Net Censorship Law Struck Down Again

Source: Wired

A federal appeals court struck down as unconstitutional a Clinton-era law that would have forced websites with adult material to verify visitors' ages, dealing another blow to the government in a 10-year court battle over net censorship.

The 3rd U.S. Circurt Court of Appeals upheld on Tuesday a 2007 lower-court decision that the Child Online Protection Act violated the First Amendment since it was not the most effective way to keep children from visiting adult websites.

Both courts also found that the standards for material that had to be hidden from open browsing were so loosely defined that any content not suitable for a four-year-old would have been hidden behind a age-verification firewall.

"Unlike COPA, filters permit adults to determine if and when they want to use them and do not subject speakers to criminal or civil penalties," the court wrote.

Read more: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/net-censorship.html

They were pretty actively against the Telecomm Act that included the Communications Decency Act that the courts not long afterward struck down. Supposedly Clinton was counting on that part of the bill being struck down, and the rest of the bill passing, which is what he wanted. Of course looking back, the rest of the bill is pretty bad too, kinda like a second look at NAFTA makes us feel. Wasn't aware that the Communications Decency Act was being revived again, though it wouldn't surprise me.

Now what's interesting is that though Clinton signed this bill, McCain is actually on record as one of the handful of senators that voted against it.

I still wonder whether McCain would want to acknowledge voting against the Telecommunications Act or not in this election. Though I'm sure that Dems like to rally around the Dems that voted against it (Feingold, Leahy, Wellstone, and Simon), not sure that Republicans would rally around McCain for being the sole vote against that bill.

Actually, that might be a GOOD question to ask McCain now! Did he support THIS court's decision now on this bill. If he says no (to keep consistent with his earlier decision), then his base would get pissed at him. If he said yes, then we can point out that this wasn't the position he took on the same bill many years back when he first voted against it.

Source: wsj

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court agreed Tuesday with a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.

The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is the latest ...


Read more: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121675088439374237.html?mod=2_1563_leftbox

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So does it mean that children now can be sexually exploited???

:shrug:

To determine age of viewer. So if your child saw boobies on the interweb you could sue that website for a bajillion dollars as we all know that boobies scar people for life. As opposed to pictures of dead innocent iraqis for example.

Their record for child protection in any form is beyond abysmal. They're more than happy to censor content and jerk the IPs around, though.

Consider that this might have been used to block content from DU.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3405475&mesg_id=3405475

And second, are you actually defending this law?