Supreme Court keeps Net porn law on ice.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Supreme Court keeps Net porn law on ice.
25
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 12:23pm

Several times I've been directed to porn sites unintentionaly. Only yesterday I was looking-up the definition of a word & was taken to a site, which was totally unconnected to my search. It's was quite graphic & totally unsuitable for children. BTW it was a dictionary site.


http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5251475.html


A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday barred prosecutors from filing criminal cases under a federal law designed to restrict Internet pornography, concluding that enforcement could violate Americans' free-speech rights.


The 5-4 ruling upheld an appeals court injunction preventing the Justice Department from enforcing the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, until a full trial takes place. COPA restricts sexually explicit material deemed "harmful to minors" that appears on commercial Web sites, and includes civil and criminal penalties.


Tuesday's decision effectively forwards COPA back to a Philadelphia court for additional proceedings, including a full trial.


Congress enacted the law in 1998 in response to pressure from antiporn groups, but it was instantly challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union and has never been invoked in prosecutions.


The plurality opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, suggested that a trial may show that filtering software was a more-effective way of preventing children from seeing inappropriate material than relying on criminal laws that can't reach overseas. A "filter can prevent minors from seeing all pornography, not just pornography posted to the Web from America," Kennedy wrote.


"Filtering software, of course, is not a perfect solution to the problem of children gaining access to harmful-to-minors materials," Kennedy wrote. "It may block some materials that are not harmful to minors and fail to catch some that are."


Still, he said that the Justice Department, which is defending the law, has failed so far to prove that filters are that flawed as an alternative.


The lack of government controls on Internet pornography has permitted the adult industry to blossom on the Web. A report from Reuters Business Insight in February 2003 calculated that sex-related business represented two-thirds of all revenue generated by online content in 2001 and that it had ballooned to a $2.5 billion industry since then.


In an unusual set of legal proceedings, COPA has been bouncing around between the lower courts and the Supreme Court like a hyperactive ping-pong ball. A federal judge in Philadelphia struck down the law in February 1999, and the 3rd Circuit of Appeals followed suit. But the Supreme Court said in May 2002 that it wanted more analysis from the appeals court, which looked at the law again and promptly said for the second time that it violated the First Amendment.


A dissent written by Justice Stephen Breyer said that COPA "imposes a burden on protected speech that is no more than modest" and should be upheld as constitutional.


COPA "does not censor the material it covers," Breyer wrote. "Rather, it requires providers of the 'harmful to minors' material to restrict minors' access to it by verifying age. They can do so by inserting screens that verify age using a credit card, adult personal identification number, or other similar technology. In this way, the act requires creation of an Internet screen that minors, but not adults, will find difficult to bypass."


COPA makes it a crime to publish "any communication for commercial purposes that includes sexual material that is harmful to minors, without restricting access to such material by minors."


"Harmful to minors" material is defined as lacking "scientific, literary, artistic or political value" and that is offensive to local "community standards." The maximum penalty is a $50,000 fine, six months in prison, and additional civil fees.


If COPA is eventually upheld as constitutional, many adult Webmasters could be imperiled unless they redesign their sites. "Teaser" images may disappear, since COPA says Webmasters who employ measures such as credit card verification or require an "adult access code" can't be prosecuted, as these mechanisms would typically keep out minors.


COPA represents Congress' second attempt to restrict sexually explicit material on the Internet. The Supreme Court in 1997 rejected the Communications Decency Act, which covered "indecent" or "patently offensive" material, as unconstitutional.


Plaintiffs in the COPA case include the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Salon.com, ObGyn.net, Philadelphia Gay News and the Internet Content Coalition. CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, was a member of the now-defunct Internet Content Coalition.

cl-Libraone~

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 1:35pm
I'm torn on this... some of the stuff out there... a lot of the stuff out there... is *awful.* If I am doing any searching for lesbian resources, goddess help me what will show up in google. By the tenth page I might actually find something useful.

And the stuff that preys upon our young... but where do we draw the line?

British laws are different than ours... a performer from Jamaica arrived in Britain and was arrested due to his lyrics inciting people to kill lgbt people. This stuff is all over the internet. What anyone wants... they can find. And it's source could be anywhere in the world.

With a great resource comes great responsibility. What can be a great tool can be a great cause of harm to others, can allow those who wish us harm to communicate and evade, those who prey upon others to have easy access to someone they will strike at.

I just don't know how we stop this, and where the line to stop is.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 3:07pm
It is a tough line to follow as I know that Freedom of Speech comes in to play, but what about protecting children from being exposed to random sites that just pop up in the situation you explained?

I think a law needs to be enacted, but it has to be amended somehow so that the protections on speech and expression are not being violated, while at the same time, people that do not wish to view such a site are also protected from being indescriminantly subjected to it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 5:09pm
I have a problem with this issue as well. The biggest problem is how and who defines just what porn is.

Some think the Statue of David, Venus de Milo, Picasso ect ect are porn. Then there was Ashcroft using a curtain to cover a statue's naked breasts. Would any of us want Ashcroft to define porn? He is the head of the justice department at this point in time.

When children are on websites it is the parents responsibility to monitor what sites they are looking at. If they feel they can't, there are seveal software programs that can be installed that do police what can be accessed.

Personally I'm glad the law did not stand. It's present format was scary to say the least.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 5:42pm

Just an anecdote for you here, regarding internet porn.


About 5 years ago, my daughter asked for "warm up suits" for Christmas.

________________________________________________

"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 6:51pm
lmaoooooooooo... thank goddess you didn't have your daughter doing the search!
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 9:32pm
This is one issue that almost every thoughtful person agrees on. We need something to block the porn sites, but don't want to block sites that have information that needs to be out there, like information on STPs and medical care and treatment. What the Supreme Court seemed to be saying was, things have changed with what technology is out there to protect the individual and we want to hear about that. The problem that I see is that by the time a case works its way through the courts, the technology has changed again.

The court is trying to use a static balancing test, as it has used in the past on print media, on something that is not static. I wonder if perhaps some new type of test is needed on things as affected by the speed of technological advances as the internet?

Sorta off the topic and sorta not, my machine is two years old. I paid a nice price for it, and, at the time I bought it, it was pretty hot. I recently went to a cable modem for high speed surfing, and because me and the phone company went around once too often. Anyway, I wanted to play "City of Heros," a comic book game where you design your own superhero and play online with other players to try to save the world from the comic book villians. The game crashes, because my machine isn't advanced enough. After only two years.

Just my own example of how fast this technology advances. Told you it was sorta on and sorta not.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 11:40pm

>"We need something to block the porn sites, but don't want to block sites that have information that needs to be out there, like information on STPs and medical care and treatment."<


Good point! I think we all like to go online & double check our Dr's opinion's, Rx's & treatment alternatives. Some of these sites wouldn't be accessible if we have some child proof software installed.


OT My DH is in IT so he takes care of my computer needs....... adds memory chips, updated circuit boards & such. I pity home users without their personal IT person. ;)

 


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Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 12:15am
I'm inclined to agree with Justice Kennedy about filtering software. My ISP's Spam filter does a great job; of course I have it set at the highest levels and on very busy days when I check in only long enough to delete everything unread, I probably delete one or two posts that I might have read without it.

But I wonder if all the search engines - Google, etc. - couldn't set-up a rating system for all the sites they feature/ present, which would immediately warn if a site were “R” or “PG 13” or “G”. This would at least let the viewer know what to expect, yet not violate the right for the site to be there.

This wouldn’t help if you accidentally accessed a site on your own, but it would certainly add to customer appeal for any search engine implementing this type of system and the increase in customer usage might offset the initial installation expense.

C

Edited 7/1/2004 4:30 am ET ET by car_al


Edited 7/1/2004 4:31 am ET ET by car_al

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-11-2004
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 1:53am
Well personally I am happy with this decision. I feel strongly that it's the responsibilty of the parent to moniter what their children are accessing on the net.

There are plenty of soft ware programs out there for parents who want to control what their children can access. And many ISP's offer built in controls. My daughters screen name is set with the highest leval controls. If there's something she needs and can't access she can come to me. Along with that the only computor in the house with internet access is in the living room- where I can keep my eye on her. I'm much more concerned with Freedom of Speech being infringed upon. There's enough of that going on in the world today.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2003
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 8:00am

This is one issue that almost every thoughtful person agrees on. We need something to block the porn sites, but don't want to block sites that have information that needs to be out there, like information on STPs and medical care and treatment.


Well I guess that makes me not very thoughtful because I don't agree with this statement as it stands.

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