Fixing the unbroken Internet.

• Author: Steigerwald, Lucy
• Position: Follow-Up - LStop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act

In his May 1996 story "Code Blue," Rick Henderson considered the political urge to fix what wasn't broken on the Internet. By the mid-'90s, members of Congress were panicked enough about kids' ability to access a wide world of racy online content that they approved the Communications Decency Act (CDA). As Henderson noted, the law authorized "$250,000 fines and jail terms of up to six years for anyone who uses interactive computer networks to make 'indecent' language or pictures--the same material that makes Howard Stern an FCC target--available to minors."

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The CDA threatened not just obscenity, a class of speech the Supreme Court has said is not protected by the First Amendment, but also perfectly legal material dealing with "sexual or excretory functions or organs." Under the new law, Henderson noted, a minor could buy Stern's book, Miss America, in a store, but "if that same youngster reads a profanity-laced quote from the book on the Internet [the person who posted it] could go to the slammer." In March 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the CDA's speech restrictions on First Amendment grounds.

But Congress did not give up its quest to regulate content on the Net. Towards the end of 2011 the Internet was abuzz over two pieces of...