Personal Computer Use

The issue was discussed for some time before it came to national attention in a big way in 1995 when Senator James Exon, a Democrat from Nebraska, seemed to discover suddenly that pornographic pictures could be downloaded from the Internet and displayed on a home computer. What followed was a rush on the part of legislators to find a way to put a stop to what had been happening in some degree for many years with no official notice. Also in 1995, the publication of a study by Carnegie Mellon University added to the controversy with statistics many found frightening. This was an 18 month study that found 917,410 sexually explicit pictures, descriptions, short stories, and film clips on the Internet. On the Usenet groups where digitized pictures could be stored, 83.5 percent of the pictures were deemed pornographic. The study also found that trading in sexually explicit imagery is not one of the largest (if not the largest) recre

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n federal court. The groups included the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Writers Union and argued that the law restricted free speech, and a three-judge panel agreed in June 1996 and struck down the law (Daniel 120). The legislation, known as S 652, was part of an omnibus telecommunications act that removed competitive barriers between local telephone companies, long-distance companies, and cable companies; deregulated most cable prices; required television manufacturers to include a V-chip in television above a certain size to screen out violent programming if parents so desired; and banned indecency online. One concern raised was that this law would revive the Comstock Act, an 1873 law banning communications related to obtaining abortions. The indecency standard to date had been applied only to broadcasts, and the extension of the rule to cyberspace would mean that online providers could not publish material that could be published in printed form. A bill was filed in February by Senators Feingold and Leahy to repeal the indecency provision (Carney 359). By March 1996, the fight against the indecency ban for online services had been joined by the American Library Association, Microsoft, newspaper publishe
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Association Microsoft, Internet Usenet, Writers Union, January CompuServe, , Newt Gingrich, Decency Act, Comstock Act, Democrat Nebraska, Mellon University, sexually explicit, free speech, protect children, german law, children reason, indecency provision, carney dan, study found, computer users, senator exon,
Approximate Word count = 1357
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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