Cite as: 521 U. S. 844 (1997)
Opinion of O’Connor, J.
of their speech using codes recognized by all screening programs. Id., at 838-839.
Despite this progress, the transformation of cyberspace is not complete. Although gateway technology has been available on the World Wide Web for some time now, id., at 845; Shea v. Reno, 930 F. Supp. 916, 933-934 (SDNY 1996), it is not available to all Web speakers, 929 F. Supp., at 845-846, and is just now becoming technologically feasible for chat rooms and USENET newsgroups, Brief for Appellants 3738. Gateway technology is not ubiquitous in cyberspace, and because without it "there is no means of age verification," cyberspace still remains largely unzoned—and unzoneable. 929 F. Supp., at 846; Shea, supra, at 934. User-based zoning is also in its infancy. For it to be effective, (i) an agreed-upon code (or "tag") would have to exist; (ii) screening software or browsers with screening capabilities would have to be able to recognize the "tag"; and (iii) those programs would have to be widely available—and widely used—by Internet users. At present, none of these conditions is true. Screening software "is not in wide use today" and "only a handful of browsers have screening capabilities." Shea, supra, at 945-946. There is, moreover, no agreed-upon "tag" for those programs to recognize. 929 F. Supp., at 848; Shea, supra, at 945.
Although the prospects for the eventual zoning of the Internet appear promising, I agree with the Court that we must evaluate the constitutionality of the CDA as it applies to the Internet as it exists today. Ante, at 881. Given the present state of cyberspace, I agree with the Court that the "display" provision cannot pass muster. Until gateway technology is available throughout cyberspace, and it is not in 1997, a speaker cannot be reasonably assured that the speech he displays will reach only adults because it is impossible to confine speech to an "adult zone." Thus, the only way for a speaker to avoid liability under the CDA is to refrain completely from using indecent speech. But this
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