13 lines
639 B
Plaintext
13 lines
639 B
Plaintext
Exon
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/ekson/ , excl. A generic obscenity that quickly entered wide use on the
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Internet and Usenet after the passage of the Communications Decency Act.
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From the last name of Senator James Exon (Democrat-Nebraska), primary author
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of the CDA. This usage outlasted the CDA itself, which was quashed a little
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over a year later by one of the most acerbic pro-free-speech opinions ever
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uttered by the Supreme Court. The campaign against it was led by an alliance
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of hackers and civil libertarians, and was the first effective political
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mobilization of the hacker culture. Use of Exon's name as an expletive
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outlived the CDA controversy itself.
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