Welcome To The Prude Internet: No More Sex Talk Allowed

Welcome To The Prude Internet: No More Sex Talk Allowed

5 years ago
Anonymous $syBn1NGQOq

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190329/16142541903/welcome-to-prude-internet-no-more-sex-talk-allowed.shtml

While we talk about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, we almost never talk about any other section of the law. And there's a good reason for that, a few years after it was put into law, every other part of the CDA was ruled unconstitutional. The original part of the CDA that is no longer law included criminalizing the knowing transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to anyone under 18 or anything "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." The Supreme Court, rightly, judged that this was a clear 1st Amendment violation.

However, with last year's passing of FOSTA beginning to eat away at CDA 230, we're actually moving back to a world described in the original CDA -- where plenty of "sexual" content is being barred, in part out of a fear of getting sued under FOSTA. Take for example, the writer Violet Blue, who we've linked to many times in the past. Last week, she revealed that Amazon has now cut off her Associates' account, which she had been using to support herself for years.