Communications Decency Act

The Internet presents a unique set of problems for regulating harmful speech.Unlike traditional media, the typical arrangement of content distribution involves multiple users "logged in" to one of many servers run by an Internet Service Provider ("ISP"), or a website run by a similar entity.These users interact with one another with little or no supervision by the ISP itself.Interactions can take the form of bulletin board postings, emails, business transactions, and chat room discussions, to name a few.While one would not expect harmful speech to confine itself to traditional media, certain characteristics of the Internet guarantee the prevalence of such speech in cyberspace.These features include ease of access, ability of any individual to publish, and relative anonymity.Whenever harmful speech does occur, it necessarily involves use of an ISP's servers and possibly another's website.Thus, a central question in regulating content on the Internet is the extent to which ISPs and other interactive computer services should be held liable for the torts and crimes of the individuals who use their servers.Congress passed the Communications Decency Act ("CDA")' in 1996 to address the myriad problems surrounding the regulation of obscene, illegal, or otherwise tortious content found on the Internet.Many of the CDA's provisions regulating decency have been struck down by the courts as violations of the First Amendment. 2One of the surviving elements is a congressional grant of immunity from suit to ISPs and other interactive computer services for content originating with third parties. 3 The text of the statute relies on terms of art from the law of defamation, formally protecting interactive computer services from treatment as "publisher[s] or speaker [s] .'However, while defamation law recognizes a distinction between liability as a publisher and liability as a distributor, 5