by Arianna Huffington

About the author: Arianna Huffington is a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation (a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a positive view of the future), where she chairs the Center for Effective Compassion.

If there is one problem with the Communications Decency Act signed into law in February 1996, which makes it illegal to post “indecent” material on the Internet, it is its name [the law was struck down by a federal appeals court in June 1996]. Discussions of indecency and pornography conjure up images of Playboy and Hustler, when in fact the kind of material available on the Internet goes far beyond indecency—and descends into barbarism.

Most parents have never been on the Internet, so they cannot imagine what their children can easily access in cyberspace: child molestation, bestiality, sadomasochism and...