Personal Home Pages Banned

Washington, DC, August 19, 2000-Say goodbye to your own www.geocities.com/some-stuff-about-me.html.

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the future creation of "personal homepages" on the Internet is strictly prohibited and punishable by a fine of up to $150. The law will take effect on September 1st, 2000.

Additionally, any owner of a personal homepage must shut down the homepage within ninety days of that date, or he or she will be subject to the fine.

The case was brought to court when a family (not named in the suit) sued various personal homepage servers-including Geocities and Angelfire-because an elderly family member allegedly died of boredom when viewing a personal homepage.

This is the Supreme Court's first ruling regarding the Internet.

What exactly is a "personal homepage"?

"Personal homepage" is to be defined as any privately created and maintained document accessible through the Internet made by one(1) person whose sole purpose is to convey information concerning one or more than one of the following topics:

1. The physical appearance of the creator. This includes photograph(s) of the creator.

2. The hobbies of the creator.

3. The entertainment-related interests of the creator. "Entertainment-related interests" includes but is not limited to preferences in the following categories:

4. The friend(s) and/or family member(s) of the creator. This includes but is not limited to:

5. Any information relating the creator's love interst(s).

6. Any other type of information that describes the interest(s) and/or personality of the creator.

Surveys show that the creators of personal homepages are nearly entirely teens.

"I dare anyone to read a random personal homepage of a non-acquaintance and try to stay awake," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

A personal home page

"This isn't the sort of thing that our nation's youth should be wasting time on. All these documents do is promote stupidity and boredom. …They can't possibly believe that somebody would read this on their own free will," added Justice Stevens.

Not all agree with the ruling. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing a strongly worded dissenting opinion, accused the majority of "limiting first-amendment rights and freedom of speech."

Justice Rehnquist went on to write, "It is disturbing that we can no longer express ourselves through this medium. This is proof that the first amendment is slowly diminishing. This is simply hostile toward the users of the Internet."

Contrary to the expectations of many, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)-known for its advocacy of protecting the first amendment-supports the court's decision. "These people's personal homepages would bore their creators' own mothers to death. Who on Earth would read these things?" commented Ann Beason, ACLU Staff Attorney on behalf of the ACLU.

But what about the other side of the issue, the people who actually create and maintain personal homepages? The Cynical Times cyber-interviewed anti-social doofus: SailorSwEtRt895510GirlZrUl4EvR_DurstFan42 (this is her Internet alias), the owner of a "Totally kick butt" personal homepage and extremely vocal opponent of the ruling.

SailorSwEtRt895510GirlZrUl4EvR_DurstFan42

"Like all those old people, they hate kids and just like won't get it that we're-like-different and smarter and more advanced and stuff than they were in like the nineteen-twenties or whatever," said SailorSwEtRt895510GirlZrUl4EvR_DurstFan42. "I mean like, they just need to get up on what's like happening now."

SailorSwEtRt895510GirlZrUl4EvR_DurstFan42 continued, "And also, like, what about the first law-amendment-article-thingy of the Declaration of Independence or whatever? They just like don't care about free speech and the Net and stuff."

The Cynical Times apologizes for any inaccuracies in the preceding quoted dialogue due to SailorSwEtRt895510GirlZrUl4EvR_DurstFan42's first grade-level knowledge of punctuation and spelling. As not to offend or bore our readers, The Cynical Times will not link to SailorSwEtRt895510GirlZrUl4EvR_DurstFan42's personal homepage.

Experts say that an appeal is a strong possibility.

More as the story breaks.

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