sed alterations were compiled in the 1993 Communications Decency Act and presented in front of Congress. The Act as a whole was voted down, but a few of the articles pertaining to punishment for offenders of censorship laws already in place were sent for revision. These rewritten sections were put in front of President Clinton and passed on February 8th, 1996 as the CDA II. According to this bill, anyone posting content containing indecent language or content would serve a minimum of a one-year jail sentence. As defined in the text itself, this provision was designed "to designate it a crime knowingly to transmit obscenity or knowingly to send or display indecent material to children" (B.R.C.). The CDA came under fire by anti-censor groups immediately after it was introduced. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced this bill as "an attempt by the government to restrict the First Amendment's guarantee to freedom of speech" (ACLU). The ACLU also contends that since the bill restricts "indecent" material, the term indecent must be defined. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues, "It is clear that Congress could not constitutionally grant the FCC the power to tell The New Yorker not to print profane languageeven though children may come across a copyit is equally clear that Congress cannot grant the FCC authority to dictate how providers (of Internet service) like Netcom and CompuServe handle content that contains such language" (Citation). Cathy Cleaver, director of legal studies at the Family research Center a pro-censor activists, says that in every other form of media "we have government regulation of obscenity, yet we have not heard the screams of censorship in those areas." She mentions further that the CDA attempts to do nothing more than "regulate obscenity and prohibit adults from giving it to children." Democrat Senator James Exon of Nebraska and CDA sponsor comments that "it is necessary to make sure our childr...
