Document Type
Article
Abstract
On March 21, a special three-judge federal court panel in Philadelphia began hearing testimony in a proceeding to determine the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”). The statute enacted as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, criminalizes the transmission of “indecent” and “patently offensive” material via the Internet in a manner that makes it available to minors. Judicial review of the CDA is destined to result in a landmark Supreme Court decision defining, for the first time, the applicability of the First Amendment to emerging interactive communications media. As the courts begin to grapple with this complex issue, three distinct areas will need to be examined: the technical feasibility of regulating online speech; the jurisdictional limitations of such regulatory actions; and the difficulty of defining “indecency” in a global, interactive medium.
Recommended Citation
David L. Sobel,
The Constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act: Censorship on the Internet,
1 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y
(1996).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol1/iss1/3