BY RORY J. O'CONNOR\nMercury News Washington Bureau
\r\nWASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has left the fate of the Internet in the hands of its users, ruling Thursday that the government's attempt to keep cyberspace communications pristine "abridges the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment." \n In overturning the Communications Decency Act, the high court reprimanded Congress for its far-reaching attempt to regulate what people can say on the world's newest communications medium. CDA opponents called the ruling "the legal birth certificate for the Internet."\n The CDA, enacted in early 1996 but never enforced, banned the use of the Internet to transmit or display "indecent" or "patently offensive" material that could be seen by children. By striking it down in a unanimous decision -- with two justices in partial dissent รณ the court accepted the arguments of civil libertarians, and the finding of a three-judge federal panel last year, that the Internet is entitled to the broadest free-speech protections the nation can afford it.\n And the justices left it to parents with the help of technology like "filtering" and "blocking" software to decide for themselves what their children can and can't see in the vast online world.\n Proponents of the law are expected to take the issue back to Capitol Hill and seek a new measure, conforming to the court's opinion, to control the dissemination of sexually explicit material in cyberspace.
