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