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Challenging the Child Online Protection Act
Journal written by narramissic (997261) and posted by
kdawson
on Mon Oct 23, 2006 03:59 PM
from the think-of-the-children dept.
from the think-of-the-children dept.
narramissic writes, "Today in Philadelphia a federal trial got underway that will decide whether COPA is constitutional. The outcome will determine whether operators of Web sites can be held accountable for failing to block children's access to inappropriate materials. An article on ITworld outlines the arguments of the foes in the battle: the DOJ and the ACLU. If I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on the ACLU. Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge." Two courts have found COPA unconstitutional and the Supreme Court has upheld the ban on its enforcement, while asking a lower court to examine whether technological measures such as filtering could be as effective as the law in shielding children; thus this trial. The article does not mention that it was the DOJ's preparation for the trial that was behind its earlier request that search companies turn over their records — a request that only Google refused.
Related Stories
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Supreme Court Rules on Challenge to COPA 298 comments
Publiux writes: "LawMeme is reporting today that the Supreme Court upheld portions of the Child Online Protection Act because using community standards to determine what could be harmful to minors was not overly broad and thus not unconstitutional. Before you stop spreading your 'sexually explicit material' online, a lower court still has to determine if the law is unconstitutional for other reasons." Snibor Eoj submits this link to coverage at Yahoo! as well. Other readers link to AP coverage running at NandoTimes and the decision itself (PDF).
[+]
Appeals Court Rejects Child Online Protection Act, Again 319 comments
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.
[+]
Supreme Court Rules Against Anti-Porn Law 975 comments
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "From Fox News/AP, the Supreme Court has ruled that the COPA (Child Online Protection Act), passed in 1998 ostensibly to shield kids from Web porn, is probably an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech. This is not quite like 'striking the law down' because the court simply said a lower court was correct to block the law from taking effect, since it likely violates the First Amendment, and sent the law back to a lower court for trial. The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics of the antipornography law said that it would restrict far too much material that adults may legally see and buy, the court said."
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U.S. Government Wants Google Search Records 917 comments
JimBridgerBowl writes "According to the San Jose Mercury News, The Bush administration wants access to Google's huge database of search queries submitted by users to track how often pornography is returned in results. This information would be used for Bush's appeal of the 2004 COPA law, targeted to prevent access to pornography by children. The law was struck down because it would have restricted adults access to legal pornography. Google is promising to fight the release of this information." From the article: "The Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law or go to trial to prove that the statute does not violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn. As a result, government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on the argument that it is far more effective than software filters in protecting children from porn."
[+]
Justice Dept. Rejects Google's Privacy Concerns 350 comments
Philip K Dickhead writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department rejected Google's concerns over a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests on privacy grounds. The department claims this will help revive an online child protection law that the Supreme Court has blocked, by proving that Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography online. A federal court hearing is scheduled in San Jose, California, March 13th."
[+]
Google Avoids Surrendering Search Info 226 comments
Mercury News has details of a San Francisco judge's decision that Google should give the DoJ some details on its search engine, but is not required to turn over records to the government. From the article: "McElvain emphasized the study would be more meaningful if it included search requests processed by Google, which by some estimates fields nearly half of all online queries in the United States. Ware concurred with the Justice Department on that point, writing in his order that 'the government's study may be significantly hampered if it did not have access to some information from the most often used search engine.' But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests to conduct its study, prompting him to conclude the Web site addresses would be adequate." Reaction to the news is available on the Google Blog.
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Slashback: SCO, COPA, AllofMP3, Navier-Stokes, and More 144 comments
Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: IBM speaks about the SCO suit, another angle on COPA, AllofMP3 followups, Navier-Stokes solution withdrawn, a librarian's guided tour of Wikipedia, and the iPod's 5th anniversary. Read on for details.
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I'll just say it in advance (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment 2: It's the parents job to police their kids
Comment 3: Parents can't police all the time
Just call this a meta-post so that we can get the generic comments out of the way.
Re:I'll just say it in advance (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Our new child protecting, internet sanitizing overlords and their army of enslaved ISP admins?
COPA is idiotic (Score:2)
Re:COPA is idiotic (Score:4, Insightful)
It would take someone about 15 minutes tops to generate a CC# to use on one of these sites. Unless they are going to require every adult related sited to take credit cards, they are only going to hit the CC validation routines, not test if they are valid accounts. Oh, and is the US government going to give out a free credit card with every bankruptcy now also?
By the way, if I'm a US citizen, running a company based in Switzerland, hosting a site through a UK company, with servers based in Canada - does this law apply? How about if the domain is registered through a US company, but me, the company, the host, and the servers are all based outside the US?
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Tonnes and tonnes of free pr0n on images.google.com
Why waste your time?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, COPA is working as designed. (Score:5, Insightful)
DOS: No serial number required.
95/98/SE: To cut down on casual piracy, enter this serial number.
Win2K: Since that didn't work, it might phone home unless you ask nicely that it not phone home.
XP: Since that didn't work, it won't activate until you let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't nuke existing installations.
Vista: Since that didn't work, we'll nuke any box that stops phoning.
Or if we're talking copyright - witness the evolution of the NET Act ("It's a crime if you sell it"), the DMCA ("It's a crime if you crack DRM"), and the attempt to pass something harsher (SSSCA/CBDTPA) a few years later. (Look for another attempt after the elections, and/or something to mandate DRM into the hardware specifications, as Vista takes hold in the marketplace and is once again cracked...)
COPA was designed to ensure that under-12 kids could get Myspace pages, that under-18 kids can click "I'm over 18" to see b00bies, and that (not legally required, but I've seen it on many brewery/winery/distillery pages) under-21 people can click "I'm over 21" to read about booze.
After a few years, and after enough "horror stories" have appeared in the press about how 11-year-olds are being victimized on Myspace, 15-year-olds are seeing teh b00bies, and underage drinkers are able to read about beer, legislators will have a wide selection ready-made excuses to come up with some sort of "Real ID" or single-signon system for the Intertubes.
The courts only decide whether or not something's constitutional. Until they do so, it is constitutional. When the courts strike down COPA, it will be replaced by something even worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Please click the following link to see a couple of really nice boobies.
http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/40/ad_32741n
Damn!! (Score:3, Funny)
(My line of work is ornithology of course)
BIG nit: (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, no cigar.
IF the court declares something unconstitutional, it was ALWAYS unconstitutional. It "didn't exist". Get out of jail free, etc.
Not that it matters a whole lot. The problem is fourfold:
1) Until the court throws the law out, you have no idea whether it will.
2) Neither does the rest of the legal system. So it still goes after you. "Get out of jail free." doesn't refund your bondsman's fee, your lawyer's fee, replace your lost chunk of lifetime, reassemble the broken family, get you your job back - with back pay, replace your repossessed house and car, restore your credit rating, replace the expensive collectable guns you had to dispose of, fill in the hole in your resume, etc. It does purge the criminal record - which doesn't help you if the info is already out in hundreds of non-court databases. And even if they knew damned well this one would get thrown out you have no way to sue them. "I vas Chust Dooink my Chob!"
3) The courts normally don't even take up the issue until somebody gets convicted of violating the law in question AND there's NO other way to dispose of the case without addressing the issue. Even then it takes the Supreme Court to definitively strike a new law, and they can arbitrarily refuse to even hear it - which they usually will do unless two appellate courts disagree, and sometimes even then.
and...
4) It takes a LOT of time and work to strike a law. It takes the legislators and chief exec very little time and work to pass another like it, with slight tweaks.
And another. And another. And another dozen. And another thousand. And put riders on every "must-pass" bill, like the budget, or a use-of-force authorization, or
Re: (Score:2)
Comment 4: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gah, kids don't spontaneously explode if they don't wear a helmet while tricycling.
Re:Comment 4: (Score:5, Funny)
You're clearly not rigging the detonators properly.
How is this different that TV? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want the internet filtered for your kid, install and manage your own filtering software. It's the parent's responsibility to take charge of what their children are doing, viewing, etc. It's not the content provider's problem at all, particular on a medium like the internet where you have no face to face interaction (e.g. checking ID). Frankly, if you require a valid credit card, I think you'd solve the whole issue.
My objection lies with of some of the banner ads and emails, which can be really atrocious. From time to time, I get things in my Inbox that make me cringe and wish I would remove them from my brain. "Barnyard" and "hot lovin'" should NEVER appear in the same sentence. I can only imagine something like that coming to a small child....
2 cents,
QueenB
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Half would say "ewwww" and half would start laughing, then they'd all turn on the TV or go out and play. Kids are not as fragile as we make them out to be, and most are terribly uninterested in all of that icky adult stuff.
Or to quote, "Stop. They're KISSING again. Go on to the fire swamp, that sounded good..."
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:4, Insightful)
If a parent purchases all of the naughty cable channels, then their kids have access to those as well. The cable company does nothing to prevent those kids from seeing those channels. If the parents want to prevent their kids from watching that, they use the filtering built into the client, the TV.
The same goes for the internet. The parent purchases access to the whole internet. The ISP does nothing to prevent kids from seeing naughty sites. If the parents want to prevent their kids from visiting those sites, they use the filtering software available for the client, the computer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:4, Interesting)
If parents want the equivalent of cable for their kids, they should get AOL and block the normal internet. Or buy a whitelist package that is voluntarily supported by certain websites. Everything else is blocked. They get the equivalent diversity of cable channels. That's what they want, right? Anything that is remotely threatening to their little world to disappear? They can have that, quite easily. But instead they want it both ways: the full diversity of the internet combined with the lack of active parenting that the very limited diversity of cable requires.
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The name is wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Copa is idiotic. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Political vs Commercial Speach (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Freedom of speech is balanced along with our other freedoms and case law has upheld political speech as the most stringently protected, while commercial speech is the least protected based upon how that speech conflic
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Actually courts have been fairly consistent in ruling hate speech (aka fightin' words) to have the least amount of constitutional protection.
Well, hate speech that is political almost always wins when it gets to federal court, but if you're talking abou
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see any reference to that distinction in the Constitution.....
Yet the courts support different standards for all sorts of speech. Print > Broadcast > Advertising, for example. Personal web pages and comments are generally afforded the same
Re: (Score:2)
I've never seen "seperation of church and state", "right to privacy", "right to their own body", and many other things in there... but they keep appearing. It doesn't matter which side you're on. The "living document" keeps "evolving" new words that we mus
What is Inappropriate? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does this affect web hosting companies? We host thousands of domains and I'm sure some of them could be considered inappropriate for kids.
It's not a site owner's job to filter out people that might be offended by the content, if you don't like a site don't go there.
Re:What is Inappropriate? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about bikini pics that you can make out anatomy through (oh wait, JC Penneys add three months ago had that and it ran in the newspaper too).
What about a lady in a full corset & stockings (that cover more than the bikini).
Someone else said it best here in the past.
PLEASE post a web page with a continuam of pictures from fully appropriate to fully inappropriate with each one flagged as to how appropriate or inappropriate it is. That way we can all go to it and see what is an is not appropriate to have on the web.
Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my favorite "Think of the children" quotes...
Nephilium
What good is the race of man? Monkeys, he thought, monkeys with a spot of poetry in them, cluttering and wasting a second-string planet near a third-string star. But sometimes they finish in style. -- Potiphar (Potty) Breen in The Year of the Jackpot
nanny state (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that the ACLU has to fight in court to get people to understand something that should be painfully obvious? Man up people, the government is not your mommy.
Re:nanny state (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't trust your kid to obey the simple rules, by what right do you allow them to travel unescorted in public? You can and must be there every time your kid is unescorted by an adult; until such time as that child is old enough to be responsible for their own behaviour.
It's no one else's job to enforce your personal little taboos. Maybe you think women need to have their heads covered with scarves, and that your children shouldn't have to see women with their heads bared. Maybe you don't think they should hear anything aside from your religious beliefs. Maybe you want to indoctrinate them in any one of a thousand different ways.
Tough. Other people have rights, too. It's called free speech. If you don't want your young kids in a porn store, keep an eye on them until they're old enough to decide if they want to go in on their own. Once they're an adult, they get the right to make their own decisions. Until then, *you* have to take responsibility for their decisions.
COPA is pointless (Score:5, Interesting)
"I am under 13"
"I am 13 or older."
Ok great! Now only the honest kids will be prevented from signing up to most forums. It's about as ridiculous as the "YES, I'm 18 or older" on adult pr0n sites.
It would seem as if COPA is only protecting the site operators in the event that something bad DOES happen to young childern. These kids can still get themselves into trouble if they want. I guess some people think that the fancy agreement is somehow significant (as seen in EULAs.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How bout filters.txt (Score:2)
So that I can say I did due diligence using standard protocols - you fai
awesome (Score:2, Funny)
How about voluntary filtering? (Score:3, Insightful)
<META NAME="might_be_inaporopriate" CONTENT="true">
Let the net-nanny type apps handle it, and be done with it...
Its lot less painfull than moving to
I know l33t kids could get around it, but it's an offer of hand.
HOW ABOUT PROTECT ME FROM THE CHILDREN (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent two years in prison for some bullshit some kid said on me, and I had to not only prove it was impossible, but had to hire a lawyer to find a technicality in the trial to say the trial was bogus. Otherwise, without having a family on the outside with a little bit of money, I would be rotting in prison today. Go ahead, tell me children don't lie about being molested. Go ahead, tell me children don't lie. Go ahead, tell me! I will look you dead in the eye and tell you how full of **** you are.
I bristle with anger whenever anybody does anything in the name of "protecting the children". These laws are being used to go on the equivalent of modern day witch hunts. Don't believe it? Wait until they come after you, and you're in front of a jury stating as plainly as possible, how what they are saying makes absolutely no sane common sense. It doesn't matter. The jury has been cherry picked jury of neo-conservative republicans. You'd get a much fairer jury if you stood outside Walmart and grabbed the first 13 people that walked in or out the door. When has any defendant ever had any say so or oversite in the picking of a jury? Answer: NEVER. Think about that. That's why America is so corrupt, its why everyone pleads out, its why you have the right to a jury trial in name only.
I think any person who wants to protect children, needs to start by granting children more basic human rights. For one thing, to be considered as citizens of the country, and not property of their parents. To be given a say so in the development and passing of the laws under which they have to live under. To have the voluntary right to opt out of schools, which have become indoctrination camps to teach people to jump when they are told.
There is no freedom in this country. You have freedom of mobility, and that's about it (and you have that anywhere). How many of the hundreds of thousands of laws on the books have you ever had any chance to vote on, ever been asked to vote on. How many of these bogus laws ever come up from review? Never. That's why there are ludicrous laws still on the book about not spitting from your donkey on the sidewalk in front of a lady during daylight hours.
These laws are passed in some place far away in a room by a select group of people and then applied nationwide to the majority, who are too busy with their own lives struggling to make ends meet to travel to find these backrooms and stand up (even though they wouldn't be let in the door).
Re:HOW ABOUT PROTECT ME FROM THE CHILDREN (Score:4, Interesting)
how are other media handled? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a parent... (Score:3, Interesting)
He clicked on a "sketchy" site that purported to have "hints and secrets".
A nice looking bare-chested woman popped up.
There was a couple second pause... then he nonchalantly clicked the "X".
Ok, so I am not sure what he would have done had I not been looking over his shoulder, but what more could you ask for?
As long as unexplained charges don't show up on my credit card, that is what you should expect your child to do while web surfing and "inappropriate" material appears.
it all just keeps coming back to the same thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I am so tired of hearing how the world failed to protect some idiot from their own stupidity or how the world failed to be the good partent to your child that you for some mysterious reason could not, and now somehow it's all our fault and you are totally innocent and victimized. There's an article here at least every 10 days with another sickening example of this retarded behavior.
Makes me sick. People, grow up!
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Check out Bush's wrongdoing! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I can see a big problem here (Score:5, Informative)
Let's say - if kid wants to register for this kind of page it needs to be done by adult. How? Simple. Bu using credit card.
You're out of date. More and more minors are getting credit cards.
Of course there's a problem - less kids registered - means less income.
If you're talking about kids and porn sites, you're way off. Do you know anyone in the porn business? Kids don't have a lot of money but do have time. Kids don't like to create records of porn viewing and don't want anyone to be able to track them. They are the least likely to pay any money of all demographics. Do you know what is really bad for a porn business? Publicity. Clients like to be anonymous because of the social stigma. One case of parents catching kids using a site can cause a huge hubbub and lose them a lot of business as their clients move elsewhere to avoid any possible publicity.
Most porn cites would be very happy to have a way to stop kids from visiting their sites. It would be good for business. Most porn cites voluntarily submit their names to parental controls lists and the major ones even help fund a consolidated database to make it easier for the industry to have good listings. They also tend to use good keywords to help search cites accurately mark them as adult. Less registered kids means more income and less liability, not less income.