Laws Governing Online Speech Need Reform, Not Repeal

If you had told me 24 years ago that the internet pornography law I was working on would be the main obstacle to defense spending in 2020, I would have called you crazy. Yet for the past several weeks President Trump has repeatedly warned that he will veto the $740 billion defense appropriation bill if Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act isn’t repealed.

The congressional committee that drafted the 1996 act’s final language knew that Section 230 was a critical law at the dawn of the internet, and we passed it for a specific reason: to protect the internet’s role as a free marketplace of ideas. What went wrong? We succeeded too well.