First Amendment Internet
Posted: 12/22/2003 12:52:46 PM
By: Comfortably Anonymous
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Topic: Quotes
"Cutting through the acronyms and argot that littered the hearing testimony, the Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion.

True it is that many find some of the speech on the Internet to be offensive, and amid the din of cyberspace many hear discordant voices that they regard as indecent. The absence of governmental regulation of Internet content has unquestionably produced a kind of chaos, but as one of plaintiffs' experts put it with such resonance at the hearing:

      What achieved success was the very chaos that the Internet is. The strength of the Internet is that chaos.[23]

Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.

For these reasons, I without hesitation hold that the CDA is unconstitutional on its face."

    Judge Dalzell, U.S. District Judge, quoted from Excerpt from the Conclusions of Law from the 1996 ALA/ACLU vs. Reno case.
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