Here's a paragraph from the findings in this morning's CDA decision. I'm happy to see that we're considered an integral part of the Internet, rather than as a fringe cyber-terrorism threat. Overall, I found the decision to be balanced, well written, and extremely thoughtful. Raph [ excerpted from http://www.vtw.org/speech/decision.html ] [ from the undisputed findings of fact ] Obstacles to Age Verification on the Internet 90. There is no effective way to determine the identity or the age of a user who is accessing material through e-mail, mail exploders, newsgroups or chat rooms. An e-mail address provides no authoritative information about the addressee, who may use an e-mail "alias" or an anonymous remailer. There is also no universal or reliable listing of e- mail addresses and corresponding names or telephone numbers, and any such listing would be or rapidly become incomplete. For these reasons, there is no reliable way in many instances for a sender to know if the e-mail recipient is an adult or a minor. The difficulty of e-mail age verification is compounded for mail exploders such as listservs, which automatically send information to all e-mail addresses on a sender's list. Government expert Dr. Olsen agreed that no current technology could give a speaker assurance that only adults were listed in a particular mail exploder's mailing list. [ ... ] Anonymity 121. Anonymity is important to Internet users who seek to access sensitive information, such as users of the Critical Path AIDS Project's Web site, the users, particularly gay youth, of Queer Resources Directory, and users of Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR). Many members of SPR's mailing list have asked to remain anonymous due to the stigma of prisoner rape. [ from views submitted by the parties in response to Order dated March 13, 1996 ] 22. Arguably, a valid CDA would create an incentive for overseas pornographers not to label their speech. If we upheld the CDA, foreign pornographers could reap the benefit of unfettered access to American audiences. A valid CDA might also encourage American pornographers to relocate in foreign countries or at least use anonymous remailers from foreign servers.