Free+Speech+Online

=Our first amendment right, our freedom of speech, we hold dear to ourselves as the basis of a just democracy. But this freedom can be abused, therefore we have set up limitations on free speech in order prevent such abuse. = The Internet is a powerful tool, amplifying the voice of everyone, every idea, every belief, opinion, and argument – a tool too powerful. The government and big corporations would want to put limitations on the use of this powerful tool, but civil rights groups and majority of people would argue that that limitations would impede on their right of Free speech.
 * =FREEDOM OF SPEECH=

Supreme Court has interpreted the guarantee of freedom of speech and press to provide no protection or only limited protection for some types of speech. For example, the Court has decided that the First Amendment provides no protection to obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes “advocacy of the use of force or of law violation ... where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” The Court has also decided that the First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television, and public employees’ speech. Even speech that enjoys the most extensive First Amendment protection may be subject to “regulations of the time, place, and manner of expression which are content-neutral, are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternative channels of communication.” Furthermore, even speech that enjoys the most extensive First Amendment protection may be restricted on the basis of its content if the restriction passes “strict scrutiny” (i.e., if the government shows that the restriction serves “to promote a compelling interest” and is “the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest”). ||  ||
 * || media type="youtube" key="D-Pau72GQvg" height="349" width="425"[[image:https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/HRakuFkgkmQe5hWB1ItaWySs2w5Ey_eGD1iuP037Iisa71z5M53u2jMw4_i5oSWExufMHCLf9vZmJbMy3xibWFn-t78qKSMRryIFVL2qbyvUTkqpozI width="385" height="336"]]media type="youtube" key="pNr353rJH8U" width="425" height="350" ||  ||
 * =﻿Restrictions By Government=

by the First Amendment even when it is not obscene; that is, child pornography need not meet the Miller test to be banned. Because of the legislative interest in destroying the market for the test to be banned. Because of the legislative interest in destroying the market for theexploitative use of children, there is no constitutional right to possess child pornography even in the privacy of one’s own home. || =HISTORY OF ONLINE SPEECH REGULATIONS=

. || =CITATIONS: LINKS: =
 * The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the first notable attempt by the[|United States Congress] to regulate[|pornographic] material on the[|Internet]. In 1997, in the landmark[|cyberlaw] case of [|Reno v. ACLU] , the[|United States Supreme Court] struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act. ||
 * **1996** - The ACLU's fight against Internet censorship stretches back a decade. Congress first attempted to censor the Internet in 1996, when it passed the Communications Decency Act. The law criminalized "indecent" speech online. The ACLU sued, arguing that the law abridged the First Amendment. All nine Supreme Court justices agreed and struck down the law. For the first time, in ACLU v. Reno, the Supreme Court recognized that online speech deserves full First Amendment protection.
 * **1998** - In reaction to the Supreme Court's decision, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a federal law that imposes severe criminal and civil penalties on people who put material the government deems "harmful to minors" on the Web. COPA was obsolete from its inception because Congress, in its haste to regulate the emerging medium, failed to predict that new technologies would render the law meaningless. The ACLU sued the day that COPA came into force and the district court quickly halted enforcement of the censorship law. It held that the ACLU was likely to succeed in proving the law unconstitutional. ||
 * **2000** - Introduced in Congress in 1999, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was signed into law in 2000. The ACLU and the American Library Association filed a lawsuit, Multnomah County Public Library et al. v. Ashcroft, seeking to get the law enjoined because it violates the Constitution to require libraries to use filters on public computers. In a nuanced ruling, in 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the law, but modified it so that if a patron asks, the library must remove the filter. ||
 * **2004** - The Supreme Court upheld the district court's decision to stop the enforcement of COPA. Because the Internet had changed dramatically in the five years since the district court gathered factual evidence, the Justices returned the case to the district court for a full trial on whether there are effective ways to keep children safe online that burden speech less than COPA's criminal penalties. ||
 * **2007** - Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of ruled in favor of the ACLU’s longstanding challenge to COPA. Previously, a federal district court in Philadelphia and a federal appeals court found the online censorship law unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court upheld the ban on enforcement of the law in June 2004. The Justices, however, also asked the Philadelphia court to determine whether there had been any changes in technology that would affect the constitutionality of the statute. ||
 * exceptions[| to free speech]
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 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">[|Wiki of COMMUNICATION DECENCY ACT 1996]
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">BOOKS:

 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kersch, Kenneth I. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Freedom of speech : rights and liberties under the law. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Print.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Isler, Claudia. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The right to free speech. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> New York: Rosen, 2001. Print.