1996 Communications Decency Act Case Study

The plaintiff, the State of California, contended that the distribution of obscene material was not protected by the First Amendment. The soliciting and sale of ‘hardcore pornography’ should not be allowed to be mailed out, especially if the receivers did not sign up for the advertisements.

Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. Roth ran a business in New York by selling books, photos, and magazines. Roth was charged with 4 counts for sending inappropriate circulars and an inappropriate book. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Roth’s appeal. Alberts was prosecuted for the sale of lewd books, and for writing inappropriate advertisements within the books. Albert’s conviction was upheld by a lower court. The Court must decide if indecent material is protected by the freedom of speech and press in the First Amendment. All ideas, even the most foolish, controversial, and intolerable, are protected by free speech. The only exception is when they interfere in more important safeties. However, indecency has been demonstrated to have no redeeming

Although we, as citizens of this country, are guaranteed freedom of speech and press by the first amendment, we are encouraged to “watch what we say”. In order to avoid unnecessary violence and to keep people from being offended, it is recommended the certain things be censored. While many may look at this censorship as a well-needed percussion it can reversely be seen as going against one's first amendment rights, in itself causing controversy.

The ACLU argued in the lower court that the censorship provisions are unconstitutional because they would criminalize expression that is protected by the First Amendment and because the terms “indecency” and “patently offensive” are unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. ACLU plaintiffs Particia Nell Warren of Wild Cat Press and Kiyoshi Kuromiya of the Critical Path AIDS Project told judges they fear censorship under the new law. Ann Duvall, president of Surf Watch, took judges on a first-ever live tour of the Internet, including a demonstration of how her company’s software blocks access to sites deemed unsuitable for children. Dr. Donna Hoffman, an expert witness on marketing in cyberspace, tells the court that the censorship law would destroy the democratic nature of cyberspace, causing many “mom & pop” websites to close up shop for fear of civil and criminal penalties under the vague “indecency” ban.

It said that this Act was in a way creating "adult zones" on the internet and that was constitutional based on the decision in Renton v. Playtime theatres Inc. CDA was not trying to ban "indecent" material, just to separate it, so that minors could not access such material. However, the zoning laws could not be applied to the internet because it is not a physical place, therefore a person who posts information cannot be certain that it will not reach minors, since there is no way to prove if a person is a minor when they are online. #

Since the founding of the United States of America, freedom has been the basis of the governmental and ruling systems in place. Individual freedoms are protected in both the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution, and Schwartz (2009) explains that ‘public liberty ultimately enhances collective rationality—it is a path to heightening our wisdom by increasing access to pertinent information and improving decision making’ (p. 409). However, there have been many times in history when the true freedom of citizens is called into question. There has always been controversy about how much power the government should have, who is keeping the government in check, and if citizens are properly informed about what their elected governed are doing. The passing of the Patriot Act in 2001 was no exception to this controversy. The

A case by Roth tried to challenge the idea regarding the nature of obscenity whether it was a variable or a constant matter. Obscenity in any case took many dimensions when it came to matters relating to the material and the contented they contained. Roth challenged the Supreme Court that obscenity was not constitutional and there it needed to be given a different approach. He argued that this term did not have a specific meaning and it could take any shape based on circumstances.

IN AT LEAST 150 TO 350-WORDS, WRITE AN ESSAY RESPONDING TO THE DETAILS OF THE FOLLOWING THREE QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS:

The main issue at hand is whether or nor obscenity is considered speech and if so is it protected speech under the Constitution. I must wager that obscenity is and indeed should be considered speech for the purposes of the Supreme Court in First Amendment matters. As to if it is or should be protected by the constitution is a more difficult question. I believe that a test of reasonableness is sufficient to govern this topic by members of the court. If there is legitimate purpose for material no matter what facilitates its dissemination then there is a compulsory reason for constitutional protection. If not and the main cause of material is to inflict injury on any party including society there is no compelling reason to afford such speech any constitutional protection.

To begin with, there are three types of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment: obscenity, libel, and slander. Obscenity is "anything which depraves or corrupts minds open to immoral influence" (Freedom of Speech, 2003). Despite the fact that the definition of obscenity has changed throughout the years, Congress, in general, has reached a consensus in determining that obscenity covers anything that is directed towards or involves youths, including child pornography. For example, in 1949, the Supreme Court upheld, in Rosenberg v. Board of Education of City of New York, that the Board of Education did not have the right to ban schools from carrying books such as Oliver Twist and The

Since there has not been a ruling in this case, the supporters of the censorship laws had to try and find a way to get the internet censored to children. So in the year 2000, Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act, which is aimed at the computers in the schools and libraries that the children would have access to. This law was limited to "only the schools and libraries that participated in certain federal programs such as, receiving federal money for technology". The schools and libraries that received this money were required to "install filtering software on all internet terminals to block access to sites with child pornography, obscene material, and material that is harmful to minors". My opinion on this law is that it is even better than the firs one. They are very similar, as you can tell from their names, there is very little changed in the names of the laws. I think that the sites that a minor can look at should be filtered. This way they cannot look at things that can be harmful to them.

A. According to the Communications Decency Act(CDA), cyberspace has many of the problems conterversise among crime, advertising,gaming,copyright,gambling

The Supreme Court lifted a 1996 act banning virtual child pornography. The six to three ruling, led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, says the law violates First Amendment freedom of speech rights guaranteed to every citizen of the United States of America. Although many free speech advocates are shouting victory, many citizens across the country are lamenting over the loss in the fight against child pornography.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”) was passed in 1986 to update the 1968 Title III Wiretap Act, the federal statute that first prohibited the actual or intentional interception communications without judicial authorization (Wiretap Act, 1968). The 1968 act only concerned wire and oral communications; a wire communication was defined as “any communication made in whole or in part through the use of [common carrier] facilities for the [interstate or foreign] transmission of communications by the aid of wire, cable, or other like connection between the point of origin and the point of reception,” and oral communication was defined as “any oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation [of privacy].” ECPA sought to amend the Wiretap Act in order to accommodate privacy protections for the increasingly prolific use of electronic devices in communications between citizens that do not apply to the original definitions (Comm. on the Judiciary, 1986). ECPA consisted of three titles: the first title amended the 1968 Wiretap Act, the second title addressed stored communications, and the title addressed pen-registers and trap and trace devices.

It is obvious that for years, the government has been trying to regulate this type of content but has seen very limited success. Part of the reason for this is because certain regulatory actions intended to protect only a small group, such as children, should not require the prohibition of material that adults have access to in other arenas. It is for example, legal for people to rent pornographic movies or buy nude magazines, so distribution of this type of material on the Internet should not be completely limited. People shouting out for protection of their 1st Amendment rights have made a good point when arguing against complete censorship. What seems more feasible is a sort of multi-layered approach to regulate illegal and harmful content on the Net. This would make it possible to form some sort of insulation for children