CDA II rides again

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 10 November 1998 05:59PM CST

Section: Censorship

When Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana) introduced legislation (S. 1482) that would punish commercial online distributors of material deemed harmful to minors with a US$50,000 fine and up to six months in prison, the bill was immediately labelled “Communications Decency Act (CDA) II.” When Coats attached his bill to the appropriations bill without debate, most observers called it politics as usual.

The Coats bill, together with legislation (S. 1619) sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) that would require public schools and libraries that receive federal funding to use filtering software, passed as part of the appropriations bill in late July 1998.

The CDA II legislation is intended to sidestep the constitutional problems of the original CDA statute that was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997. CDA II is supposed to apply only to commercial pornographic sites, but ambiguous language would affect any commercial site on the Internet.

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