aprilkorova

Supreme Court Mulls Online Porn Law
The Associated Press
May 21 2001 11:26AM

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court agreed Monday to take a fresh look at whether congressional efforts to limit children's access to online smut violates free-speech principles.

The court agreed to review lower court decisions blocking enforcement of a 1998 law that Congress passed, making it a crime to knowingly place objectionable material where a child could find it on the World Wide Web.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other free-speech advocates claim the law violates the First Amendment. The Justice Department claims the law correctly targets only material that is inappropriate for children.

The justices are expected to hear the case and issue a decision during the court term that begins next October. In the meantime, the Justice Department is barred from enforcing the 1998 Child Online Protection Act.

The legislation, signed into law by then-President Clinton, sets out criminal penalties or civil fines for failing to ensure only adult eyes will see adult material offered commercially online.

The law was a response to the Supreme Court's decision striking down an earlier ban on making online pornography available to children. The court found that Congress' first attempt was unconstitutional because it would also prevent adults from seeing what they had a free-speech right to see.

Sexually explicit words and pictures are protected by the Constitution's First Amendment if they are deemed indecent but not obscene.

The Supreme Court's ruling in 1997 invalidated a key provision of the Communications Decency Act passed the year before and challenged by the ACLU.

Congress and the White House said they would try again.

The resulting 1998 law requires commercial Web sites to collect a credit card number or an access code as proof of age before allowing Internet users to view online material deemed ``harmful to minors.''

The newer law calls for maximum criminal penalties of six months in jail and $50,000 in fines, and additional fines for repeat violators.

In an attempt to clear the Supreme Court hurdle, the second law defines indecency much more specifically. It also limits prosecution to commercial material found on the World Wide Web, as opposed to the wider online terrain of e-mail, chat rooms and so forth.

The ACLU claimed the law is unconstitutional nonetheless. The day after Clinton signed it civil liberties groups sued to prevent the law from taking effect. Lower federal courts in Pennsylvania granted that request, and the law has been in limbo.

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to resolve the deadlock.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in its ruling last year that there may be no constitutional way for government to shield children from online pornography.

``The court of appeals has thus gravely, indeed in its own view perhaps fatally, constricted Congress' power to address that serious problem,'' Acting Solicitor General Barbara Underwood wrote in court papers.

The ACLU and other groups ranging from bookstores to a Web site called OBGYN.net said the appeals court ruled correctly, and they urged the high court not to get involved.

The case is Ashcroft v. ACLU, 00-1293.

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On the Net: For the appeals court ruling in ACLU v. Reno: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 3rd Circuit.

Wizzo

Very Interesting...



It's not a question of "if", but "when" will Asscroft come after us!

boneprone

Its all over national news right now..

Its on live fox news live.. They are having a forum talk about it now.

wiZd0m

Lets see, if you're under 18 you face curfews (both late at night AND during the day when you "should be in school" even if you're home schooled). The drinking age has been raised to 21 almost everywhere, and the driving age and voting age aren't too far off. And of course you need to be "protected" from all sorts of things "for your own good". That kind of parental repression works so remarkably well with ciagarettes and alcohol, doesn't it? You can't BUY advertising that effective.
You still have to register for the draft at 18, though. (Although they're afraid of you might have a gun they didn't give you. After columbine and such they have metal detectors in school because they EXPECT kids to be violent psychopaths, complete with McCarthy style witch-hunts against nonconformist. Fun.)

Isn't it amazing that the generation that campaigned for youth rights in the 60's when THEY were teenagers are now voting republican, trying to censor the internet (the "free love" communes), strip-mining the environment (flower power), fighting a war on drugs (they're upset they didn't use the next generation's supply back in the 60's?) and generally being the same hypcritical pricks their parents were? (No real suprise here, although finding them retroactively defending nixon is kind of amusing.)

When did the phrase conservative replace the phrase "old fogey"?

Oh well, another 20 years and they'll start to die off en masse. (And they expect US to fund social security for them, after they looted the thing to fund Reganomics when they all became yuppies back in the 80's. Right.)

Ah and fuck you all instead, you wanted this, now live with it.
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wiZd0m
Fortune Pussy Adult Links

[This message has been edited by wiZd0m (edited 05-21-2001).]

wiZd0m

Murder, death, violence. Portray these and you may rise to be a "news source" for the world. Love, kindness, and attraction. Portray these and you may live... if you run quickly.

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wiZd0m
Fortune Pussy Adult Links

UnseenWorld

Well, if people have to be more careful about what they show in the publicly accessible part of their sites, it can't be all bad.

Everyone will lament that the sites beyond US law will be exempt, but I know several webmasters found that a good tease worked as well as or better than a hard-core "deliver." In fact, one of them is making a mint with a panty tease site that never even shows a pussy!

On a somewhat less related note, I've seen people put up banners with hard-core scenes in them on their WARNING page. Think about that for a moment.

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Producer of truly original teen/young woman-oriented adult content at Wonders of the Unseen World

boneprone

Im suprised we dont have more posts to this particular thread.. This may be the most important issue to facing us freesite owners in the US..

We would be forced to all incoportate over seas, and it would be a huge fucking headache.

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boneprone

As if the Netherlands didnt already have most the traffic, if the FEDS get this to go through the Dutch will have the entire traffic market..

titmowse

At the moment, I think this case revolves around making the providers of public terminals install filtering software to prevent the viewing of obscene materials by children.

What is good for us are the inherent flaws in filtering software. Because filters basically look for "inappropriate" words and block the user from accessing sites that contain these words, we are asking the court to define exactly which words in the language are actually obscene. Aside from a handful of curse words, I would hope that no one word could actually be proved indecent.

What is most unfair is that the "govt" wants to make the public providers pay to install software that is inadequate.

What they really should be doing is hiring adult webmasters to go plop their fannies in front of these (library, school ect.) terminals and block the real smut.

Funny thing is, aren't there supposed to be adults and teachers and librarians around these public terminals? Why the hell aren't they better skilled at looking in history and cookie folders?



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tit,
Mowsebytes Porn Newsletter: Webmasters submit your sites here.

Web_Mistress

I agree with you Titmouse. Since when do we have to do the parents job of keeping Jonny away from Porn? Why don't some of these parents take responsiblity to either monitor their children's usage of the net, or as you said, however imperfect, install some of the programs to help block the sites?

I could see if they forced as all to register and label our sites with ICRA, then developed programs that would block those sites that are labeled as adult.

Enforce the blocks at home with your kids, in schools (at least through 12th grade) and at libraries and public terminals. Make those librarians get off their butts and type in a seceret code or something if an adult wants to us the computer so it is unblocked.

I could get behind something like that but to just say you can't put anything that you can't verify adult hood without a credit card, well up until a short time ago I wouldn't have been able to prove I was an adult...no credit cards due to a bankrupsy but I am WELL past the age of majority. And what is to stop Jonny from sneaking into Mom's purse and grabbing a card?

I am starting to put more behind AVS systems, and I only have 1 hardcore site (with penetration) left up. I still show pink on some sites, but less and less. I agree...teasing galleries work for me but I target Amateur and babes markets and not so much hardcore.

Thanks for dropping this on the board, I am so lame, I never watch the news....too scary.



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UnseenWorld

What makes you think incorporating overseas will protect you? On 20/20, I saw a program about some guys who opened a gambling website on a Caribbean island and can't return to the United States because they live in the United States and their site is accessible to people in the United States. Before you open that site, you might want to move overseas and give up your citizenship.

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Producer of truly original teen/young woman-oriented adult content at Wonders of the Unseen World

wiZd0m

The general thought in the past, and still held by many mental health professionals,
is that the viewing of sexually explicit material before the child is ready can lead to various mental and sexual problems.
This is borne out by several case studies of young children who are scarred by
viewing their parents having sex. Said children do not
yet have the mental capacity to deal with this, and often think of
the act itself as a violent assault. In addition, it's often
felt that pornography portrays an unhealthy sexual relationship,
and should not be shown to people too young to understand the
fantasy element of it.

I do agree with this ideal. Children shouldn't be allowed to see porn, just as
children should not be allowed to see violence. Most can't deal with it -
they don't have the knowledge or experience to deal with it
as it actually is.

Having said that, the responsibility is on the parents to ensure
that their children are not viewing this stuff. Don't make it
harder for adults to get to it - educate parents on the problems
involved. Make them responsible, not everyone else.

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wiZd0m
Fortune Pussy Adult Links

wiZd0m

Nah, with the money you'll make, you'll be able to bride Hillary for a pardon ...

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wiZd0m
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Tucks

The net effect of the court allowing enforcement of this law could be seen as a positive.

Think of the bulk of free sites with hardcore material disappearing, a sudden shift towards licensed content instead of Joe Blow stealing some pics and posting them. Granted, if you've got several thousand free sites with anything but extremely softcore content, this would suck - but on a whole I think it would be good for the industry. Weed out fly-by-night webmasters (to an extent).

I'd hope that if the Supreme Court does allow COPA enforcement, some guidelines would be published as to what is and is not 'acceptable'. My fear if COPA is overturned is that Ashcroft and Co. will not simply ignore adult sites, but turn to the vague obscenity laws to prosecute.

Something is going to change. There are simply too many hundreds of thousands of sites on the net with zero intent on keeping children away from them. Public support has changed - it's no longer "free speech is important", but rather "damn smut peddlers spamming my kids AOL account again". No way the notion of "eh... do what you want" is gonna last.

[edit: Three posts and I'm in the family, huh? I'm honored.]

[This message has been edited by Tucks (edited 05-22-2001).]

UnseenWorld

Tucks wrote: "Three posts and I'm in the family, huh? I'm honored."

Yeah, who did Boneprone blow to get this feature added? Huh, huh, huh?

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Producer of truly original teen/young woman-oriented adult content at Wonders of the Unseen World

pet

.

[This message has been edited by pet (edited 07-08-2001).]

Gemini

I have seen two problems more and more lately. One is that kids now HAVE cc's. And two more than 75% of freesites I look at do NOT have kiddie codes in their meta tags. Simply sticking the parents notice and a few links do NOT stop the kids from getting to the site or inside it either.

The software they have right now may not be the best but they have to work on it just like any other software to improve it. None of it will be worth a darn unless the WEBMASTER sends the urls to the filtering companies tho.

That *is* our job.

Warphead

Good job, Pet. You should be proud, the thing is you're one in a thousand.

Parents no longer take responsibility for their own children, they have problems taking responsibility for anything. Like these school shootings, I blame it 100% on the parents.

My father had about 30 guns, they were in a gun cabinet without a lock - never once did I sneak in and play with one, never considered grabbing one and shooting anyone who'd picked on me. Because my parents TAUGHT me things.

Now days parents expect the schools to teach the kids everything, and at the same time they cut funding for the schools and know full well that a teacher is just a step up from mininum wage.

Also, I know that kids have no business seeing porn. But in a world where they're shooting each other - is it a big concern if a 14 year old sees a naked woman?

tenletters

I agree with Warphead, to some degree.

Hell, the news shows more disturbing images than any of my sites do.

Who runs this country?



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Lensman is a hypocrite


The Revive Juicybone Now Coalition

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