`home schooling'? Don't look now--it's already happened.'' The article goes on: ``Perverse as these connections seem, they're right out of Economics 101, specifically the part about competition. Pornography sites are among the Web's few big moneymakers. There are thousands of them, from the R-rated to the boundlessly perverse. They compete furiously, and their main battleground for market share is search engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, and Infoseek. Web surfers looking for porn typically tap into such search services and use keywords like ``sex'' and ``XXX.'' But so many on- line sex shops now display those words that their presence won't make a site stand out in a list resulting from a user's query. To get noticed, pornographers increasingly try to trick search engines into giving them top billing-- sometimes called `spoofing'.'' The article points out that: ``Search engine companies like Infoseek constantly develop new filters to defeat spoofing. But calls still come in from irate mothers and grade-school teachers who click on innocent- looking search results and find themselves on a page too exotic to mention.'' The article concludes: ``The Clinton Administration is encouraging efforts based on`voluntary restraint.' That's a lot to ask in the Web's open bazaar, where market share is the name of the game.'' I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted in the record at the appropriate place. Mr. President, it is not just a lot to ask. It is foolish and futile to ask. The bottom line is that, unless commercial distributors of pornography are met with the force of law, they will not act responsibly. I am here today to introduce legislation that will provide just such force of law. As I stated in my opening comments, the legislation I introduce today is designed to accommodate the concerns of the Supreme Court. This legislation is specifically targeted at the commercial distribution of materials harmful to minors on the World Wide Web. It states simply that ``Whoever in interstate or foreign commerce in or through the World Wide Web is engaged in the business of the commercial distribution of material that is harmful to minors shall restrict access to such material by persons under 17 years of age.'' It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that the defendant restricted access to such material by requiring use of a verified credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult personal identification number. The bill also calls upon the FCC to prescribe alternative procedures. The FCC is expressly restricted from regulation of the Internet, or Internet Speech. Further, the FCC and the Justice Department are directed to post on their Web sites information as is necessary to inform the public of the meaning of the term ``harmful to minors.'' As I know that it will be of some concern to my colleagues that any legislation dealing with this topic takes into account the Supreme Court's ruling in the CDA, I would like to take some time now to examine the key precedents which the Court considered in its opinion on the CDA and how they relate to this bill. Central to the construction of this legislation is the Ginsberg case. This Court ruling upheld the constitutionality of a New York statute that prohibited the selling to minors under 17 years of age material that was considered obscene as to them even if not obscene as to adults. In Ginsberg, the Court rejected the defendant's argument that ``the scope of the constitutional freedom of expression secured to a citizen to read or see material concerned with sex cannot be made to depend on whether the citizen is an adult or a minor.'' In Ginsberg, the Court relied on both the state's interest in protecting the well-being of children, but also on the principle that ``the parent's claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their own children is basic in the structure of our society.'' In the Court's opinion on the CDA, they laid out four differences between the CDA and the question contained in the Ginsberg case. As you will see, the legislation I introduce today carefully addresses each of these concerns. First, the Court points out that in the New York statute examined in Ginsberg, ``the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children.'' The Court interpreted the CDA to prohibit such activity. Though I must confess to my colleagues that I find it a disturbing proposition that a parent should so desire to purchase pornographic material for their children's consumption, it seems that this is a right that this Court feels compelled to protect. The legislation I introduce today places no restriction on a parent's right to purchase such material, and to provide it to their children, or anyone else. In fact, it places no restriction on any potential consumer of pornography. Rather, it simply requires the commercial purveyor of pornography to cast their message in such a way as not to be readily available to children. The Court's second issue relating to the Ginsberg case is that the New York statute applied only to commercial transactions. As I have previously stated, my legislation deals only with commercial transactions. Third, the Court points out that in Ginsberg, the New York statute combined its definition of harmful to minors with the requirement that it be ``utterly without redeeming social importance for minors.'' The Court goes on to express that the CDA omits any requirement that the material covered in the statute lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This concern is addressed directly in my legislation, with a specific plank of the definition of harmful to minors requiring that the material in question ``lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'' Mr. President, I do not believe that it is possible to address a concern more directly. Finally, the Court states that the New York statute considered in Ginsberg defined a minor as a person under the age of 17, whereas the CDA applied to children under the age of 18, citing concern that by extending protection to those under 18, the CDA reached ``those nearest the majority.'' Mr. President, here again I am confused my the rationale of the Court. For it is common practice in federal statute to recognize minors as those under the age of 18 years. However, the legislation I introduce today contains the same under 17 requirement established under Ginsberg. The second case of importance as relates to the Supreme Court ruling on the CDA is the Pacifica case. Though the specifics of this case are well- known to most by now, a summary might be helpful. In the Pacifica case, the Supreme Court upheld a declaratory order of the FCC relating to the broadcast of a recording of a monologue entitled ``Filthy Words.'' The Commission found that the use of certain words referring to excretory or sexual activities or organs ``in an afternoon broadcast when children are in the audience was patently offensive'' and thus inappropriate for broadcast. [[Page S12149]] In considering the precedent established in Pacifica, and their relationship to the CDA, the Court outlined 3 concerns. First, the Court stated that, unlike in Pacifica where the content in question was regulated as to the time it was broadcast, the CDA made no such distinction. Further, the Court makes a rather curious distinction in stating that the regulation in question in the Pacifica case had been promulgated by an agency with ``decades'' of experience in regulating the medium. On the first point, the regulation of Internet content in the context of time is irrelevant, as a child may access or be inadvertently exposed to pornography any time he or she logs onto the Internet. That could be in the evening, when doing a research paper, or during class-- working on an assignment, or at the public library. The simple fact that a child runs the risk of exposure any time presents a more substantial potential for harm than the time regulation approach approved in Pacifica, and calls for a higher level of control, not lower as the Court concluded. On the question of regulation by an agency with decades of experience, given the fact that the Internet is a very new medium of communication, it is a rather ludicrous distinction to make. No agency, short of the Defense Department, could demonstrate the historical relationship to the Internet that the FCC can with broadcast radio. Surely the Supreme Court would not advocate Defense Department regulation of the Internet. Further, given the concern among supporters of the Internet regarding government regulation of the medium, it would seem preferable to have a clearly defined statute, enforced by the Justice Department, as opposed to a regulatory regime, which would be enforced by an unaccountable federal agency and subject to bureaucratic creep. During debate and negotiations on passage of the CDA, opponents raised strong concerns that the FCC not be given any regulatory authority over the Internet. It was this opposition to a regulatory solution that resulted in a very restricted agency roll. Though the FCC is expressly prohibited from regulating content under the legislation I introduce today, a specific provision is made for the FCC to prescribe a method of restricting access that would function as an affirmative defense to prosecution. As such, this legislation provides the benefit and flexibility of an evolving agency regulation, whereby as technology evolved and new and more effective means of access restriction emerge, the Commission could modify the regulation, without the creation of a regulatory regime with expansive FCC authority over the Internet and speech. The Court goes on to point out that in Pacifica, the Commission's declaratory order was not punitive, whereas there were penalties under the CDA. Here, it is important to distinguish the difference in scope between this legislation and the CDA. A principal concern of the Court with the CDA, was that the CDA dealt with both commercial and non-commercial communications. As such, the cost and technology burdens necessary to restrict access that would be imposed by the CDA on non-commercial speakers, according to the opinion of the Court, would be prohibitive. The result would be, in the Opinion of the Court, that speech would be chilled. The legislation I introduce today is strictly limited to the commercial distribution of pornography on the World Wide Web. The commercial distributors of pornography on the Web already use the very mechanisms (credit cards and PIN numbers) that are required under this bill. The difference between the status quo and this bill is that pornography distributors would be required to cease to give away the freebies that any child with a mouse could gain access to. As such, Court concerns regarding the potential chilling effect to non-commercial speech that they perceived under the CDA is moot. The scope of this legislation does not extend to the non-commercial speaker. Secondly, this legislation imposes no new technological or economic burden on the commercial operator. It simply imposes a control on the manner of distribution and provides penalties for violations. Mr. President, there is a long tradition of fines and penalties for violations of laws governing the commercial distribution of pornography. This legislation is simply a continuation of these principles. In fact, the very treatment of fines in penalties under this legislation, mirrors those under dial-a-porn, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Finally, under an examination of Pacifica, the Court points out the differences between the level of First Amendment protection extended to broadcast and the Internet. Mr. President, I must say that however much I differ with the opinion of the Court on this question in general, I would simply point out that the harmful to minors standard has traditionally been used, and has been constitutionally upheld, as a standard for regulating print media. Print media is extended the highest level of First Amendment protection. As such, this legislation clearly accounts for the Supreme Court's concerns in this area. The Court also examines the precedents established under Renton. The Renton case dealt with a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theaters out of residential neighborhoods. It did so based on the ``secondary effects'' of the theaters--such as crime and deteriorating property values. It was the Court's opinion that the CDA treated the entire universe of cyberspace rather than specific areas or zones. Further, the Court seemed preoccupied that the CDA dealt with the primary, not the secondary effects of pornography. The legislation I introduce today deals with a narrow zone of the Internet, commercial activity on the World Wide Web. Though there is tremendous economic activity in pornography on the Web. The cyber- geography of this bill is very limited. Mr. President, on this question of primary and secondary effects, I must differ with the Court and would like to go into this question in some detail. The underlying principle which the Senate supported by a vote of 84 to 16 in adopting the CDA, and which is embodied in the legislation I introduce today is articulated in New York versus. Ferber: ``It is evident beyond the need for elaboration that the State's interest in `safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor' is compelling.'' There is no question that exposure to pornography harms children. A child's sexual development occurs gradually through childhood. Exposure to pornography, particularly the type of hard-core pornography available on the Internet, distorts the natural sexual development of children. Essentially, pornography shapes children's sexual perspective by providing them information on sexual activity. However, the type of information provided by pornography does not provide children with a normal sexual perspective. As pointed out in Enough is Enough's brief to Court on the CDA, pornography portrays unhealthy or antisocial kinds of sexual activity, such as sadomasochism, abuse, and humiliation of females, involvement of children, incest, group sex, voyeurism, sexual degradation, bestiality, torture, objectification, that serve to teach children the rudiments of sex without adult supervision and moral guidance. Ann Burgess, Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, states that children generally do not have a natural sexual capacity until between 10 and 12 years old. Pornography unnaturally accelerates that development. By short-circuiting the normal development process and supplying misinformation about their own sexuality, pornography leaves children confused, changed and damaged. As if the psychological threat of pornography does not present a sufficient compelling interest, there is a significant physical threat. As I have stated, pornography develops in children a distorted sexual perspective. It encourages irresponsible, dehumanized sexual behavior, conduct that presents a genuine physical threat to children. In the United States, about one in four sexually active teenagers acquire a sexually transmitted disease (STD) every year, resulting in 3 million STD cases. Infectious syphilis rates have more than doubled among teenagers since the mid-1980's. One million American teenage girls become pregnant each year. A report entitled ``Exposure to Pornography, Character and Sexual [[Page S12150]] Deviance'' concluded that as more and more children become exposed not only to soft-core pornography, but also to explicit deviant sexual material, society's youth will learn an extremely dangerous message: sex without responsibility is acceptable. However, there is a darker and more ominous threat. For research has established a direct link between exposure and consumption of pornography and sexual assault, rape and molesting of children. As stated in Aggressive Erotica and Violence Against Women, ``Virtually all lab studies established a causal link between violent pornography and the commission of violence. This relationship is not seriously debated in the research community.'' What is more, pedophiles will often use pornographic material to desensitize children to sexual activity, effectively breaking down their resistance in order to sexually exploit them. A study by Victor Cline found that child molesters often use pornography to seduce their prey, to lower the inhibitions of the victim, and as an instruction manual. Further, a W.L. Marshal study found that: ``87 percent of female child molesters and 77 percent of male child molesters studied admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography.'' Given these facts, Mr. President, any distinction the Court makes regarding the effects of pornography on children seems to miss the very point of the state's compelling interest. For the sanctity and security of childhood is what these efforts are all about. As I have stated before in addressing this subject, childhood must be defended by parents and society as a safe harbor of innocence. It is a privileged time to develop values in an environment that is not hostile to them. But this foul material on the Internet invades that place and destroys that innocence. It takes the worst excesses of the red-light district and places it directly into a child's bedroom, on the computer their parents bought them to help them with their homework. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and yield the floor. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 10, 1997] The Business of Pornography (By Eric Schlosser) Most of the outsize profits being generated by pornography today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry John Stagliano is a wealthy entrepreneur, a self-made man whose rise to the top could happen only in America. Raised in a conservative, Midwestern household, Stagliano read the books of Ayn Rand and was greatly influenced by their heroes, rugged individualists willing to defy conventional opinion. He attended the University of California--Los Angeles hoping to become a professor of economics. Instead, he studied modern dance, struggled to find work as an actor, became one of the original Chippendale dancers, performed occasionally in hard-core films, and used the prize money won during a cable television strip contest to finance and direct a porn film of his own. Today, Stagliano is the nation's leading director of hard- core videos, a porn auteur whose distinctive cinema verite style of filmmaking has been widely imitated. His videos cost about $8,000 to produce--and often earn him 30 times that amount. Stagliano shoots without a crew, edits the films himself, and performs in them. He also is a major contributor to the Cato Institute, a well-known think tank in Washington, D.C., where he regularly discusses policy issues with its economists. Stagliano's company, Evil Angel Video, has become a veritable United Artists of porn, distributing the work of other top directors. Evil Angel sold about half a million videos last year. At its modern Southern California warehouse, hundreds of VCRs, stacked floor to ceiling, run 24 hours a day, five days a week, churning out copies of hard- core films. A great deal has been written about pornography, both pro and con. A new movie about the life of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, has once again raised the issue of pornography and the First Amendment. But much less attention has been given to the underlying economics of porn, to porn as a commodity, the end product of a modern industry that arose in this country after the Second World War and has grown enormously ever since. Critics of the sex industry have long attacked it for being ``un-American''--and yet there is something quintessentially American about it: the heady mix of sex and money, the fortunes quickly made and lost, the new identities assumed and then discarded, the public condemnations of a private obsession. Largely fueled by loneliness and frustration, the sex industry has been transformed from a minor subculture on the fringes of society into a major component of American popular culture. Meese formation. More than a decade ago, Attorney General Edwin Meese III's Commission on Pornography issued its controversial report, asserting that sexually explicit materials were harmful and calling for strict enforcement of the federal obscenity laws. The report prompted President Ronald Reagan to launch one of the most far-reaching assaults on porn in the nation's history, a campaign that continued under President George Bush. Hundreds of producers, distributors, and retailers in the sex industry were indicted and convicted. Many were driven from the business and imprisoned. The Reagan-Bush war on pornography coincided, however, with a dramatic increase in America's consumption of sexually explicit materials. According to Adult Video News, an industry trade publication, the number of hard-core-video rentals rose from 75 million in 1985 to 490 million in 1992. The total climbed to 665 million, an all-time high, in 1996. Last year Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual vices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances--combined. Porn has become so commonplace in recent years that one can easily forget how strictly it was prohibited not long ago. The sociologist Charles Winick has noted that the sexual content of American culture changed more in two decades than it had in the previous two centuries. Twenty-five years ago, a federal study of pornography estimated that the total retail value of all the hard-core porn in the United States was no more than $10 million, and perhaps less than $5 million. Durng the 1980s, the advent of adult movies on videocassette and on cable television, as well as the huge growth in telephone sex services, shifted the consumption of porn from seedy movie theaters and bookstores into the home. As a result, most of the profits being generated by porn today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry--by mom and pop video stores; by long-distance carriers like AT by cable companies like Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc.; and by hotel chains like Marriott, Hyatt, and Holiday Inn that now reportedly earn million of dollars each year supplying adult films to their guests. America's porn has become one more of its cultural exports, dominating overseas markets. Despite having some of the toughest restrictions on sexually explicit materials of any Western industrialized nation, the United States is now by far the world's leading producer of porn, churning out hard-core videos at the astonishing rate of about 150 new titles a week. Parallel universe. In the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, near Universal City and the Warner Bros. back lot, an X-rated-movie industry has emerged, an adult dream factory, with its own studios, talent agencies, and stars, its own fan clubs and film critics. Perhaps three quarters of the hard-core films made in the United States today come from Los Angeles County. Sound stages, editing facilities, and printing plants are tucked away in middle- and working-class neighborhoods, amid a typical Southern California landscape of palm trees, shopping malls, car washes, and fast-food joints. You could hardly choose a more unexceptional spot for the world capital of porn. Nevertheless, strange things are happening in the valley, behind closed doors. Every few weeks, in the upscale suburb of Sherman Oaks, there's an open casting call at the industry's top talent agency. Scores of young men and women crowd its small offices, undressing for producers and directors who audition promising newcomers and inspect them for tattoos. At the sleek headquarters of an adult-film company in Chatsworth, the hallways are lined with autographed basketball and hockey jerseys, expensively framed. There is not an obscene image in sight. It could be the headquarters of ESPN. In addition to hard-core videos, the company's start-of-the-art, $30 million duplicating equipment also copies videos for government agencies and local church groups. At a factory in Panorama City, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, shelves are lined with plaster casts of the buttocks and genitalia of famous porn stars. The casts are used to make sexual devices, lifelike reproductions packaged with celebrity endorsements. A rival L.A. company sells a plastic, inflatable woman that speaks with an English accent. The factory calls to mind the set of a science fiction movie: Wires peek from battery- powered devices; metal cages on the floor are filled with rubber body parts. The distribu

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NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT
(Senate - November 08, 1997)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S12144-S12179] NORTHERN IRELAND/BORDER COUNTIES FREE TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY ACT Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, today I introduce the Northern Ireland/ Border Counties Free Trade, Development and Security Act. This legislation is a carbon copy of S. 1976, legislation that I introduced in the 104th Congress. Joining me as original cosponsors are my friends and colleagues, the senior Senator from Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun and the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran. The Northern Ireland Free Trade, Development and Security Act reintroduced today will--by University of Ulster estimates, create 12,000 jobs within the twelve counties of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. It will produce an additional $1.5 billion into that economy annually. The new jobs it will create will be targeted to those areas that need the most, areas where the current unemployment rate ranges between 30 percent and 50 percent, areas that have never felt the effects of real economic expansion or growth. Further, this legislation will provide those jobs and hope without any discernable impact upon our nations trade or budget deficit, as was the case with Gaza/West Bank legislation. This bill will operate in harmony with stated goals of the European Union, United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. It will additionally comport with the requirements of the World Trade Organization. Mr. President, the paradox of Northern Ireland is that she has given so much to other cultures and lands but has been incapable of fully reaping the rewards of her own peoples skills and strengths at home. The unfortunate reality is that as in the Republic of Ireland, a large majority of the North's highly educated and skilled younger generation has been forced to emigrate due to high unemployment levels which are as high as 70 percent in some areas. These disadvantaged areas are the ones which this legislation has been especially designed to target. Joint cooperation and joint economic development between the United States, Northern Ireland and the European Union will integrate the most distressed parts of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties into a dynamic economy that--while firmly rooted in the European Union-- continues to expand and cement new trading relationships beneficial to all trading partners. Northern Ireland's peace process must move forward and the aspirations and goodwill of the vast majority of its citizens must be accompanied by hard work and endeavor. A more prosperous economy with more evenly spread and meaningful job opportunities can only serve to bridge the social and economic disparities that exist in this region. In conclusion this opportunity cannot be overlooked, after 25 years since the outbreak of the ``troubles,'' the people of Northern Ireland have suffered enough violence and depravity. Now it is time to embark on a rebuilding process that will give no chance to the terrorist but every chance to peace and reconciliation. Mr. President, it is time to roll up our sleeves and do something real and substantive for all the people of Northern Ireland. This legislation goes far beyond symbolic gestures and grand statements of concern. It will provide a real and solid foundation that the people of Northern Ireland can use to build that new and brighter future. This legislation represents the Senate's down payment on that future. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a public statement of support from Minister James McDaid, the Minister of Tourism and Trade for the Republic of Ireland, found in today's Irish News--be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Irish News] Minister Gives Backing to U.S. Free Trade Bill for North (By Jim Fitzpatrick) The Republic's tourism minister Dr. Jim McDaid has given his backing to the American free trade bill for Northern Ireland and the border counties. The Irish News reported last month that the proposed bill, which a University of Ulster study concluded would create at least 12,000 jobs, was facing opposition from officials in London, Dublin and Brussels. But Fianna Fail minister Dr. McDaid gave his unqualified backing to the proposal yesterday, saying that he felt special measures were necessary to redress the economic imbalance on the island. The bill would allow companies based in the northern twelve counties of Ireland to sell products directly into the U.S. without any tariffs. Its backers argue that it would be a massive boost for foreign investment and create thousands of jobs because it would allow companies free access the two largest markets in the world--north America and Europe. But the legislation, which is in the early stages of development in the U.S. Congress, has faced opposition from some sections of the Irish political establishment. Dr. McDaid's predecessor, Fine Gael minister Enda Kenny who also held responsibility for trade, said the bill would require customs posts to be set up within the Republic along the border of the zone. But Dr. McDaid rejected that suggestion: ``I don't agree that this bill will mean the `re-partition of Ireland'. The bill addresses an area which has already been recognized by the European Union and the International Fund for Ireland as needing special assistance.'' He said there was a need for ``positive discrimination'' and a radical economic plan to tackle the economic problems of the northern part of Ireland so that the ``whole of the island'' can share in its economic success. He said the bill would undoubtedly be a boost to the peace process, and help redress the economic imbalance crested by the years of violence in the north. Dr. McDaid said he felt that the free trade status would probably have to be granted on a time-limited basis--perhaps for 25 years or more. It's understood that support for the free trade bill has been growing within Irish political circles, although the Irish government has not taken a formal position on the matter. A number of senators and MEPs from border counties have submitted letters of support to the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congressman pushing the bill wrote to the Irish News recently calling on people in the region to publicly support the initiative. Massachusetts Congressman Marty Meehan praised the Clinton administration's current efforts to bring new investment to the north, and called on the people of the north to work with the influential American politicians who are backing the free trade initiative. ``I encourage the people of Northern Ireland and the border counties to work with me through trade associations, councils and elected representatives to help pass this bill as well as other related measures. Together, we can help lay the groundwork for a sound economic future in Northern Ireland,'' he wrote. Mr. Meehan stressed in his letter that, contrary to some of the criticisms levelled against the bill, his legislation would comply fully with European Union law. ______ By Mr. D'AMATO: S. 1477. A bill to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States to provide that certain goods may be reimported into the United States without additional duty; to the Committee on Finance. U.S. CATALOGUE MERCHANTS EXPORT PROMOTION ACT OF 1997 Mr. D'AMATO. Mr President, I rise today to introduce legislation necessary to correct a problem faced by an important segment of the American exporting community, catalogue merchants. Catalogue merchants are multi-billion dollar export businesses in New York State and across the nation. Due to an anomaly in our customs law, some products sold by these merchants face double duties when the goods are returned to them by customers abroad. The bill I am introducing today seeks to correct this problem by making sure that duties are only assessed once--as the law intended--the first time a product comes into this country from abroad. If I may Mr. President, let me explain the problem by first telling you how the system is supposed to work. When a catalogue merchant imports a product directly from abroad, as the [[Page S12145]] importer of record, he pays a duty on the product. Let's say the product is a pair of trousers from Taiwan. A merchant in the United States takes direct delivery of a pair of pants from a company in Taipei, and pays duties to the U.S. Treasury on the trousers when they enter the United States. The merchant then sells the pants to a customer in Montreal, Canada. But, the pants are the wrong size, and the customer returns the same pair of trousers directly to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. In that case, properly, is no duty paid on the returned trousers. After all, a duty was properly paid on the trousers when they were first imported into the U.S. That is how the law works when the catalogue merchant is also the official importer of record. Now, take the same situation, but add a broker here in the United States, (the way most catalogue merchants import merchandise into the United States) who is officially the importer of record. The trousers come into the United States from Taipei, but this time, instead of going directly to the merchant, they are imported by a U.S. distributer. The distributer, who is the importer of record, properly pays the duty on the pants, and then transfers the trousers to the catalogue merchant in the U.S. The catalogue merchant then sells the trousers to the customer in Montreal, who subsequently returns the trousers to the U.S. merchant (via a return clearinghouse in Canada, that is set up to ship returned products back to the U.S. in bulk). That is where the problem comes in. When the trousers come back to the United States (as part of a bulk shipment), duty has to be paid on the trousers a second time. Officially, that is because the catalogue merchant is not the original importer of record, and thus a second duty is assessed on the trousers. Clearly, this makes no sense. A second duty should not have to be paid on the same pair of trousers, just because the U.S. catalogue seller is not the original U.S. importer of record. What this amendment says, essentially, is that it doesn't matter who the original importer of record is; as long as the proper duty is paid when an article first enters the U.S., a duty is not assessed the second time the article enters the U.S., when it re-enters the U.S. as a sales return. The President may know that I have sought this change in law for more than a year, and it is my hope that when the Senate next turns to miscellaneous trade matters, this very minor provision can be included. The U.S. Customs Service has told importers that legislation is the only remedy to correct this anomaly. Furthermore, the measure should be deemed ``revenue neutral'' because importers can already avoid the double duty by simply shipping the returns back by (inefficiently) shipping the returns back to the U.S. individually rather than (efficiently) consolidating the shipments. This measure is a common-sense, good government measure which promotes U.S. exports, and correspondingly keeps companies from moving good jobs in distribution and logistics offshore. ______ By Ms. SNOWE (for herself and Mr. Breaux): S. 1480. A bill to authorize appropriations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct research, monitoring, education and management activities for the eradication and control of harmful algal blooms, including blooms of Pfiesteria piscicida and other aquatic toxins; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. the harmful algal bloom research and control act of 1997 Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation designed to address a serious national problem affecting our coasts. The recent outbreak of Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay has garnered a lot of media attention, and deservedly so. But Pfiesteria is actually just one example of a larger phenomenon--Harmful algal blooms. These damaging outbreaks of often toxic algae affect every U.S. coastal State and territory. In my State of Maine, we have outbreaks of paralytic shellfish poisoning every year which require the closure of clam flats along the coast, and the loss of millions of dollars in potential income. On Georges Bank off the New England coast, harmful algal blooms cause $3 million to $5 million worth of damage every year. In Washington in 1991, an outbreak resulted in losses of razor clams exceeding $15 million. And off Alaska, which has our Nation's most pristine coastline, an estimated $50 million worth of shellfish remain unexploited each year due to these outbreaks. What is frightening is that these blooms have been increasing over the last 30 years with no sign of abatement--and science cannot explain why. Nor do we have any other way of addressing the problem besides closing areas to swimming and fishing. My bill is designed to address this problem with focused and appropriate Federal action. NOAA, the lead Federal agency on harmful algal blooms, currently has the major Federal research program to address the problem--the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms project, or ECO-HAB. It is part of NOAA's Coastal Ocean Program, but it does not have a specific authorization. My bill would give this program a specific authorization for $10.5 million annually during fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, providing it with a more certain future as the next century approaches. The bill would also authorize the following activities for the next 3 years--$5 million per year for NOAA to upgrade its research lab capabilities to more effectively study the problem; $3 million annually for education and extension services through the Sea Grant colleges; $5.5 million annually to augment Federal and State monitoring programs to help detect harmful algal blooms early; and $8 million annually in grants to the States through the Coastal Zone Management Act [CZMA] programs to help States control blooms in their area. My bill represents a coordinated strategy for attacking this serious problem. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed, in the Record, as follows: S. 1480 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Harmful Algal Bloom Research and Control Act of 1997''. SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The Congress finds that-- (1) the recent outbreak of the harmful microbe Pfiesteria piscicida in the coastal waters of the United States is one of the larger set of potentially harmful algal blooms that appear to be increasing in abundance and intensity in the Nation's coastal waters; (2) in recent years, harmful algal blooms have resulted in massive fish kills, the deaths of numerous endangered West Indian manatees, beach closures, and threats to public health and safety; (3) other recent occurrences of harmful algal blooms include red tides in the Gulf of Mexico and the southeast, brown tides in New York and Texas, and shellfish poisonings in the Gulf of Maine, the Pacific northwest and the Gulf of Alaska; (4) harmful algal blooms have been responsible for an estimated $1,000,000,000 in economic losses during the past decade; (5) harmful algal blooms are composed of naturally occurring species that reproduce explosively when the natural system is out of balance; (6) under certain circumstances, harmful algal blooms can lead directly to other damaging marine conditions such as hypoxia, as has been found in the Gulf of Mexico; (7) factors thought to cause or contribute to harmful algal blooms include excessive nutrients and toxins from polluted runoff; (8) there is a strong need for a national strategy to identify better means of controlling polluted runoff; (9) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce, through its ongoing research, grant, and coastal resource management programs, possesses a full range of capabilities necessary to support a near and long-term comprehensive effort to control and eradicate harmful algal blooms; and (10) funding for NOAA's research and related programs will aid in improving the Nation's understanding and capabilities for addressing the human and environmental costs associated with harmful algal blooms. SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR ALGAL BLOOM ERADICATION AND CONTROL. There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary of Commerce for activities related to the research, eradication, and control of harmful algal blooms $32,000,000 in [[Page S12146]] each of fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000, to remain available until expended. Of such amounts for each fiscal year-- (1) $5,000,000 may be used to enable the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to carry out research activities, including procurement and maintenance of research facilities, of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Ocean Service; (2) $10,500,000 may be used to carry out the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECO-HAB) project and related research under the Coastal Ocean Program established under section 201(c) of Public Law 102-567. (3) $3,000,000 may be used for outreach, education and advisory services administrated by the National Sea Grant Office established under subsection 204(a) of the National Sea Grant College Program Act (33 U.S.C. 1123(a)); (4) $5,500,000 may be used to carry out federal and state annual monitoring and analysis activities administered by the Office of Resource Conservation and Assessment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and (5) $8,000,000 may be used for grants under sections 306, 306A and 310 of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (16 U.S.C. 1455, 1455a and 1456c). ______ By Mr. DeWINE: S. 1481. A bill to amend the Social Security Act to eliminate the time limitation on benefits for immunosuppressive drugs under the Medicare Program, to provide for continued entitlement for such drugs for certain individuals after Medicare benefits end, and to extend certain Medicare secondary payer requirements; to the Committee on Finance. the immunosuppressive drugs coverage act of 1997 Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that will help organ transplant recipients maintain access to drugs that they need to prevent their immune systems from rejecting transplanted organs. This bill is the product of many conversations I have had with folks in the organ and tissue transplant community, including many people from Ohio. I have worked with people interested in organ and tissue donation for quite some time to increase awareness and education about transplant issues. Organs are very scarce, and we work hard to raise awareness so we can increase donation. Despite our efforts, more than 55,000 Americans are on the organ transplant waiting list--where they wait, and wait, and some of them die. Others are lucky--they get one of the precious organs, allowing them to live a healthier, longer life. Because of the wonderful gift these lucky few have been given, it is particularly tragic that some can't afford the drugs--called immunosuppressive drugs--that help ensure that their immune systems won't reject their new organs. That is why I am introducing the ``Immunosuppressive Drugs Coverage Act of 1997.'' This bill makes sure that the 75,000 people that have received an organ transplant covered by Medicare always have access to immunosuppressive drugs. Medicare currently limits coverage for immunosuppressive drugs to 30 months after a transplant. In 1998, the limit will rise to 36 months under current law. But then what? After Medicare coverage ends, the transplant recipient must find some other way to pay for these essential drugs. Many transplant recipients may not be able to get other insurance coverage or be able to afford to pay out-of-pocket for the drugs, which average around $5,000 annually and can cost in excess of $10,000. Without a way to pay for them, these patients may be forced to stop taking the immunosuppressive drugs. Others will ration use of the drugs and take them irregularly. In either case, the risk of rejection for the transplant organ is much greater. If a transplanted organ is rejected, the recipient may die or may need intensive, life-sustaining medical care, which Medicare often does pay for. And yet, it won't pay for the drugs to prevent these life- threatening episodes. For kidney recipients, who make up the vast majority of Medicare transplant recipients, immune rejection means an immediate return to renal dialysis at a cost to Medicare of around $30,000 a year. For some kidney patients and all other Medicare transplant recipients, rejection means a return to the transplant waiting list, and a need for expensive life-sustaining care. If they are lucky, they will get a second transplant, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My bill simply makes sure that everyone who receives an organ transplant through Medicare will have continued access to immunosuppressive drugs. This bill will help people who cannot pay for life-preserving immunosuppressive drugs and, at the same time, will help Medicare avoid the huge additional costs currently incurred when organs are rejected. When working with people to write this bill, I wanted to make sure the cost was as low as possible, while still getting the job done. That is why my bill contains safeguards that say that if any patient has private insurance coverage, it is the private insurance plan--and not Medicare--that pays for the immunosuppressive drugs. Someday, immunosuppressive drugs may not be necessary. We are beginning to see some promising research in this area. But today's transplant recipients need help now. They need this bill. The miracle of transplantation gives people the ``Gift of Life.'' It does not make sense to put this gift at risk because the recipient is unable to pay for immunosuppressive drugs. I urge every Senator to consider cosponsoring and supporting this bill. ______ By Mr. COATS: S. 1482. A bill to amend section 223 of the Communications Act of 1934 to establish a prohibition on commercial distribution on the World Wide Web of material that is harmful to minors, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. PORN LEGISLATION Mr. COATS. Mr. President, during Senate consideration of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 I, along with Senator James Exon, introduced an amendment to the Act which came to be known as the Communications Decency Act or CDA. This amendment held forth a basic principle, that children should be sheltered from obscene and indecent pornography. There was spirited debate on the amendment. However, ultimately the Senate adopted the CDA by an overwhelming margin of 84 to 16. On the very day that the President signed the Telecommunications Act into law, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association, along with America On-Line and other representatives of the computer industry, filed a law suit against the CDA in District Court. In short, the case ultimately came before the Supreme Court, where it was struck down. Mr. President, however much I disagree with the ruling of the Supreme Court, it is reality and as such, I have studied the opinion of the Court and come before my colleagues today to introduce legislation that reflects the parameters laid out by the Court's opinion. Mr. President, during Congressional consideration of the CDA, opponents of the measure took what I like to call an ostrich approach. They stuck their head in the sand and their rear end in the air. With companies like America on Line and Microsoft in the forefront, there came an indignant claim from the computer industry that there was no problem with pornography on the Internet. They claimed that there was very little pornography, and that what exists is difficult to find. However incredulous, this is what they claimed. Well, Mr. President, this ostrich appears to have extricated its head from the sand. For after the Supreme Court's ruling, the computer industry, along with so-called civil liberties groups, gathered for a White House summit to address the issue of pornography on the net, and what could be done about it. There are now panels and working groups, media discussions and industry alternatives all designed to address this problem of the proliferation of pornography on the Internet and the threat it poses to our children. Mr. President, let me congratulate the computer industry, and welcome them to the real world. And what is this real world? Mr. President, I turn now to the February 10 edition of U.S. News and World Report. The cover story is entitled, ``The Business of Porn.'' The article outlines in rather disturbing clarity the issue of pornography in America. ``Last year'' [[Page S12147]] it states, ``America spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances combined.'' This is truly alarming, and reflects poorly on the moral direction of the country. And, Mr. President, as the Internet continues to grow as a medium of communication and commerce in our society, its role in expanding the commerce of pornography increases exponentially. The Article goes on to say that: ``In much the same way that hard- core films on videocassette were largely responsible for the rapid introduction of the VCR, porn on and CD-ROM and on the Internet has hastened acceptance of these new technologies. Interactive adult CD- ROMS, such as Virtual Valarie and the Penthouse Photo Shoot, create interest in multimedia equipment among male computer buyers.'' It goes on: ``Porn companies have established elaborate Web sites to lure customers . . . Playboy's web site, which offers free glimpses of its Playmates, now averages about 5 million hits a day.'' The Article quotes Larry Flint, who says he ``imagines a future in which the TV and the personal computer have merged. Americans will lie in bed, cruising the Internet with their remote controls and ordering hard-core films at the punch of a button. The Internet promises to combine the video store's diversity of choices with the secrecy of purchases through the mail.'' Mr. President, there has been a virtual explosion of commerce in pornography on the Internet. Adult book stores, live peep shows, adult movies, you name it and it is there. It is available, Mr. President, not just to adults, but to children. And what does the computer industry, the ACLU, and the American Library Association tout as a solution to this problem? They tout self- ratings systems and blocking software. Opponents of the CDA, companies like America On-Line, the ACLU, the American Library Association, Larry Flint, have argued that there is no role for government in protecting children, that the Internet can regulate itself. The primary solution these people promote is system called PICs (Platform for Internet Content Selection), a type of self-ratings system. This would allow the pornographer to rate his own page, and browsers, the tool used to search the Internet, would then respond to these ratings. Aside from the ludicrous proposition of allowing the pornographer to self-rate, Mr. President, there is no incentive for compliance. I now turn to an editorial by writers in PC Week Magazine, a very prominent voice in the computer industry. The editorial is titled: ``Web Site Ratings--Shame on Most of Us.'' The column discusses the lack of voluntary compliance by content providers with the PICs system: ``We and many others in the computer industry and press have decried the Communications Decency Act and other government attempts to regulate the content of the Web. Instead, we've all argued, the government should let the Web rate and regulate its own content. Page ratings and browsers that respond to those ratings, not legislation, are the answers we've offered.'' The article goes on, ``Too bad we left the field before the game was over.'' the article says, ``We who work around the Web have done little to rate our content.'' it states that, in a search of the Web, they found ``few rated sites.'' And that rated sites were the ``exception to the rule'' In other words, PICs does not work. It does not work, because there is no incentive for pornographers to comply. And what about blocking software? Mr. President, let me begin by pointing out the amazing level of deceit that proponents of this solution are willing to go to. The American Library Association, a principal opponent of the CDA, lined up with plaintiffs in challenging the Constitutionality of the Act. It was a central argument of the Library Association and their cohorts, that blocking software presented a non-governmental solution to the problem. However, Mr. President, if one logs onto the American Library Association Web site one finds quite a surprise. Contained on the site is a resolution, adopted by the ALA Council on July 2, 1997, that resolves: ``That the American Library Association affirms that the use of filtering software by libraries to block access . . . violates the Library Bill of Rights.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this Resolution be inserted into the Record. So, here we find the true agenda of the American Library Association. They represent to the Court that everything is O.K., that all we need is blocking software. Then, they turn around and implement a policy that says no-way. And what are the implications? I quote now from a February 12, 1997 article in the Boston Herald. ``John Hunt, a parent from Dorchester, said he was furious to learn his 11-year-old daughter was able to view pornography yesterday while working on a school essay at the BPL's Copley Square branch.'' The article goes on: ``She said all the boys were around the computer and they were laughing and called the girls over to look at the pictures of naked people,'' Hunt said. ``I want to find out from these library officials what is going on.'' The article goes on to tell the story of another parent, Susan Sullivan who said she was stunned when her 10-year-old son spent the afternoon researching a book report on the computer in the BPL's Adams Street branch, but ended up looking through explicit photographs instead. Ms. Sullivan says: ``I'm very, very upset because I have no idea what he saw on the screen. He said he was using the Internet to do a book report on Indians and he was able to access dirty pictures, pictures of naked people.'' When the library spokesman was asked about parent's concerns, he dismissed them saying, ``We do have children's librarians but we do not have Internet police.'' So here is the genuine concern of the American Library Association for children and their genuine support for blocking software as a solution. Again, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be made part of the record. However, Mr. President, this is a side issue. As I pointed out earlier, in the case of the computer industry, deceit and denial are tactics regularly employed by opponents of real child protections. The fact is, Mr. President, that the software does not work. In fact, it is particularly dangerous because it creates a false sense of security for parents, teachers, and children. I have here a transcript from Morning Edition on National Public Radio. It is from the September 12, 1997 program. The host, Brooke Gladstone is interviewing a 12-year-old named Jack. Ms. Gladstone asks Jack what he does when he bumps up against Net Nanny, a popular blocking software program. Jack replies: ``You go to hacking sites such as the Undernet, which is a site which you pay money to go a member{sic . And then, after that, you have full access to all these hacking, cracking and phreaking and credit card fraud and all these other tools.'' Ms. Gladstone then asks Jack if kids use these services. Jack replies: ``A lot. I mean, you have kids at school who bring in 3.5 inch disks saying hey, buddy, come here. I'll sell you this disk for $10 dollars. There's all the hacking stuff you'll ever need. Ms. Gladstone then goes on to discuss with Jack how he made money down-loading pornography and selling it to his school-mates, making $30. Jack describes the various methods by which he defeats the blocking software his parents have installed. Later in the interview, Ms. Gladstone interviews Jay Friedland, founder of Surf Watch, another well-hyped blocking software program. Mr. Friedland readily concedes that his software can be broken, even describing the ways to hack the program. In describing the security his product offers parents, he says: ``It's a little bit like suntan lotion. It allows you to stay out in the sun longer, but you can still get sunburnt.'' Mr. President, this does not sound very reassuring to me. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted into the Record at the appropriate place. [[Page S12148]] The bottom line here is money. There are millions upon millions of dollars being made on the Internet in the pornography business. There is even more money being made marketing software to terrified parents, software that does not work. Let's look at the situation. You have the computer industry working to defeat laws designed to prohibit distribution of pornography to children. The solution that they promote is blocking software, manufactured by themselves. They are making tens- of-millions of dollars off of it. However, what we find out is that the software doesn't work. And all the while, you have companies like America On- Line out there, head in the sand, telling parents, schools, Congress, and the American public that there isn't a problem with pornography on the Internet. And the Internet Access Providers are pulling in the big bucks, providing access to the red light district. ``The Erotic Allure of Home Schooling,'' that is the name of an article, published in the September 8 edition of Fortune Magazine. Mr. President, I have long been an advocate of home schooling. But, I must confess that its erotic allure has never been one of my motivations. It begins: ``Here's one of the Web's dirtiest words: Mars. Try searching for sites about the red planet lately, and you could land on a porn purveyor's on-line playground. What next?'' the article asks, ``Smut linked to the keywords`home schooling'? Don't look now--it's already happened.'' The article goes on: ``Perverse as these connections seem, they're right out of Economics 101, specifically the part about competition. Pornography sites are among the Web's few big moneymakers. There are thousands of them, from the R-rated to the boundlessly perverse. They compete furiously, and their main battleground for market share is search engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, and Infoseek. Web surfers looking for porn typically tap into such search services and use keywords like ``sex'' and ``XXX.'' But so many on- line sex shops now display those words that their presence won't make a site stand out in a list resulting from a user's query. To get noticed, pornographers increasingly try to trick search engines into giving them top billing-- sometimes called `spoofing'.'' The article points out that: ``Search engine companies like Infoseek constantly develop new filters to defeat spoofing. But calls still come in from irate mothers and grade-school teachers who click on innocent- looking search results and find themselves on a page too exotic to mention.'' The article concludes: ``The Clinton Administration is encouraging efforts based on`voluntary restraint.' That's a lot to ask in the Web's open bazaar, where market share is the name of the game.'' I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be inserted in the record at the appropriate place. Mr. President, it is not just a lot to ask. It is foolish and futile to ask. The bottom line is that, unless commercial distributors of pornography are met with the force of law, they will not act responsibly. I am here today to introduce legislation that will provide just such force of law. As I stated in my opening comments, the legislation I introduce today is designed to accommodate the concerns of the Supreme Court. This legislation is specifically targeted at the commercial distribution of materials harmful to minors on the World Wide Web. It states simply that ``Whoever in interstate or foreign commerce in or through the World Wide Web is engaged in the business of the commercial distribution of material that is harmful to minors shall restrict access to such material by persons under 17 years of age.'' It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that the defendant restricted access to such material by requiring use of a verified credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult personal identification number. The bill also calls upon the FCC to prescribe alternative procedures. The FCC is expressly restricted from regulation of the Internet, or Internet Speech. Further, the FCC and the Justice Department are directed to post on their Web sites information as is necessary to inform the public of the meaning of the term ``harmful to minors.'' As I know that it will be of some concern to my colleagues that any legislation dealing with this topic takes into account the Supreme Court's ruling in the CDA, I would like to take some time now to examine the key precedents which the Court considered in its opinion on the CDA and how they relate to this bill. Central to the construction of this legislation is the Ginsberg case. This Court ruling upheld the constitutionality of a New York statute that prohibited the selling to minors under 17 years of age material that was considered obscene as to them even if not obscene as to adults. In Ginsberg, the Court rejected the defendant's argument that ``the scope of the constitutional freedom of expression secured to a citizen to read or see material concerned with sex cannot be made to depend on whether the citizen is an adult or a minor.'' In Ginsberg, the Court relied on both the state's interest in protecting the well-being of children, but also on the principle that ``the parent's claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their own children is basic in the structure of our society.'' In the Court's opinion on the CDA, they laid out four differences between the CDA and the question contained in the Ginsberg case. As you will see, the legislation I introduce today carefully addresses each of these concerns. First, the Court points out that in the New York statute examined in Ginsberg, ``the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children.'' The Court interpreted the CDA to prohibit such activity. Though I must confess to my colleagues that I find it a disturbing proposition that a parent should so desire to purchase pornographic material for their children's consumption, it seems that this is a right that this Court feels compelled to protect. The legislation I introduce today places no restriction on a parent's right to purchase such material, and to provide it to their children, or anyone else. In fact, it places no restriction on any potential consumer of pornography. Rather, it simply requires the commercial purveyor of pornography to cast their message in such a way as not to be readily available to children. The Court's second issue relating to the Ginsberg case is that the New York statute applied only to commercial transactions. As I have previously stated, my legislation deals only with commercial transactions. Third, the Court points out that in Ginsberg, the New York statute combined its definition of harmful to minors with the requirement that it be ``utterly without redeeming social importance for minors.'' The Court goes on to express that the CDA omits any requirement that the material covered in the statute lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This concern is addressed directly in my legislation, with a specific plank of the definition of harmful to minors requiring that the material in question ``lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'' Mr. President, I do not believe that it is possible to address a concern more directly. Finally, the Court states that the New York statute considered in Ginsberg defined a minor as a person under the age of 17, whereas the CDA applied to children under the age of 18, citing concern that by extending protection to those under 18, the CDA reached ``those nearest the majority.'' Mr. President, here again I am confused my the rationale of the Court. For it is common practice in federal statute to recognize minors as those under the age of 18 years. However, the legislation I introduce today contains the same under 17 requirement established under Ginsberg. The second case of importance as relates to the Supreme Court ruling on the CDA is the Pacifica case. Though the specifics of this case are well- known to most by now, a summary might be helpful. In the Pacifica case, the Supreme Court upheld a declaratory order of the FCC relating to the broadcast of a recording of a monologue entitled ``Filthy Words.'' The Commission found that the use of certain words referring to excretory or sexual activities or organs ``in an afternoon broadcast when children are in the audience was patently offensive'' and thus inappropriate for broadcast. [[Page S12149]] In considering the precedent established in Pacifica, and their relationship to the CDA, the Court outlined 3 concerns. First, the Court stated that, unlike in Pacifica where the content in question was regulated as to the time it was broadcast, the CDA made no such distinction. Further, the Court makes a rather curious distinction in stating that the regulation in question in the Pacifica case had been promulgated by an agency with ``decades'' of experience in regulating the medium. On the first point, the regulation of Internet content in the context of time is irrelevant, as a child may access or be inadvertently exposed to pornography any time he or she logs onto the Internet. That could be in the evening, when doing a research paper, or during class-- working on an assignment, or at the public library. The simple fact that a child runs the risk of exposure any time presents a more substantial potential for harm than the time regulation approach approved in Pacifica, and calls for a higher level of control, not lower as the Court concluded. On the question of regulation by an agency with decades of experience, given the fact that the Internet is a very new medium of communication, it is a rather ludicrous distinction to make. No agency, short of the Defense Department, could demonstrate the historical relationship to the Internet that the FCC can with broadcast radio. Surely the Supreme Court would not advocate Defense Department regulation of the Internet. Further, given the concern among supporters of the Internet regarding government regulation of the medium, it would seem preferable to have a clearly defined statute, enforced by the Justice Department, as opposed to a regulatory regime, which would be enforced by an unaccountable federal agency and subject to bureaucratic creep. During debate and negotiations on passage of the CDA, opponents raised strong concerns that the FCC not be given any regulatory authority over the Internet. It was this opposition to a regulatory solution that resulted in a very restricted agency roll. Though the FCC is expressly prohibited from regulating content under the legislation I introduce today, a specific provision is made for the FCC to prescribe a method of restricting access that would function as an affirmative defense to prosecution. As such, this legislation provides the benefit and flexibility of an evolving agency regulation, whereby as technology evolved and new and more effective means of access restriction emerge, the Commission could modify the regulation, without the creation of a regulatory regime with expansive FCC authority over the Internet and speech. The Court goes on to point out that in Pacifica, the Commission's declaratory order was not punitive, whereas there were penalties under the CDA. Here, it is important to distinguish the difference in scope between this legislation and the CDA. A principal concern of the Court with the CDA, was that the CDA dealt with both commercial and non-commercial communications. As such, the cost and technology burdens necessary to restrict access that would be imposed by the CDA on non-commercial speakers, according to the opinion of the Court, would be prohibitive. The result would be, in the Opinion of the Court, that speech would be chilled. The legislation I introduce today is strictly limited to the commercial distribution of pornography on the World Wide Web. The commercial distributors of pornography on the Web already use the very mechanisms (credit cards and PIN numbers) that are required under this bill. The difference between the status quo and this bill is that pornography distributors would be required to cease to give away the freebies that any child with a mouse could gain access to. As such, Court concerns regarding the potential chilling effect to non-commercial speech that they perceived under the CDA is moot. The scope of this legislation does not extend to the non-commercial speaker. Secondly, this legislation imposes no new technological or economic burden on the commercial operator. It simply imposes a control on the manner of distribution and provides penalties for violations. Mr. President, there is a long tradition of fines and penalties for violations of laws governing the commercial distribution of pornography. This legislation is simply a continuation of these principles. In fact, the very treatment of fines in penalties under this legislation, mirrors those under dial-a-porn, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Finally, under an examination of Pacifica, the Court points out the differences between the level of First Amendment protection extended to broadcast and the Internet. Mr. President, I must say that however much I differ with the opinion of the Court on this question in general, I would simply point out that the harmful to minors standard has traditionally been used, and has been constitutionally upheld, as a standard for regulating print media. Print media is extended the highest level of First Amendment protection. As such, this legislation clearly accounts for the Supreme Court's concerns in this area. The Court also examines the precedents established under Renton. The Renton case dealt with a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theaters out of residential neighborhoods. It did so based on the ``secondary effects'' of the theaters--such as crime and deteriorating property values. It was the Court's opinion that the CDA treated the entire universe of cyberspace rather than specific areas or zones. Further, the Court seemed preoccupied that the CDA dealt with the primary, not the secondary effects of pornography. The legislation I introduce today deals with a narrow zone of the Internet, commercial activity on the World Wide Web. Though there is tremendous economic activity in pornography on the Web. The cyber- geography of this bill is very limited. Mr. President, on this question of primary and secondary effects, I must differ with the Court and would like to go into this question in some detail. The underlying principle which the Senate supported by a vote of 84 to 16 in adopting the CDA, and which is embodied in the legislation I introduce today is articulated in New York versus. Ferber: ``It is evident beyond the need for elaboration that the State's interest in `safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor' is compelling.'' There is no question that exposure to pornography harms children. A child's sexual development occurs gradually through childhood. Exposure to pornography, particularly the type of hard-core pornography available on the Internet, distorts the natural sexual development of children. Essentially, pornography shapes children's sexual perspective by providing them information on sexual activity. However, the type of information provided by pornography does not provide children with a normal sexual perspective. As pointed out in Enough is Enough's brief to Court on the CDA, pornography portrays unhealthy or antisocial kinds of sexual activity, such as sadomasochism, abuse, and humiliation of females, involvement of children, incest, group sex, voyeurism, sexual degradation, bestiality, torture, objectification, that serve to teach children the rudiments of sex without adult supervision and moral guidance. Ann Burgess, Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, states that children generally do not have a natural sexual capacity until between 10 and 12 years old. Pornography unnaturally accelerates that development. By short-circuiting the normal development process and supplying misinformation about their own sexuality, pornography leaves children confused, changed and damaged. As if the psychological threat of pornography does not present a sufficient compelling interest, there is a significant physical threat. As I have stated, pornography develops in children a distorted sexual perspective. It encourages irresponsible, dehumanized sexual behavior, conduct that presents a genuine physical threat to children. In the United States, about one in four sexually active teenagers acquire a sexually transmitted disease (STD) every year, resulting in 3 million STD cases. Infectious syphilis rates have more than doubled among teenagers since the mid-1980's. One million American teenage girls become pregnant each year. A report entitled ``Exposure to Pornography, Character and Sexual [[Page S12150]] Deviance'' concluded that as more and more children become exposed not only to soft-core pornography, but also to explicit deviant sexual material, society's youth will learn an extremely dangerous message: sex without responsibility is acceptable. However, there is a darker and more ominous threat. For research has established a direct link between exposure and consumption of pornography and sexual assault, rape and molesting of children. As stated in Aggressive Erotica and Violence Against Women, ``Virtually all lab studies established a causal link between violent pornography and the commission of violence. This relationship is not seriously debated in the research community.'' What is more, pedophiles will often use pornographic material to desensitize children to sexual activity, effectively breaking down their resistance in order to sexually exploit them. A study by Victor Cline found that child molesters often use pornography to seduce their prey, to lower the inhibitions of the victim, and as an instruction manual. Further, a W.L. Marshal study found that: ``87 percent of female child molesters and 77 percent of male child molesters studied admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography.'' Given these facts, Mr. President, any distinction the Court makes regarding the effects of pornography on children seems to miss the very point of the state's compelling interest. For the sanctity and security of childhood is what these efforts are all about. As I have stated before in addressing this subject, childhood must be defended by parents and society as a safe harbor of innocence. It is a privileged time to develop values in an environment that is not hostile to them. But this foul material on the Internet invades that place and destroys that innocence. It takes the worst excesses of the red-light district and places it directly into a child's bedroom, on the computer their parents bought them to help them with their homework. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and yield the floor. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 10, 1997] The Business of Pornography (By Eric Schlosser) Most of the outsize profits being generated by pornography today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry John Stagliano is a wealthy entrepreneur, a self-made man whose rise to the top could happen only in America. Raised in a conservative, Midwestern household, Stagliano read the books of Ayn Rand and was greatly influenced by their heroes, rugged individualists willing to defy conventional opinion. He attended the University of California--Los Angeles hoping to become a professor of economics. Instead, he studied modern dance, struggled to find work as an actor, became one of the original Chippendale dancers, performed occasionally in hard-core films, and used the prize money won during a cable television strip contest to finance and direct a porn film of his own. Today, Stagliano is the nation's leading director of hard- core videos, a porn auteur whose distinctive cinema verite style of filmmaking has been widely imitated. His videos cost about $8,000 to produce--and often earn him 30 times that amount. Stagliano shoots without a crew, edits the films himself, and performs in them. He also is a major contributor to the Cato Institute, a well-known think tank in Washington, D.C., where he regularly discusses policy issues with its economists. Stagliano's company, Evil Angel Video, has become a veritable United Artists of porn, distributing the work of other top directors. Evil Angel sold about half a million videos last year. At its modern Southern California warehouse, hundreds of VCRs, stacked floor to ceiling, run 24 hours a day, five days a week, churning out copies of hard- core films. A great deal has been written about pornography, both pro and con. A new movie about the life of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, has once again raised the issue of pornography and the First Amendment. But much less attention has been given to the underlying economics of porn, to porn as a commodity, the end product of a modern industry that arose in this country after the Second World War and has grown enormously ever since. Critics of the sex industry have long attacked it for being ``un-American''--and yet there is something quintessentially American about it: the heady mix of sex and money, the fortunes quickly made and lost, the new identities assumed and then discarded, the public condemnations of a private obsession. Largely fueled by loneliness and frustration, the sex industry has been transformed from a minor subculture on the fringes of society into a major component of American popular culture. Meese formation. More than a decade ago, Attorney General Edwin Meese III's Commission on Pornography issued its controversial report, asserting that sexually explicit materials were harmful and calling for strict enforcement of the federal obscenity laws. The report prompted President Ronald Reagan to launch one of the most far-reaching assaults on porn in the nation's history, a campaign that continued under President George Bush. Hundreds of producers, distributors, and retailers in the sex industry were indicted and convicted. Many were driven from the business and imprisoned. The Reagan-Bush war on pornography coincided, however, with a dramatic increase in America's consumption of sexually explicit materials. According to Adult Video News, an industry trade publication, the number of hard-core-video rentals rose from 75 million in 1985 to 490 million in 1992. The total climbed to 665 million, an all-time high, in 1996. Last year Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual vices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances--combined. Porn has become so commonplace in recent years that one can easily forget how strictly it was prohibited not long ago. The sociologist Charles Winick has noted that the sexual content of American culture changed more in two decades than it had in the previous two centuries. Twenty-five years ago, a federal study of pornography estimated that the total retail value of all the hard-core porn in the United States was no more than $10 million, and perhaps less than $5 million. Durng the 1980s, the advent of adult movies on videocassette and on cable television, as well as the huge growth in telephone sex services, shifted the consumption of porn from seedy movie theaters and bookstores into the home. As a result, most of the profits being generated by porn today are being earned by businesses not traditionally associated with the sex industry--by mom and pop video stores; by long-distance carriers like AT by cable companies like Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc.; and by hotel chains like Marriott, Hyatt, and Holiday Inn that now reportedly earn million of dollars each year supplying adult films to their guests. America's porn has become one more of its cultural exports, dominating overseas markets. Despite having some of the toughest restrictions on sexually explicit materials of any Western industrialized nation, the United States is now by far the world's leading producer of porn, churning out hard-core videos at the astonishing rate of about 150 new titles a week. Parallel universe. In the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, near Universal City and the Warner Bros. back lot, an X-rated-movie industry has emerged, an adult dream factory, with its own studios, talent agencies, and stars, its own fan clubs and film critics. Perhaps three quarters of the hard-core films made in the United States today come from Los Angeles County. Sound stages, editing facilities, and printing plants are tucked away in middle- and working-class neighborhoods, amid a typical Southern California landscape of palm trees, shopping malls, car washes, and fast-food joints. You could hardly choose a more unexceptional spot for the world capital of porn. Nevertheless, strange things are happening in the valley, behind closed doors. Every few weeks, in the upscale suburb of Sherman Oaks, there's an open casting call at the industry's top talent agency. Scores of young men and women crowd its small offices, undressing for producers and directors who audition promising newcomers and inspect them for tattoos. At the sleek headquarters of an adult-film company in Chatsworth, the hallways are lined with autographed basketball and hockey jerseys, expensively framed. There is not an obscene image in sight. It could be the headquarters of ESPN. In addition to hard-core videos, the company's start-of-the-art, $30 million duplicating equipment also copies videos for government agencies and local church groups. At a factory in Panorama City, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, shelves are lined with plaster casts of the buttocks and genitalia of famous porn stars. The casts are used to make sexual devices, lifelike reproductions packaged with celebrity endorsements. A rival L.A. company sells a plastic, inflatable woman that speaks with an English accent. The factory calls to mind the set of a science fiction movie: Wires peek from battery- powered devices; metal cages on the floor are filled with rubber body parts. Th