Supreme Court Hears Online Porn Case, searches for "free porn"
 

Tuesday March 2, 2004 9:31 PM

By ANNE GEARAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Kids, don't try this at home. The Bush administration's top Supreme Court lawyer says he typed the words ``free porn'' into an Internet search engine on his home computer and got a list of more than 6 million Web sites. That's proof, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, of the need for a law protecting children from a tide of online smut.

Internet porn is ``persistent and unavoidable,'' Olson told the court, and government has a strong interest in shielding teenagers and younger children from it.

The problem, as the Supreme Court has observed before, is that a lot of dirty pictures are constitutionally protected free speech that adults have the right to see and buy. Children don't have the same rights, but kids and adults alike can surf the Web.

Porn is ``as easily available to children as a television remote,'' Olson told the justices as he defended a 1998 law that Congress meant as a firewall to shield children.

The Child Online Protection Act has never taken effect. A federal appeals court struck down the law twice, on separate constitutional grounds, and it is now before the Supreme Court for a second time.

The law, known as COPA, was a replacement for a broader law that the Supreme Court rejected as unconstitutional in 1997. Congress retooled the law to address the high court's free speech concerns, Olson said.

Several justices weren't buying it.

``It seems to me this is very sweeping,'' Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said at one point.

If porn sellers are flouting the existing laws about obscenity, perhaps the government should go after them more aggressively, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested.

The Bush administration has brought 21 indictments in two years alleging that Web site operators and others crossed the line from acceptable smut to illegal obscenity, Olson told the court.

``With such a vast array of sites, there are so few prosecutions,'' O'Connor said. ``It's just amazing.''

COPA would make it a crime for commercial Web site operators to knowingly place material that is harmful to children within their unrestricted online reach. Violators can face six months in jail and civil and criminal penalties of $50,000.

The law is meant to go after the really bad guys, Olson argued. He suggested that the American Civil Liberties Union and other opponents of the law are crying wolf.

It's the government that is being unrealistic, ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson countered.

The law ``criminalizes a depiction or description of nudity, or even a description of the female breast,'' Beeson told the justices.

The ACLU challenged the law on behalf of online bookstores, artists and others, including operators of Web sites that offer explicit how-to sex advice or health information. Among them is Mitch Tepper, whose Web site dispenses very specific instructions to help the disabled enjoy sex. One article he has posted online is titled ``Handsfree Whoopie.''

Tepper risks jail time if some prosecutor somewhere finds his material ``harmful to minors,'' the ACLU argued. COPA gives no absolute definition of what is ``harmful to minors,'' leaving that in part to ``the average person, applying contemporary community standards.''

The ACLU maintains that the community standards test is meaningless when applied to the far-flung Internet, but the Supreme Court ruled two years ago that that claim is not enough, on its own, to make the law unconstitutional.

The high court is expected to issue a more definitive ruling by summer.

The case is Ashcrof t v. ACLU, 03-218.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/s...813123,00.html

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/03-218.htm

I long for the day where free porn will be a thing of the past and sites will actually convert.

I know it's an Utopia
One can only hope

Give the kids their own .kids TLD, it's not fucking hard.

Retards. I'm so sick of this bullshit being spewed from the american administration.

Will it satisfy their curiousity?

And when they define porn as one nipple then we'll all be in a lot of trouble.

They forgot to mention that he made his report after the bad porn people forced his hand to his cock and made him jerk off.

They also forgot to mention the niche he jerked off to: Gay Porn.

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The Child Online Protection Act has never taken effect. A federal appeals court struck down the law twice, on separate constitutional grounds, and it is now before the Supreme Court for a second time.
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:thumbsup :thumbsup

Their laws dont mean anything outside the country. Everything will just move to overseas servers.

This is a wake-up call for all you retards who support Bush.

do you suppose that 12clicks reads any of these threads?

I totally agree . The gov should make m$ install filters on their OS at LEAST . It's not possible to kill free porn because of the multi-country law . They can't put governemental filters because that will start riots . So a built-in parental system in microsoft IE would be the way too go I think .

Just history repeating itself, nothing to see here.

Ok sarcasm off, we better wake the fuck up. This is the Reagan porn playbook all over again.

Yeah I know most have not a clue what I am talking about, we are invincable, I been in this industry 10 whole years, yadda yadda, just move off shore, yadda yadda, you say the sky is always falling yadda yadda.

Oh I pray there is no second term or we should really, really anticipate fire and brimstone salt the earth style of attacks.

well, get out there and vote! tell your friends to vote!

freeadultcontent - i know what you're talking about, and we don't need a witch hunt. totally aside from my work, this country is supposed to be about freedom of speech, among other things.

This country is about:

No one taking any personal responsibility. Someone else is ALWAYS at fault.

Freedom of popular speach that makes the soccor moms heads nod in agreement.

Being a corperate spoke and never questioning anything a sound bite says.

Mindlessly doing everything and giving up everything "to protect the children".

Never having to make a sacrifice, look the other way, or changing the channel, because everything is about me.

Outsourcing all logic and thinking to a higher power. Since we can never protect ourselves from ourselves.

And of course caring more about American Idol tonight that American politics.

Well, if the parents were actually monitoring their kids while they were on the Internet then they wouldn't be typing "free porn". I'm really tired of the gov't and parents feeling that everything on the Internet should be geared to 8 year olds because parents are too busy using their computers as babysitters.

Password protect the computer when you are not home, install net nanny, keep the computer out of the kids bedroom and put it in the family room. If you don't want your kids seeing adult material then WATCH them. </vent>

Their laws don't mean anything outside the country.

shhhh we may wake someone that cares.

Seriously if this passed, i dont think the government realizes the number of people adult webmasters could reach through their sites and email lists, it would be the biggest revolt ever. :2 cents:

That would be too easy.

nope, they should pass a law that all nudity be put behind a CC.
Then we could get rid of the joeshoes and other kiddies who've been dragging this biz down for years.:thumbsup

Tell Osama and Sadaam that...:)

Oh that's right, Bush in 1997, submitted COPA while governor of Texas.

I forgot he has been in office that long.

I also agree it would be better with no free hardcore. Signups would be way better. But most peoples business model these days is to give away free hardcore. Its kinda ass backwards but thats how things evolved.

I think the future of the adult net (5 years from now) is going to be vanilla. No free hardcore, clean tours. Want to see the future of paysite tours, look at Hustler.com

To a point, thes guys are basically right. What if you could turn on your tv set and see tons of hardcore on a free station. That would never happen. But a kid can go to their browser and get all the porn they want.

Fucking morons. Not even going to comment further than how many kids that are looking for Disney characters etc. type in "free porn" ... God.

Cheers,
Matt

What gets me is that a picture of a tit online is considered porn but yet TLC shows tits during a daytime program (such as lifes birth stories which also shows actual births without it being censored) and it's considered fine for family viewing.

amen :glugglug

i think a verification solution is best, it's like in the real world, to verify you can view the content, somehow you prove you are over 18. If you walk into a adult video store, it's visual verification, a movie on t.v., credit card, etc...