Page 328 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Obscen ty and Indecency | 0

ThE CommuniCaTions DECEnCy aCT
The Communications Decency Act attempted to introduce a wide range of
broadcasting-type controls on the Internet. When the act passed into law on
February 1, 1996, as part of the Telecommunications Reform Act, it met with
protest from a broad range of groups promoting freedom of speech, from the
American Civil Liberties Union to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The EFF launched a blue ribbon campaign calling for Internet users to pro-
test the legislation by displaying the anticensorship blue ribbon on their Web
pages.
Critics charged that the Communications Decency Act was one of the most
restrictive forms of censorship applied in the United States and that it turned
the Internet from one of the most free forums for speech to one of the most
tightly regulated. The Act made it a crime to knowingly transmit any communi-
cation accessible to minors that could be considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious,
filthy, or indecent.” It also prevented any publicity of abortion services. Pub-
lishers of offending material could be prosecuted, but also those who distrib-
ute it—Internet service providers. In an attempt to avoid prosecution, they may
have had to act as private censors. The penalty was a sentence of up to two years
in prison and a $100,000 fine.
By June 1996, a three-judge panel in Philadelphia ruled that the Act was
unnecessarily broad in its scope, violating constitutional guarantees to free-
dom of speech. The Act also infringed on privacy rights by empowering federal
agencies to intervene in, for example, the sending of private e-mail between
individuals.
On June 26, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the district court
judges that the Act was unconstitutional. The judges pointed out, in part, that
TV and radio were originally regulated because of the scarcity of room in the
airwaves, which is not true of the Internet. The judges stated that the concern to
protect children “does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech
addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not ‘reduc[e]
the adult population . . . to . . . only what is fit for children’. ”
After the Communications Decency Act was struck down, new legislation
was passed, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The federal statute
requires Internet blocking of speech that is obscene, or “harmful to minors,” in
all schools and libraries receiving certain federal funding. CIPA, also known as
the Internet Blocking Law, was also challenged. The EFF charged that the law
damages the free speech rights of library patrons and Web publishers.
On June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court upheld CIPA. The court found that the
use of Internet blocking, also known as filtering, is constitutional because the
need for libraries to prevent minors from accessing obscene materials out-
weighs the free speech rights of library patrons and Web site publishers. How-
ever, many independent research studies show that Internet blocking software
is incapable of blocking only the materials required by CIPA. The CIPA law is
problematic because speech that is harmful to minors is still legal for adults, and
not all library patrons are minors.