Appeals Court Rejects Child Online Protection Act, Again

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.

What a relief.

I was afraid they might set up some sort of recreational club under this law, a COPA-cabana if you will.

Way to Go Absentee Parents!

Finally, a decision. Now will parents stop pushing legislation and start monitoring their children's online activities? No, they'll just push another bill. But at least we have a precedent, again... Wait, what was the point of a precedent? Apparently, parents haven't caught on yet.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

The parents' "fighting chance" should be fought by the parents, not the government. Legislating child-rearing is yet another cop-out from a generation of parents that refuse to take responsibility for their children. If you are disturbed enough by the content to be found online, and you haven't raised your children well enough to trust their judgment around such content, then you need to be responsible and watch your kids. What's so hard about that?

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.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

"If you go into a magazine store, it's not like they have Hustler out there along with everything else - instead, magazines like that are usually obscured by placards above which you can see the title, if that's what you're looking for. I think a mechanism similar to that is what is needed online - something of a barrier to child access, but doesn't require specific identification of the viewer (to protect privacy). It's not a simple issue, to be sure. There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to enact such barriers ("Click here if over 18" is a joke). "

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.

I completely agree

Personally I think a lot of legislation forced down on children is entirely unfair, especially considering they have no vote or say in it. LIke I still thinks it's rediculous to have a drinking age of 21 but a smoking age of 18. I think that if kids are old enough to have an M16 tossed into their hands and told to go die for their country, they are old enough to have a couple of beers. Sexism is heavily frowned upon, and so is racism, why not ageism? Because all the policy makers are old and have forgotten what it's like to be young. It made me so angry when I was 18 and I signed up for a 20K loan to cover my first year of college. It made me angry I was old enough to put myself 20 thousand dollars in debt, but not old enough to drink certain kinds of beverages.

Re:I completely agree

The thing that pisses me off the most is that we'll draft people who can't vote. That's just fucked up. And you can vote, but not drink. In my mind, there shouldn't be any age limits on anything that are greater than the age of majority - it just doesn't make any logical sense. Especially since the only things I can think of are alcohol and running for public office, neither or which are nearly as important or as life-changing as all the other things you can do at 18.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

Something has to be done to give parents a fighting chance

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!

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:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

Sounds like we need some SPAM laws instead, then. Seriously...how likely is it that johnny is going to get a sexual image on the internet (likely http) unless he is explicityly looking for it?

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!

It's going to be tough. You gotta think back to your childhood. Back then all we had was cable TV and the "Playboy Channel." Granted it was only softcore porn, but it was the unspoken goal of all 13 years old boys to sneak a peek at the verboten channel, even if it was scrambled. (You had to hope for scenes with a heavy white background in order for it to come out straight.)

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.

WOW

I'm surprised the moral majority didn't win out and make this a reality. Especially considering how they tightened the noose around tv and radio.

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.

You're soaking in it!

Some good stuff that could be filtered based on adult content:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=cf rm&s=50009562 [infopop.net] - Ars' Soapbox and Velvet Room forums

http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org] - Many texts not suitable for children.

http://sexuality.about.com/mbody.htm [about.com] - The first place many people find when looking for non-porn sex information

and

http://www.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] - You're soaking in it!

law not refined enough

It appears that this law tries to cover too much ground, and does not define itself well enough. Rather then blanketing all of the "minor" population, some scale would be more appropriate. But there lies the problem, as who should determine what is appropriate for a ten year old, or for a five year old, etc. It's a good idea, but unfortunately, the current properties of the law do restrict First Amendment rights.

1st Amendment

Wair a minute... I thought the First Amendment was repealled with the Patriot Act and the DCMA. How does this ruling make a difference, then?

Free speech

Free speech is almost as idealistic and hard to obtain in real world situations as communism!

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!

They'll just try again....

... using community standards to determine what could be harmful to minors was not overly broad and thus not unconstitutional ...

What?? shouldn't that read: ... using community standards to determine what could be harmful to minors was overly broad and thus unconstitutional ... ?!? I know people are becomming terrible parents these days, but I don't think the government should try to play dad here. Parents need to be responsible and filter things that they don't want their kids to see.

I think a lot of legislators realize that they can pass some really crazy laws regaurding children because minors have almost no rights to begin with.

Sometimes the system works...

It's refreshing to see that the system, as inefficient as it may be, occasionally works.

If you find yourself feeling relieved at this decision, I strongly suggest that you consider making a donation to the EFF [eff.org], EPIC [guidestar.org] or ACLU [aclu.org]. For without the efforts of these fine organizations, this law might have been enacted, and the whole of the Internet legislated to the morality of the most conservative town in America.

Let's not just say thank you for the win, let's SHOW our thanks, by breaking out the Benjamins.

I fought the law and...

The law, signed by President Clinton and endorsed by President Bush, has never been enforced.

Ah, I love basking in the irony of unforced laws.

Meta tag

Why not inforce a rule asking people providing adult material to have a meta tag specifying this exactly, or send it some way or another, so that censorship programs can read this and disallow it for children, I think a kid wanting to see adult material will know his way through clicking buttons telling he is over 18 years old.

Khalid

Re:Meta tag

Because then it will be up to the author of the Web page to decide what constitutes "adult material," and if he guesses wrong, he goes to prison.

In some cases, it's obvious: porn site operators and the proprietors of sites like rotten.com would be idiots if they didn't use the tags. But there's a huge gray area. Is my personal home page "adult" because it contains a few four-letter words? I don't think so -- but some prosecutor, somewhere, might, and then I've got big problems. What about medical sites which, by their nature, include detailed discussions of human anatomy?

I wouldn't object at all to the creation of a standard (I'd rather have it done by the W3C or some other private entity than the government, but whatever) for "opt-in" kid-safe sites: a clearly published set of rules that says, "If your site does not contain any of the following [naked people / dirty words / etc.] then you are authorized to use this tag." Then the more extreme censorware could look for this tag.

I would still object to public libraries and the like being required to block stuff that doesn't contain the tag, for all kinds of reasons, but it would be a start.

Complexities inherent in this issue

Some people will define "protecting" children by different means. The Christian Right around here would deny children access to everything they don't agree with, cinluding evolutionary textbooks since they might "corrupt" their kids. Other people will take their 7-year-olds to go see Robocop or the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the hell of it. Trying to protect children requires good parenting first and foremost, not just overly protective laws. Public schools are trickiest of all since so many ready-to-litigate families have different concerns for their kids. I think the easiest solution would be to either have all of the computers monitored by a faculty member. Maybe they could also tell the kids well in advance that their activities will be monitored with justification neccessary for visiting sites deemed "questionable". Granted, that system could be abused and not all kids need protection, but for Johnny trying to e-mail the president and instead visiting a .com instead of a .gov (whitehouse.com is a notorious porn site), some measure of protection should be in place.

I propose a new law

How about this one.

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?

Great news..

It's bad enough I buy booze for underage kids, I wouldn't want to be buying them pr0n too!

Good.

I'm sick of laws trying to be passed to make up for bad parenting. It is not the government's responsibility to raise your children, people.

Online porn

One reason that I would think twice about letting my kids (if I had them) use the net would be for the amount of accessible porn, and the like that is so freely, and easily available. Over a certain age (15 maybe, maybe more) then anything goes, but, as it stands, I can click on a page within a presumably benign google search, and be presented with something that isn't. Allowing sites to show 'information inappropriate for minors' to minors is like selling kids top shelf mags, or allowing them in to the movies see uk cert 18 movies.
I'm completely against censorship to those of us who have arrived at adulthood, but saying that kids should be allowed to view adult material because of 'free speech' is wrong.

T.

Protecting the kids?

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.

Libraries Get Temporary Relief

This law allowed the government to withhold funds from any library not applying the appropriate filtering software, or having ineffective filtering software. All filtering software is incomplete meaning you could "prove" arbitrarily that any library or group of libraries is unworthy of Fed funds due to ineffective Web filtering software.

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.

Parents - Here's An Idea

I've been arguing with myself back and forth, and finally have settled on the more libertarian side of my internal dispute.

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 personally don't need this law...

If my kids want/need to be on the internet they go to our central computer in our dining room which is in full view of most of the house. The computers in my kids rooms while networked together for games do not have internet access.

It would have been nice for this to pass for the loser parents that don't know or care what their kids are getting into.

Censorship? I don't think so. For crying out loud you need a license to own a dog but any idiot can have a child.

Stupid americans

What makes people think a law like this will help to protect their children from pr0n on the internet. Even if a law is enacted within the united states, there is no way of them forcing this law on sites situated outside their borders. It would be completely useless

What's wrong with .sex, .adult, or .porn?

It seems that in the states, most of the top-level domains are here. What if we gave each registrar rights to a porn-style top-level domain, and enforced that adult sites be there. That way, it is nothing more than an inconvenience to them, it's easy for us admins to block the top-level domains, and no free speech violated. Everyone's happy. Anyone got a problem with that, besides the content filtering cmopanies?

Are they raising them or not?

Seems like many people just don't want to face the fact that there is violence and nudity in the world. They ignore it in while we go to war, they ignore it on the streets and they try to simply not deal with it anywhere they encounter it. It would be much better if people faced the fact that most of the world is not like the Mall. If kids were educated about what goes on and the consequences of these things instead of insulated and kept ignorant, maybe they wouldn't have such devastating consequences. Maybe advertising that plays to our ignorance wouldn't work as well. Maybe people would realize that "Bombing Evil" is overly-simplistic and have some understanding that it could have more consequences than a football game.

...this means...

That i and many others can fire the babysitter and use the internet instead? GREAT!!!

How Do laws matter?

People are interested in breaking ot circumventing laws.the stricter the laws the more they are likely to be broken.

U cant just sit on the back of the kid all the time to see to it that he doesnt see porn.the best the parents can do is to put up the comp. in a not so private place(well may me they are afraid of getting caught watching porn).

all these laws are useless. its upto the parents to protect their own children. if its not porn sites, some other thing comes up.
you cant have laws for every thing. their are better things to be done

censorship doesn't work

its only good parenting that does. Teach your kids to know what's right and wrong, and letting them make decisions from there. Yes there are many sites on the net I wouldn't deem appropiate for kids, but those kids should know better too. These are not pre-schoolers and kindergardeners, these are kids who should already know what goes on in the world, and how to used the back button on the browser. If they're curious..ok, what harm is it going to do them in reality?..it might bring about questions that are awkward for the adults to answer, but this is an opportunity for the parents to give their moral views. If they've been taught right, they won't be warped for life... children are not innocent sponges that soak up and become whatever they see, they can think and make value decisions on their own, and at the ages at which you're most worried about them on the net, its going to be the values taught by parents that win out in their minds over everyone else's.. Locking children into little protective worlds will only create a generation of jaded adults...oh wait

Good.

You can make all the rules you want but it won't help much. It won't make the internet more safe. The internet is a poor substitute for a babysitter.
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.

NO

How many times does it have to be said...a 'safe' TLD cannot work.

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? /. fits the bill here. goatse for one is often linked from here.
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.

Remember old National Geographics at the library?

All this talk about this internet pr0n surfing by kids, kind of reminds me when we used to hit up the library and check out old issues of Nat. Geographic to see some b00b. Same concept.

Is adult content really bad for kids?

Are there any studies that demonstrate that occasionally stumbling on adult content can damage a child? It seems far-fetched to me.