Plaintiff Mark Brown used the Internet at the Philadelphia Free Library to research breast cancer and reconstructive surgery for his mother who had breast surgery. Mr. Brown's research at the library provided him and his mother with essential information about his mother's medical condition and potential treatments. 3. Web Publisher Plaintiffs Plaintiff Afraid to Ask, Inc., based in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, publishes a health education Web site, www.AfraidtoAsk.com. Dr. Jonathan Bertman, the president and medical director of Afraid to Ask, is a family practice physician in rural Rhode Island and a clinical assistant professor of family medicine at Brown University. AfraidtoAsk.com's mission is to provide detailed information on sensitive health issues, often of a sexual nature, such as sexually transmitted diseases, male and female genitalia, and birth control, sought by people of all ages who would prefer to learn about sensitive health issues anonymously, i.e., they are "afraid to ask." As part of its educational mission, AfraidtoAsk.com often uses graphic images of sexual anatomy to convey information. Its primary audience is teens and young adults. Based on survey data collected on the site, half of the people visiting the site are under 24 years old and a quarter are under 18. AfraidtoAsk.com is blocked by several leading blocking products as containing sexually explicit content.
Plaintiff Alan Guttmacher Institute has a Web site that contains information about its activities and objectives, including its mission to protect the reproductive choices of women and men. Plaintiff Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. ("Planned Parenthood") is a national voluntary organization in the field of reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood owns and operates several Web sites that provide a range of information about reproductive health, from contraception to prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, to finding an abortion provider, and to information about the drug Mifepristone. Plaintiff Safersex.org is a Web site that offers free educational information on how to practice safer sex. Plaintiff Ethan Interactive, Inc., d/b/a Out In America, is an online content provider that owns and operates 64 free Web sites for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons worldwide. Plaintiff PlanetOut Corporation is an online content provider for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. Plaintiff the Naturist Action Committee ("NAC") is the nonprofit political arm of the Naturist Society, a private organization that promotes a way of life characterized by the practice of nudity. The NAC Web site provides information about Naturist Society activities and about state and local laws that may affect the rights of Naturists or their ability to practice Naturism, and includes nude photographs of its members.
Plaintiff Wayne L. Parker was the Libertarian candidate in the 2000 U.S. Congressional election for the Fifth District of Mississippi (and is running again in 2002). He publishes a Web site that communicates information about his campaign and that provides information about his political views and the Libertarian Party to the public. Plaintiff Jeffrey Pollock was the Republican candidate in the 2000 U.S. Congressional election for the Third District of Oregon. He operates a Web site that is now promoting his candidacy for Congress in 2002. 3. The Internet 1. Background As we noted at the outset, the Internet is a vast, interactive medium consisting of a decentralized network of computers around the world. The Internet presents low entry barriers to anyone who wishes to provide or distribute information. Unlike television, cable, radio, newspapers, magazines or books, the Internet provides an opportunity for those with access to it to communicate with a worldwide audience at little cost. At least 400 million people use the Internet worldwide, and approximately 143 million Americans were using the Internet as of September 2001. Nat'l Telecomm. & Info. Admin., A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet (February 2002), available at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/.
The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet that consists of a network of computers, called "Web servers," that host "pages" of content accessible via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or "HTTP." Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet can search for and retrieve information stored on Web servers located around the world. Computer users typically access the Web by running a program called a "browser" on their computers. The browser displays, as individual pages on the computer screen, the various types of content found on the Web and lets the user follow the connections built into Web pages called "hypertext links," "hyperlinks," or "links" to additional content. Two popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. A "Web page" is one or more files a browser graphically assembles to make a viewable whole when a user requests content over the Internet. A Web page may contain a variety of different elements, including text, images, buttons, form fields that the user can fill in, and links to other Web pages. A "Web site" is a term that can be used in several different ways. It may refer to all of the pages and resources available on a particular Web server. It may also refer to all the pages and resources associated with a particular organization, company or person, even if these are located on different servers, or in a subdirectory on a single server shared with other, unrelated sites. Typically, a Web site has as an intended point of entry, a "home page," which includes links to other pages on the same Web site or to pages on other sites. Online discussion groups and chat rooms relating to a variety of subjects are available through many Web sites.
Users may find content on the Web using engines that search for requested keywords. In response to a keyword request, a search engine will display a list of Web sites that may contain relevant content and provide links to those sites. Search engines and directories often return a limited number of sites in their search results (e.g., the Google search engine will return only 2,000 sites in response to a search, even if it has found, for example, 530,000 sites in its index that meet the search criteria). A user may also access content on the Web by typing a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) into the address line of the browser. A URL is an address that points to some resource located on a Web server that is accessible over the Internet. This resource may be a Web site, a Web page, an image, a sound or video file, or other resource. A URL can be either a numeric Internet Protocol or "IP" address, or an alphanumeric "domain name" address. Every Web server connected to the Internet is assigned an IP address. A typical IP address looks like "13.1.64.14." Typing the URL "http://13.1.64.14/" into a browser will bring the user to the Web server that corresponds to that address. For convenience, most Web servers have alphanumeric domain name addresses in addition to IP addresses. For example, typing in "http://www.paed.uscourts.gov" will bring the user to the same Web server as typing in "http://204.170.64.143." Every time a user attempts to access material located on a Web server by entering a domain name address into a Web browser, a request is made to a Domain Name Server, which is a directory of domain names and IP addresses, to "resolve," or translate, the domain name address into an IP address. That IP address is then used to locate the Web server from which content is being requested. A Web site may be accessed by using either its domain name address or its IP address.
A domain name address typically consists of several parts. For example, the alphanumeric URL http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions can be broken down into three parts. The first part is the transfer protocol the computer will use in accessing the content (e.g., "http" for Hypertext Transfer Protocol); next is the name of the host server on which the information is stored (e.g., www.paed.uscourts.gov); and then the name of the particular file or directory on that server (e.g., /documents/opinions). A single Web page may be associated with more than one URL. For example, the URLs http://www.newyorktimes.com and http://www.nytimes.com will both take the user to the New York Times home page. The topmost directory in a Web site is often referred to as that Web site's root directory or root URL. For example, in http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents, the root URL is http://www.paed.uscourts.gov. There may be hundreds or thousands of pages under a single root URL, or there may be one or only a few.
There are a number of Web hosting companies that maintain Web sites for other businesses and individuals, which can lead to vast amounts of diverse content being located at the same IP address. Hosting services are offered either for a fee, or in some cases, for free, allowing any individual with Internet access to create a Web site. Some hosting services are provided through the process of "IP-based hosting," where each domain name is assigned a unique IP number. For example, www.baseball.com might map to the IP address "10.3.5.9" and www.XXX.com might map to the IP address "10.0.42.5." Other hosting services are provided through the process of "name-based hosting," where multiple domain name addresses are mapped to a single IP address. If the hosting company were using this method, both www.baseball.com