Supreme Court keeps Net porn law on ice.
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| 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.


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You said this so much better than I did. But this was what I thought that the major search engines could initiate as a part of their service. Gkonkler5's idea “… but would giving certain types of internet material a different. from .com, .org, .edu, .gov be infringing on free speech?”- could work in the same way, although I’m not sure how it would be implemented.
C
The Web-Porn Patrol
With sites unfettered, here's how to keep X-rated content away from kids.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040712-660970,00.html
Keeping kids from viewing porn online has never been tougher. Even when you're trying to avoid it, sexually explicit material pops up everywhere, from mistyped URLs for popular sites to links embedded in instant messages. The Supreme Court decision last week to block enforcement of a rule that would have placed the burden of censorship on Web operators serves as a good reminder to parents to evaluate their family policy on what type of material is O.K. for their kids to view. While parental supervision is always a good idea, software filters can help too.
The leading online services offer relatively straightforward controls. AOL and MSN have suggested settings for different ages that can completely block kids' access to, say, instant messaging or chat rooms. If kids want access to a blocked website, they can e-mail a request to their parents, who can in turn view a complete list of sites their kids have visited and set limits on how long they can stay online.
If your kids access the Web from a regular Web browser, however, you have to do a little more work. While there is a built-in Content Advisor in Internet Explorer and a SafeSearch feature in Google, I found both ineffective: they either fail to block pornographic websites altogether or block so many sites that your browser becomes unusable. (For example, I was unable to log on to the Nickelodeon kids' site nick.com using Internet Explorer's Content Advisor.)
A pricier but more effective option is a filter that you download from the Internet. Of the three programs I tested, Cyber Patrol, Cybersitter and Net Nanny, only one seemed impervious to smut: Cybersitter. This $40 program (available at cybersitter.com) can run in a stealth mode so your kids don't notice it's there. When they try to log on to a blocked site, they are presented with either a blank page or a standard error message that reads, "This page cannot be displayed." Cybersitter works on e-mail, instant messaging, newsgroups and file-sharing sites. A System Snooper feature enables you to scan your hard drive for evidence of "recent internet activity where potentially objectionable material has been accessed." One downside to Cybersitter: it doesn't work on Macs.
Our Wedding
This weekend I down loaded some software as these mentioned called Content Protect. Seems like a really great program got very high ratings at Internet Filter Review:
http://www.internetfilterreview.com/?engine=overture!880&keyword=parental+control+software&OVRAW=parental%20software%20controls&OVKEY=parental%20control%20software&OVMTC=standard
This is going to be an extremely time consuming process. Basically I'll have to sit next to may kids while they make their internet rounds and add each site that has not been rated for content in their HTML tags or whatever, to a list of approved sites. Then there are the sites like yahoo who tag every page as possible for adult content even though there may be none. So far, I have been unable to find a way for them to check their yahoo e-mail accounts unless I unblock pornography. This could be something that is a bit tedious and defeats the purpose to some degree.
I think what I may do is use the "time allowance" and block all internet use when I would not be home and put the settings on "warning" for the adult content. This means they will get a warning before it loads the site if it has adult content and they can click past it. I'm hoping that if they are sitting in the family room and they get a warning they will think twice before they proceed. This program is also suppose to log their activity so if they are going places they shouldn't be I can call them on it and/or might also make them think twice.
As I stated in a previous post it is the parents’ responsibility to monitor their child’s activity. It becomes a question of how realistic that is. Just like sex, abstinence is going to be your best bet to avoid unwanted situations. The Internet is such a valuable tool as far as schoolwork is concerned. As I say that, though it is more of convenience. There is always the trusted public library where we older folk use to do our research.
I would think the answer to this problem would or should be much more simple than the powers that be make it. I think reasonable people know what is or is not appropriate for children. If they are being unreasonable maybe their motives should be questioned. I would be happier even if some of the adult material was inaccessible. I could live with the things that all parties concerned agree are inappropriate. The ones we cannot agree on well they will still be available but it my decrease the bombardment of these adult sites.
G
Hi Rikimiki! Thanks for your
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