Pennsylvania Child Porn Act Overturned 337
Ghoser777 writes "According to MSNBC, a Pennsylvanian law that required ISPs to filter/block websites containing child porn has been overturned by a federal judge. Child porn is still illegal under U.S. federal law, but the judge found that 'there is an abundance of evidence that implementation of the Act has resulted in massive suppression of speech protected by the First Amendment.'"
protect yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:protect yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:protect yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
A (probably slightly flawed) analogy would be tracking devices in cars. The vast majority of the public would be heavily oppossed to any form of continous government or police monitoring of their whereabouts whilst driving. People don't want to be penalised for what they see as "small" violations of the law (minor speeding and the like).
The same with the internet - the vast majority of people don't want their usage to be tracked, because they don't wan't to be penalised for what they see as "small" violations of the law (copyright theft via P2P, those under 18 viewing pornography, etc.)
However, once your car's been stolent, you'd probably really want a vehicle tracking device so you could get your car back. The same with the internet - once you've been hit with a large spam attack / DDoS etc. you'd probably want to find out who carried it out, via logs. Home users with little technical experience would expect their ISP to help, certainly with spam.
Re:protect yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
You're correct in that this is the attitude that most users have - a sort of sophomoric stay out of my business mom and dad!.. but by the way can I borrow a few bucks and the car? Major ISPs like AOL are currently nailing this attitude with ads describing how they will protect your children for you and monitor your email for you.
That's all well and good, but many of us do just want a reliable connection and are willing to sacrafice some of these protective luxuries for the sake of autonomy. I can pr
"small violations" - no (Score:4, Insightful)
The ISP does NOT need to know what I'm accessing, the government does NOT need to know where I'm driving.. or where I had lunch yesterday.
It has nothing to do with 'getting away' with "little things", as you put it. It has to do with tracking citizens doing legal activities, and a violation of the rights guaranteed to me by the 4th amendment...
That being said, I I'm really doing something wrong, then a court order is all that is needed to track me for the sake of collecting evidence an active case, which I DO support.. But only then, not 'just because'.. or for a 'crime sweep' sort of concept.
And do address your last statement, no I wouldn't want my next car to be tracked by the state because it was stolen and trashed.. Perhaps, if *I* am the *only* one that can track it, and no one else can, i might consider it.. My car, my business..
Same goes for the ISP, they don't need to know content of the emails.. Monitoring bandwidth usage is acceptable as its part of good network management, but it stops there and does not go into tracking of content.. nope.. no sir.
As a side note what liberties our fore-fathers faught and died for that you willingly trade in for a bit of percieved 'safety', you dont desrve to have in the first place..
Re:protect yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
The link was supposed to inform slashdot guys that run little ISP's
unforutnately, thereare nomore small ISP's left anymore, all the little guys are either dead or they sold out.
Re:protect yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally, to achieve common-carrier status you had to subject yourself to the regulatory whims of the government. This included specific items such as level-of-service standards with stiff penalties for non-compliance. Those of you old enough to remember the old AT&T (Ma Bell) will remember that, while Ma Bell owned everything, they did have standards laid down by the Feds and they had to live by them. However, these things cost money, and is why companies like, say, Comcast would like to be considered common carriers (to avoid any liability issues) and yet not be considered common carriers (so as not to be subject to regulation.)
There's also that business about "store and forward". As long as the communication made is immediate (the other guy answers the phone) they can't be held liable, but as soon as you use a voice mail system (i.e., store and forward) things get a bit sticky regarding liability. And all Web sites and email systems do is store and forward information.
So don't assume that it can't happen here just because it hasn't yet. In our anti-terrorist-happy society, ISPs and phone companies (the distinction is becoming somewhat irrelevant
Re:protect yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
Because people who want to censor everything they find objectionable should be censoring themselves, not everyone else. Why not a
Re:protect yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:protect yourself (Score:2)
Czech it out!
Re:protect yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
1.)
2.)
3.) Porn sites on non-XXX domains are either more harshly regulated or forcefully eliminated. People see them as deceptive or uncooperative to a system set up for their benefit.
4.) Non-porn (by their owner's discretion), but objectionable sites start to fall into the category of No. 3. Sites with possibly legitimate no
Re:protect yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, by using the extreme examples of the category to implicate the whole class, it's easy to convince people to censor these "content ghetto
Ehhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
What would have been OK? (Score:2)
More would agree with it if the RIAA hadn't blown all its goodwill suing the wrong people and being mean in general. You don't get a second chance when you're a giant bitch on top of being wrong on your first go.
How would you have liked to see the RIAA police their content? I agree they're a bunch of anachronistic assholes, but to me it seems their biggest screwup was not doing the research to realize (if they could somehow do so) that one of the people they sued was a kid. Other than that, it seems lik
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
With drugs, arresting pot smokers will do little damage to drug dealers. Half of all college students would be in trouble. Instead, they crack down on the dealers. By intercepting one truckload of marijuana, the government can prevent the distribution of marijuana to thousands of people.
Unfortunately, stoping child porn and digital copyright infringement is not as easy. One can smuggle thousands of dollars of bootleg cds or child pornography without putting them in condoms and swallowing them to get them past the border. It can simply be sent with a filesharing program or a website or one of a thousand other ways of sending a file. As with pot, half of all college kids (more like 80%) could be in trouble for copyright infringement, so stopping them is pointless. They need to work from the top down. They can't stop child pornography or media bootlegging in foreign countries, nor can they prevent the illegal material from entering the united states.
The best they can do is filter ISPs or monitor individuals who visit fake sites. Setting up fake sites wouldn't work well because people probably have a source they trust for their child porn. While the actions taken were ineffective, I feel that they were a step in the right direction. Perhaps if/when there is an overhaul of internet protocols, monitoring illegal activities may be easier for the government.
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Setting up fake sites would be illegal. The only way to stop child porn is to stop its production and I don't know how you go about doing that with censorship. Censorship only increases demand.
The alternative is to copy japan and let them watch whatever fake porn and arrest the people who own or create real childporn. The whole childporn debate should be about protecting children and not censorship.
The way to protect children is to prevent children from being exploited in the first place, censorship of childporn sites won't make a difference because the site already exists. What makes a difference is shutting the site down and finding out where the owner got their pictures and if they refuse to talk then you put them in prison.
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no entrapment, because the feds aren't encouraging a crime that would not otherwise have taken place. The cops are making a situation available, but they aren't coercing anyone into the deal. It's perfectly legal for a cop to stand on a street corner "looking like" a drug dealer, and he can bust anyone who attempts to buy drugs from him. Likewise, it's perfectly legal for the law to set up a site that "looks like" a child porn site, and bust anyone who attempts to sign up.
It's called a sting operation, and it's totally legal. IMO, this is where the majority of child protection tax dollars should be going. Not to legislation that gives states the right to set up secret "website blacklists" that ISPs are required to obey.
Re:Ehhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say what they could do at this point is monitor anyone that did sign up and bust them later.
Maybe youve been watching too much Law and Order...
Wrongo, Mary Lou... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrongo, Mary Lou... (Score:2)
Re:Wrongo, Mary Lou... (Score:2)
And if you're wondering how this would protect American children, the answer is it won't--at least not much. I suppose every American pedophile who's arrested is less likely to molest children in the future, but that's
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2, Informative)
If you go searching for a child porn site, find one, and then sign up I am not sure how that is entrapment. Now if you went searching for legit porn, found was appeared to be a legal site, signed up and it had a section with child porn that you clicked on whether inadv
The sad source (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, but here's the rub:
Adults aren't really involved in creating the child porn now.
The VAST, VAST majority of child porn is now created by children, for children. Webcams are ubiquitous. Every twelve year old sending her boyfriend nudie pics or videochatting with him is creating child porn.
When you consider that the age lmit for "child" in the case of pornography is 18, that body of work is *staggering.*
Those pictures get out. Kids break up, they send them out as revenge, they forget to delete them when their parents sell the computer... whatever.
The whole question of how to stop child porn production is now *completely irrelevant.* There's no guy at the photo-developing booth catching it before it's made anymore.
Moreover, the "kids" who are taking naked picutres of themselves and sex partners probably keep those pictures. When you're 18 you're going to delete the photos of your first lay? I don't THINK SO.
The law and the mindset we currently have regarding this material is outdated. There's no way to stop the supply when the supply is the children themselves. We need new laws that make it illegal to pay a child to be in pornography, to force a child, whatever... but that recognize there are just too many pictures of 16-year old girls and too much demand to control it.
The most important thing to remember here is that it's not unreasonable for a man to be aroused by pictures of a 17-year old woman. A woman's breasts and hips are fully developed at that age... there's no magic switch that goes off at 18.
As long as 17-year old girls take pictures of themselves, 30-year old men will traffic in those pictures. That's not a reasonable definition of pedophilia.
Re:The sad source (Score:2)
Re:The sad source (Score:2)
In this country it's perfectly legal to have sex with a 16 year old - they are considered adult at that age (on the other hand 16 year old boys have been put on trial as paedophiles for having sex with their 15 year old girlfriends... the law is just as crappy over here).
So if I produced a site showing 16 years olds in various, erm... 'poses', then it would be perfectly legal for me to do so.
If someone on the US then viewed this site they would then
True. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, so true. Also, insightful. Child porn laws are supposed to protect kids by creating penalties for those who abuse them, or would abuse them, or think about abusing them, or something like that. I'm not sure. But things have changed since the seventies. Image and video replication is infinitely easier (digital); production is trivial---fifteen-dollar webcam at Wal-Mart instead of a basement photo lab.
These 'wonderland' creeps that they found last year (was it last year?) that were involved with white slavery and such, that's what these laws are meant to prosecute. Not some guy searching for 'lolita' on eMule.
There needs to be some division, some distinction, between porn created by evil, abusive adults, and porn created by bored teenagers under no compulsion by anyone. Because there really, really is a difference. But how do you put it into law?
And also, in Australia, the age of Porn is sixteen, not eighteen as it is here in the US. Striking, that data which is perfectly legal, no cause for concern, in Australia, will cause one to be sent to the Being Raped to Death Big House here in America. We're both supposedly civilized nations here. Sheesh. If this isn't a moral absolute (like, say, killing someone---that's pretty much a moral absolute), it's kinda scary that we have such harsh penalties. Like drugs. Maybe weed will be legal in ten years. Nice consolation prize for someone who spent five of those years in jail on some stupid possession charge.
--grendel drago
Re:The sad source (Score:2)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2, Insightful)
___
but this is of course not what is happening.
if you would take the ISP example to the drugs world it would mean that transportation companies would be held responsible for the drugs distribution.
tracking down the dea
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Closer to topic, your desire for more government monitoring is scary. But also not the point, and I won't argue it.
(The following is obviously speculation, so if you have facts to refute or support it, I'm all ears.)
Actually on-topic, while the whole child porn thing is disgusting, stopping internet sharing of it is not going to stop the abuse of the children the law aims to protect. The people who do this aren't doing it because they can make money doing it. They're going to be making the porn for themselves whether they can sell it and share it or not. The people consuming it aren't going to stop molesting children if they can't get their dirty pictures.
I'm willing to bet that the number of kids helped by this law is going to be within the margin of butterfly-effects, so let's not waste time and money blocking people from reading melodramatic blogs.
There are better ways to fight child abuse, and they conflict with this one.
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2)
Would you say the same about the speed limit then?
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:2)
Re:Ehhh... (Score:5, Informative)
The speed limits are set lower than the majority of drivers for two reasons: to generate revenue and to give the police reason to make drug & alcohol stops. It's illegal for a cop to point a gun at you and take your money, but it's perfectly legal for him to ticket you for an infraction of a lunatic traffic rule; it's illegal for him to stop your car to search it without a warrant, but perfectly legal for him to search it with a loosely-defined probably cause after having stopped you for an infraction of the above-mentioned lunatic traffic rule.
Fortunately, I neither use nor carry drugs, so the latter doesn't affect me--but it's annoying nonetheless the way traffic rules are manipulated to over-ride little things like freedom from search and seizure.
Re:Ehhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I once heard someone say something about the fact that 'the youth' as a group decide "how things should be" as they're the most powerful group of people in society. Their minds are the most active and capable (bodies as well), they hold the key to whatever future lies ahead, and they pretty much decide how things are going to be, whether all the near-retirement CEOs like it or not...
I've also always been a firm believer t
here's some refutation (Score:5, Insightful)
And the people "consuming" this porn are NOT necessarily the people molesting children. The people actually molesting children are going to be trading their trophy shots in the underground, not visiting "mainstream" websites. My cousin ended up in jail for trying to fuck his daughter and he doesn't even know how to use a pc. Another cousin had her second husband imprisoned after she found out he had been repeatedly molesting her daughter (his stepdaughter). The jails are full of people who have molested children who aren't even pedophiles - they simply had the opportunity to fuck a little kid and got caught at it. Don't confuse child molestors with pedophiles.
Truly refreshing.. next up.. DMCA! (Score:4, Interesting)
At least someone in that court room still remember that Americans possess this thing called rights. While decisions like this probably won't stand against the corporate giants, at least 1984 has been postponed yet further..
Re:Truly refreshing.. next up.. DMCA! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's quite ironic that you would use the word *rights* on Terrorism Day. It has been exactly 3 years since that word has begun to lose its meaning.
Granted, the US is arguably the most powerful country in the world, but this power is nothing more than deception and manipulation. The US government is a lion tamer, while the population is the lion. With enough anger and conviction, the tables can be turne
Re:Truly refreshing.. next up.. DMCA! (Score:2)
Once you get attacked it all the same, people will be angry and the govt will gladly enforce laws to take away rights....ironically to pacify them
The judge got it right (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also unfortunate that the same logic hasn't been applied elsewhere [ala.org].
Praise God (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sayin', but I'm sayin'.
Secondly, I wonder if the law had passed if ISPs would have done anything about FreeNet [freenetproject.org].
Re:Praise God (Score:5, Insightful)
No you could not.
The relevant legal point here would be that the legislation was not aimed at restricting exercise of religion.
Legislatures have tried to act against religion in this way in the past, for example by banning animal sacrifice on "cruelty" grounds. This has failed because they haven't applied the same standards to other instances of animal killing e.g. for food. In this case, however, the banning of child pornorgraphy is clearly applied across the board, it is not targeted specifically at any religion nor at religions in general. It would be valid in much the same way that laws against murder are valid, even if the murder is a ritual sacrifice.
Re:Praise God (Score:2)
That's right. If Yarroism, of which I am the sole messiah, preaches the ritual sacrifice of anyone who disagrees with me on Slashdot then the courts should be powerless to stop me killing you.
Re:Praise God (Score:2)
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
But you are not the real Yarro, or you wouldn't be posting as Ralph Yarro. Therefore you must be an impostor, and thus a heretic.
BURN THE HERETIC!
culture (custom) is king (Score:2, Interesting)
1.Child Porn images (not photos) were attempted to be made illegal by congress, but judges ruled that was making an idea illegal, which is unconstitutional; so all ancient(ie pre-photo) Hindu sex images are legal.
2.Whatever is in general practice CONTINUES to be allowed whether slavery when freedom for all is declared or cutting the foreskin off infants (the genital mutilation of OUR culture) whe
Re:Praise God (Score:2)
Re:Praise God (Score:2)
Two hurdles.
1) Freedom of Religion is provisional in that you can practice religion freely so long as the government also agrees with you that what you are practicing is a religion. So you very likely could not start up some fake sick religion called ChildPornology and demand to be allowed to watch child porn. The government is perfectly within it's legal rights to deny you the status of reli
A Delicate Subject. (Score:4, Interesting)
My personal stance on the issue is manage it on a regional basis, if your country/state/city feels strongly enough about the issue they can ban the internet completely if it is voted on, and people not in the area are unaffected. As long as no legitimate content (eg "speech") is censored or blocked, there should be no problem with it. Hell, put a switch on every new PC saying "child pornography - ON/OFF" and let the consumers decide for themselves, instead of legislating it to high heaven.
Let's face it, these child pornogrophers are always going to be releasing their stuff, it is up to the people weather they want to watch it or something made by more mature people. Simple as that.
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you make some excellent points. Indeed, a similar system exists in many countries if you only think about it for a minute - I'll use the UK as an example here.
Child porn is illegal, but nobody has yet (to my knowledge) tried to enforce blocking at an ISP level. However, there is nothing to stop you buying Internet provision from a company which offers a "filtered" service, or installing software to filter it yourself.
How effective this all is is another issue altogether, but at least in the above example the decision is made by the individual rather than the government. Indeed, I can think of a few uses, both personal and organisational:
Now, watch this get merrily modded down because I've said that people may voluntarily choose to have their internet access "censored".
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:2, Flamebait)
You'll get modded down because you're dumb, not beca
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was actually thinking more about porn in general than child porn in particular - though re-reading I obviously didn't make that clear. By which definition I probably am dumb.
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:2)
Now, it's all well and good saying that if no-one views it then it'll stop the production - but child molestors will still get their "thrills" even if not selling/giving it away.
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:2)
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difficulty here is not that people want to choose whether to watch child porn or not, or that people want to allow others that choice. No mentally healthy person wants to watch child porn and nobody wants to give people the option.
The problem is that by compulsorily filtering against child porn, all current technical solutions also catch a whole bunch of other stuff. It's like the Tuna fishermen - they go out to fish out tuna, but they end up catching dolphins too. Nobody cares about the tuna, but lots of people don't want the dolphins killed.
If the child porn filters actually only filtered child porn, I'm sure they'd find very widespread acceptance. Since they don't, they have a chilling effect on other sorts of free speech, by blocking those sites in the mistaken belief that they're child porn.
(This same argument applies to normal porn filters, with the difference that quite a lot of people want their porn filter set to "on")
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:2)
More importantly, once the filters are in place, it's very easy for government/big business to filter out anything they don't like. That's the real reason why such proposals pop up every now and then - a free communication channel is the worst nightm
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:2)
Indeed - I prefer to watch pr0n made by mature people (but not too mature - preferably between 20 and 30 years of age)!
Re:A Delicate Subject. (Score:2, Funny)
Fucking Quintana--that creep can roll, man--
WALTER
Yeah, but he's a fucking pervert, Dude.
DUDE
Huh?
WALTER
The man is a sex offender. With a record. Spent six months in Chino for exposing himself to an eight-year-old.
DUDE
Huh.
WALTER
When he moved down to Venice he had to go door-to-door to tell everyone he's a pederast.
DONNY
What's a pederast, Walter?
WALTER
Shut the fuck up, Donny.
Wrong Target (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring the problem and pretending it's not there is not going to fix it. Banning access to these sites does not remove the porn and help the kids; it simply blocks our access to it and let's the sick bastards keep doing what they do. I'd think most countries would have no problem arresting someone that did this kind of shit.
Re:Wrong Target (Score:5, Interesting)
If it had effectively blocked just the child porn I would be screaming how wrong this was, if it had only affected a couple of other sites I would still support it but it took down hundreds (probably thousands) of legitimate sites and was therefore not legitimate.
Re:Wrong Target (Score:2)
And then perhaps the'll do it real life instead of just watching pictures. We discovered over here that for normal porn, it *REDUCES* sexual assaults, not the other way around.
I'd think most countries would have no problem arresting someone that did this kind of shit.
Ye
Blocking does not tackle the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
First and foremost, I do not advocate kiddie porn in any way shape or form. But a law requiring ISPs to block such information is not the solution. It is all to typical of society today that we find a quick solution to a problem and ignore the underlying issue.
Blocking kiddie porn, will only result in people doing their best to bypass the blocking software. It becomes an ongoing battle.
Stopping people looking at kiddie porn will not stop their desires to get hold of it. Who knows how far people like this are prepared to go to get what they want.
We need to give these people help and education, not just drive them to other sources for their material.
If the software can identify the porn/sites to block the stuff, then surely people who look at it could be offered help. Tackle the problem at the source. Remove the kiddie porn and the problem doesn't go away, remove the desire for kiddie porn and you have solved the problem.
Yes I know this is advocating monitoring of what we look at but ultimately the ISPs know that already. But I believe it is a step towards a better solution than simply blocking.
Re:Blocking does not tackle the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
This assumes the consumer mentality, and I don't agree with the idea. You aren't going to stop child pornography by going after the people who look at it; in fact, this is ass-backwards, and unfortunately it's the way that the US gover
Re:Blocking does not tackle the problem (Score:2, Informative)
I appreciate your comments, but I still don't think that this is entirely true
Two examples:
1) The British Press: Print story after story about the private lives of some poor person who happened to make a name for themselves. My belief is, and it doesn't sound to unreasonable, is that the stuff is printed because it sells. There is a demand for it. Remove the demand and the stories would disappear.
2) Smoking: Smoking is bad (I think most agree). But as long as there is a demand for tobacco, som
Re:Blocking does not tackle the problem (Score:2)
I'm not sure that we really disagree upon the main point: dads are always going to be abusing daughters. It doesn't matter if "no one wanted kiddie porn, even daddies" - the daddies aren't in it for the porn, they're in it for the sexual gratification. The people who make kiddie porn aren't doing it to make kidd
Re: Right (Score:3, Insightful)
On the money. Others should read up a bit on the history of this porn. Before the access explosion, ped's had sites with tons of this crap. No advertising, no limits. It was jollies, and those jollies will continue even with complete success at removing said content.
Those who remember CandyMan's spamming should also remember that he created site after site just for the perversion of it, not money. Every time they closed one
Re:Blocking does not tackle the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
My understanding of people with obsession and compulsion towards _any_ type of porn is that the impetus stems from an inappropriate exposure to the subject matter during some formative period in a person's life. That "inappropriate exposure" can take many forms -- from the extreme (rape), "commonplace" (sexual experiences at too young an age), or subtle/obscure (a sensitive person being rebuked for normal sexuality by an authority f
?? they have pr0n for children (Score:3, Funny)
Change the Header (Score:3, Funny)
traci lords (Score:4, Interesting)
"Child Porn" is NOT legally what most of you think it is. Some think its any nude of a child. It is not. Some think the child's genitals must be nude/visible to be legally porn - NOPE (not in the USA). Some think the child must look like a child - no again, look at a Traci Lords photo at age 17 (illegal in USA, I THINK legal in Germany).
Re:traci lords (Score:3, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight (Score:3, Insightful)
It's gotta be something in the water.
Re:So, let me get this straight (Score:2)
Suppressing kiddie porn violates the first amendment. Banning political ads 60 days before an election protects American liberty.
It's a lot easier to go after political ads and control their distribution.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
CIPA a joke anyway... (Score:3, Informative)
childporn will not go away by blocking websites (Score:2)
This reminds me... (Score:2, Funny)
"But dude, you HAVE SEX WITH CHILDREN!"
Free speech is great, but c'mon.
Bring on the PGP (Score:4, Insightful)
So then the government winds up with the average citizen PGP encrypting everything and their little Carnivore system is as useful as a clicking Zip-Drive. The sooner the better if you ask me.
Same Old Crap (Score:3)
There is no "harm" done to anyone (including people who are already freaks) - including children - from viewing porn or anything else.
Any "harm" is self-inflicted.
It's all ruminant evacuation.
Any parents who buy into this crap are themselves doing harm to their children by not properly training them to deal with human reality.
This "children are supposed to be innocent" bullshit started with moronic Christians and has nothing to do with human evolution or human history or practically any human culture.
NONE of these laws are useful for anything but enabling freak cops and statists to bust people to enhance their psychotic need to push people around to demonstrate to themselves that they're better than other people.
Humans. Morons.
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:3)
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:2)
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:5, Informative)
In case you don't, the judge's objection was that THINGS OTHER THAN PORN WERE BEING SUPPRESSED DUE TO IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS.
And freedom can be unlimited freedom as long as it is matched by unlimited responsibility and accountability. But that's another story...
Re:Freedom is not Cover (Score:2, Informative)
If the practical effect of a piece of legislation is that the first amendment is violated then that piece of legislation is not valid.
The first amendment makes no mention of "tremendous difficulties". The judicial precedents for application of the first amendment do not concern themselves with whether or not people undergo "tremendous difficulties" as a result of their communications being ham
Re:technical kiddieporn (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that you have a government-created list of websites which all ISPs in the state must, by law, block access to... But the list itself is a secret. In other words, state regulators could add just about any website to the list, force all ISPs operating in Pennsylvania to block access to that site, without any sort of publicly accountable procedure to determine whether or not that website was actually distributing anything illegal. Because the list of banned sites was secret, who knows what they're banning?
Just to burn some karma, I'll toss in the fact that Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security, was formerly the governor of Pennsylvania.
Re:technical kiddieporn (Score:2)
Why would that burn Karma? It's not like slashdot isn't fond of a good conspiracy theory, or has any love for the DHS or (presumably) Tom Ridge...
Re:technical kiddieporn (Score:2)
and all of those problems assume that the people running the list are decent, honorable people performin
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine if your website was hosted on a server that happened to be also serving a customer who, according to Pennsylvania lawmakers, was hosting a child porn site. All of a sudden, you're dead in the water, and potential customers in Pennsylvania can't reach you. Meanwhile, neither you nor your web hosting provider have any idea that this is happening, because the law made the "dirty list" a secret.
This was a bad law. Striking it down was the right thing to do.
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
I was AOL remote staff for a number of years, beginning when I was only 14 myself. I started in the Mac Help forum, and was there throughout my AOL tenure. Eventually I wound up working in the Youth Tech forum, and later, I instructed other remote staff as a member of KARES (Kids Area Resource for Education and Safety), part of the CLC (Community Leaders College). As a KARES instructor I taught Terms of Service enforcement to other remote staff who worked in areas like Nickelodeon.
My duties in Youth Tech were fairly mundane, I did content publishing through RAINMAN and also had file library and message board tools. On at least one occasion, child porn was uploaded into the Youth Tech file library. As a file library tool holder, I was one of the people whose responsibility it was to download files that people uploaded into our file library, in order to determine whether or not the files were suitable for the public. Someone uploads something, well, one of the staff have to download it to see whether or not it's worth keeping in the library. And yes, I encountered files which I would classify as child porn. There was no procedure at that point, and (being a kid myself) I just deleted the weird shit out of the file library.
Chat hosting was another story. By the time I was instructing in CLC/KARES, I was 17 or 18, and had also taken over some chat hosting slots in Youth Tech. While the forum was called "Youth Tech," the chat rooms were what you might expect, more like "youth flirt." A bunch of "A/S/L" and "13/f/nj" type stuff. As a chat host I was empowered to gag and/or remove offensive participants. What I was not prepared to deal with was the pervs who would come in and mass-email everyone in the chat room with child porn.
Again, as it was my duty, when we would get a mass-email to the room, if there was a file attachment I would check it out and see what it was, to determine whether or not action needed to be taken, whether or not to warn the room about a virus, etc. On multiple occasions, some pervert would enter the chat room, and send an email to everyone in the room containing an attachment of child porn. At this point it was up to "TOS Kids" to deal with it, and I have no idea what they did, and I do not speak on behalf of AOL as to what took place. All I know is the procedure I followed in terms of alerting the TOSA/AOBaseball/ActionFast/DeadVolvo/etc as to what was going on.
I am not a "child porn expert," nor do I want to be. I'm just someone who has spent many years online, a lot of them dealing with kids (much of that time I was a "kid" myself) and encountering child porn in those situations.
Re:Isn't Pa. the place orig'ly for Freedom of Reli (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exactly: the pilgrims fled when the Puritans came to power in England, but wanted nothing more than to set up an equally intolerant society of their own. Freedom of religion was never one of their proposed solutions, that was the exact opposite of what they were aiming for.
pay attention! (Score:2, Informative)
(guy 2)"Not exactly: the pilgrims fled when the Puritans came to power in England, but wanted nothing more than to set up an equally intolerant society of their own. Freedom of religion was never one of their proposed solutions, that was the exact opposite of what they were aiming for."
(Me}(to guy 2)"Yes, and people who'd been bothe
Re:i wonder how much tv coverage this will get (Score:2)
Yeah, you would have loved Summeria.
Re:The solution is the same as with spammers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Keep sickos at home. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because police find child pornography at many convicted offenders', that doesn't imply causality. Of course, such a causality may exist, but it hasn't been shown yet.
The grandparent post postulated t
Absolutely correct (Score:2)
NO, this IS about porn (Score:2)