Communications Decency Act
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The '''Communications Decency Act of 1996''' ('''CDA''') was arguably the first attempt by the [[United States Congress]] to regulate [[pornography|pornographic]] material on the [[Internet]]. In 1997, in the landmark [[cyberlaw]] case of ''[[ACLU v. Reno]]'', the [[United States Supreme Court|U.S. Supreme Court]] partially overturned the law.
The Act was Title V of the [[Telecommunications Act of 1996]]. It was introduced to the [[United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation|Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation]] by Senators [[J. James Exon|James Exon]] (D-NE) and [[Slade Gorton]] (R-WA) in 1995. The amendment that became the CDA was added to the Telecommunications Act in the Senate by an 84–16 vote on [[June 14]], [[1995]].
As eventually passed by Congress, Title V affected the Internet (and online communications) in two significant ways. First, it attempted to regulate both [[indecency]] (when available to children) and [[obscenity]] in [[cyberspace]]. Second, Section 230 of the Act, authored by [[United States House of Representatives|Representatives]] [[Christopher Cox]] (R-CA) and [[Ron Wyden]] (D-OR), declared that operators of Internet services were not to be construed as publishers (and thus not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services).
==Anti-indecency and -obscenity provisions==
The most controversial portions of the Act were those relating to indecency on the Internet. The relevant sections of the Act were introduced in response to fears that Internet pornography was on the rise. Indecency in TV and radio broadcasting had already been regulated by the [[Federal Communications Commission]]—broadcasting of offensive speech was restricted to certain hours of the day, when minors were supposedly least likely to be exposed. Violators could be fined and potentially lose their licenses. The Internet, however, had only recently been opened to commercial interests by the 1992 amendment to the [[National Science Foundation|National Science Foundation Act]] and thus had not been taken into consideration by previous laws. The CDA, which affected the Internet and [[cable television]], marked the first attempt to expand regulation to these new [[mass media]].
Passed by Congress on [[February 1]], [[1996]], and signed by President [[Bill Clinton]] on [[February 8]], [[1996]], the CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who
:knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.
It further criminalized the transmission of materials that were "obscene or indecent" to persons known to be under 18.
[[Free speech]] advocates, however, worked diligently and successfully to overturn the portion relating to indecent, but not obscene, speech. They argued that speech protected under the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]], such as printed novels or the use of the ''[[seven dirty words]]'', would suddenly become unlawful when posted to the Internet. Critics also claimed the bill would have a [[chilling effect]] on the availability of medical information. Online [[civil liberties]] organizations arranged protests against the bill, for example the [[Black World Wide Web protest]] which encouraged webmasters to make their sites' backgrounds black for 48 hours after its passage, and the [[Electronic Frontier Foundation]]'s [[Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign]].
===Legal challenges===
In [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania|Philadelphia]] on [[June 12]], [[1996]] a panel of [[United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania|federal judges]] blocked part of the CDA, saying it would infringe upon the [[free speech]] rights of adults. The next month, another US federal court in [[New York City|New York]] struck down the portion of the CDA intended to protect children from indecent speech as too broad. On [[June 26]], [[1997]], the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] upheld the Philadelphia court's decision in ''[[Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union]],'' stating that the indecency provisions were an unconstitutional abridgement of the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] right to free speech because they did not permit parents to decide for themselves what material was acceptable for their children, extended to non-commercial speech, and did not define "patently offensive," a term with no prior legal meaning. (The New York case, [[Joe Shea|''Reno v. Shea'']], was affirmed by the Supreme Court the next day, without a published opinion.)
In 2003, Congress amended the CDA to remove the indecency provisions struck down in ''Reno v. ACLU''. A separate challenge to the provisions governing obscenity, known as [[Barbara Nitke#Nitke v. Gonzales|''Nitke v. Gonzales'']], was rejected by a federal court in New York in 2005. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision in 2006.
Congress has made two narrower attempts to regulate children's exposure to Internet indecency since the Supreme Court overturned the CDA. Court injunction blocked enforcement of the first, the [[Child Online Protection Act]] (COPA), almost immediately after its passage in 1998; the law was later overturned. While legal challenges also dogged COPA's successor, the [[Children's Internet Protection Act]] (CIPA) of 2000, the Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional in 2004.
==Section 230==
{{Main|Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act}}
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was not part of the original [[United States Senate|Senate]] legislation, but was added in conference with the [[United States House of Representatives|House]], where it had been separately introduced by [[United States House of Representatives|Representatives]] [[Chris Cox]] (R-CA) and [[Ron Wyden]] (D-OR) as the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act and passed by a near-unanimous vote on the floor. It added protection for online service providers and users from action against them for the actions of others, stating in part that "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". Effectively, this section immunizes ISPs and other service providers from torts committed by users over their systems, unless the provider fails to take action after actual notice or is itself involved in the process of creation or development of the content<ref>
{{Citation
| last=Myers
| first=Ken S.
| title=Wikimmunity: Fitting the Communications Decency Act to Wikipedia
| newspaper=[[Harvard Journal of Law and Technology]]
| volume=20
| pages=163
| year=2006
| date=Fall 2006
| url=http://ssrn.com/abstract=916529}}
</ref>. As a result of the [[Seigenthaler incident]], and other incidents where individuals have been allegedly libeled by anonymous or [[Judgment proof|judgment-proof]] parties, this section of the Act has come under fire, with numerous calls for revisions to the Act to restore service provider liability in some cases.{{Fact|date=May 2007}}
Through the so-called Good Samaritan provision, this section also protects ISPs from liability for restricting access to certain material or giving others the technical means to restrict access to that material.
==See also==
*[[Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act|OCILLA]] portion of the [[Digital Millennium Copyright Act|DMCA]], which contingently protects online service providers from liability for copyright infringement
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* [http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.txt FCC text of the full act].
* [http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html Section 230]
* [http://www.internetlibrary.com/topics/comm_decency_act.cfm Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions] Court Decisions applying Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
* [http://www.cdt.org/speech/cda/ Center for Democracy and Technology Overview of CDA]. This refers only to the portion of the act which was struck down.
* [http://www.cybertelecom.org/cda/cda-up.htm Cybertelecom :: The Communications Decency Act] and [http://www.cybertelecom.org/cda/samaritan.htm Sec. 230 Good Samaritan Defense]
* [[Electronic Frontier Foundation]] [http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-230.php FAQ] on Section 230
[[Category:1996 in law]]
[[Category:Censorship in the United States]]
[[Category:Computer law]]
[[Category:Obscenity law]]
[[Category:Pornography law]]
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