Word: contently
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cybernauts believed, by a primly named federal statute called the Communications Decency Act. Signed into law by President Clinton on Feb. 8, after being passed by an admittedly Net-illiterate Congress, the CDA was supposed to squelch online pornography and make the Net safe for children by banning "indecent" content. But the legislation was so vague and broad that uploading Ulysses to the World Wide Web could have been construed as a felony offense punishable by a $250,000 fine and two years in jail. If that's the kind of treatment James Joyce would get, what hope would there...
Relief came last week in a landmark ruling that firmly extends the umbrella of the First Amendment over cyberspace. A panel of three federal judges, specially convened in Philadelphia to review the new law, pronounced the government's attempt to regulate online content more closely than print or broadcast media "unconstitutional on its face" and "profoundly repugnant." The Justice Department was enjoined from not only enforcing the act but even investigating alleged malfeasance, at least...
...There is no evidence that sexually oriented material is the primary type of content on this new medium," they wrote. "Communications over the Internet do not 'invade' an individual's home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden." The judges found that dicey material--whether from Bianca's Smut Shack or Playboy magazine's hugely popular site--was generally preceded by warnings admonishing those under the age of 18 to keep out. Even the government's own expert witness acknowledged that the odds were slim that a user would come across a sexually explicit site by accident...
...head of Microsoft's Interactive Media Division, Stonesifer, 40, is defining what may be the most important step in Microsoft's future: venturing beyond software for PCs into content for all media, including cd-roms, cable TV and the Internet. "We want to be the premier provider of interactive products," she says. With a $500 million 1996 budget, Stonesifer is in a position to change how millions of Americans get their news and entertainment. She has become, for Microsoft's growing ranks of media partners (a collection that ranges from nbc to Julia Child), an indispensable new-media problem solver...
...only the latest example of the increasingly hazy distinction between TV advertising and programming. CNBC has announced a series called Scan, a weekly look at technology's impact on people's lives. The show will be sponsored by IBM, which also has final approval over the show's content--ensuring, presumably, that technology's impact will not include things like corporate downsizing and carpal-tunnel syndrome. (Whether IBM's editorial involvement will be noted in the show's credits has not yet been decided.) Scan was commissioned by CNBC's sales and marketing department, though Jack Reilly, vice president...