Censorship has been around in many forms since the Romans first used it to try to shape the character of its citizens. This was a task meant to make society as a whole a better place for everyone. One of the most important examples of censorship from this time was the execution of Socrates who was said to be corrupting the youth and his beliefs in “unorthodox divinities” (Newth 1). Another famous mass censorship happened during the various Inquisition in Europe, one of these people who the Catholic Church tried to censor was Martin Luther who was the founder of the Lutheran branch of Christianity (Newth 3). In more recent time the censorship has been used in wartime to prevent other nations from knowing about sensitive material that could benefit them in some way (Newth 8).

For many years the internet was a completely uncensored source of information which had no rules or regulation and from free from the constraint of governments and private organizations. For the United States this changed greatly in 1996 when President Clinton signed into effect the Communication Decency Act (Esposito 1).

This Act was made to ban the communication and distribution of any indecent or obscene material on the internet to any person under the age of 18 (Esposito 1). Indecency was described by the Act as describing or depicting sexual or excretory acts and / or organs in a patently offensive fashion under contemporary community standards (Wallace 4).
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