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organizations to comply), that it fails what the judiciary calls the 'least restrictive means' test for speech regulation, and that there is no basic constitutional authority under the First Amendment to engage in this type of content regulation in any nonbroadcast medium." The EFF and others argued that it would be more appropriate for the standards to be the looser ones generally applied to print media because Net users can choose what material from the Net they view or download. Broadcast media simply spill into people's houses.

Nonetheless, Senator James Exon (D-NE) commented in his press release after the decision, "The Decency Act stands for the premise that it is wrong to provide pornography to children on computers just as it is wrong to do it on a street corner or anywhere else. Hopefully, reason and common sense will prevail in the Supreme Court."[5]

The fear that the CDA would chill discussion on the Net as people began censoring themselves out of fear of prosecution is a real one, in my experience. I have, for example, one friend who will not discuss the subject of child pornography on the Net or ever admit he's seen any because he's convinced that such a statement would get him arrested. On top of that, because of the sheer volume of material on the Net, computers would have to do the scanning. But computers are supremely stupid and literal about following directions, and the CDA would be like an open- meshed trawler net killing dolphins while trying to catch Charlie the Tuna. All kinds of material would be prohibited, including certain literary classics and reports on academic and medical research, as well as more controversial adult humor, abortion information, and gay support groups. If that sounds alarmist, consider that AOL has already had exactly this kind of problem. First its breast cancer support group fell afoul of the system's built-in filters; then British users from the northern English town of Scunthorpe found they couldn't live there for AOL's purposes because of a sequence of four letters in the town's name.

Of course, filters can be defeated by deliberate misspellings, one origin of the kind of writing you see online from would-be hackers or software pirates, something like, "I am a kewl d00d looking for warez." A similar situation applies to newsgroup naming schemes; the obscurely titled alt.binaries.pictures.leek was for a time known as a group for the illegal exchange of commercial software. Because of this, attempts to block the posting of certain types of material to Usenet by removing specific groups from the newsfeed are generally considered doomed to fail. Conversation about sex didn't happen on Usenet because alt.sex was created; the creation of a sex-related discussion group was proposed as a home for the sexually related conversation that was taking place in soc.singles.[6]

As Gene Spafford, one of the earliest and longest-lived (eleven years) Usenet administrators, wrote in a long email message explaining his decision to give up his Usenet work, "Attempts to change the real world by altering the structure of the Usenet is an attempt to work sympathetic magic--electronic voodoo."[7]

Doubtless we would have seen more civil disobedience had the CDA not been challenged so quickly. Even so, there were indications that the Net wasn't about to go quietly into regulation as a broadcast medium. Unexpected groups began planning campaigns such as linking to as many objectionable sites (especially if foreign) as possible. The members of alt.showbiz.gossip, a newsgroup with a weird sense of irony that allows them simultaneously to indulge in celebrity gossip and laugh at themselves (and the virtual trailer park they live in) for doing it, began using as many swear words as possible.[8]

Other reactions were more timid. System operators began worrying about what material might get them arrested (the day after the CDA's passage an outfit called Oklahomans for Children and Families announced a campaign to eliminate pornography from the Internet, and at least one Oklahoma ISP cut ten of the most controversial newsgroups while awaiting legal advice. In June 1997 CNN reported that the same outfit had obtained a ruling that the movie "The Tin Drum" was illegal under Oklahoma law.).[9] One beneficiary was the Adult Check system, which for $9.95 (payable by credit card) issues you a number certifying you're an