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Censorship The Internet Your Rights Online

Pennsylvania Refuses to Disclose Banned Website List 418

Posted by michael from the librorum-prohibitorum dept.
koehn writes "In an interesting turn of events, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania has ordered all PA ISPs to block sites that have child porn. If that's not bad enough, they won't tell you which sites those are because - so the excuse goes - that could be construed as 'disseminating pornography.' So much for public review, huh?" See the previous story.
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Pennsylvania Refuses to Disclose Banned Website List More

Pennsylvania Refuses to Disclose Banned Website List

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  • Bad for Who? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ken@WearableTech ( 107340 ) <ken@kenwillia m s j r . com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:41AM (#5667228) Homepage Journal
    the Attorney General of Pennsylvania has ordered all PA ISPs to block sites that have child porn. If that's not bad enough...

    Waa... Hunh... I had to read this a few times to realize it's not supposed be a joke.

    Bad enough for who?

    • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Carlos Laviola ( 127699 )
      For everyone. ISPs are just carriers. They're not supposed to be filtering based on content. That's akin to the Attorney General ordering Fedex to block all packages that have $WHATEVER material, which is illegal.
      • Tis true, but on the other hand people can mistakenly surf to a domain name they think is good and end up at a horrible site. I think it's a little different than Fedex because Fedex has a one to one relationship. A sends B a package. Visitor C never sees that package.

        Little Timmy surfing around doesn't want to mistakenly see little Sarah on some illegal site.

        • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nick this ( 22998 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:55AM (#5667302) Journal
          Several things that bother me about it:

          1. It's a slippery slope. Once the goverment decides that its job is to censor web sites, where does it stop? All pornography? Terrorist sites? Legitimate news sites from "terrorist countries"? Legitimate news sites period? Bad precedent, in my opinion.

          2. This is a job that should be done at the end-user location. Want to surf safely? Don't surf on machines that don't have content filtering programs on them. Want your child to surf safely? Don't let him/her surf on machines that don't have content filtering programs on them.

          3. Lastly, what are we protecting people from? It's an evil world, and evil stuff exists out there. We can't ignore it. And hiding it doesn't make it go away. I'm not sure what this fundamentally accomplishes.

          • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Thomas M Hughes ( 463951 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @07:22AM (#5668068)
            I think you misunderstand the purpose of blocking access to child pornography. There are two reasons why child pornography is considered absolutely horrific by people:

            1) They think its gross that someone gets aroused looking at a child.

            2) Making child pornography requires a child to be put into a sexual situation, before they are of the age to know that such a thing could possibly be wrong.

            Now, legally and constitutionally, the government cannot play thought police. You're allowed to think of gross things all day, as long as you don't hurt anyone with them. So, if someone sits around jacking off to thoughts of children, its gross, but you can't stop it.

            However, if you start taking pictures of it, and forcing real children into that position, you are hurting someone (the child in question). Because of that, the production of child pornography CAN be deemed completely illegal, outlawed, and censored. Its a matter of stopping children from being sexually abused.

            But, simply stopping people from producing this pornography is not enough for most people. They fundamentally feel that anyone who would look at this stuff, even if they haven't produced it, is a sicko who deserves to be punished. Furthermore, they argue that by allowing existing child pornography to be obtained, even though it causes no further harm to the child, it encourages the phedophile to think about his problem even more, and ultimately, will result in more sexual child abuse. The link between viewing porn and increased chances of sexual abuse is not very well proven. Some studies say maybe. Some studies say no.

            Thus, the rationale isn't to stop people from things they shouldn't be looking at. Its two fold. First, they want to stop children from being used in this abusive manner for the photo shoots. Killing the market, kills the abuse. Second, they argue that viewing child pornography makes you more likely to commit sexual child abuse, and on those grounds they try to block it, for the good of the children.

            As a side note, the Supreme Court heard a case about the possibility of virtual child pornography, where you have a computer generated child being sexually depicted, without ever having a real child involved. I forget how the court ultimately ruled, but I believe they found the law to be overbroad, and struck it down.

            • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @12:24PM (#5668654)

              Furthermore, they argue that by allowing existing child pornography to be obtained, even though it causes no further harm to the child, it encourages the phedophile to think about his problem even more, and ultimately, will result in more sexual child abuse.

              I know you're just summarizing key points, but don't forget that those photos are of people who are still alive and/or have families. I think it could be easily argued that the act of distributing this stuff continues to victimize the survivor, even if no money changes hands, no other children are touched etc.

              But your sentiment seems to be that this whole thing is a savage witch hunt... which I agree with.

              If they really want to stop child pornography and child abuse, they should have a two-sided message. The other side being "if you have a problem..." But everyone seems to be more interested in projecting their hatred... It is socially encouraged to demand that pedophiles be dragged through the streets by their testicles, flayed to the bone, drawn, quartered then set on fire.

              (Pause for cheers from the peanut gallery)

              As it is now, the severe punishments and public shaming means that for a pedophile, it is in their best interest to beat or threaten a child into silence, or to kill them.

              (Pause for morbid silence)

              It's a sad and screwed up situation.

      • They're not supposed to be filtering based on content.


        Says who? A bunch of libertarians? Come on. The ISP is in the perfect position to filter content on a regional basis. Yes, this means state- or province-wide.

        If it is efficient to block child porn at the ISP level then so be it. I don't care if information wants to be free, that stuff SHOULD be censored, and the people who make it should never see the light of day again.

    • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rf0 ( 159958 )
      Bad for the kiddy fiddlers. So good for everyone else.

      Rus

      • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Com2Kid ( 142006 )
        • Bad for the kiddy fiddlers. So good for everyone else.


        You are ASSUMING it is just child pornography that is being blocked.

        How do you know? What if some site showing the current Governor of Pennsylvania's wife in a "compromising" position is also blocked?

    • Re:Bad for Who? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:34AM (#5667459)
      Who decides when a website contains "child porn"? Child porn is illegal under Federal law. The government enforces those laws, not ISPs. The courts interpret those laws, not ISPs. Now an ISP is required by law to enforce decisions made in secret by the government. And the government won't release the list of blocked sites -- so a webmaster has no idea if his website is considered "child porn" and no opportunity to defend it.

      If the AG knows of child porn sites he should shut them down directly, by law. If they aren't in PA he can send the URLs to the federal government. But nothing in the Constitution can be construed to permit prior restraint of expression that has not been deemed illegal.

      • How does the AG shut down foreign sites? Iraqi child porn sites are obviously in jeopardy, but beyond that I'm not sure the AG has much power...
        • He doesn't; he reports it to the FBI and they decide what to do from there (such as contact the host country and get the ISP shut down). Someone is providing bandwidth if the site is up; they can be ordered to take the site down. International enforcement of child porn laws does exist.

    • This is bad for everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:58AM (#5667554) Homepage Journal
      The AG hands out an unverifiable list to "major" ISPs and expects them blocked. How are non "mojor" ISPs supposed to know? They can't and that will be used against them. How do the "major" ISPs know that the site they block is not simply something that embarases the AG? They can't either. Why? Because looking at kiddie porn is a Federal Offense and you go to jail for having it stored on your computer's cahche directory. So you block the content, sight unseen because the State tells you to. That's real censorship and a clear violation of the first amendment protection of free press.

      Even if the program were honest and verifiable, it would still be a bad idea. This essentially closes off sites that alow user posts, such as Slashdot. All you have to do to kill Slashdot in Pensylvania now is persistenlty place kiddie porn links into your posts. But it is not honest and it is not verifiable so the state could just block Slashdot as it pleases. If people noticed and complained that they can't find Slashdot anymore, the State can claim it was an honest mistake. The damage would have been done as the people would have been kept from knowledge in a timely manner. Other sites that few no about can be blocked with impunity.

    • Bad enough for who?

      Ok, how about I start a list?

      (1) A "site" can have ten thousand webpages from hundreds of different people/companies. This is bad for these innocent people/companies that share the "site".
      (2) This is bad for the people who wish to access the perfectly valid and valuable mentioned above.
      (3) If you read the article you'd see that this Pennsylvania censorship law is going to impact people outside Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has no right to censor people outside the state from accessing mat

  • Penn seems to be the leader in regulating ISPs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here [freedomforum.org]
    But what about this? [lasvegassun.com]

    Oh BTW, Pajonet's Hot or Not News Site has been totally redone [pajonet.com]

  • Search strings (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:43AM (#5667242) Homepage
    I feel that basically yes this is a good idea to block access to certains types of sites. I would expect that the Attorney General has said not to make the list public for the very fact that it does advertise which sites kiddie fiddlers would like to visit. Basically instead of them having to search they get it delivered to them. This is a very very bad thing(TM). Also as the articles says the Attorney General's dept would also be breaking the law if the let this information out.

    On the other side just blocking things is just as bad. The only way to make sure the list is fair is to have a independant review board. If that is going to happen then it might not be so bad.

    Rus

    • Re:Search strings (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:10AM (#5667365)
      Indeed, but who chooses the member of this "independant" review board?

      And who watches *them?*

      Review boards almost always end up being just another branch of the government itself and are no substitute for public scrutiny.

      This is why *all* laws against the mere possession, or mere *viewing* of certain documents is always a bad idea and counter to *any* theory of democratic freedoms.

      We have these laws out of a combination of a cultural disgust at certain things, which is a *social* issue and ought to be dealt with on the social level, not the criminal, and the fact that it's easier to "catch" and prosecute "viewers" as opposed to the people actually producing and distributing such documents, who in the traditional view are the only ones actually breaking a law in the first place.

      Not to mention the simple historical fact that once a certain threshold has been crossed in banning certain documents that the principle has been set and the law of the slippery slope has *always* come in to force.

      Bear in mind that those furthest to the right in the fight against child pornography are now fighting to ban the dissemination of erotic materials that feature people who have reached the age of majority, i.e. are *adults*, but who "appear" as if they might be younger.

      And who decides what "looks" young, and what right do they have to remove the rights of an adult based on appearance?

      The slope leads ever downward. Crimes of possession and "viewing" are all counter liberty, and thus all evil.

      Please do not allow your own disgust at child pornography to lead you to the knee jerk conclusion that I'm supporting child pornography. Far from it. I'm merely *supporting* certain priciples of liberty.

      Go after the *child pornographers,* by all means, but do *not* deal with the problem that that might cause by simply, as is the modern wont, defining everyone as a child.

      Unless of course the *child* has done something morally repulsive enough to raise public ire. Then we'll decide that the child was "old enough to know better" and insist on trying them as an adult.

      The law is, as ever, schizophrenic.

      This unpopular point of view ( as opposed to a troll or a flamebait, a subtle difference not understood by many) is brought to you by:

      KFG

      • And who watches *them?*

        Reminds me of Milton's argument against censorship boards in his essay Areopagitica: basically anybody with the moral character to be worthy of sitting on such a board would find the duties too replusive to perform.
    • I feel that basically yes this is a good idea to block access to certains types of sites.

      Excellent; then add this to your hosts file:

      127.0.0.1 sitetoblockrepeatasnecessary

      I would expect that the Attorney General has said not to make the list public for the very fact that it does advertise which sites kiddie fiddlers would like to visit

      WTF is a kiddie fiddler?

      On the other side just blocking things is just as bad. The only way to make sure the list is fair is to have a independant review board.

      • Re:Search strings (Score:4, Funny)

        by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:16AM (#5667610) Homepage
        WTF is a kiddie fiddler?

        Traditionally violin strings are made out of sheeps intestines. Kiddie fiddlers are those evil violin players who snatch children in the night and use kiddie intestines to make their violin strings.

        You know those old Buggs Bunny cartoons where you'd hear really fast violin music when they ran around? Yep! That was a kiddie fiddler.

        -

    • Re:Search strings (Score:4, Insightful)

      by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:44AM (#5667494)
      You're missing the point. The viewing of child porn, while degrading and disgusting, is not directly what we're trying to stop here. The thing that endagers the kids is the *making* of child porn. Making the list public does nothing to help those making the porn, and would probably make it easier to find these people and shut them down (the whole penetrating glare of the public idea). It also has the additional benifet of preserving the whole "government transparency" thing us hippies are so crazy about.

    • child porn is ILLEGAL. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:49AM (#5667514)
      This is the most ass backward thing I have heard in at least the last hour or two. If the Attorney General is aware of child porn sites that are still running he should take steps to shut them down. They are illegal! To make a secret list of them and have ISPs block them is a totally unnecessary restraint on communication. To say that he can't make the list public because he would be distributing child porn is ludicrous -- if the people on the list are indeed breaking the law, then he is helping child pornographers escape getting caught. And if anyone on the list is NOT breaking the law, he is both slandering them to the ISPs, and restricting expression by prior restraint. It's the electronic age equivalent of the Star Chamber -- which, among other things, determined publications were seditious in secret hearings, then search, seize, and burn.
      • "...he should take steps to shut them down. They are illegal!"

        The sites the AG wants blocked are probably all hosted somewhere where he has no jurisdiction. Possibly even hosted somewhere where they aren't illegal under local law.

    • I agree wholeheartedly with you first paragraph. It would be stupid to disclose this list as it would be an advert for those that search for this stuff. I do hate censorship but I think there are exceptions. There are many things that the gov do not tell you. There are many things they keep secret. Most of those things are because to disclose them would let you see how corrupt the gov is. This is something for which I think there is a genuine case for secrecy.

      At the end of each link is a photo that i

  • Let me get this straight (Score:3, Interesting)

    by justin_speers ( 631757 ) <`ten.tsacmoc' `ta' `sreepsaj'> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:44AM (#5667248)
    So under this law, if someone hops on AOL and goes to a web site that Pennsylvania says should be blocked, is AOL liable?

    And does this apply to p2p apps as well, or IRC for that matter? If someone downloads child porn or anything considered illegal material by Pennsylvania, could their ISP face fines?

  • Get 'em (Score:3, Funny)

    by mnassri ( 149467 ) <shroud2k@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:44AM (#5667250)
    You'd think they could just publish the list on the net, so every s. kiddie could try to take it down with their mad skills...

    Alternately, just publish the list on /. - I bet the sites would never be back up.

    -Maher-

  • Maybe they don't *have* a list? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dspeyer ( 531333 ) <(dspeyer) (at) (wam.umd.edu)> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:45AM (#5667257) Homepage Journal
    I realize this is a hideously Orwellian (Heelerian?) Catch-22, but it could be pure incompitance. When the ruling first appeared, many here questioned how such a law might be enforced when surely any ISP discovering child porn should report it to police so the server can be taken down.

    It seems likely to me that they simply don't have a list, and they want to make it the ISP's problems. The best law enforcement agencies in the country can't stop kiddy-porn rings, so let's see if overworked sysadmins can! If it fails, at least we'll be able to pass the blame...

    I think ISPs should simply declare that, to the best of their knowledge, there is no kiddy porn on the web, and only block things if they get complaints (then report the complainant as having viewed kiddy-porn.)

  • why not shut em down? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jest3r ( 458429 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:46AM (#5667263)
    If all of these sites actually contain child porn why not focus all efforts on getting them shut down completely .. having a few ISP's block these websites accomplishes nothing ..
    • So here's how the game is played: someone notifies the authorities about a child porn site. Several days (weeks) go by before the claim is looked into. Several more days pass by until the site is eventually shut down.

      In the mean time, ISP's can act on their own accord by blocking access to known child porn sites. This is a good thing (TM).
    • B/C PA needs an open ended way to attack anyone they feel like attacking.

      in other words, yeah, exactly, if they had a target to pin the bulls-eye on, they would, so instead they blame the guys proiding access (can you say newsgroups?).

      Kiddie porn is bad. If the government know where it is, it should be THEIR job to stop the spread of it, not some ISP.

      What if the site is via a membership. Should every ISP join EVERY site that their members (who get only access to the Internet) join, so they can va

      • Re:why not shut em down? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sheddd ( 592499 ) <jmeadlock@@@perdidobeachresort...com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:22AM (#5667415)
        Kiddie porn is bad

        Define kiddie porn, please; beauty pageants for preteens give me a much ickier feeling than watching a 17 year old screw a guy. Who should be the judge of what's indecent? Or illegal?

        • beauty pageants for preteens give me a much ickier feeling

          Urgh, yes. Was watching a TV show about one the other day, and some adults were talking about "how beautiful some of these girls are", "how important it is to be beautiful", and were saying things like that "that one has such beautiful legs" and "what a nice body that one has" etc. It was kind of creepy and kind of sad. These girls were no older than 10 or 11, and were trying so hard to behave grown-up. The adults 'dressing up the girls in pretty d

  • CDT Calls Penn Blocking Law Unconstitutional (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:53AM (#5667293)
    The CDT report - entitled "The Pennsylvania ISP Liability Law: An Unconstitutional Prior Restraint and a Threat to the Stability of the Internet" - analyzes a 2002 Pennsylvania law that forces ISPs to block access to any web site deemed "child pornography" without notice to the site's publisher and without any opportunity to challenge the determination. ISPs are required to block the sites even if they do not host the content and have no relationship whatsoever with the publishers of the content. The Pennsylvania Attorney General has since gone even further, bypassing the law's inadequate court procedures to simply demand by letter that sites be blocked.

    CDT.org [cdt.org]

    More News

  • How often is this list updated? (Score:3, Informative)

    by joshlax ( 663983 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:54AM (#5667301)
    To quote the article:

    Fisher has so far instructed Internet providers with customers in the state to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world.

    First, I find it hard to believe that there are only 423 web sites that offer kiddie porn, based soley on the amount of spam I get advertizing it. And in what way is this list updated? Porn sites move around constantly, and use any number of tricks to fool browsers (fake.site.com@real.site.com tricks, IP addresses instead of host names, etc.) so I think this list must be changing every few minutes. Do they reall y have someone sitting and watching as the porn sites get a new IP address?

    I'm not saying anything for or against the block itself, I'm just saying this must be one hell of a headache to manange.

    • The number of sites on that list is actually less than 423. At least for the ISP I work for, they have to supply the URL and the IP address...and we block by IP.

      The unfortunate side effect is that blocking by IP permeates over the whole backbone, effectively shutting everyone out from our network and anyone else who uses us for transit...regardless if they live in PA or not.

      Also, once each request is made, that's it...we don't keep tabs on it...especially since they don't pay us for that kind of service.

  • OK, to explain why it's a bad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clambake ( 37702 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:55AM (#5667303) Homepage
    ...if you don't get to look at the list, how do you know it's not being abused? How do you know that they are all child porn sites, and not, for example, pro-choice advocate sites, or whatever the reviewer decides is against his personal beliefs?

    If I was in charge of the list, and I knew that it would never be seen by anyone but me and my cronies, then I've got a really big stick to wave around the heads of those people I don't agree with. Child porn is bad, but the potential to lose some bit of freedom is worse. Eventually those kids grow up and either adjust or they don't, but lost freedoms are usually gone forever and they affect everybody in the country. There is no bigger superpower than us that can come and bail us out if our govt becomes a totolitarian regime, so we have to defend our liberty at all cost while we have the chance.

  • feel-good laws! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by justin_speers ( 631757 ) <`ten.tsacmoc' `ta' `sreepsaj'> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:57AM (#5667314)
    Why do laws like this, which are completely impossible to force and redundant (possession of child porn is ALREADY illegal, why force ISPs to filter it?) manage to get passed?

    Because who the hell expects to get any votes after voting against a child-porn law?

    They only get away with stupid laws like this because most people don't look past the title, so we get things like "The Patriot Act"...

  • Umm... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So how exactly does the state tell the ISPs which sites to block without such 'disseminiation'?

  • Wha...? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Erik Fish ( 106896 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:01AM (#5667330) Journal
    Sounds like he's just passing the buck. Last time I checked it was the legal system's job to enforce laws -- not some private company that provides internet access. Not that this exactly qualifies as law enforcement since the sites are still out there -- they're just kinda-sorta-maybe blocked in PA (motto: "Yet Another Hillbilly State").

    Were all the internet child porn cases coming through his court cutting into his golf time? Did someone forget to give him the memo that would have clued him in to the fact that a lot of this shit is hosted by the russian mafia and isn't exactly a stationary target because (suprise!) even people on the internet hate kiddie porn?

  • Am I missing something? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by insecuritiez ( 606865 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:20AM (#5667405)
    Child porn is illegal everywhere I am aware of. Why block the websites when they can be taken down like they should be? That's like when your mother told you to clean your room and so you just shoved it all under the bed, didn't make your room clean and this wont make the internet better. A band-aid won't stop the bleeding.
  • if they don't tell you what sites are on it, how can they block them? Are they going to make everyone in the state use their DNS servers or something?

  • Doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:32AM (#5667450)
    If they fail to make the list open then some cracker will crack one of the covered ISP's and make the list public. Information wants to be free, and any information this widely distributed is bound to make it into the wild. Now I personally believe that hidden government is bad in general, but I put up with the CIA and NSA because they provide a service that is necessary and requires secrecy. Whether blocking sites alleged to contain kiddie porn is a compelling enough argument to put up with hidden government is debatable, but for me it is not.

  • Unconscionable law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr&telebody,com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:40AM (#5667477) Homepage Journal
    First, I am totally against child porn, totally. However Pennsylvania's action is completely hideous and could create more problems than it solves. Consider:

    • Blocking sites make it impossible for Pennsylvania enforcement officers to find child porn traders in their own state, pushing them farther underground!
    • Misuse of secret web censorship lists is well documented. It is possible to disclose information about where these sites are without making an open advertisement. Their argument is illogical.
    • Their action may be unconsitutional and certainly may be moot should a Freedom Of Information Act request be made by someone with the list published anywhere on the net
    • It is not possible for people to use the net to identify Pennsylvania's definition of child porn should the medium itself be censored.
    • There is no information about whether they are making efforts to identify whether underage models are actually being used.
    • I am thinking about the comics sold in every convenience store in Japan that have drawings which could be construed as child porn, and use of the term "Lolita" for young-looking models. I don't want to see these myself, however what happens to people who have gotten used to this kind of titillation and when the virtual source of imagery dries up will they not be led to look for actual child porn and exploitative venues in the real world?
    • Likewise would this cover sites which distribute dirty stories? There must be at least one nasty child porn fantasy in there. An easy way to ban these sites, just have some fundamentalist submit a bunch of illegal stories and sue them?
    • Many fibers undoubtedly run through Pennsylvania, are they going to be censoring all packets at all switches? This is a neat way to start killing the Internet, let's drop every spamming country off the net.. not.
    • There is no information (I presume) about how to find out if your site is banned in Pennsylvania, say what if a hacker started serving child porn from your 0wned box, and there is no information about how to reinstate an IP address.
    • Since the point is in fact removing dangerous and illegal information from the net, in particular the underlying reason should be to protect children from dangerous exploitation, it is in society's best interest to openly maintain a database of sites accused of child pornography, which states and municipalities may use to implement censorship should they so choose.
    • This database would set a huge precedent and it is scary to me, but it would at least remove the idea of secret blocking lists and enable accused sites to fight back. It is possible that many people may not even know their provider is hosting these things, and they can also bring pressure on the hosting companies to police themselves.
    • Unless a site has been wrongly accused of hosting child pornography, or is in fact a honeypot being used for a big sting operation by the government, it is really very unlikely that publically available sites are going to be hosting this stuff, at least in the U.S. (Of course there could indeed be a list of overseas sites which have not been taken down due to different local ordinances). Therefore, it is VERY likely that Pennsylvania's secret list is not only UNLAWFUL but also FALSE in that they do not in fact have a list of child pornography websites to ban. The real threat of secret lists of unlawfully censored information sources is anathema to our society. Either something is illegal in a given territory, or it is not. They can't get away with promoting vague notions of propriety with scare tactics and secrecy. It is not even likely that they will succeed at reducing the flow of child pornography in their state.
    • Pennsylvania's action is also a restraint on interstate commerce in that a secret list will enable law enforcement to search any digital medium including hd,cd,dvd, cable, and wireless networks, for potentially incriminating evidence without explaining exactly what is illegal. In particular it seems likely that web caches operated by universities and companies may unwittingly hold such information, and this action opens the doors to a broad range of abuses including but not limited to corruption of interstate telecommunications.
    • It's also a dumb idea. 'Nuff said.
    • I'd like to start out by saying that I also find this block disgusting and awful as well. But just to get things absolutely straight:

      Blocking sites make it impossible for Pennsylvania enforcement officers to find child porn traders in their own state, pushing them farther underground!

      Meh. There's a long tradition of trying to attack social behavior deemed unacceptable by direclty supressing the behavior. You'd have to change a *lot* of things if you didn't want to take this approach.

      Misuse of secre
    • Will filtering be based on A) IP address? B) specific URL? C) domain name?

      A) if the server is using name-based virtual hosting, legitimate web sites with different names hosted on the same IP will be blocked, and nobody will have the slightest idea why.

      B) AFAIK the only way an ISP can block access to a URL is by redirecting port 80 to a transparent proxy server, which will take the request from the client, check the URL, and if the URL is not on the list, make a query to the web server, and return the r

  • I just thought of something (OT) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:52AM (#5667525)
    The public seems to have something of a love-hate relationship with child porn. On one hand, child porn in the classical sense is bad. On the other hand, child porn in the form of Britney and Christina is just fine? I remember reading an article on Britney before the music industry pimped her out. Cute kid. I just say LeAnn Rimes the other day on a Blender cover, topless. Even country music has gotten into it. Sigh... Maybe just another reason to hate the RIAA?

    • Possession (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Merk ( 25521 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @06:41AM (#5668028) Homepage

      Or maybe the music industry is selling what people want but are ashamed to admit they want. Heck, it wouldn't be the first time [asismanagement.com].

      I think people over-react to child porn. Just look at the replies in this topic. Everybody seems to have to put "I don't like kiddie-porn but..." in every message. It's almost like "I'm not a communist but..." Does anybody really think that someone who doesn't include that disclaimer goes out and rapes kids?

      Exploitation of anybody, including children is bad. No question. I fully support going after anybody who makes, sells or buys child porn, but I'm not 100% sold on going after people who possess it. If it is simply found "in their possession", which could possibly even mean that it showed up in their browser cache. Should you be in trouble because you mistype a URL and get one of the many porn typo sites [whitehouse.com]?

      Maybe intentionally seeking out child porn online should be illegal, but the penalty should reflect the crime. Someone who doesn't buy, sell, or make kiddie porn hasn't hurt any kids. Now the the argument is of course that viewing child porn leads to other crimes against kids. But isn't that the kind of thing that Slashdotters hate when it comes to other things? Just because someone loves playing violent video games and perhaps even makes a level that reflects their school or office doesn't necessarily mean they're going to go shooting up their school or office. Perhaps the punishment for seeking out child porn should be giving up all their privacy in case they can't control their urges.

      This isn't intended to be flamebait. I'm sure there's many a libertarian who would agree with me that any action that doesn't actually hurt somebody else shouldn't be illegal. If you're going to moderate it down because you don't like what I'm saying, consider posting a reply instead. And it's not offtopic, the topic is child-porn and law, isn't it?

      • Re:Possession (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot.org@gmai l . c om> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @08:04AM (#5668114) Homepage Journal
        You're right, and here's why:

        By using a definition that says anything representing any sort of sexual act of anyone "underage" we get into situations that make this illegal (yes, I'm in Canada, and I'm technically going to break the old version of our laws):

        It is reccomended that anyone under the age of 18 use a condom during sex to prevent the possibility of conceiving a child. A condom is worn by simply removing it from its wrapper and then rolling it down one's penis.

        Because I mentioned sex, and a sexual act between minors I have broken the law. Does anyone else here think that's silly? Insane, perhaps?

        Don't believe me? Click here [allaboutsex.org].

        That's why child porn laws should be used to protect children from abusers, and not from information such as the above which they have a right to know. But an incensed public just doesn't seem to understand the difference, unfortunately, and only listens to police who clamour for such broad-scope laws that let *them* decide who gets raided and who doesn't, rather than you.

        Remember, you can tell someone's true support for free speech by seeing if they're willing to support those they detest who harm no-one. And I detest pedophiles, but if they aren't abusing children, it's hard for me to find a reason they need to go to jail for. Really hard. Mental hospital, sure, but jail...

        I think this site [misanthropic-bitch.com] puts it better than I ever could have.

        For those wondering what goes through the mind of a pedophile, read this [wanadoo.nl]. I'm surprised I even found it.

  • Interstate vs. Intrastate commerce? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rainmanjag ( 455094 ) <joshg@@@myrealbox...com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:01AM (#5667564) Homepage
    It seems like this law tries to regulate interstate commerce. If the child porn site is in Nevada (nothing against Nevada, mind you) and Pennsylvania wants to block its citizens from accessing it, the transaction has to occur across state lines. Interstate commerce is the domain of Congress, not Pennsylvania. It would seem to me the only Constitutionally valid law Pennsylvania could pass would bar Pennsylvania citizens from accessing Pennsylvania child porn.

    -jag
  • The problem with this law is that an ISP cannot search web content for a given filename or even URL and block it based on that. ISPs don't look at anything beyond IP Layer 3. All they care about is routing IP packets. What happens if a large over-seas company hosts thousands of customers with a single IP address (or pool of addresses in the case of a webserver farm)? All it would take is one bad apple at that hosting ISP and Penn. would force Penn. ISP's to block all other content from that hosting ISP'

  • why? (Score:2)

    by pyrote ( 151588 )
    If they know the addresses to all these domains, why don't they just forward all the domains to a goverment controlled server? last time I checked, the DNS servers call the shots.

    Kiddie porn is illegal so they can find just cause. I know it's drastic, but damn, individual ISP's shouldn't be forced to filter access. Most ISP's are struggling just to keep afloat as is. people in PA will just get the nation-wide Long distance and dialup to NY or California for that matter.
  • The article says,

    Lawyers for the civil liberties group said the technique undermines the Internet's global connectivity by regularly blocking Web surfers visiting harmless sites that may be located on the same server computers as sites with child pornography. They have compared the tactic to disrupting mail delivery to an entire apartment complex over one tenant's illegal actions.

    I've heard that analogy before, but it seems lacking. Few people would care much about a "disruption" of snail mail. It's

  • In Other News... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sunlighter ( 177996 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:33AM (#5667662)

    It's going to be interesting when they try to prosecute somebody.

    Prosecutor: This guy looked at child porn.

    Defendant: It isn't child porn!

    Judge: OK, let's show the jury this alleged porn.

    Prosecutor: No, we can't do that! It's illegal for the jurors to look at child porn!

    Judge: Well, then let me look at it.

    Prosecutor: But, Your Honor, it's illegal for you to look at child porn, too!

    Judge: Well, dammit, what if it's not porn?

    Prosecutor: Well, then you could look at it. But you realize that if you deem it porn, we can charge you with having viewed it.

    Judge: Well, then, I don't want to risk it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you're just going to have to take his word for it.

    [Jury deliberates.]

    Jury: Not guilty due to lack of evidence.

  • Exactly the same thing happening in Australia (Score:3, Informative)

    by lpontiac ( 173839 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:59AM (#5667729)

    Electronic Frontiers Australia have been trying to get a list of sites from the authorities over here. While there isn't an all-encompassing list of sites that ISPs must block, there is a list of sites that have been reported to the authorities. If these sites are deemed sufficiently offensive by the same governmental body that issues classifications for movies, and the site falls under Australian jurisdiction, it will be issued a takedown notice.

    So far the government has managed to weasel it's way out of complying with EFA's Freedom of Information requests, due to exemptions in the law. Whether the exemptions should protect the government in this case isn't an open and shut case though - in fact, the government is worried enough that they're currently pushing legislation that would explicitly put such information outside of the scope of the FOI Act.

    The problem with keeping this information from the public is that there is no ability to properly review the process. Many in Australia are of the opinion that our content regulation regime is a farce.

    More information at EFA [efa.org.au]

  • How the hell are ISPs supposed to be able .... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @04:20AM (#5667769) Homepage

    How the hell are ISPs supposed to be able to implement and deploy this blocking according to the official list if they are not given a copy of the list? And doesn't that law at least claim it applies to any ISP, even out of state, as long as it serves customers in Pennsylvania ... at least for the Pennsylvania customers? I'd like to know if the list consists of IP addresses, domain names, or complete URLs (or some mix of these).

    If the list has IP addresses only, then it would be theoretically possible to deploy this in a router access list. But many routers don't scale well with large lists because of sequential implementation. And what if the web site in question changes IP address periodically? Does the IP address list get updated equally as often?

    If the list has domain names, perhaps those can be remapped to IP addresses regularly, and put in the access list.

    In either case, using IP addresses has "collateral damage" effects on other web sites sharing the same server, and maybe even other services if not deployed to specific ports (e.g. other connections like SMTP won't work). I'm sure that Mike Fisher, who is so full of himself that he tries to make people think he is the only attorney general around by registering attorneygeneral.com and attorneygeneral.gov, won't care (using the same theory spam fighters use that if the ISP hosts bad customers, then everyone should suffer until the ISP stops hosting them or goes out of business).

    Or perhaps the list consists of URLs, including path names to specific site areas or user pages. The problem is most routers can't deal with that at all. You need a web proxy. That means ISPs now have to pay out more money to run web proxies, with all their associated problems, such as DNS lookup failures for users accessing web sites in different DNS realms (e.g. DNS name spaces NOT rooted at the normal ICANN root servers) or with add-on TLDs (e.g. pseudo-realms that take normal TLDs and combine with special TLDs like ... uh ... the ".xxx" and ".sex" TLDs). And what about accessing HTTPS sites via the proxy? The certificates won't match up unless the browser is configured to "trust" the proxy (e.g. accept the proxy's certificate for that half the end-to-end path, or just connect to the proxy unencrypted and ask for an HTTPS URL). If the ISPs don't filter on HTTPS, then the porn sites that are intended to be blocked can just make HTTPS work. OTOH, if the ISPs force proxying HTTPS, that becomes a major privacy violation.

    So one way or the other, porn sites can evade the blocking. If blocked by IP address, they just move around ... maybe as often as every 5 minutes with very dynamic DNS or other very highly distributed methods. And if blocked by URL, they can use HTTPS to bypass proxies or force the ISPs to invade secure web privacy. And if blocked by domain name in the DNS server (using local authoritative zones) users can get around that by not using the ISP DNS servers, running their own DNS servers, or the porn site can register more domain names (they're cheap for porn operators).

    And with tens of thousands of open proxies around the world (check today's load of spam for more addresses), there's going to be plenty of ways for perverts to get their fix once they learn these methods. Is the PA AG going to track all the open proxies out there, too?

    But in either of these cases, there isn't much the ISP can do without the list. And I didn't see anything in the text of the law that says the list has to be held in strict confidence by the ISP (as if that would apply to an out of state ISP anyway).

  • they are using facilities in the public domain. although, IANAL, and don't pretend to be one, this would be similar to using the phone lines to organize criminal activity. or, better, it is similar to radio or television broadcast frequencies.

    if an isp laid (no pun intended) its own lines, and ran its own vpn or whatever, and had its own backbone, etc., than the issue is different. but, unless i am wrong, and that possibility does exist, most isp's are leasing lines and connect over a public backbone

  • PA ISPs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @04:36AM (#5667799) Homepage
    Does this law affect only those ISPs which are based in Pennsylvania, or ISPs that operate in Pennsylvania, or that have a Point Of Presence in Pennsylvania?

    What about a national DSL ISP that doesn't have a POP in Pennsylvania, but instead backhauls all their Pennsylvania customers over the phone company's ATM cloud to a POP in a neighboring state? It could be argued that the customer is not technically connected to the Internet in Pennsylvania.

    In order to block specific URLs (rather than IP addresses), PA ISPs would be required to redirect port 80 through a transparent proxy server. This can potentially cause problems (although it's not a problem for most people). If the law does not apply to ISPs that are not based in Pennsylvania, could non-local ISPs to advertise that they don't redirect, block or monitor traffic, possibly giving them a competitive advantage over local PA ISPs?

    Of course I'm all for getting rid of child porn, but this doesn't sound like the way to do it.
    • I'm certainly not against blocking child pornography; but I still disagree that anything for public ISP users should be blocked by an ISP unless it is hostile traffic such as malicious code/viruses, etc. And I'm very offended that they will make a list of sites to ban and not give the owners of any of those sites any chance to make sure they aren't on that list because of a 'keyword' or some other mistake. And in the case of cable and DSL providers I guess they'll have to ban a significant majority of the
  • Who exactly maintains the list? Can a site be removed from the list if it stops hosting the objectionable content? How would the PA Attorney General's office be able to check the site to verify this, if every ISP in the state blocks access to it?

  • Reminds me of the "Index librorum prohibitorum" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @11:02AM (#5668397) Homepage
    This is far from an original idea. The Pope [newadvent.org] and Roman Inquisition [rice.edu] did the same thing back in the 1700's and 1800's. The Church published the "Index librorum prohibitorum" [newadvent.org] or "List of Prohibited Books".

    Once the list got out, nearly every book on it became a best seller and eventually the list itself was put on the "Index librorum prohibitorum" [newadvent.org]. So the Catholics arrived at the same point. The Catholics maintained a secret list of prohibited books but wouldn't disclose what was on the list for fear of promoting that which was prohibited.

    Either this guy knows his history or it's a clear case of "There is nothing new under the Sun." I wonder if he also knows that in 1966 the Index was abolished. I suspect the list was abolished because the Catholics could no longer keep up with the volume of books being released and they had probably had their fill of p0rn too. So, if history does repeat itself, this list will fade away too. I just hope he doesn't start making claims that "heavy bodies fall faster than lighter bodies."

    No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! [cam.ac.uk]

  • And they thought I was paranoid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GiMP ( 10923 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @12:48PM (#5668731)
    I live in Pennsylvania and I've been using an international proxy server for a while because I don't trust either my state or my federal government.

    Often, but not always, I use proxy servers to mask my location and avoid the possible censorship; especially while looking for information regarding the Iraq invasion. Aljezerra for one has blocked the USA at times from fully accessing their site. I would not doubt if my ISP or government has been censoring or monitoring the activities of their customers/citizens.

    Don't trust anyone.

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