Twenty years ago today the Supreme Court justices ruled that the same censorship standards being applied to broadcast radio and television could not be applied to the Internet.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot)

Twenty years ago today the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision and unanimously overturned congressional legislation that made it unlawful to transmit "Indecent" material on the Internet if that content could be viewed by minors.

The ACLU maintained that the CDA did not define what "Indecent" meant and that the law would dumb-down the Internet in the same manner as the censorship requirements imposed on broadcasters that transmit over public spectrum.

The legal wrangling over the CDA happened when the commercial Internet was primitive compared to today.

The Backpage operators prevailed over the charges-all because of the CDA. "By enacting the CDA, Congress struck a balance in favor of free speech by providing for both a foreclosure from prosecution and an affirmative defense at trial for those who are deemed an Internet service provider," a California judge ruled when dismissing the charges in December.

I think the greater censorship dangers today involve attempts by nongovernmental entities-such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other internet companies-to decide what speech is appropriate online, and those efforts largely are directed at hate speech.

For the history buffs out there, the Oyez Project has published the audiotape of the oral arguments being conducted in the CDA case that the ACLU has labeled the "Magna Carta of Cyberspace." The Oyez Project has also posted the audiotape of the justices announcing their decision from the bench 20 years ago today.

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