Communications Decency Act - technical definition

Title V of the United States Telecommunications Act of 1996, this Act was passed by the United States Congress in February 1996. The CDA remains in force to strengthen protection for online service providers and users against legal action being taken against them because of certain actions of others. For example, the Act says that no provider or user of an interactive computer service should be treated as the publisher or speaker of any data given by another provider of information content. Of importance, on July 29, 1996, a United States federal court struck down the portion of the Act relating to protecting children from indecent speech as being too broad, and a year later, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courtÂ’s decision. The CDA was criticized for prohibiting the posting of indecent or patently offensive items in public forums on the Internet. A narrower version of this Act relative to the Internet was restated afterward in COPA, the Child Online Protection Act.

See Also: Child Pornography; Internet; Telecommunications Act of 1996.