cda

4 definitions found

cda - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  CDA
  
     1. <file format> Compound Document Architecture.
  
     2. <legal> Communications Decency Act.
  

cda - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  CDA
   /C.D.A/
  
     The "Communications Decency Act", passed as section 502 of a major
     telecommunications reform bill on February 8th, 1996 ("Black
     Thursday"). The CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a
     communication which is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or
     indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another
     person." It also threatened with imprisonment anyone who "knowingly"
     makes accessible to minors any message that "describes, in terms
     patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards,
     sexual or excretory activities or organs".
  
     While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the
     putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the
     bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw
     discussion of abortion on the Internet.
  
     To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights
     was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A
     firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th 1996 mass
     demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home pages
     black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and
     computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional
     challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision
  handed
     down in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the
     U.S. Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 ("White Thursday"). See also
     Exon.
  

cda - V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2006) :

  CDA
         Compound Document Architecture (DEC)
         

  CDA
         Communications Decency Act (Internet, USA)