Appeals Court Rejects Child Online Protection Act, Again 319
mabesty writes "From The Washington Post: A panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that COPA restricts free speech by barring Web page operators from posting information inappropriate for minors unless they limit the site to adults. The ruling upholds an injunction blocking the government from enforcing the law." We last covered COPA when the Supreme Court handled it last year.
WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
I think everybody would benefit if the gov took a more laizze faire stance on the internet, even if the result is a little anarchy. I know things like spam and such really suck and make the net somewhat gay but, There is so much good stuff tht would be threatened if the moral majority really got a strong foot hold in and turned the internet into disneyland online.
law not refined enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
In both cases you have a few bastards who screw everyone over, and a few bad apples spoils the bunch [ouch sorry for that.] But, in a "free" society we need freedom of speech.
I was always taught as a youngster that you had a set of rights, such as free speech, right to vote, etc; however these rights only extended so far until you were infringing on someone else's rights.
So sure, I have the right not to get kicked in the nuts, and so does Bob over there. I also have the right to kick wildly. But I do not have the right to kick Bob in the nuts; because it is infringing on his right to not get kicked in the nuts.
Thats where it gets complicated; especially considering where you begin infringing on people's rights. Do young people have a right not to be exposed to some pr0n on the internet? Do I have the right to put naked pix on the internet without any warnings? Who really controls the Internet anyways, and does some guy have a right to put pr0n on his website in [insert country here] that my kid gets exposed to in [insert other country here]?
Not an easy problem to define, therefor no easy solutions to come across. All i know is that the american gov't cannot dictate Internet laws, although they may be able to enforce a few in their own country (if they have the time/effort/etc)
I dunno this is a "dont hate the playah hate the game" sorta situation, because there wouldnt be so much pr0n on the internet if people werent paying for it!
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody denies the right to have adult-oriented content out on the web, but it shouldn't be shoved in your face quite so easily. When I signed up for cable-modem access, for example, and the guy came out to set things up, the first time I accessed the email account it already had about a dozen spams, some for porn sites. While COPA may not be a good idea, something needs to be done, period.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, watching your kid is better, but this works if you want to know what they've done on it.
Meta tag (Score:5, Insightful)
Khalid
I propose a new law (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever congress (or state legislatures) pass a law that is later found to be unconstitutional, public funds must be used to reimburse all legal costs that were incurred in bringing the suit and having the unconstitutional law found to be unconstitutional.
Why should private or industry money have to be used to combat ridiculous laws that legislators can freely pass at a whim? Let's make them at least have to budget the cost of overturning their unconstitutional laws.
Example. Some hypothetical attorney general, let's call him "Asscruft", proposes to congress, and congress later passes, and the president signs a bill making it illegal to think bad thoughts under penalty of 5 years of $500,000.
Everyone would be screaming to have this overturned. Lots of private money would have to be used to get this nonsense overturned. Why should the citizenry be forced to overturn bad laws that they didn't want but that their "representatives" thought would be good for them, or that corporate interests bought and paid for?
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents are so quick to scream for laws to protect their children, regardless of the restrictions it places on rest of the public. and yet if we were to legislate parenting licenses to ensure parents were watching their children properly, you'd see the biggest hell-storm to ever sweep across the nation. Where's the fairness in that?
If we can't tell you how to raise your children, then don't tell us how to raise our Internet. Watch your kids, for god's sake.
Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? If you're a parent, then it's your responsibility to do whatever you feel is appropriate in terms of looking after your kids. It's not the rest of societies problem. Parents are doing far too much insisting on protection 'for the children' which ends up restricting what adults can do. Do your job, don't expect me to do it for you.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:5, Insightful)
My inbox, however, gets flooded with tons of offers from 'Women who want to meet me' and 'office secret admirer's' every day. The penis growth stuff is mostly filtered, now, though.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:1, Insightful)
Arguments about "but I don't have time" or, "I can't understand" should result in the children being taken into responsible care and the parents shot as an attempt to keep the stupid gene out of the gene pool: if you don't have time for your kids, if you don't have the patience to live and work with them, if you don't want to make the effort to learn with them, you shouldn't ----ing have them in the first place.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you lock everything down in your house, you know damn well, there's gonna be some other kid on the block whose parents are less watchful. If you impose all these restrictions, I predict your child will begin asking to spend an inordinate amount of time over a friends house to "study." Forget the laws. This is the Internet. No one is going to be able to regulate all the offensive material coming from all over the world all the time. Once kids find something that gets through the filter, the URL will spread like wildfire.
Protecting the kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure we're going to hear again from the gang that just wants to "protect the children." And we're going to hear from the people who want parents to surf the Net with their children, thus combatting the problem from another approach.
Might I suggest a different approach?
Children are going to be exposed to bad things. They always have. At home I have a book titled "Pioneer Women." It's about the roles of women in settling the western United States. One photograph is particularly memorable. It's of a small child looking at the body of man who's just been killed in a gun fight. I suspect that's more traumatic than seeing a bit of pr0n on the Internet.
When I was a child, I was exposed to information about the Holocaust and World War II. As a teenager I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and the Kennedy assassination. Children today have been exposed to the horrors of 9/11. All these things are far more troubling for children than a bit of pr0n on the Internet.
So, short of shutting up children in some sort of tightly controlled, heavily censored environment (hmm, sounds like a jail), they will be exposed to bad stuff. Perhaps, instead of trying to shield our little darlings, we should instead be teaching them that the world is not always a nice place. We should be giving them the tools to deal with nastiness and worse. I think this is a far healthier approach to take -- as well as more practical.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:2, Insightful)
You gotta be kidding.
Try doing a google on Britney Spears, and see how many celebrity porn sites show on the list.
Libraries Get Temporary Relief (Score:5, Insightful)
The filtering software also blocks educational/informational sites on things like: breast cancer, testicular cancer, tourism in Essex and Sussex, and sex education. Not to mention blocking adult content from adults.
The core of the law has good intentions (another brick to the road to Hell), but the legaleze is vague and inappropriate.
I've seen news stories locally (Baltimore) that claim this "requires libraries to allow pr0n surfing." Not so. Long before this law, most libraries have rules against such things, and still do. They also had a child internet area in view of a librarian's desk, and the adult area computers were off limits to ages 12 and under.
I think the children were being protected just fine by the libraries already. Maybe we should let them take care of their own business.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:5, Insightful)
How is "Don't remove this placard if under 18" any different from "Don't click here if under 18" ?? They're both the honor system. They can both be enforced by the watchful eye of a responsible adult, and they can both be defeated by the absence of such supervision.
Parents - Here's An Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents, if you don't want your kids to be exposed to materials on the internet you find objectionable, don't let them use the internet. Up until middle school, at the earliest, I don't see any reason why a child would NEED to use the internet. And by then they've probably seen/heard everything at their local public school.
And of course, parents who don't care what their children see are free to let them run wild.
I completely agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymity (Score:2, Insightful)
<em>The court also said screening methods suggested by the government, including requiring Web-page viewers to give a credit card number, would unfairly require adults to identify themselves before viewing constitutionally protected material such as medical sites offering sex advice. </em>
That last issue seems like it will be the downfall of any access-control system. How do you both prove age while maintaining anonymity? They're mutually exclusive things.
Re:Online porn (Score:2, Insightful)
And until that age they should be allowed to be children.
Making kids grow up too soon, and expecting them to be miniature adults when they're 5 or 6 is probably the most damaging thing you can do to them.
Re:Online porn (Score:1, Insightful)
Which is it?
Stupid americans (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I propose a new law (Score:1, Insightful)
Here's a better idea. When a law is overturned on constitutional grounds...
Re:Protecting the kids? (Score:2, Insightful)
We should answer questions that they have, but we definately shouldnt be forcing or expecting them to grow up by the age of 5 or 6.
There's the saying "you're right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". I submit that peoples right to act like assholes stops when my kids are around.
Re:Online porn (Score:2, Insightful)
T.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:2, Insightful)
Once he's old enough to surf, he will be allowed to do so only when one parent is present, and we will limit the amount and types of websites he can view. Right now, he is allowed to use a laptop which is not connected to the internet (or to our own network), but which has many preschool educational games installed on it. I doubt he's feeling the lack.
If we are responsible for raising our children, then we're responsible for what they read, what they watch, what they surf. We can't expect the government to babysit our kids for us (hell, we can't even expect the government to babysit incarcerated criminals for us sometimes!) - we gave birth to them, essentially, we created new life. That carries a pretty hefty responsibility with it. Suck it up and stop asking Uncle Sam (or Uncle Jean in my case) to raise your kids for you. jmho
Re:I completely agree (Score:3, Insightful)
And you happen to be in what country?
A. in the US, there is not 'draft'. Selective Service registration, yes, but no actual "Come down and take a physical" draft.
B. The Sel Service registration age is 18. Which also happens to be the age at which you can vote.
C. Running for public office is also generally allowed at age 18. OK...for President, you have to be 35. I don't think we're ready for a teenage pres yet.
D. Now...should the drinking age be lowered to 18? hmm...tough one. On one side, we have semiresponsible people. On the other side, we have drunken riots at many colleges across the country, and many late teens killed (or other victims) driving while drunk.
Tough call.
censorship doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
I do think that everybody should label their site fx. using icra [icra.org], if many sites did this, you could block all sites that had the "wrong" content and sites that didn't have the tag at all. It's no big deal to add it, you can add a meta tag to all your pages or tell your webserver to add it as a header line if you have thousands of pages you don't feel like updating manually.
There has been a lot of talk about this safe-for-children top-level domain which I also think is good, but why not use a tagging of the pages like the one I mentioned above? It takes less than 30 min. to "tag" your site.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk to any public school student and find out pretty quick how badly most teachers are neglecting their jobs.
You're correct.
Some of teachers do neglect to perform their duties with dedication we, the taxpaying public, expect of them.
<sarcasm>Given just how exorbitant the salaries are for teachers these days, I'm surprised that we have as many problems attracting competent teachers as we do.</saracasm>
Re:I completely agree (Score:1, Insightful)
Once there it was clear none of this mattered. The professors did not respect me simply because of my age. I did excellent in the courses but ultimately left because of the hostile attitude from everyone (i left with a 90% average). And because this was 1998 and I had a very well paying job lined up with a major dotcom.
Now 5 years later, I run my own development studio and employ 5 people full time. Yet because of ageism I have no degree. Luckily it turns out in this industry you dont need one. However what happens to the students like me who _do_ need degrees but drop out and end up working crap jobs for the rest of their life.
For example people who would have gone into a business degree or medicine at a young age.
Should age dictate where you are allowed to go in life or should the merits of what you know and your achievements matter more?
even now, every so often I'll walk into a meeting with a client (as most of my work is done internationally and online this is rare) and they'll completely change their attitude from very professional and respecting to very hostile and degrading strictly based on age. This is becoming a minority now but is still very much alive. Much like the early years after the school system was de-segregated.
Why is this outright discrimination tolerated.
Why do police give me a hard time every time i
pass a road check whereas colleages of mine 10 yrs older never get hassled (no i dont drive a flashy fast car or any other factors that could lead to a profile)
Why is it that I CANT DRINK IN THE US! I can sure as hell drink here.
If they're going to enforce these asenine laws. Why then are we required to pay taxes, go to war and mess with other bullshit. As a legal adult whose right is it to tell me what I can or cannot do. (DUI is a different matter and an 18 yr old can still be charged just as a 25 year old can). As a minor who is to tell my parents what I can or cannot do. Personally my parents wouldnt have minded me drinking at 17 if I had wanted to. ( I didnt drink then and dont drink often now ).
The biggest problem with bills like the one in the subject are that they make these materials (sex, beer, smoking) illicit, bad or otherwise just taboo.
The best marketing the liqor producers have is that its illicit. At an age where most teenagers are so overprotected by their parents that their rebelion is to go the complete opposite direction. Why then do we continue these ass backwards way of telling youths what to do.
The best way to get a teenager to do something is to tell him/her not to.
NO (Score:4, Insightful)
Define a 'porn' site.
Is it one with a dorm webcam? Maybe, depending on level of undress.
Is it one that may contain links to various other sites depicting nudity or other depravity?
Is it one with photos of nude and semi nude females? A slideshow of a recent beach trip might fall in here.
Is a picture of the female sex organs porn or non porn? Maybe both. Medical sites would fall where, exactly?
And then there's always the problem of who is defining the 'wrong content'. Bikinis are taboo in some countries. Do we fall to that level? Or is the break point the knee? Or thigh...who determines? Local standards? Podunk, Iowa, or San Francisco's? Ogden, Utah, or Greenwich Village?
Who is responsible for the content on their website? A blogger, who happens to have some user link a porn site or post a nude pic would then have to become a 'not safe' site.
In theory, a kid-safe TLD is a good idea. Try to put it into practice, though. The obvious porn sites are easy. That huge grey area in the middle is the problem.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you differentiate what is good for children to see or not? Huh? Would brittanyspears.com be banned? MTV with picts of her in skimpy clothes? Oh thats differnt thats pop culture.
Further more I let my teenage children use the Internet at the computer located smack dab in the middle of the family room. They want to go to the fringes of the net they can but I'll see it. At some point teenagers are going to be exposed to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll (sorry, couldn't resist); despite the medium changes from the 50s, 60s and 70s the same old concerns live.
The point isn't that Click here if over 18 is a joke isn't ment to be a prevention, its a legal samantic. The point is the parents need to parent and it just doesn't happen these days. I see it in the parents of my childrens friends, good people that "just don't have the time". Bullshit, you want to procreate? You take all the responsibilty that comes with it.
The real crime in all of this is PISS POOR parenting. It is people with comments and thoughts like yours that let parents off the hook of responsibility.
Oh and news flash, i don't care if your kids are 2 or 20, they have seen more "unacceptable" shit in the world of everyday life than you can imagine. The Internet is hardly the highest on my concern list.
Bullshit, CENSORSHIP DOESN'T WORK!!! Period! End of discussion. It never has and never will.
Re:I propose a new law (Score:2, Insightful)
Second: The founders didn't want to do it, but I think it might help: Any bill introduced should be reviewed by a court at the level of the appeals court before it can be enforced. Only checking on constitutional grounds, like it is now. That might help...
Third: No amendments to bills that are unrelated to the stated main purpose of the bill. Not directly related, but that would help too.
Is adult content really bad for kids? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, what's the big deal really ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well call me naive, or maybe European (which I am), but I'm still wondering what is so wrong with kids occasionaly seeing naked people.
Really. Is there any proof that children that have seen sexual scens turn out to be dangerous criminals, perverts, or worse Polticians ?
In my contry we still have adult magazins right next to the "standard" magazins in shops. Children are exposed to these as well as on TV, even in the lamest Ad for shampoo you have naked women and such. And any kid that that is looking for some "exposure" only has to wait for some weekends late night (23h-1am) movies.
I'm still pretty sure that all the fuss about p0rn comes from the lack of knowledge of it. It's like most things in life. If it's forbiden then you will damn well try to get it. How hard is it for parents to simply explain to their kid what sex is, why their are porno magazins, and hence why their are porno Sites on the net.
I mean, my parents did it, and although they are in my mind Uber parents, I'm sure a lot of others have done it too.
Murphy(c)
Oh and by the way I haven't turned out to be a child rapist or pervert.... yet.
Not for long. (Score:3, Insightful)
In as few as 30 years, the ruling class will be made up largely by people who grew up with computers - and there has never been an oppressed community (the net-savvy) whose distinguishing charachteristic (the internet) acted directly as such a powerful organizing tool.
Mark my words - within our lifetimes, it will become impossible for this kind of fascist bullshit to get pushed through government, and computer law will make sense. Maybe this is already happening.
In the meantime, parents who want "a fighting chance" should take note: drop the "I am not a computer person" attitude and learn what your kids already know about the internet. It actually takes less effort to do this than it takes to whine about your problems to the government. And your kids will be overjoyed at the chance to teach you something!
Re:Anonymity (Score:3, Insightful)
Another option would be something like the
Both solutions would probably be pretty easy to hack, but those are 2 possible ways surfing with as much anonymity as you have today.
Of course, option 1 would require cooperation from the porno vendors... which would never happen. And it still doesn't address the spam issue.
In my opinion, the very best option is to have the PC out in a family room or something. Don't let your kids have their own PC until they can buy one on their own. Don't allow them to surf when you aren't home, and lock down the PC to make sure they comply. And, when they are online, check on them every once in a while. It's good to see what your kids are up to, and there are sites much more dangerous then porno sites out there.
Re:Protecting the kids? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the parent goes OMIGHOD and snatches away the mouse, the kid gets the notion that here's something worth investigating, just because forbidding something induces automatic curiosity as to WHY it's forbidden.
Whereas if the parent says, "Oh yeah, some adults like to look at naked people" like it's no big deal, the kid is likely to shrug and look for something more interesting (to a kid).
Freedom of speech is a bitch. (Score:3, Insightful)
There have always been and shall always be those who abuse the system, who push the limits too far. But does that mean we have to give up our rights and freedoms because of these assholes? You woiuld surrender your freedoms that easily?
Re:I completely agree (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet it is not your age nearly as much as other factors.
Do you dress professionally for meetings? Do you treat your clients with respect? Do you have a reasonable haircut of a reasonable color, no obvious tatoos or piercings? Do you arrive sober, and speak educated English. Are you copping an attitude because you once did well in a DotCom and once made more money then the people you new deal with? Or do you consider all this just selling out, and that you should be accepted for who you are regardless of how you dress and/or act?
There's a lot you can to to cultivate a professional provided you care enough about your business to do so.
After reading your rant, you don't strike me as a reliable person that I'd want to do business with.
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:3, Insightful)
The kid is curious, and it doesn't harm anyone. What kind of message are you trying to send him?
Re:Blah blah rights blah, what? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are providing pornographic content on the Internet, then it is also your moral responsibility to take resonable steps to ensure that a minor cannot access that content. Of course you have to define "resonable"...
Aye, there's the rub. You cannot define reasonable. When I was 13 I was allowed to play DOOM but my friend was not allowed. My mom would flip out if she saw me looking at provocative pictures (not necisarily pr0n), but my dad wouldn't think twice about it. Coversations about sex (even like sex ed in school) same situation.
It is this disparity that prohibits any concept of "reasonable" to be established. The same that has brought me to the point where my kids (the oldest of whom is 5yo) enjoy watching me play Gothic so much that they beg me to play it sometimes as soon as I walk in the door from work (at which point I would refuse since I only play video games on the weekend).
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:2, Insightful)
However, if you insist that it become MY problem, then you have no room to compain when I smack your kid on the head to shut them the hell up when they're acting like little bastards in a restaurant and interrupting my meal. Do you have a problem with THAT too?
Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents! (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not what COPA was designed to prevent. Pornography of that nature is most certainly illegal already. No one in their right mind would approve of that kind of pornography. On the other hand, COPA was designed to give the government leeway to overly regulate legal pornography businesses by taking over a parent's responsibility. If you can't be responsible enough to watch over your children, then you shouldn't come and complain to the government because they didn't do your job.
Legislating morality is a dangerous precedent to set, and I think that decisions regarding legal pornography should be made by adults, and the government should stay out of parenting. Don't want your kids viewing pornography? Then either put the computer in a high-traffic area in the house or having some sort of monitoring. Or, more importantly, teach your kids the proper way to use the Internet. Of course, it's much easier these days to just let kids surf the Internet at will, and that's the parent's fault. I'll say it again: it's a parent's responsibility to look out for their kids.
Re:I completely agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Now - the allure of the forbidden is a major reason for underage drinking. That's just a basic fact, it's not really disputable. Here's some of the reasons legalization makes sense, while it doesn't make sense to legalize murder, just in case you really are too damn stupid to see the differences.
A) Drinking is a victimless crime. Yes, I know about drunk driving and all that. Doesn't matter - getting drunk does not involve causing harm to anyone.
B) There is a very small social stigma associated with drinking. The major force of law is NOT it's very existence, but rather the social pressure to obey a law. When a law isn't respected by society (drinking, underage smoking, mild drug use, jaywalking, certain types of white collar crime), it's much easier break it because of other pressures, like experimenting or greed or peer pressure. People absolutely drink and do drugs because it's illegal. They do it for the same reason they get tattoos and piercings and funky haircuts. It's an easy, mostly harmless way of rebelling when you're at an age when it's very important to do so.