A minor safe-harbor amendment survived the CDA’s full repeal and reshaped platform law

Evidence

The Communications Decency Act was short-lived; less than a year later the U.S. Supreme Court judged it unconstitutional. While the justices recognized the concerns motivating the bill, the court ruled that CDA overreached in terms of what content was prohibited (indecent, not just obscene), it extended its protection of minors to the content available to adults, and it did not deal with the question of whose community norms should be the barometer for a network that spans communities. However, because the safe harbor amendment was not at issue in the Supreme Court decision, it survived the ruling. — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet, 108

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how Section 230 came to be the sole surviving piece of the CDA ruling.
• XREF: connects to: Platforms’ private rules affect users more than the law does — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 121; Platforms claim a 1996 legal category never designed to anticipate them — Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms,…, 120