nied thousands of grant applications during the de-
cade on the basis of the 1990 legislation.
Hate Speech “Hate speech” can be defined in gen-
eral terms as publicly uttered hostile remarks di-
rected at a social or ethnic group. By the beginning
of the 1990’s, such speech was prohibited at many
U.S. colleges, as well as by legislation on the part of
some state and municipal governments. In 1992,
however, the Supreme Court overturned St. Paul,
Minnesota’s hate speech ordinance, noting that ex-
pression cannot be repressed merely because it is of-
fensive or in other ways emotionally painful to those
it targets.
In other free speech victories, the Court de-
fended the right to distribute unsigned but never-
theless truthful political literature and insisted that
Congress’s 1989 Flag Protection Act was unconstitu-
tional because flag burning is a symbolic expression
of a political opinion.
The Internet A theme that linked many of these
censorship efforts was the protection of minors. This
was an important part of the Telecommunications
Act of 1996, which proposed to criminalize obscene,
indecent, and “patently offensive” speech on the In-
ternet. However, the Supreme Court held this por-
tion of the legislation unconstitutional, deciding
that the Internet deserves the highest level of pro-
tection for freedom of speech, on the same level as
that given books and newspapers. In the words of the
Court, the Internet is a new locus of free expression
where “any person with a phone line can become a
town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it
could from any soapbox.”
Two more Internet-related efforts on the part of
Congress rounded out the decade. The Digital Mil-
lennium Copyright Act of 1998 criminalized efforts
to work around copyright protections by heighten-
ing penalties for copyright infringement and by lim-
iting the liability of online providers so long as they
remove protected material when notified. Also in
1998, the theme of protecting children returned in
the form of the Children’s Online Privacy Protec-
tion Act, requiring sites to get parental permission
before granting e-mail accounts to children under
the age of thirteen.
Impact Relatively few of the efforts during the de-
cade that sought to censor violent, sexual, or other-
wise objectionable content argued from a base of
substantive evidence regarding the actual behav-
ioral effects of such forms of expression on recipi-
ents. Instead, anecdotal evidence and even evidence
based on respectable research projects were filtered
through previously held opinions on the issue.
These censorship efforts encouraged self-imposed
restraints on the creation and/or distribution of po-
tentially objectionable content by marketing associ-
ations, broadcasters, and artists.
Further Reading
Foerstel, Herbert F.Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference
Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Li-
braries. 2d ed. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,- First published in the mid-1990’s, the up-
dated version is an authoritative resource for
teachers, librarians, and researchers.
Nuzum, Eric.Parental Advisor y: Music Censorship in
America. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. A lively
work covering music censorship from the 1950’s
to the end of the twentieth century.
Overbeck, Wayne.Major Principles of Media Law. Bos-
ton: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008. An annually
updated volume written for laypersons and attor-
neys alike. An associated Web site offers frequent
updates to keep readers up-to-date between edi-
tions of the book.
Rojas, Hernando, Dhavan V. Shah, and Ronald J.
Faber. “For the Good of Others: Censorship and
the Third-Person Effect.”International Journal of
Public Opinion Research8, no. 2 (Summer, 1996):
163-186. The “third-person effect” hypothesis de-
scribed in the article suggests that people exposed
to mass-media messages expect the messages to
have a greater effect on others than on themselves.
Barbara Roos
See also Child pornography; Hip-hop and rap
music; Internet; King, Rodney; Los Angeles riots;
Mapplethorpe obscenity trial; Music; National En-
dowment for the Arts (NEA); Supreme Court deci-
sions; Telecommunications Act of 1996. CGI
Definition Computer-generated imagery
CGI forever changed the ability of television and film to
portray images and stories, while bringing attention to the
special-effects industr y.The Nineties in America CGI 157