Originally published February 26 2006
Decency legislation would have radically altered the nature of online communication
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Wired News takes a look at the recent legal history surrounding decency legislation and the internet.
In some alternative universe out there, the world is using a very different internet.
It's a network without sex and violence, devoid of four-letter words and racy ideas, subject to constant monitoring by censors and harsh punishment to those who cross the line into controversy.
It's the internet in a world in which the U.S. Supreme Court never overturned the 1996 Communications Decency Act -- the web's first and still most-sweeping U.S. censorship law, struck down after a legal challenge filed by civil liberties groups 10 years ago Wednesday.
The Communications Decency Act, or CDA, was passed by Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act and signed into law by President Clinton on Feb. 8, 1996.
The law aimed to extend to the internet the same "decency" standard that applies to broadcast TV and radio, and is now most famous for leading to fines for Howard Stern and CBS television for explicit language and a wardrobe malfunction respectively.
E-mailers, newsgroup posters, chat room participants and website operators who produced material judged "indecent" were responsible for ensuring that minors couldn't see it.
The victory in Reno v. ACLU was the internet's legal coming of age, earning it the highest protections of the First Amendment, said Rotenberg.
John Morris, now staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, or CDT, felt the challenge was on solid legal ground at the time, but worried that judges wouldn't take the time to understand the internet, which was still alien and new to outsiders.
At the lower-court level, the plaintiffs arranged for a high-speed connection into the courtroom in order to show the judges how sprawling the internet was.
Today the Justice Department is preparing to battle an injunction against the 1998 follow-up to the CDA, known as the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA.
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