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13-year-old ‘can’t wait’ to visit Austria
By Wendy Thomas
Staff Reporter
Nicole Jones, 13, cannot walk. But that won’t
stop her from putting on her traveling shoes July 3.
The Park Middle School student, who lost
her father and the use of her legs in a car
accident 10 years ago, will pack her bags and
travel to Austria for two weeks.
Last year, the mayor of Vienna invited a
young person with a disability from every state
to visit the city this summer as a symbolic
gesture of gratitude to the United States for help
ing to restore freedom in Austria 50 years ago.
Gov. Ben Nelson chose Nicole to represent
Nebraska.
“I guess it’s just a thank you for us helping
them [Austria] out during the war,” Nicole said.
“I can’t wait to go.”
Nicole will be accompanied by her mother,
stepfather and sister.
“/ guess it’s just a thank you
for us helping them [Austria]
out during the war. I can’t
wait to go. ”
m
NICOLE JONES
Park Middle School student
The trip will allow Nicole and her family to
see the sights of Austria, attend operas, tour the
zoo and take an excursion to the Austrian coun
tryside on an old-fashioned steam locomotive.
They will also be welcomed by a Viennese
host family, who will show them the ropes and
answer any questions they might have about the
country.
Nicole said she was most looking forward to
visiting the palaces and doing some Austrian
style shopping.
She said she hoped the dollar was strong so
she could afford an Austrian Barbie to add to
her international Barbie collection.
When Nicole spoke of seeing Austria and
possibly traveling to Italy on one of her “leisure
days,” her lips opened into a smile and her eyes
shone with excitement.
She said she knew the trip was an experience
not many 13-year-olds have.
But exciting experiences are certainly not
foreign to Nicole.
In the past few years, the girl has been on
television, posed for an Easter Seals poster,
became friends with the governor and met Billy
Ray Cyrus of country music fame.
She met Cyrus backstage at one of his con
certs. The other three events came with her role
as 1993-94 Easter Seals Ambassador.
Every year, Camp Easter Seals in Milford
chooses one camper to be its “poster child.”
Nicole was chosen out of hundreds of young
people to appear on telethons, speak to various
organizations and clubs and shadow Gov. Ben
Nelson for a day.
In fact, her day with Nelson is what got her
the opportunity to visit Austria.
“She was just at the right place at the right
time,” Nicole’s stepfather, Dick Piper, said.
Nicole was in the room when Nelson and the
Austrian Consulate General were discussing a
trade mission. The Consulate reminded Nelson
of the Vienna mayor’s invitation.
“Nicole is a very impressive young woman,”
Nelson said in a press release, “and it occurred
to me that our delegate was right there in the
room.”
Nelson, who held a Bon Voyage reception at
the Capitol
for Nicole, said the trip would be a wonderful
experience for her.
“I’m sure she will do a great job as an
ambassador of Nebraska,” he said. .
Tanna Kinnaman/DN
Nicole Jones, Nebraska Easter Seals Ambassador, discusses her upcoming
two-week trip to Vienna, Austria, with her mother, stepfather and sister.
Surfing ‘ smut’net may be harder for kids as bill advances
By Erin Schulte
Staff Reporter ~
A bill (S-314) introduced by Sen. Jim Exon
known as the communications bill has passed in
the Senate and will continue on for House
approval during July.
The bill includes legislation concerning tele
phone company prices, cable TV, and most
controversial, obscenity on the Internet (section
402).
Families appear to be cheering the “no smut”
bill onward, twit questions remain about enforc
ing the Internet portion of the bill.
The government will prosecute those who
transmit obscene, lewd, filthy or indecent mate
rial over the computer network, including e
mail accounts and all sections of the Internet,
such as the World Wide Web.
Steve Rowe, the public relations director for
International Discount Telecommunications, a
national Internet provider, said the bill would
be impossible to enforce and would cripple the
Internet and invade individual rights to free
speech.
“We think that the Internet should be equal to
other forms of communication. People can say
whatever they want on the phone, and the gov
ernment is saying it shouldn ’t be the same on the
Internet,” Rowe said.
The Internet is so multifaceted, Rowe said,
there is no way that Internet providers can be
aware of every bit of information or every
graphic that people choose to put on the ‘net.’
And, if people choose to sue an Internet
provider for obscene material they have en
countered while on the Internet, servers will
soon go out of business because they can’t
monitor what is on the world-wide computer
network and will shy away from taking the risk.
“It’s like an unfunded mandate,” Rowe said.
“The government makes a law and says, ‘You
enforce it or we’ll fine you.’”
Rowe said he does not believe the bill will
pass as is. He said if the bill was changed to
include the condition of the company’s knowl
edge of obscene material on their service to
make them It, it WbuW make the*'
bill more reasonable.
But even that condition would be hard to
prove, he said.
Russ Rader, spokesman for Sen. Exon, said
many people misunderstood the bill and that
many changes have been made since it was
introduced.
In noway, Rader said, would private conver
sations between consenting adults through e
mail be eavesdropped on, unless there was a
complaint.
Careful wording changes have been made,
Rader said, to make the bill totally constitu
tional and in adherence to standing court deci
sions. Rader said the government doesn’t want
to be a censor.
“As long as pornography is located in an
‘adults only’ section, that’s OK. As long as
children don’t have access to it,” Rader said.
Companies are in the process of developing
lock-out software to protect children from sexual
images on the Internet, Rader said. Credit cards
or passwords can also be used to monitor who
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Exon’s office said the bill would prosecute
people who use the Internet for the equivalent of
obscene telephone calls, to prosecute electronic
stalkers, clamp down on obscene materials and
and prosecute those who provide pornography
to children.
Rader said the bill has been changed so that
Internet providers will not be held responsible
for material that goes through their service
unless they are aware that it is being distributed
to children.
“Services should take reasonable steps to
make sure only adults have access to adult
material, similar to dial-a-pom companies,”
Rader said, referring to popular TV 900 num
bers.
John Bender, communications law professor
at UNL, said the bill may face judicial protests
because indecent material is protected by the
Constitution (although obscenity is not).
“I have strong reservations about the bill,”
Bender said. “If the bill is passed as-is, it could
reduce all material on the Internet to the level
that’s appropriate for children.”