The rise of new communications technologies, such as the Internet, poses a number of problems for policymakers. Perhaps the most vexing of these problems involves trying to balance (1) the First Amendment rights of those people who wish to communicate using the Internet with (2) ensuring that children who use the Internet are protected from adult-oriented material such as pornography. According to Timothy Zick (1999), millions of children access the Internet everyday despite the fact that approximately 70 percent of Internet traffic is sexually oriented in nature. Clearly, the World Wide Web differs from other media in that the availability of adult-oriented content is greater and restricting the distribution of that type of content is difficult at best.

Faced with the reality of children being able to view material that is intended for adults, the U.S. Congress passed the Communications Decency Act of 1996 as part...