Sometimes when my teenage son attempts to educate me about the internet, I find myself tempted to quote Aslan from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, “Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch. I was there when it was written.”

I remember the high-pitched screeches and squeals emitting from the cumbersome modems used for dial-up internet service. I remember waiting for what seemed an eternity for downloads to complete. I remember compiling college research for a paper in just one evening that would previously have taken me days to pull together at the library. 

But as primitive as the internet was then, especially by today’s standards, it did not take long for the information superhighway to turn into a virtual red-light district. Already by the mid-‘90s, children and teenagers were discovering online pornography. Sometimes intentionally, often unintentionally. 

There was, for example, a notorious practice known as “typosquatting,” in which adult-site operators intentionally registered domain names similar to legitimate ones. The most notorious example was WhiteHouse.com, a pornographic site frequently mistaken for the official government address, WhiteHouse.gov, and widely cited as a case where children innocently researching the presidency were instead exposed to explicit content.

These and other stories led to public outcry and demands for congressional action to help protect children online. 

This was the context and framework for the passage of the Communications Decency Act, which was enacted as Title V of the........

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