The Communications Decency Act of 1996

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 U.S. Supreme Court partially overturned the law.

The Act was Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It was introduced to the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation by Senators James Exon (D-NE) and Slade Gorton (R-WA) in 1995. The amendment that became the CDA was added to the Telecommunications Act in the Senate by an 84–16 vote on June 14, 1995.

As eventually passed by Congress, Title V affected the Internet (and online communications) in two significant ways. First, it attempted to regulate both indecency (when available to children) and obscenity in cyberspace. Second, Section 230 of the Act has been interpreted to say that operators of Internet services are not to be construed as publishers (and thus not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services).
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Anti-indecency and Anti-obscenity provisions
o 1.1 Legal challenges
* 2 Section 230
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 External links

[edit] Anti-indecency and Anti-obscenity provisions

The most controversial portions of the Act were those relating to indecency on the Internet. The relevant sections of the Act were introduced in response to fears that Internet pornography was on the rise. Indecency in TV and radio broadcasting had already been regulated by the Federal Communications Commission—broadcasting of offensive speech was restricted to certain hours of the day, when minors were supposedly least likely to be exposed. Violators could be fined and potentially lose their licenses. The Internet, however, had only recently been opened to commercial interests by the 1992 amendment to the National Science Foundation Act and thus had not been taken into consideration by previous laws. The CDA, which affected the Internet and cable television, marked the first attempt to expand regulation to these new media.

Passed by Congress on February 1, 1996, and signed by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996, the CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who

knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.

It further criminalized the transmission of materials that were "obscene or indecent" to persons known to be under 18.

Free speech advocates, however, worked diligently and successfully to overturn the portion relating to indecent, but not obscene, speech. They argued that speech protected under the First Amendment, such as printed novels or the use of the seven dirty words, would suddenly become unlawful when posted to the Internet. Critics also claimed the bill would have a chilling effect on the availability of medical information. Online civil liberties organizations arranged protests against the bill, for example the Black World Wide Web protest which encouraged webmasters to make their sites' backgrounds black for 48 hours after its passage, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign.
[edit] Legal challenges

In Philadelphia on June 12, 1996 a panel of federal judges blocked part of the CDA, saying it would infringe upon the free speech rights of adults. The next month, another US federal court in New York struck down the portion of the CDA intended to protect children from indecent speech as too broad. On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court upheld the Philadelphia court's decision in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, stating that the indecency provisions were an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment right to free speech because they did not permit parents to decide for themselves what material was acceptable for their children, extended to non-commercial speech, and did not define "patently offensive," a term with no prior legal meaning. (The New York case, Reno v. Shea, was affirmed by the Supreme Court the next day, without a published opinion.)

In 2003, Congress amended the CDA to remove the indecency provisions struck down in Reno v. ACLU. A separate challenge to the provisions governing obscenity, known as Nitke v. Gonzales, was rejected by a federal court in New York in 2005. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision in 2006.

Congress has made two narrower attempts to regulate children's exposure to Internet indecency since the Supreme Court overturned the CDA. Court injunction blocked enforcement of the first, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), almost immediately after its passage in 1998; the law was later overturned. While legal challenges also dogged COPA's successor, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) of 2000, the Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional in 2004.
[edit] Section 230
Main article: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was not part of the original Senate legislation, but was added in conference with the House, where it had been separately introduced by Representatives Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) as the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act and passed by a near-unanimous vote on the floor. It added protection for online service providers and users from actions against them based on the content of third parties, stating in part that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider". Effectively, this section immunizes both ISPs and Internet users from liability for torts committed by others using their website or online forum, even if the provider fails to take action after receiving actual notice of the harmful or offensive content.[1]. As a result of the Seigenthaler incident, and other incidents where individuals have been allegedly libeled by anonymous or judgment-proof parties, this section of the Act has come under fire, with numerous calls for revisions to the Act to restore service provider liability in some cases.[citation needed]

Through the so-called Good Samaritan provision, this section also protects ISPs from liability for restricting access to certain material or giving others the technical means to restrict access to that material.
[edit] See also

* Electronic Frontier Foundation
* OCILLA portion of the DMCA, which contingently protects online service providers from liability for copyright infringement
* Right to pornography

[edit] References

1. ^ Myers, Ken S. (Fall 2006), "Wikimmunity: Fitting the Communications Decency Act to Wikipedia", Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 20: 163, http://ssrn.com/abstract=916529

[edit] External links
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Communications Decency Act

* FCC text of the full act.
* Section 230
* Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions Court Decisions applying Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
* Center for Democracy and Technology Overview of CDA. This refers only to the portion of the act which was struck down.
* Cybertelecom :: The Communications Decency Act and Sec. 230 Good Samaritan Defense
* EFF.org, bloggers on Section 230

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act"
Categories: 1996 in law | Censorship in the United States | Computer law | Obscenity law | Pornography law

Red Hat Expands Messaging, Real-Time and Grid Features on Cloud Platform

By: Fahmida Y. Rashid
2010-10-15
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The Red Hat Enterprise MRG platform includes a new Linux kernel, expanded RHEL support and improved performance.
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Red Hat updated and expanded its Red Hat Enterprise Messaging, Realtime and Grid Linux platform, a critical set of tools for building and managing a private cloud, the company said on Oct. 14.

The enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise MRG 1.3 include adding support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 and 5.5, improving Messaging APIs, optimizing performance and scalability, and expanding new management features.

Red Hat Enterprise MRG is a collection of three different subscriptions - advanced messaging, real-time computing and grid computing - for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The distributed computing platform features high-speed interoperable and open standards messaging tools, a deterministic low-latency real-time kernel based on Linux 2.6.33 kernel and high-performance and throughput computing grid scheduler for distributed workloads and cloud computing.

The Grid functionality had the most extensive updates in this release. A key enhancement allows IT managers to build out complex infrastructures that consist of multiple cloud environments, both public and private.

Along with integrated support for virtualization and public clouds, the Grid module can also aggregate multiple cloud resources into one common computing pool. These changes provide IT managers with flexible computing across private, public, and hybrid clouds and streamlined operations across remote grids with servers, Red Hat said.

The release includes new user tools, Windows Execute Node support, enhanced workflow management, resource restriction capabilities, update configuration management and new administration tool. With these updates, customers will gain the ability to scale to tens of thousands of devices, be able to provision virtual machines, centralize configuration and management and utilize cloud spill-over capabilities.

Based on the University of Wisconsin, Madison-hosted Condor Project, the Grid module introduces flexible deployment to various applications and workloads. With the Red Hat Grid component, IT managers can scale out applications with real-time or high-performance needs or take advantage of better asset utilization for applications.

In Enterprise 1.3, the Messaging component features updated clients with improve performance, and enhancements that optimize performance and increase stability in clustered environments. New protocol version independent C++ and Python clients, Windows C++ client and additional QMF APIs are also available.

The new MRG Messaging can now be used on JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform and has a number of security improvements, such as Kerberos support. The messaging component is built on the Advanced Messaging Queuing Protocol, which can handle multiple kinds of messaging functions at the same time.

Enterprise MRG’s updated Realtime kernel includes the new Performance Counter subsystem and the associated perf performance tool to enable greater performance capabilities. As real-time still has trade-offs in performance levels, low-latency is the preferred option over real-time to ensure mission-critical systems remain up and running. With the Realtime kernel, IT managers can make the necessary adjustments for each application.

Red Hat will be introducing a new MRG Realtime hardware self-certification program soon, the company said in its statement. The new hardware enablement and certifications in the module are designed to work with the program, according to Red Hat.

Rival Novell has a similar real-time product, called SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time.

Red Hat Enterprise MRG, first released in 2008, is part of Red Hat Cloud Foundations suite. Red Hat uses the same set of compilers for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Enterprise MRG so applications certified for RHEL will be supported without the need to recertify on Enterprise MRG. The platform is available only for x86 and x64 hardware at this time.

Customers with an Enterprise MRG subscription will automatically receive the 1.3 update via the Red Hat Network. Under Enterprise MRG 1.3, Grid is fully supported for everyone, even customers without a technical account manager, Red Hat said.