The case for the Communications Decency Act

To save the children: CDA supporters cited Internet 's threat to minors

(CNN) -- To its supporters, protecting the children from "disgusting, repulsive pornography" on the Internet was the prime purpose of the Communications Decency Act. The federal government's compelling interest to protect minors overshadows any infringement on the First Amendment rights of adult users of the Internet, they said.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that the worst, most vile, most perverse pornography is only a few click-click-clicks away from any child on the Internet," then-Sen. James Exon, the Nebraska Democrat who sponsored the original bill, said during debate on the Senate floor.

The Internet, Exon said, was filled with "the most disgusting, repulsive pornography ... featuring torture, child abuse, and bestiality" -- all within easy access to children with a computer and a modem.

His fellow senators agreed, passing the measure overwhelmingly.

"The Internet is like taking a porn shop and putting it in the bedroom of your children and then saying 'Do not look,'" Indiana Republican Sen. Dan Coats said on the floor of the chamber the day the Senate passed the bill.

Supporters, including President Clinton, saw the bill as an aid to parents struggling to protect their children in an increasingly complex world.

"I remain convinced ... that our Constitution allows us to help parents by enforcing this Act to prevent children from being exposed to objectionable material transmitted through computer networks," Clinton said after the bill was found unconstitutional by a federal court in Philadelphia last year.

Clinton agreed with opponents of the bill that software products that block access to sexually explicit sites on the Internet and an industry-wide rating system were both valuable tools, but CDA supporters maintained that was not enough.

"Outside cyberspace, laws restrain people from displaying sexually explicit images in public places and from selling porn magazines to children," said Cathleen Cleaver, director of legal studies at the conservative think tank Family Research Council. "So, on the Internet, the burden of protecting children from exploitation should not rest solely on the parents."(17 sec. /224K AIFF or WAV sound)

Cleaver argued that failure to enact strong laws governing cyberspace was in essence abandoning "the information superhighway ... to pornographers."

Supporters also pointed to the ever-advancing technology of computers -- arguing that parents are hard-pressed to keep up with their techno-savvy kids.

"We can't expect parents to supervise their kids if they can't set the clocks on their VCRs," said Donna Rice Hughes, communications director for Enough Is Enough, a Virginia-based anti-pornography organization.

Additionally, said Hughes, children have access to the Internet via computers in libraries, schools and cybercafes -- away from parents' attempts to block such material from their children.

The Internet, Exon said during a radio interview on National Public radio last spring, is not so different from telephones and the mail -- obscene and indecent material should not be allowed.

"I think we have a responsibility here," Exon said. " ... There's nothing to say that the Internet is so different, although it is, that we dare not touch it."

"The law won't be foolproof, but it will work," Exon said in an article he wrote for Windows magazine in October 1995. "Just like speed limits don't eliminate all speeders on the asphalt highways, they do make the highways safer."

"We want to set down some basic rules of the road to make the information highway safer for families and children to travel," he said.

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