CDA
     Compound Document Architecture (DEC)

	

	CDA
     Communications Decency Act (Internet, USA)

	

	CDA /C-D-A/ The "Communications Decency Act" of 1996, passed on Black
   Thursday as section 502 of a major telecommunications reform bill. The
   CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a communication which is
   "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy,
   abuse, threaten, or harass another person." It also threatened with
   imprisonment anyone who "knowingly" makes accessible to minors any
   message that "describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by
   contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or
   organs".

   While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the
   putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the bill
   were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw
   discussion of abortion on the Internet.

   To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights
   was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A
   firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th mass
   demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home pages
   black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and
   computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional
   challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision handed
   down in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the U.S.
   Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 (`White Thursday'). See also Exon.

	

	CDA
     
        1.  Compound Document Architecture.
     
        2.  Communications Decency Act.