ABSTRACT
The collision between free expression and what many people see as a growing need to monitor and regulate movies, television, and the Internet. The specter of similar efforts looms to "clean up" cyberspace and the anarchy of free expression that is the Internet. Given the crucial importance of free expression to society, complaints about perceived "excesses" in the mass media are nothing to be taken lightly or with arrogance. Moviemakers finally challenged the constitutionality of licensing and censorship in 1915, arguing to the US Supreme Court that movies were part of the press and entitled to the same protections. Free and unrestrained expression is not only a constitutional issue, but a natural right. The inclination—then as now—was to "protect" society from the perceived excesses of unbridled self-expression by imposing various forms of censorship. The First Amendment says nothing about responsible free expression, but in a social climate of growing concern about the impact of pervasive mass media.
