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Benjamin Riddle Attorney

     In 1995, before the first breaths of air were blown into the dot.com bubble, United States Senator James Exon began his crusade against pornography on the Internet. (Cannon, 1996).  The problem, he supposed, was the ease of which America's youth could access pornographic material.  To prove his point, he asked a friend to assemble and download a collection of readily accessible pornographic photographs from the Internet.  Senator Exon kept the material in a "Blue Book" which he kept with him on the Senate floor for the review of any of his curious colleagues.  Senator Exon's solution to the problems lying behind the cover of his Blue Book was the Communications Decency Act (CDA). (Cannon, 1996). Through the CDA, Senator Exon sought to extend existing regulations limiting the dissemination of obscene and harassing telephone calls to the Internet.  The Senate debate over the CDA began with the following prayer, written by the Senate chaplain:

"Almighty God, Lord of all life, we praise You for the advancements in computerized communications that we enjoy in our time. Sadly, however, there are those who are littering this information superhighway with obscene, indecent, and destructive pornography. Virtual but virtueless reality is projected in the most twisted, sick misuse of sexuality. Violent people with sexual pathology are able to stalk and harass the innocent. Cyber solicitation of teenagers reveals the dark side of online victimization."

   (Thaler, 1995)

In retrospect, the CDA was not the answer to the chaplain's prayer. 

     While the CDA was passed in the Senate by an 84-16 vote, it met strong resistance in the House where House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the CDA a clear violation of free speech. (Cannon, 1996).  Rather than reject the proposed CDA on the merits, the House chose to attach the Cox/Wyden Amendment which was meant to kill the bill in conference.  The Cox/Wyden Amendment, proposed by representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden was drafted in response to Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. 1995 WL 323710 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1995).  In Stratton, Prodigy was sued by a brokerage house for defamatory statements made by an unidentified user on a "bulletin board" it hosted.[1]  The Court found that a web-service provider, which edits or regulates the content provided by its users, was a "publisher" in a traditional legal sense and was therefore liable for the re-publication of defamatory statements.  The Cox/Wyden Amendment overruled the Stratton decision and provides follows:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

The CDA, with the Cox-Wyden Amendment, was ultimately passed and signed into law in February of 1996 by President Clinton.(READ FULL ARTICLE)