Dan Coats: “the Supreme Court decision against the Communications Decency Act marks a departure from precedent on indecency, and…”

“the Supreme Court decision against the Communications Decency Act marks a departure from precedent on indecency, and weakens the protection of children by our laws. The Court, even in this decision, recognizes that Congress has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of children. In the past, they took that standard to include indecency restrictions on every communications medium of our society-- telephones, radio, television, bookstores, video shops. But with today's decision, the Supreme Court has refused to apply that standard to protect a child on a computer in his or her own home. It argues, instead, that unrestricted access to indecency by adults on the Internet overrides any community interest in the protection of children. In the Communications Decency Act, we gave a definition of indecency that was upheld by the Courts in case after case. Now the Supreme Court has apparently decided that this definition cannot be applied to the Internet. In other words, though an image displayed on a television screen would be indecent, an image displayed on a computer screen would not. It is difficult to understand how a child would understand the difference. It is the content, not the technology, that should concern us.”