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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.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, originally its own bill, was an addition to the CDA by the US House of Representatives. Section 230 includes protection for internet service providers (ISPs) and website owners by stating “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This means that if someone were to go on a website as a third party user and engage in illicit activity, the website's owner would not be held at fault for that occurrence. This protection for ISPs and website administrators has been hailed as a bulwark for internet freedom.

This piece of legislation in the past has protected companies like Facebook and Twitter and allows ISPs to provide unfettered access to the internet without a requirement for censorship. Unfortunately, the future of this freedom has become uncertain as attacks and challenges become more frequent.