Otherwise Objectionable: How The Communications Decency Act Fell Apart

Last week, we told the story of how the Communications Decency Act came to be. On this week's episode of Otherwise Objectionable, we look at how it quickly went down in flames - except, of course, for the all-important Section 230.

Episode 5: Blowback, and the Dust Settles

Just four months after being signed into law, the CDA faced its first court challenge on free speech grounds. Online publisher Joe Shea filed a lawsuit in New York, and secured a unanimous ruling that the CDA's restrictions infringed on the First Amendment. Around the same time, a federal court in Pennsylvania also struck down portions of the law, and soon the law was on its way to the Supreme Court.

While the ACLU argued that the law was unconstitutional, the government defended it by drawing comparisons to the regulation of public television and radio airwaves. But is it right to regulate the internet in the same manner as broadcast media, where the primary concern was unexpected" encounters with sensitive content? As the court would recognize, no, it's not. In June of 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the indecency parts of the CDA, leaving only one section in force: Section 230.

But of course, that wasn't the end of the story. Critical cases, starting with Zeran v. AOL, would test and define the extent of 230 protections. A decade or so later, the rise of Facebook initiated a new era in user generated content, and a new era of importance for Section 230.