edent isnt useful has tripped the Court up. For example, the Court announced that cable is not to be treated like broadcast television (Turner v. FCC I) and then saying that it is in fact to be treated like broadcast television (Turner v. FCC II). Unlike the District Court, which analogized the Net to print and the telephone, the Supreme Court decision doesnt rely on analogy to reach a result. However, the Court makes a couple of significant references: The Web is thus comparable, from the readers viewpoint, toa vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications And again: Through the use of Web pages, mail explorers and newsgroups, [any Net user] can become a pamphleteer. The Supreme Court applies standards of various strictness to determining the constitutionality of laws. Its highest standard of review is called strict scrutiny, which says that to survive, a law must be based on a compelling government interest and use the least restrictive means of reaching the goal. Laws evaluated under a strict scrutiny standard rarely survive, so the battle is mostly won when the Court agrees to apply this standard. By applying its highest standard to the Net, after referring to the Net as a library and Net users a s pamphleteers, the Court is acknowledging that the Net should be treated like print media, which has always had the highest level of First Amendment protection.Elsewhere in the opinion, the Court backs away from this conclusion. It has long objected to almost every kind of restriction on the content of non-obscene print communications. The District Court observed that Congress would not even considered passing a Newspaper Decency Act. The Supreme Court does not tackle this issue because appellees do not press this argument before the Court, we do not consider it. The Court goes on in footnote thirty to re-affirm that the government has a compelling interest in protecting minors from indecent, pat...
