Press Release
June 26, 1997
Electronic Frontier Foundation Statement:
Supreme Court Victory for Free Speech: CDA Ruled Unconstitutional
Contacts: Mike Godwin, Staff Counsel, +1 415 436 9333 or 1 510 548 3290
Stanton McCandlish, Program Director, +1 415 436 9333
Shari Steele, Staff Counsel, +1 301 375 8856
Washington, DC -- "As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence
of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the
content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of
ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of
expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven
benefit of censorship."
With this ringing reaffirmation of the American people's fundamental right
to freedom of expression, the United States Supreme Court ruled Thursday
that the Communications Decency Amendment censorship provisions of the
Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 regarding so-called "indecent"
content are unconstitutional on their face, and that free speech on the
Internet merits the highest standards of Constitutional protection. The
decision marks a major victory in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
ongoing efforts to ensure that the long-standing American principles of
freedom of expression be preserved and extended to the Internet.
The extremely broad reach that the CDA would have had was reflected in the
range of plaintiffs who joined together to challenge the law. The EFF was
a leading party in a coalition comprising such diverse organizations as
Apple, Microsoft, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic
Privacy Information Center, Barnes & Noble, and journalists such as Brock
Meeks, in challenging the Communications Decency Amendment (CDA) which
would have banned a broad range of First Amendment-protected speech from
the public spaces of the Internet. These groups are united today in
celebration of the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a law that
would have criminalized this constitutionally protected speech on the
Internet and other online forums.
The Court's ruling in Reno v. ACLU affirmed the unanimous decisions of
Philadelphia and New York federal courts, rejecting the controversial
"decency" amendment to the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 as an
unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The Court's opinion
firmly establishes that the Constitution's guarantees of freedom of speech
and of the press apply on the Internet.
Members of the technology and publishing industries, as well as civil
liberties watchdog groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
ACLU, hailed the Court's decision as a victory for everyone who uses
computer communications. "Today marks a victory for all Americans, and we
think it's appropriate for everyone to celebrate the Court's recognition of
the free-speech significance of the Internet," said Lori Fena, executive
director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "What this means is that
the responsibility for controlling our content lies on us -- the citizens
and the parents -- and this is a call for all of us once again to
demonstrate how we can trusted to use this medium responsibly," she said.
"This means that the parents, rather than the government, are empowered to
make the choices about Internet content."
Mike Godwin, EFF staff counsel, stated, "The CDA would have abridged one
of the freedoms that Americans treasure most, and a freedom that is
central to any democratic society. The Supreme Court recognized, as had
the District Court, that this law was a wholly inappropriate exercise of
governmental power under the Constitution."
Esther Dyson, EFF chairman, noted that the decision stands for one of
EFF's principal positions regarding free speech online: "We believe in
free speech at the source -- and in the empowerment of any audience for
that speech to control what they see and hear.
"The Court's decision takes the responsibility for controlling and
accessing speech on the Net out of the hands of government and puts it
back where it belongs: in the hands of parents and other individuals," she
said. "Individuals have the technical means to make their own choices
about what they and their children read and see," Dyson noted.
EFF has long noted that such low-cost technical solutions, together with
existing anti-obscenity laws, offer a less intrusive and more efficient
answer to questions about protecting children in the online world.
"The government kept saying that this was a crisis that required harsher
censorship in the online world than in any other communication medium,"
Godwin said. "In fact, EFF and the other plaintiffs in this case showed
that it's possible to promote both freedom of speech and family values --
that the two goals don't oppose each other. By its decision today, the
Court expressly acknowledged that reality."
The constitutional challenge to the Communications Decency Act was grounded
in a series of basic arguments, including that law is unconstitutionally
overbroad (criminalizing protected speech), and that it it is
unconstitutionally vague (making it difficult for individuals and
organizations to comply).
The Court also reaffirmed the lower court's findings a) that the character
of this new medium means that any attempt at content regulation for the
Internet must meet the strictest Constitutional requirements under the
First Amendment, and b) that filtering technologies provided a less
restrictive means to achieve Congress's stated goal of protecting
children.
"We applaud today's Supreme Court decision declaring the CDA
unconstitutional," said Michael Sears, vice president and general manager
of SurfWatch Software, a division of Spyglass Inc. "After our testimony
in Philadelphia last year, I believe that we convinced the court that
parental control software like SurfWatch is a much more effective and less
restrictive solution than excessive government regulation."
Referring to the Court's four-decade-old anti-censorship decision in
Butler v. Michigan, the Supreme Court stated the speech restriction at
issue there amounted to "burn[ing] the house to roast the pig." In his
opinion for the Court, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that
"[t]he CDA, casting a far darker shadow over free speech, threatens to
torch a large segment of the Internet community."
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