Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States. Two things from his presidency sit at the root of subjects this site covers: the statute that created Section 230, and an impeachment that produced one of the first large web-and-email political campaigns.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and Section 230

Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — Public Law 104-104, from S. 652 — on 8 February 1996. Its Title V is the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Two parts of that title went in opposite directions. Section 502 amended 47 U.S.C. 223 to criminalize knowingly sending or displaying patently offensive material to minors “by means of an interactive computer service”. Section 509, headed “Online Family Empowerment”, added a new Section 230 to the Communications Act of 1934, containing the provision that has shaped the American internet ever since:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Section 230 was, in other words, enacted as a subsection of an anti-indecency title, as protection for platforms that chose to moderate. In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, decided 26 June 1997, the Supreme Court reviewed a three-judge district court’s injunction against the indecency provisions. Section 230 survived; the criminal indecency provisions did not.

Impeachment, December 1998

The House of Representatives voted on four articles of impeachment under H. Res. 611 on 19 December 1998. The Clerk’s records show Article I agreed to 228-206, Article II failed 205-229, Article III agreed to 221-212, and Article IV failed 148-285.

”Censure and Move On”

By 12 December 1998, a week before the vote, a web page at moveon.org was gathering signatures for a single sentence: “The Congress must immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country.” The site claimed over 300,000 petitions signed. It offered a sign-up form, a facility to email an individual petition to a user’s own representatives, a printable paper petition, and volunteer recruitment — and it described its distribution in one line: “This campaign is based solely on word of mouth.”

That page is the direct ancestor of MoveOn, which by its own account “launched a historic online petition and established MoveOn Political Action” in its first couple of years. The founders and the exact founding date are treated on MoveOn’s own page rather than asserted here; MoveOn’s about page names neither.

Digital Political Impact

• Signed the statute that created Section 230, a foundational provision of American internet platform-liability law, as part of a title aimed at restricting online indecency
• Presided over the first constitutional test of federal internet speech regulation, decided in 1997
• Was the occasion, though not the author, of a web petition campaign whose mechanics — a one-sentence ask, a form, forwarding to your own representatives, and word-of-mouth distribution — recurred in many later online political campaigns

What Is Not Established Here

Removed in the citation audit: the “Pre-social media era figure” follower-count placeholder; the claims that his administration “oversaw expansion of internet access and infrastructure”, pursued digital divide initiatives, established internet governance frameworks, or launched early federal websites, none of which was sourced; the September 1998 founding date and named founders of MoveOn, which belong on MoveOn’s own page with their own sources; and the framing of the 1992 and 1996 campaigns as relying on traditional media, which is likely true but was asserted without support.