Communications Decency Act Passed (1996)
On February 8, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act (CDA) into law. This was the first attempt by the federal government to regulate pornographic materials on the internet. Senators James Exon (D-NE) and Slade Gorton (R-WA) introduced the CDA to the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 1995. Congress passed the Act under Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and Clinton signed it on February 8, 1996.
The CDA aimed to regulate indecency and obscenity on the internet. Indecency in TV and radio broadcasting had already been regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, but because the internet was such a new medium, no laws or task forces had been formed to regulate it.
The CDA prohibited posting "indecent" or "patently offensive" materials in a public forum on the Internet. The term "public forum" included web pages, newsgroups, chat rooms, or online discussion lists. More specifically, the Act was passed in an attempt to regulate the exposure of minors to pornography. The Act imposed criminal charges 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.
However, free speech advocates worked to overturn the portion of the Act that dealt with indecent (as opposed to obscene) speech. Many stated that the CDA would restrict postings of many things that were already protected by the First Amendment, including text from books and transcripts from speeches.
A little over a year later, in June 1997, the Supreme Court held in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), that the CDA was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment.