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arguments; thus, over an electronic chat link, cd ~coffee would mean ''I'm going to the coffee machine." |
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CDA /C-D-A/ The "Communications Decency Act" of 1996, passed on Black Thursday as section 502 of a major telecommunications reform bill. 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 threatens 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". |
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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. |
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To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights was not well received on the Internet would be putting it midly. A firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th mass demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home pages black for 48 hours. On May 15th, free-speech advocates won an injunction to block CDA enforcement pending legal challenge. On June 12th the CDA was unanimously ruled unconstitutional by a three-judge Federal court in a strongly-worded opinion that observed "Any content-based regulation of the Internet, no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village to roast the pig." The U.S. Government is now expected to appeal to the Supreme Courtand to lose. |
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To join the fight against the CDA (if it's still law) and other forms of Internet censorship, visit the Center for Democracy and Technology Home Page at http://www.cdt.org. |
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cdr /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ vt. [from LISP] To skip past the first item from a list of things (generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures, which returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its argument). In the form cdr down, to trace down a list of elements: "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also loop through. |
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Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 704 that hosted the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called the 'address' and 'decrement' parts. The term cdr was originally 'Contents of Decrement part of Register'. Similarly, car stood for 'Contents of Address part of Register'. |
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