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Censorship Your Rights Online

Cyberspace Wins Free Speech Ruling 64

Posted by michael from the winning-a-battle-losing-the-war dept.
Prodigal yo-yo writes "Cyberspace Communications, Inc., and several other plaintiffs won a favorable ruling in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals recently in the Cyberspace v. Engler lawsuit to overturn an unconstitutionally broad Internet censorship law. The 2 page ruling affirms an injunction against enforcement of the law while the case is tried." It is good to keep in mind that besides Federal censorship laws, many states have passed such laws as well.
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Cyberspace Wins Free Speech Ruling More

Cyberspace Wins Free Speech Ruling

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  • Irony. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can say it. I can use it [slashdot.org]
  • I dont believe in censorship.. but I think we have to be careful of any ruling in the area of censorship.. anything put down on the books can be bad.. lawyers are tricky folks (no offense to any lawyers out there, they aren't all bad).. but anything put down in "stone" can be used against the cause, as well as for it..

  • at least something like this isn't going in the law books.. therefore precident can't be claimed.

    it's when something like this can be used in another case as precident i think we really have to worry.. although lower courts have power, at least there are some forms of checks and balences left.

  • Cyberspace is a owrthy charity I mentioned in the item today about geek charities and this is why.
  • > We must bring the Internet back under government control, in the form of a cooperative of nations.

    Rember the CDA?

    Capitalism is cooperation. But companys quickly find monopolys are more valuable.
    In capitalism entitys (people and companys) agree on terms for trade of service for "credits" (Money usually but barter can also play a role).
    Monopoly is when an entity dictates terms to the population at larg.
    Microsoft and other monopolys cast themselfs as ultimate capitalists. But they are not.
    You can make more money faster as a monopolist than you can as a capitalist.
    Just as you can solve socal problems easyer as a dictator than you can as a democrocy.
    The key isn't to hand control over from a corupted enity to an enity who has yet to be corrupted (but is testing the waters). It is to break the coruption so it dosn't continue.

    A public Internet under government control would quickly devolve into a dictatorship.

    As far as corprate Internets... At one time the Internet was a collective of networks.. the core network.. The Internet itself.. was the government run network.. the rest were corprate...
  • Of course, there is one state funded broadcaster that is the exception:- BBC. In spite of being state funded, they seem to have no problems NOT toeing the government line. I seem to recall a certain Mr. Clinton getting a bit upset about the Balkans coverage from a BBC journalist, and leaning on that weasel Blair. BBC told them both where to get off.

    Of all the "major" broadcasters have seen, they seem to be amongst the most balanced in their coverage. Not perfect by a long shot, but better than most.
  • a recent british(IIRC) survey has found that THC actually makes you drive safer.. (no, I don't have the link). so drinking and driving IS more dangerous than MJ and driving. Not that I'd recommend it though.. it's still DUI. personally I think it has a lot to do with estimating your own abilities... at least MJ doesn't make you feel you can take on the world.

    //rdj
  • ...the person who agreed to the TOS is responsible for the acts of any minors who use there account.

    What?! Allow parents to make decisions for their children? And hold them responsible for those decisions? Clearly you have been working too hard and have missed the 20th Century in which it was decided that liberty and personal responsibility are out of fashion and we need to have Daddy Government take care of everyone.

    Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

    -George Bernard Shaw


  • It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).

    So then, does this mean that no state could (or should) be able to pass a law declaring a new internet commerce tax for online purchases?

    The state governments' opinion is that they are losing out on revenue generated by sales tax whenever an online sales is made. The retailers' opinion is that they lose out on profit whenever someone in their state buys a product from a warehouse located in a differing state.

    Frankly, (and I know I'm getting a little off-topic here) Point #1 is absurd because state taxes get spent on things like roads, schools, etc. None of which is ever utilized by the person buying out-of-state. Point #2 is getting older each year as we watch more companies and organizations try to get laws passed to stifle new business models and methods, so that they may preserve their own and never have to change.

    This internet tax thing is a pretty huge debate where I'm currently located (New Mexico), and I'm always trying to come up with ways to disprove the idiotic assumption that such a tax should exist.

  • Yeah... Wouldn't they at least record the number of votes for and against? To do otherwise seems to mock the concept of a republic, that the government is somehow accountable to the people...

    Then again, this is America we're talking about. The government there seems to have slowly made itself less and less accountable, until it can now blatantly violate every limitation on its power and no-one can even find the details... If they cared. (Most don't seem to)


    -RickHunter
  • Yes, but this case is different for precisely that reason. Cyberspace Communications, Inc., while not technically an ISP, would probably be judged as one under this act. The whole lawsuit is based on the fact that Grex, their BBS, is totally free, and that CCI does not do any verification that users really are who they say they are.

    -
  • 1) Matt Drudge is about as reliable as a Magic 8-ball. He's got power, as you said, but he doesn't have discipline. Sometimes the mainstream journalists sit on a story to see if their information pans out. That's responsibility, not corruption.

    2) Al Gore's not the only one doing some pretty shady stuff in this election.
  • THe only vague and ambiguous wording is the prohibiting of sending "sexually explicit" content to minors

    Im a proponent of free speech and all but whats wrong with not sending sexually explicit material to minors?

    The only part of this law I would have problems wiht is identity, do you have to know that the person is underage because most of the time you dont know a person's identity so in forwarding a picture to someone you thought was a friend back in high school could really be a minor that just fooled you into breaking the law!

  • Has anybody considered that most ISP's (including things like AOL etc...) require the person signing up for the account to be 18...a cc is needed...Age 18 is when make contracts are legal and binding, etc So since your ISP required somebody to be 18 in order to agree to some type of TOS, the person who agreed to the TOS is responsible for the acts of any minors who use there account. Is this an easy simple solution to minors on the NET or have I just been working to hard?
  • (Note: I'm a member of the board of directors at Cyberspace Communications, and testified at the original hearing in this case.)

    The ACLU attorneys prosecuting this case have been trying not to emphasis the Commerce Clause aspects of it, not because they don't think they could win on that basis, but because they are much more interested in setting precedent on the Free Speech issues. The Commerce Clause issue is raised to leave no stone unturned, but we'd all be rather worried if the courts said we won the case solely on the basis of the Commerce Clause.

  • More than one judge. So far four judges have ruled in our favor on this case alone, and it's not the first of it's kind. The legal system as a whole seems pretty unanimous on the subject.

    I'm not sure what "corporate and liberal group" you are talking about. Cyberspace Communications is the lead plaintiff. We're a corporate group, albeit a tax-exempt non-profit charitable corporation. The suit is being mounted by the ACLU, certainly a liberal group. But nobody found against us. They found for us, against the State of Michigan. So the judges haven't been standing up to corporate and liberal pressure. Quite the contrary. It's Michigan's conservative legislature and governor who was pushing this censorship, and they're the ones the judges have been "standing up to".

    I'm completely in agreement with your opinion that it is the parent's job to control what their children see. In fact, in the original opinion by Judge Tarnow on this case, he added a third reason why this law was suspect (beside the free speech and commerce clause issues), one that the ACLU lawyers hadn't even claimed. He felt that since there are tools to allow parents to censor their children's access to the web, for the state to take that role from the parents was an unwarrented intrusion into the parent's right to raise their own children their own way.

  • (Note: I'm a member of the board of Cyberspace Communications, and testified at the original hearing of this case.)

    I'm not sure how significant the whole thing is. The Supreme Court set the most important precedent when it overthrew the CDA and it's successors at the Federal level. There have already been a couple similar state laws thrown out. The legal tide is already flowing so strongly our way on this that there seemed from the beginning little chance that this Michigan law wouldn't be defeated. The Michigan legislature was stupid enough to pass it (in spite of their own legal staff advising them that it was probably unconstitutional), so we have to fight it. They fact that we are winning easily isn't really cause for excitement. If we somehow manage to lose it, however, that would make a splash.

    The first hearing was just to temporarily keep the law from being enforced until it's constitutionality was determined. Judge Tarnow not only gave us the preliminary injunction, but also a rather strongly worded opinion that the law probably is unconstitutional. I think he was hoping to speed up it's death.

    The state appealed the preliminary injunction. The circuit court distanced itself a little from Tarnow's condemnation of the law, but agreed that it was likely enough to be shown unconstitutional to justify the preliminary injunction. So my reading (I'm not a lawyer and haven't heard a lawyer's opinon of this) is that though this ruling is favorable, it isn't as wildly favorable as the lower court ruling was.

    Though it sounds like there is still a long way to go, since we haven't actually challenged the law yet, just gotten a preliminary injunction, there are good odds that it really is closer to being done that it looks. With all this build-up and with favorable rulings at the district and appeals court level, we may be able to get a summary judgement against the law soon, without another full-blown hearing. So this ruling may be a bigger step toward finishing off the law than it appears to be.

  • simplify for me the impications that this ruling would have if it had fell the other way.
  • the page [cyberspace.org] reads:
    Upon remand, the parties will be afforded the opportunity to argue
    Are these kegger parties or what? I could sure use some good lovin' from that easy woman JENNIFER M. GRANHOLM, Attorney General of the State of Michigan!@#
  • It means that at least one judge believes in free speech and isn't afraid to stand up to corporate and a liberal group's pressure. I think that it is the parents responsibility to make sure that their kids don't look at porn, etc. A law that restricts use like this was made by parents who worried more about themselves and their careers than to take responsibility and take care of their own children. If you don't want them to look at porn (or whatever), don't let them use the internet or teach them what is right and wrong. For example: Tell them books, classic hobbies, sports, etc...good. Violence, Sex, Abuse...bad. Please note! I just used these as examples! You must make your own judgements on what you believe is moral and teach it to your children.

    ----------------
    Take responsibility for your own actions...and your children under 18.

  • There is a great deal of irony in my being moderated down (read: censored) for having an unpopular opinion in an article about censorship.

    How is being moderated down a form of censorship? Granted, the mod in question was unfair, and if I come across it in metamod.pl, I'll make a note of it, but it wasn't censorship. Censorship would be if, say, CmdrTaco found your post(s) to be objectionable and removed them from the system or slapped a -50 mod onto them.

    You just got hit by a clueless moderator, not a censor. There is a difference.

    hymie

  • The electronic locater chip could've helped tremendously. Too bad only one student volunteered...
  • We must bring the Internet back under government control, in the form of a cooperative of nations.

    Interesting idea, but do you really think government would be any better than corporations? Look at China and tell me we would never see censorship if governments controlled the internet. No, in order to be free from censorship, the internet should be developed by the people, for the people, with as little intervention from big brother and big corporations as possible. Besides, a "cooperative of nations" is almost a contradiction in terms. Trying to get two (or more) nations to agree on anything is an exercise in frustration.


    --

  • The problem being, of course, is that the government of the US (and most everywhere else, too) is largely controlled by Corporate interests. I don't see how this does anything but arrive at the same conclusion (ie: pro-corporate), only more slowly.

    And before you tell me that all we have to do is change the government through the available democratic mechanisms, I think you better give your head a shake. There is not two systems (public and private), there is one society dominated by the self-appointed elite. The battle for hearts and minds has been going on for a long time, and the web of Corporate interests permeates all through international society. There is little hope of making any changes while humans continue to live unconscious lives focused on economic purely goals.

    The problem I have with Communists is their insistence that once they hold power, they will manage the rest of us in our own best interests... because of course THEY know the TRUTH, which the proletariat is too dumb to ever understand. How convenient for them. I'm sure that self-interested Communist management of the economy would be much more effective than self-interested Capitalist management.

    Either way, the little guy has to bend over and take it... or does he?
  • You don't seem to understand the real issue here is that corporate entities are controlled by managers, and managers are pretty much the same (ie: lazy, greedy, dim) in both the public and private sectors. Handing the power to set standards from one bureaucracy to the other is hardly a solution, unless you consider shuffling the deck and picking a new card at random an optimal strategy.

    For there to be a rational and disinterested outcome, for there to be an international set of standards that apply universally across the Web, it will take the combined effort and wisdom of EVERYONE who has a stake in this... which includes the people who DON'T have access to the Internet.

    While I agree that there is a role for governments to play (hopefully in investing in infrastructure that benefits the common good), you can hardly leave industry out of the picture. But the key to defining and achieving worthwhile goals is to raise the profile of the average net citizen, and to find ways to increase participation and transparency in the process.

    I seriously doubt that Leftist rhetoric has any role to play, any more than does the ceaseless chanting of "In the name of The Shareholders, of Globalization, and of The Invisible Hand."

    I just wish people would be a little more practical and a little less idealistic.
  • I consider any "group" with a well-defined identity and sense of its own self-interest to be a corporate entity. This includes political parties, companies, industry groups, and any other special interest group... even the ones I may agree with. The problem is that they deal with issues in an "us vs. them" manner, using sterile rhetoric instead of actually communicating. Nobody speaks as an individual, only as their corporate role (ie: "spokesman", "lawyer") dictates.

    People that speak for a group are, in fact, acting in an anti-democratic fashion, since they are further reinforcing the corrupt philosophy that the voice of the citizen is inadequate to address the needs of the common good. In effect, they reduce the dialogue to a defence of their positions and policies and attack on any competing ideas, without ever considering the merits of anyone else's point of view. This is not democracy. This is corporatism.

    Democracy is listening and thinking. Democracy is saying what you mean. Democracy is negotiating in good faith to find consensus.
  • Mike the Geek, I like the way you speak. My RHETORIC-METER(tm) has barely given off a tick on either of your posts. Kudos!

    I agree that the real threat of the Internet is to upset the balance of power (that is, melt down the Pyramid, which is built on specialized knowledge and secrets). It is a revolutionary tool in the truest sense, if only it can survive long enough.

    I am personally FOR capitalism AND communism, as long as they are properly mixed in the public mind, and not the dominant truths of competing societies. What a waste! All we need is MORE free speech. MORE MORE MORE. There is no 'problem' with free speech (pr0n, terrorism, bad journalism) that can't be rectified by increased freedom of speech for all humans on this planet.

    The fact of the matter is that both Capitalists and Communists fear unrestrained democracy and free speech, because neither can stand long against criticism. Kind of like Open Source: enough eyeballs will find all existing bugs.

  • Or is it not? This is one of the few times which I'd prefer to be proven wrong.
  • Also in today's news: The Supreme Court ruled against unconstitutional police roadblocks [cnn.com]and the supreme court also upheld an arbiter's decision [yahoo.com] not to fire a truck driver who had tested positive for marijuana (I hope -in all sincerity - that he was not smoking and driving). It looks like both the first and fourth amemdments had wins today!
  • sometimes entire posts are not displayed. you need to click the "Read the rest of this comment..." link at the end of a post if the post length exceeds the display limit. unfortunately, the link for the full post actually points to a malformed uri (maybe this was pulled somehow from a link) on the microsoft server, so you'll need to go the actual page of the text at:

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/profe ss ional/solutions/toptenupgrade.asp

    and, no, i am not a microsoft rep; i'm just trying to help this anonymous poster get to the rest of the post.
  • But this ruling isn't really a significant thing. It's just upholding a lower court ruling, guys.
  • Hello?

    It was the state *government* that was regulating the content. Did you see that? *Government* was regulating the 'net. And your solution: more government?

    This guy either can't read or he's a troll.
  • Heck, on the front page of slashdot today there is of course, the article about space satallites. If such broadcast power is in use someday, it will sure be interesting to watch what Granholm can say to that. Some people just have to learn that they aren't king of the world.
  • "It is exactly the opposite! The reason radio and TV are like minded, etc, is because of the corporate ownership. Because of their profit obsessiveness, you see very little innovation unless it "shows a profit".
    Why is it that PBS is so much better than regular television? It's because of the government involvement, so that producers only have to focus on quality rather than the "bottom line"."

    While I will agree with you that most all PBS programming is far and above better quality than what is on commercial TV, I disagree STRONGLY with respect to their news reporting and opinon.

    PBS is if anything even MORE pro-establishment than commercial media. But, like the differences between the parties, it's not much different.

    "Quite frankly, we need to remove corporatism from the airwaves, and let the government publicly fund all programming. Only then is the corporate greed removed."

    Government has no business having anything to do with news reporting. Not even CNN is as bad as PRAVDA would be. Look at the USSR and China, that's what you get with government run media.

    Now, I don't like the megacorps either, I don't think they do much better.

    The Internet is the answer. Old broadcast media requires a LOT of money to run. It's way beyond what most individuals can afford, but the Internet is open to all to report. No secret is safe. And there are very few secrets that a truly honest (oxymoron) government should have.

    That's the threat of the `net. Even socialist-communist-fascist countries like China, Indonesia, Cuba, etc can't completely filter out the truth from their people, even though they try.

  • "The reason the DMCA hasn't been struck down is twofold: Kaplan didn't really have the power to (although there were options he could take in that direction),"

    Kaplan and any Federal judge has the power to find that there is no crime because the law is Unconstitutional. Which the DMCA is. If a picture of Christ in a jar of urine is speech (ruled as such by Federal judges) then code can be speech (and is according to one ruling). If it's speech then the 1st Amendment trumps any statutory law.

    "and the MPAA and RIAA have just plain paid the right people too much money for it to die easily. From what I heard, it was passed by a near-unanimous vote in Congress, and signed by the president almost immediately."

    Are you aware HOW insidiously the DMCA was passed? It was passed by affirmation, a voice vote. It was passed unanimously by Congress. This was done for a couple of reasons... First, it shows just how far the MPAA/RIAA's influence goes.. Secondly, it was done this way so the individual congressmen didn't have to be accountable when we found out what they had done.

  • No one is saying there's anything wrong with NOT giving S.E. content to minors. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to validate who sees what on the Internet. I found the ruling to be very insigtful on the merits against the Act and in favor of upholding the injunction.

    This law would mean that if you chose to publish some medical question to a forum or chat room, even anonymously about human sexuality, you could be sujected to arrest for a felony under this law...even if you weren't in Michigan... all that would have to happen is to have that forum or chat room be available to minors on the internet who do reside in Michigan. Since you can't identify everyone who is involved in such a forum (because doing so would remove the anonymity that often fosters open communication), you'd have no idea who else was "listening."

    That's why it's so important to NOT censor the internet and our rights to freedom of speech... because it comes back to attack us at the source point of such speech. That effects our entire society as a whole in a negative fashion.

    I think the Judge's comments about parental control, and perhaps most humorously, the comment that "Finally, the Court takes judicial notice of the fact that every computer is equipped with an
    on/off switch. " are quite sage.

  • You don't seem to understand the real issue here is that corporate entities are controlled by managers, and managers are pretty much the same (ie: lazy, greedy, dim) in both the public and private sectors.

    That's simply not true. Looking at the US, you might be tempted to believe that. But that's because the US has been poisoned by too many years of unrestrained capitalism. Look at more enlightend countries like Sweden, where the government works in partnership with the workers.

    The United States can be like that too, but we have to rid ourselves of our profit-obsessed Corporations. Once we have cleansed ourselves of our greed, and the corporate people in power, the people will naturally elect workers of their own peers, because the corporate power-mongers will have been removed from their "thrones". Without their money stolen from the people, they will no longer have the power to control elections and the people.


    --

  • It was the state *government* that was regulating the content.

    Exactly. They should be regulating the content. Right now we have Corporation regulating the content for their own profits. The government should be regulating the content and filtering the lies that the corporations use to control everyone.


    --

  • No, the solution would be no one regulating it. Censorship by gov't or by buisness is just as bad either way.

    "No one regulating" is just corporate censorship by default. We've already seen what happens in that case. There is a very real possibility of Microsoft taking over the Internet and controlling what we see and hear. The only solution is bring the people back into control.


    --

  • Yeah! Censorship sucks (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Whatever degree of censorship is a bad thing, just because of the problem of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whether it's censoring web sites, or barring users os a service because the administration dislikes them. Such concepts are shocking and anything that can restrict freedom of speech should be considered extremely carefully

    Fortunately on /. we don;t have that problem. The admin people are very firm believers in freedom of speech, and would never interfere with our right t express ourselves, even if its just to troll.
  • This has been held up by several recent suits, including one against mail order and internet sellers of cigarettes in the state of NY. NY passed a law that banned the sales of cigarettes from mail order and internet companies because they could not control the age of the purchaser. Federal courts rules that the NY law overstepped the interstate Commerce clause and the law was nullified.

    Why such similar stategies aren't used to burn UCITA, I'll never know...

  • In Australia the Federal 1999 Broadcasting Services Act has attracted most of the attention, but individual states have either passed legislation covering the Net (Victoria, Western Australia) or are proposing to (South Australia).

    For more information and links see my anti-censorship site [danny.oz.au].

    Danny.

  • One advantage our friends in the UK don't have, a Constitution. Of course, those in power here in the US have shown an alarming lack of respect for law lately, so we get the CDA, CDA II, COPA, DMCA, etc. They are going to keep throwing these things against the wall until one sticks.

    Problem is a written constitution only works if the vast majority of people know what it actually says. Especially when combined with the quirk in the US system of passing legislation which assumes that any law is constitutional unless proved otherwise.
    A knowlable population would mean that passing an unconstitutional law would be a waste of time since it would be impossible to find a cop who would arrest anyone for breaking it and impossible to find a judge who would hear the case.
  • The problem being, of course, is that the government of the US (and most everywhere else, too) is largely controlled by Corporate interests.

    Actually there are two groups of people with major influence on the US government, one is corporate interests, the other is made up of political groups (including some who are very extreme and bigoted) who are willing to lobby politicans full time.
    It's simply that their areas of lobbying differ...
  • I consider any "group" with a well-defined identity and sense of its own self-interest to be a corporate entity. This includes political parties, companies, industry groups, and any other special interest group... even the ones I may agree with. The problem is that they deal with issues in an "us vs. them" manner, using sterile rhetoric instead of actually communicating. Nobody speaks as an individual, only as their corporate role (ie: "spokesman", "lawyer") dictates.

    I was trying to draw a distinction between those who lobby for the likes of DMCA, UCITA, etc. and those who lobby for "hate crime" laws, supercrimilization of drug usage, etc. Since we tend to hear far more about the former than the latter.

    People that speak for a group are, in fact, acting in an anti-democratic fashion, since they are further reinforcing the corrupt philosophy that the voice of the citizen is inadequate to address the needs of the common good.

    Also no citizen would be able to make themselves heard whilst such groups are around. For one thing they can't be lobbying politicans 24 hours a day.
  • The Commerce Clause does not prevent the states from making laws that affect interstate commerce. Rather, it authorizes the federal government to make laws regulating things that affect interstate commerce. It also forbids the states to unduly burden interstate commerce or to make laws that discriminate against commerce from outside the state. (This is the way courts currently read the Clause. Whether this reading is correct is a separate question.)

    When someone browses a site, that person may be in any state, or even, as hard as that may be to believe, outside the United States. There's no practical way to tell what state that is. But a state law forbidding web sites to send certain material into that state would subject providers to penalties because of the browsers' hitting the sites. The only way to avoid those penalties would be to take the material down.

    Of course, the only way a site operator could protect himself would be to take the material down altogether, even though it may be perfectly legal in the other 49 states. A single state's law would thus prevent commerce, even though the transaction lacked any connection to it. This is a substantial burden on interstate commerce, and I suppose the plaintiffs argued that it was an unconstitutional one.

    In contrast, the states make contract law, even though those laws dramatically affect interstate commerce. The reason is that a contract is usually treated as subject to the law of a single state. The parties can usually even choose the state law to apply, so long as that state has some connection to the transaction. If that state makes a law that makes some kind of contract illegal, well, the state's residents can't make them, but the rest of us can do as we please.

    The downside is that spammers have argued (successfully, IIRC) that state anti-spam laws also contravene the Commerce Clause. It's not a perfect world.
  • No, the solution would be no one regulating it. Censorship by gov't or by buisness is just as bad either way.
  • Okay! As you can see even from the blurb, and certainly from ruling itself, this isn't exactly the victory claimed in the headline. It's an *affirmation* of an injunction which was previously issued.

    Which effectively means, the COPA-esque thing is currently on the books in Michigan, but there's an injuction against enforcing it until this suit comes to trial. The language of the injunction is pretty harsh, calling the law "unconstitutional," but that's not the final verdict! We have a while to wait before this is sorted out.

  • I'm afraid you misunderstood, the ruling affirmed the injunction against enforcing this law while it's validity is being challenged in court. You wrote as if you thought this was a bad thing?

    I'm happy the injunction was upheld, I hope the law is overturned eventually. You are either a proponent of censorship, or simply misunderstood the article. After looking at your page, and applying Occams razor, I am guessing the latter.

    If the former is true, I will be truly sad... an intelligent (and beautiful, not that that's pertinent, but it had to be said ;^) woman like yourself really should be on our side.

  • The reason the DMCA hasn't been struck down is twofold: Kaplan didn't really have the power to (although there were options he could take in that direction), and the MPAA and RIAA have just plain paid the right people too much money for it to die easily. From what I heard, it was passed by a near-unanimous vote in Congress, and signed by the president almost immediately.


    -RickHunter
  • Well, IANAL, either, but what apparently happened is the Plaintiffs moved to Have enforcement of the law enjoined, temporarily, until the trial was concluded (where it could be lifted, if the defendants won, or made permanent if the plaintiffs did). The trial judge, reading the material provided by both sides, did not make a final decision, but concluded tha the plaintiffs had a definite high probability of winning the case (allowing, of course, a differnt result if the evidence developed during the trial overcame this preliminary action).

    The defendants appealed this specific action, arguing that the law should only be enjoined only after a full trial. The Appeals court simply looked a the Judge's resoning for this preliminary injunction (which, after all, is a possibly proper action, not some out of the blue, arbitrary action of a crazy judge) and found, on its surface, that the judge properly granted the injunction on the preliminary facts at hand. The appeals court is noat making an immutable judgement on the merits of the case; they just send it back to the trial court for the full trial. They could easily remove the injunction on an appeal after the final judgedment of the trial court, ruling that the trial judge (if he finds for the plaintiffs) incorrectly applied the law to the facts developed at trial.

    The bottom line is that nothing about this action by the appeals court has any bearing on what they might decide on any final appeal that might be lodged after the trial is over. - Whew
  • Fortunately on /. we don't have that problem. The admin people are very firm believers in freedom of speech,...

    Yeah, but the Moderators are NOT, heh, heh, heh! Watch this reply going do-o-own-n-nnnnn-n...

  • This is an extremely significant thing. By hearing the case and making the same finding as the lower court, it sets the same precedent as if the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals were the first court to find for Cyberspace. The only reason it would be not significant is if the Court of Appeals had tacitly upheld the lower court decision by not hearing the case at all. The court did hear the case, and the ruling is very significant. It's not nationwide, but the different Circuit Courts tend to pay attention to one another, even though they're not as rigidly bound by precedent.
  • Has anybody considered that most ISP's (including things like AOL etc...) require the person signing up for the account to be 18...a cc is needed.

    Is this an easy simple solution to minors on the NET or have I just been working to hard?

    You've been working too hard. I've been living on my own/arranging for my own internet access since I was 16; I've had multiple dial-up accounts and once a cable account. Not once have I been asked for ID or been told I must be 18 to sign up. Only AOL has required me to have a CC (which I've had, at any rate; there are banks which issue them to minors, with parental permission) - most ISPs are more than happy to send you a bill and be mailed a check. Or given cold hard cash in their office, as the case may be.

    Companies like AOL like to require that you give them a CC# and be billed no other way because it makes it more work for you to 1) see what they're billing you and 2) cancel the service when their Accounts phone line is only open between 1 and 3 AM Tuesdays. Everyone else takes cash and checks.

    <SARCASM>Plus, you're obviously missing the point that we're trying to protect THE CHILDREN from the HORRIBLE PORN PUSHERS out there. THE PORN DEALER on your street corner is redirecting YOUR CHILD'S browser to goatse.cx [goatse.cx] without your precious little darling doing more than sitting in front of the computer.</SARCASM>

  • "The ruling states that the Commerce Clause may also be grounds for the statute in question to be declared unConstitutional. Interstate commerce can only be the target of federal legislation as per the Constitution. If this is true, perhaps the Circuit Court is claiming that the Internet, as interstate "commerce", is entirely out of the juristdiction of states."

    That is a VERY intriguing point. Of course, the Feds have used and abused the "commerce" clause to justify everything from seat belt laws to banning effective crypto. The 10th Amendment specifically FORBIDS the Feds from having any power not specifically granted them in the Constitution.

    It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).

    Going after state internet censorship and mandatory censorware under the Commerce clause is probably the only way other than the 1st Amendment to fight it. Since the Internet is interstate and international, no State actually has ANY authority to regulate it at all.

    And, the Feds are stopped Constitutionally by the 1st and 10th Amendments. They are stopped from implimenting something like the UK's RIP law (where you are required to hand over your crypto keys on request to "secret" police and forbidden to tell anyone, on threat of prison) by the 1st, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments.

    One advantage our friends in the UK don't have, a Constitution. Of course, those in power here in the US have shown an alarming lack of respect for law lately, so we get the CDA, CDA II, COPA, DMCA, etc. They are going to keep throwing these things against the wall until one sticks.

  • "And before you tell me that all we have to do is change the government through the available democratic mechanisms, I think you better give your head a shake. There is not two systems (public and private), there is one society dominated by the self-appointed elite. "

    You are correct. So long as the US is a 2-party system, and the two partys don't differ more than 20% or so in their beliefs (if that much) things will always be so. I think one reason why things have gone downhill so rapidly in the 20th century (which we are still in, BTW) is because since the late 19th Century, the two party system has stabilized. In the early-mid 19th Century, it was commonplace for a major party to rise, fall, and be replaced by a new party.

    Also, the one form of mass media of that time, the newspaper, was COMPLETELY unregulated by government, because the Constitution expressly forbid it.

    I think the invention of rapid communication and new ELECTRONIC mass media have helped entrench the dominant parties.

    ALL forms of electronic mass media (except so far, the Internet) are regulated by the government. There is no freedom of speech on TV or Radio, and never has been. It wasn't until the late 80's that the so-called "fairness doctrine" which prevented people from expressing opinion without giving "equal time" to any and all opposing views prevented almost any form of debate in media.

    Is it any wonder that after 70 years of government restriction and regulation, that the mass media eventually all became like minded and pro-establishment?

    The Internet is a threat to all that, because everyone can be a reporter. The ultimate target of the censors is not porn, it's not bomb plans, or DECSS, it's Matt Drudge and anyone else who in the future may use the Internet to do what he did.

  • There is a great deal of irony in my being moderated down (read: censored) for having an unpopular opinion in an article about censorship.


    --

  • Is it any wonder that after 70 years of government restriction and regulation, that the mass media eventually all became like minded and pro-establishment?

    It is exactly the opposite! The reason radio and TV are like minded, etc, is because of the corporate ownership. Because of their profit obsessiveness, you see very little innovation unless it "shows a profit".

    Why is it that PBS is so much better than regular television? It's because of the government involvement, so that producers only have to focus on quality rather than the "bottom line".

    Quite frankly, we need to remove corporatism from the airwaves, and let the government publicly fund all programming. Only then is the corporate greed removed.


    --

  • Of course... (Score:3)

    by Electric Angst ( 138229 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @12:37PM (#595374)
    State internet regulations... Now that's funny.

    Kinda like a cockroach telling a human that he or she isn't allowed to step on it...
    --
  • "It might interest you to know that the Founders put the commerce clause in the Constitution so that States couldn't put tariffs on goods from other States (as happened under the Articles of Confederation).

    So then, does this mean that no state could (or should) be able to pass a law declaring a new internet commerce tax for online purchases?"

    I think you are right. The Internet so far has been governed by the precedents set for mail-roder/catalog sales. States can pass sales taxes, because they are taxing INTRA-State commerce. However, mail order, internet, etc, commonly pass state lines.

    Legally, it is the responsibility of the person buying the items to turn in the sales tax to their state on their return. State's don't like it this way because typically very few, if any, people actually do this, and there isnt' an easy way to enforce it.

    And, I think it's unfair to put the burden on an Internet seller to have to comply with and collect taxes for 50 different states.

    Preventing burdens like that is the purpose of the (much abused) commerce clause, and why it had a very noble purpose for being there. Interstate companies are supposed to be regulated by the Feds, not the States. State sales taxes, IMO, are the same as tariffs on interstate goods.

    ANY government depends on having moral, honest people IN government to function lawfully and for the good of the people. Read the writings of the founders. It's the fundamental weakness of a Republic, is the dependancy on honesty.

  • Commerce Clause (Score:4)

    by KingJawa ( 65904 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @12:43PM (#595376) Homepage
    Note: "I am totally unfamiliar with this case save for a cursory read of the ruling", "IANAL but I am quite familiar with the Constutition", and other disclaimers may apply.

    The ruling states that the Commerce Clause may also be grounds for the statute in question to be declared unConstitutional. Interstate commerce can only be the target of federal legislation as per the Constitution. If this is true, perhaps the Circuit Court is claiming that the Internet, as interstate "commerce", is entirely out of the juristdiction of states.

    This would be quite interesting because it would allow orgs like the ACLU, EFF, etc. to fight all the Internet filter laws at once -- at the federal level. I, being a federalist, would rather empower localities, but if the Courts disagree, exercising the Commerce Clause could go a long way to keeping the Net uncensored.

  • Re:Can someone.. (Score:4)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @01:16PM (#595377) Homepage Journal
    Jennifer Granholm, Attorney General of Michigan, would have felt the need to bully all sites, everywhere, whether they have 'sexually explicit' material or not, because they do not verify your age.

    I'm a Michiganian, and this wouldn't be the first time Ms. Granholm tried to assert Michigan law against people in different states or even different countries. She's a really rabid fuck-up. When Voteauction was still running, she attempted to get a injunction against them. Unfortunatly, Illinois got to them first and she didn't get to be on the 5 O'Clock news.. She's also tried to get legally operating online casinos, (denied) porn sites in other countries, (denied a half a dozen times) internet rebroadcast of Canadian television, (denied) MP3 sites in foreign countries (denied).

    Basically she think she's gonna make a name for herself..

  • Need to think on electronic justice (Score:4)

    by os2fan ( 254461 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @05:01PM (#595378) Homepage
    The purpose of laws were to add restraints for what was not naturally present. The electronic age changes what is naturally present. Consider these examples.

    Copyright

    Before computers, one could not easily copy books, records, etc. But you could acquire at some expence, a press, and do these things. So there was certian laws enacted to stop copyright, and the target of these was sizable operations.

    You enter the tape age, where people can record cassettes and videos, and so we get this nonsence of `time shifts' and royalties on blank media.

    In the computer age, we have e-books, and MP3's and Napster and so forth getting into trouble because there is no easy way to control copies.

    Privacy

    In the paper age, if you wanted to track me, you had to pay a spook to sit in a letter box or something. Have spooks cutting clippings out of papers, and photographing me. Big money. Pick carefully.

    With computers, you can run and store massive archives assembled with grep. If you play your cards right, you do not have to even pay for the processing or storage of your snooping.

    Junk Mail

    In the days of paper, you had to pay a printer to print your flyer, and pay some likely lasses to put the flyer in everyone's letterboxes. Costs money. Pick the target carefully.

    In the computer age, you can send out bulk e-mails, or generalised mail, based on individual profiles. Annie likes Apple, send her adds for apple applications. Sally likes servers, send her out server software samplers. You get the idea. Also, you do not pay for the duplication and sending of this.

    Spam is not liked because it clogs up the system, and it is paid for by those who do not benefit from it.

    Anomynous Posting

    If I stick a sign up that said, 'Windows sucks', then MS are going to have a devel of a time working out it was me.

    If I post a message that says `Windows sucks', then MS could use some spooky program that says it came from this box, etc etc.

    Covering the tracks

    A privacy issue allows a person to cover ones tracks, by destroying that part of the past. There are people who seek uncover this past and use it against us. But the difficulty of deletion of data has strongly taken away from us our rights of a fair forgiveness of forgotten things. In the electronic age, we can scrape through a computer for scrap of files deleted, and tie it more clearly to a person, then if the same data had been recovered from the council tip.

    Issues for a digital age

    Do you see a pattern? Under the digital age, there are three natural justices that have changed, for which there is need for a new laws to protect our rights

    1. it is easier to copy.
    2. it is easier to analise.
    3. it is harder to delete.

    We need to address these natural justices as a totality, rather than looking at the effected issues (changes in copyright, privacy, freedom of speech, ....)

  • Passing any kind of restriction on speech is a slippery slope that we don't want to go down...

    Let's face it, guys and gals, the Internet as it is today (cheap, international, instantaneous) is threatening to ALL establishment powers. Finally, access to almost infinate information is there for the taking for anyone with a cheap PC and a modem.

    All you have to do is look at the election coverage to know what is at stake here... There is a lot that went on in the Algore recount-until-I-win fury that the FCC licenced and regulated dominant media didn't report. The Internet allows anyone with information to distribute it worldwide. The Internet enabled people like Matt Drudge to tell the world about Monica and the presidentially semen stained blue dress when the dominant media had been sitting on the story for weeks. No longer do all the like-thinking editors in the press decide what is and isn't distributed to the people. You or I can tell the WORLD anything, and there's not a thing any politico can do to stop it.

    THAT is power. And it scares politicos. This power has NEVER in history belonged to so many! So they are going after the `net, hot and heavy. They are trying desperately to get SOME kind of regulation of the Internet that will stick, so that it can be extended.

    EVERYTHING the government touches eventually ends up under it's domination. Jefferson wrote that the "natural way of things is for government to get more powerful" (paraphrase).

    So, they go after regulating prOn (for the children, of course), then they go after those posting bomb plans, etc. Censors always start censoring those that most ordinary people find offensive. But it never ENDS there. The personal freedom-control Nazis always want more and more.

    ANY kind of Internet censorship at all is just the thin edge of a wedge.

    What I find pitiful is that so far, the only legal Internet censorship that hasn't been struck down by a court is that resulting from the DMCA... Thaks to Judge Kaplan and his MPAA financed retirement fund.

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