03-25-2007, 04:58 AM
|
|
|
Too lazy to set a custom title
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 40,377
|
Recent COPA Ruling Shedding Light on Usefulness of XXX as Voluntary Self Regulatory Vehicle?
Quote:
ICM Registry applauds the decision yesterday of Judge Lowell Reed of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in ACLU v. Gonzales to permanently enjoin enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act ("COPA"). Praising Judge Reed?s meticulously documented opinion, ICM Registry President Stuart Lawley said, ?This continues the unbroken chain of court decisions in the U.S. upholding free expression on the Internet, and it underscores the superiority of voluntary measures that empower users to select content compared with government regulations.? Lawley concluded, ?Now, more than ever, it underscores the need for ICANN to approve the proposal for a voluntary .xxx domain as another alternative to government regulation.?
Judge Reed?s decision permanently enjoins enforcement of COPA, which has never gone into effect since it was adopted by Congress in 1998. The law is intended to prevent children from gaining access to commercial pornography, described as material deemed ?harmful to minors.? But despite the law?s laudable goals, the court found that it violates the First Amendment because it is not narrowly tailored to achieve its objectives. In particular, the government failed to show that the law could be as effective as voluntary measures such as filtering of unwanted content. Finally, the court held that the law was both vague and overly broad.
The court?s analysis of voluntary filtering, based on an extensive record compiled after a month-long trial, demonstrated the futility of government regulations designed to control online speech. It found that ?a significant amount of sexually explicit material on the Internet . . . originates from outside the United States? and that ?COPA has no extra-territorial application . . . unlike Internet content filters which are able to block from view unsuitable material regardless of its origin.? At the same time, it found that voluntary use of filters can block unwanted content 90 to 99% of the time, and, unlike a law, can be tailored to meet the concerns of individual households and customized to meet the needs of different ages within each household.
?These findings fully support the approval by ICANN of the .xxx domain,? Lawley said, ?because doing so would improve the accuracy of voluntary filters and would put in place ?best practices? by adult websites.? He added, ?Not only could a .xxx domain help filters block access by minors to adult content, it could help reduce the rate of overblocking that the court identified.? The court found, for example, that some filtering products, depending on how they were configured, inadvertently blocked non-sexually explicit content up to 33 percent of the time or more. ?The use of more precise labeling by virtue of a .xxx domain, as it has been proposed by ICM Registry, could reduce the incidence of overblocking and serve free speech interests.?
Finally, Lawley noted that the ACLU v Gonzales decision should help allay fears as expressed by some that lawmakers might attempt to create a mandatory domain for adult material. ?Judge Reed?s decision shows that such regulatory approaches are unnecessary, heavy handed, and doomed to failure,? he said. ?Among other things, the decision highlights the fact that any attempt to impose control by legislative fiat is inherently inferior to voluntary marketbased measures that can help parents control access to a global medium in their own homes.? He added, ?This conclusion fully applies to current legislative proposals to impose mandatory labeling requirements.?
Lawley called on ICANN to end its delay and finally approve ICM Registry?s proposal for a voluntary .xxx domain. Failure to do so might well prompt lawmakers to champion additional regulations for the Internet. ?Particularly now, after this further setback in the decadelong battle to implement COPA in the United States, we should focus on ways to make voluntary measures more effective and to move away from damaging and futile regulations.?
|
http://www.circleid.com/posts/copa_r...lf_regulatory/
__________________
I don't use ICQ anymore.
|
|
|