The Communications Decency Act

Article by Tevin Park

In 1996 the Communications Decency Act (CDA) was the first attempt made by the United States Congress to regulate vulgar material on the Internet such as pornography or obscenity within the reach of children.

Goals of the Communications Decency Act

The goal of the Communications Decency Act is that there should be some regulation to keep pornography and vulgar language away from those under the age of 18. Signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, the CDA created criminal penalties for anyone who knowingly:

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

In other words, anyone who knowingly allows children under 18 to view anything unsuitable on a computer, including pornography and even vulgar language, could be charged under the act.

Rimm Study

In the debate over the availability of pornography on the Internet was Marty Rimm's article published in the Georgetown University Law Review, �Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of 917,410 Images, Descriptions, Short Stories, and Animations Downloaded 8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries, Provinces and Territories.� In the article, Marty Rimm claimed to have conducted a survey of the availability of pornography. He concluded that pornography was rampant and freely available to anyone who searched for it. In one of his most notorious statements, he concluded that 83.5% of the images available on the Internet were pornographic.

The problems of the Rimm Study were numerous. Professors Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak criticized the study, claiming that Rimm's work was methodologically flawed. The ethics of Mr. Rimm's research procedures were questioned. Marty Rimm was accused of plagiarism. It was discovered that he was working both sides of this issue; Mr. Rimm was also the author of The Pornographer's Handbook: How to Exploit Women, Dupe Men, & Make Lots of Money. Eventually, the United States Senate decided that it no longer needed to hear what Mr. Rimm had to say about pornography and pulled him from the witness list of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on computer pornography.

Legal Challenge

Many people felt that the Communications Decency Act was restricting them in their freedom of speech. If foul words were said in a book, it was allowed, but if said online, it would have been restricted. Criticism of the CDA came to a critical point when a federal court in Philadelphia blocked part of the new law, stating that it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it did not permit parents to decide what was acceptable for their children, it was not clearly defined what was offensive, and it was taking away freedom of speech from adults.

In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, the Supreme Court upheld the Philadelpha court's decision and key parts of the Communications Decency Act were ruled unconstitutional. Instead of having the government take over and telling people what websites were safe and what were unsuitable for minors, parents were to decide or have technology itself block certain websites, as programmed by adults.

Enduring Protections and Legacy

While the most high profile part of the Communications Decency Act was overturned, a less controversial part of it remains an important part of federal law. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides legal protections to operators of websites and other types of interactive computer services. If someone hosts a website that allows others to write anything they want, that host is not responsible for what their users write, even if the users write things that are illegal or that they could be sued for.

The CDA was a first attempt at controlling the availability of obscene or indecent materials on the Internet. While it was ruled to violate the First Amendment, the idea behind it remained, and Congress made further attempts with the Child Online Protection Act and Children's Internet Protection Act. The CDA's combination of seeking to protect providers while also imposing restrictions in the presence of children set the tone for US policy, and has helped to create the Internet as we know it today, where websites can write or post more or less what they wish, but those with questionable content usually have warning signs in front saying that some content may be unsuitable for children.

Sources and Additional Reading

U.S. Code, Title 47 Section 230
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Cyber Telecom