The Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act that was signed into law by President Clinton over a year ago is clearly in need of serious revisions due, not only to its vagueness, but mostly due to the fact that the government is infringing on our freedom of speech, may it be indecent or not. The Communications Decency Act, also know by Internet users as the CDA, is an Act that aims to remove indecent or dangerous text, lewd images, and other things deemed inappropriate from public
The Communications Decency Act The U.S. Government should not attempt to place restrictions on the internet. The Internet does not belong to the United States and it is not our responsibility to save the world, so why are we attempting to regulate something that belongs to the world? The Telecommunications Reform Act has done exactly that, put regulations on the Internet. Edward Cavazos quotes William Gibson says, "As described in Neuromancer, Cyberspace was a consensual hallucination that felt
content. In our effort to protect ourselves, however, we cannot disregard the freedom of speech. Is it proper to restrict expression on the internet for the sake of limiting exposure to offensive material? The contention between freedom of speech and decency regulation supporters tends to dissipate when it comes to the topic of children. The objective for all involved appears to be the protection of the young (Seiger 14). To this effect, parents naturally serve as the front-line defense, and given the
Pornography on the Internet The Internet is a method of communication and a source of information that is becoming popular among those who are interested in the information superhighway. The problem with this world we know as Cyberspace, the ‘Net, or the Web is that some of this information, including pornographical material and hate literature, is being accessible to minors. Did you know that 83.5% of the images available on the Internet are pornographical? Did you know that the Internet’s
of communication and a source of information that is becoming more popular among those who are interested in, and have the time to surf the information superhighway. The problem with this much information being accessible to this many people is that some of it is deemed inappropriate for minors. The government wants censorship, but a segment of the population does not. Legislative regulation of the Internet would be an appropriate function of the government. The Communications Decency Act is an
challenge to the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which Congress passed in 1998. The law, which is the subject of this essay, attempts to protect minors from exposure to Internet pornography by requiring that commercial adult websites containing "indecent" material that is "harmful to minors" use age-verification mechanisms such as credit cards or adult identification numbers.(Child) An earlier version of the law -- the 1996 Communications Decency Act -- was struck down as an unconstitutional
ethical implications of internet censorship through two case studies: the United States' Communications Decency Act, and Australia's Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999. The United States and Australia have both taken two different approaches to internet censorship. However, both countries started out with similar censorship laws. The United States in 1996 passed the Communications Decency Act. This law was later found to be unconstitutional and in violation of first amendment
the United States together. When Salman Rushdie wrote Guardian, he knew this. Unfortunately, the majority of congress and the President himself have forgotten the basic rights of Americans. When President William J. Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act that was proposed but the 104th Congress, he severely limited the rights of Americans on the Internet. The internet, just like books, magazines, artwork, and newspapers, should not be censored. "We are willing enough to praise freedom
criticize the government and voice our opinions in the form of voting and political debate. This is not only a right, it is vital for the survival of our country. The internet is no stranger to free speech debates. In early 1996 the Communications Decency Act was passed. This act prevented "indecent" and "patently offensive" content which included profanity and many works of classic literature that contained such material. No less than 6 months later, the CDA was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
Senate bill 314, the Communications Decency Act. (I'm a huge net geek: I've already received at least three copies of an on-line petition against it.) Senate bill 314, proposed by Senator Exon and currently under consideration in the Senate, would ban obscenity on-line, making it a federal crime to transmit or make available over the internet anything determined to be "obscene...regardless of whether the maker of such communication placed the call or initiated the communication." This ban includes
or physical constraints to Internet surfing. The Internet Censorship Bill of 1995, also known as the Exon/Coats Communications Decency Act, has been introduced in the U.S. Congress. It would make it a criminal offense to make available to children anything that is indecent, or to send anything indecent with "intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass" ("Stop the Communications ..." n.p.). The goal of this bill as written (though not as stated by its proponents) is to try to make all public discourse
censorship. The EFA’s goals are “to advocate the amendment of laws and regulations in Australia and elsewhere which restrict free speech...and to educate the community at large about the...liberties issues involved in the use of computer-based communications systems.” (President of EFA) The EFA shares similar goals with the USA’s EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation) these organizations believe that free speech is a right and it will be taken away by censoring the Internet. Does freedom of speech
Internet Pornography Material that is reserved for adult use has been widely available to everyone via the Internet. Without any regulation the Internet has remained untouched until a few days ago when the president passed the Communications Decency Act. This law was put into effect to put an end to the problems that have derived from the Internet. The CDA makes it a crime to knowingly send "indecent" material that could be viewed by a minor over a computer online service or on the Internet computer
Internet Ethics: Issues that Push the Boundaries Ethics in a Virtual World While the internet has brought with it a vast amount of resources, business opportunities, artistic expressions and an endless number of new conveniences, it has not been without its share of criticisms. With the emergence of this virtually unsupervised world, has come the realization that "the internet knows no physical boundaries and also no moral or ethical ones"(Emmans, 2000, p.25). The internet is a world that
The Concerns of Internet Censorship As a professional Internet publisher and avid user of the Internet, I have become concerned with laws like the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) that censor free speech on the Internet. By approving the CDA, Congress has established a precedent which condones censorship regulations for the Internet similar to those that exist for traditional broadcast media. Treating the Internet like broadcast media is a grave mistake because the Internet is unlike any
communicate information and displaying data, the first amendment needs to be applied to this communication channel. How are we using and communicating information without offending and harm others? Since the evolution of the Internet, there has been acts from Congress to regulate the use the Internet such as the Communications Decency Act in 1996 and the Child Online Protection Act in 1998. These acts aim to forbid Internet users from displaying offensive speech to users or exposing children of
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 can be termed as a major overhaul of the communications law in the past sixty-two years. The main aim of this Act is to enable any communications firm to enter the market and compete against one another based on fair and just practices (“The Telecommunications Act 1996,” The Federal Communications Commission). This Act has the potential to radically change the lives of the people in a number of different ways. For instance it has
(Privacy Concerns 1). “Everyone has the right for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right…” (Privacy concerns 2). In 1998, the Human Rights Act, the act sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that individuals have, came into force; it incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8 which protects the right to private and family life. Was the first time there was a generalized
amounts of information collected by private companies – including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter – are giving new insight to all aspects of everyday life. Another article posted on the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse adds, “Freedom of Information ACT (FOIA) requests filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with assistance from the University of California-Berkeley Samuelson Clinic have shed light on how government agencies use social networking sites for investigations, data collection
Patriot Act, which was passed after 9/11, allows the FBI to acquire telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order. Furthermore, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 2008 allows Untied States private and public companies protection from being sued by their customers when they comply with illegal government surveillance requests. Such acts have provided laws that do or do not protect citizen’s privacy on their personal digital devices. The most notable act was the Electronic