curate data and a "Moral Panic " type attitude, than the facts (1). With government officials being pressured from these groups, they declared war and the "anti-Internet" campaign had begun.
             The first attack came from Sen. Jim Exxon (D-Nebraska) in March 1995. He introduced legislation that made material considered "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent" against the law (qtd. in Lead-up). This legislation made its way to the Telecommunication Reform Package, and ultimately to the Communication Decency Act (CDA). The Telecommunication Act, which includes the CDA was passed by the senate, the house, and signed by President Clinton on February 8, 1995. (Lead-up) The same day the CDA was signed, the opposition, led by the ACLU and other advocacy groups, along with industry leaders like AOL and Microsoft, filed suit in a Philadelphia District Court "challenging the constitutionality of the new law" (Kramer, qtd. in Lead-up). The ACLU v. Reno landmark case found that CDA violated the first amendment and was, therefore, unconstitutional. Then on June 26, 1997, in the U.S. Supreme Court, in the appeal, Reno v. ACLU, the justices reaffirmed that the CDA was unconstitutional and that it was a cure worse than the disease (Lead-up). By a vote of 7-2, the CDA and the "Moral Panic" went away (Wilkins). Or did it?
             Despite the Supreme Court's ruling that the Communication Decency Act was a violation of the first amendment and that "the Internet is entitled to the highest level of free speech protection" , there is a new less obvious threat to the freedom of speech (qtd. in Beeson). According to ACLU, the new threat is hiding in the smoke screen of Internet rating systems (Beeson 2). These types of rating systems have been around for awhile, designed as a tool to protect children from inappropriate material and help businesses keep their Internet users focused. While benign on the surface, the ACLU warns the long-...