Freedom Under Fire – The Unlikely Law That is Saving the Internet

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The Communications Decency Act, or CDA, is a bill that dates all the way back to 1995. This act has famously, or infamously, been labeled as the “Great Internet Sex Panic Act of 1995.” It was the first attempt that the United States Federal Government made to regulate indecency on the Internet. A goal they had already accomplished with radio and television through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The FCC cracked down on broadcasts by imposing content bans for times of the day in which kids were, supposedly, more likely to be watching or listening. The CDA sought to impose similar regulations on the internet as it was beginning to be commercialized in 1995. The Act sought to regulate “indecent” or pornographic material by criminalizing its use by anyone under the age of 18 and by limiting speech that was deemed to be “obscene” or “indecent” to individuals under the age of 18.

Of course, this kind of non-specific language raised quite a few concerns among those in the civil liberties arena. Free speech advocates worried that many things, including reading or writing about already in-print novels, saying words deemed to be “dirty,” or even accessing or providing medical information could potentially qualify as criminal action. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, and in the landmark case American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, the Supreme Court struck down the anti-indecency clauses in the CDA. This left the portion of the Act known as Section 230, and effectively turned an attempt at censorship into a protection of protection of freedom.