IPSO participants may be interested in today's the Supreme Court
issued its ruling in the Communications Decency Act case. As
expected, the CDA was found to be unconstitutionally vague. The
Court's main ruling was supported by seven justices. The ruling
emphasized that the Internet is a "unique" medium, unlike television,
telephones or other media. While protecting minors is a worthy goal,
the attempt of Congress to do this through the CDA is simply too broad
and vague -- it suppresses speech to an unne "We are persuaded that
the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a
statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors
access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a
large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to
receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is
unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as
effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was
enacted to Two other justices (O'Connor and Rehnquist) concurred in
part and dissented in part. They agreed that the CDA's vagueness
rendered it unconstitutional in most circumstances. However, they
dissented in part on the grounds that portions of the CDA should be
allowed to "apply to the transmission of Internet communications where
the party initiating the communication knows that all of the
recipients are minors." Interestingly, this minority opinion tended
to view the Internet as resembling a physical "place

The full text of the decision is at

http://www.access.digex.net/~strategy/decision.html

LP
ZbY

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Z.Batagelj,  URL: http://www.uni-lj.si/~fdbatagelj/zbys.htm