Is the CDA necessary to protect children?
First, and as a dispositive matter, the constitutionality of the CDA cannot turn on whether it protects children, despite the emotional appeal of this issue. The Supreme Court in Butler v. Michigan did not spend a lot of time considering the state of youthful minds and the measures available to protect them; it held, instead, that setting all public discourse in Michigan at the level acceptable for children would be “burning down the house to roast the pig.” A law banning books by Miller, Joyce, Burroughs and Nabokov might also protect children who might get hold of them, but would be completely unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Proponents of the CDA have completely ignored the fact that no child can connect to the Internet without the help of an adult. Signing up for an Internet account typically involves presenting a credit card to an ISP. Adults who wish to allow their children to surf the Net unsupervised can sign them up through a child-safe service like Prodigy. Childho
