Life without ALA ... amid its trials, a perfect time to consider its significance. (Editorial).(Editorial)

Thanks to the sweeping Communications Decency Act (CDA), which will celebrate its sixth anniversary at the end of this month, the Internet is now a sanitized and diminished version of its formerly untamed and diverse self. Following the Supreme Court's decision in 1997 to uphold passage of the federal law protecting children from "indecent" and "offensive" material on the Internet, states began following suit with their own CDA laws, to better fit their own communities' mores. The debate over scurrilous content in the library is now moot: the possibility of accessing porn on a public-access computer is virtually impossible. Many patrons have stopped using the Internet …