This week the Supreme Court shocked some by nixing a law passed by Congress aimed at keeping kids away from Internet porn. This drew mixed interpretations on various blogs of varying political outlooks.
Now, Newsday says, it's time for the Congress to try again because the issue is too important. It's editorial says in part:
There is almost certainly a way to shield children from sexually explicit material on the Internet without unconstitutionally infringing on adults' First Amendment rights, but Congress hasn't found it yet. That's the message the Supreme Court sent to Capitol Hill Tuesday when it ruled that the Child Online Protection Act is probably unconstitutional.
Washington should take another crack at striking an acceptable balance that will protect free speech and children by looking to technology rather than criminal sanctions.......
But to pass legal muster, an Internet pornography law must employ the least restrictive means possible to achieve its objective. That's actually an elegant legal formulation. It seeks to allow children to be shielded while ensuring that free speech is curtailed as little as necessary.
The Supreme Court didn't reject the 1998 law outright. It sent the dispute back to the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia for trial. So government lawyers can try to prove that the law is the least restrictive way to limit access to Internet porn by people under 17. It imposes a $50,000 fine and 6six months in jail for knowingly posting content that is "harmful to minors" on the Web for commercial purposes. To guard against criminal charges, providers would have to require a credit card or age verification from customers.
The court suggested a better alternative: Promoting the use of filtering software to block access to explicit material. It would be less restrictive than the disputed law and, according to the government's own Commission on Child Internet Protection, more effective than criminal sanctions.
Filters, if effective, would allow selective screening on the receiving end rather than universal restrictions at the source. Adults would not have to identify themselves to gain access to material they have a right to see. Filters would block not only U.S.-made pornography, but the 40 percent that originates outside the country. And filters would not require criminalizing any speech. They're not a perfect solution, but filters have the distinct advantage of being constitutional.
Tip: invest in computer SOFTWARE....
Filters aren't, and never will be, very effective. They don't block things they should, and do block things they shouldn't. Technology will never be an answer to this.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with your article. Why should our government be in the business of promoting filters?
I'd rather see parents using filters, with all their imperfections, than see the government shutting down sites because they are too sexually-oriented. I'm against censorship.
An additional approach is for sites to voluntarily rate themselves. There are sites such as RASCi and SafeSurf which allow you to do this. I'm thinking that, when I'm able to start blogging again, I'll go over to SafeSurf and get an ADULTS ONLY tag to put on my site. I don't run a commercial porn site, but I do openly glorify sex as central to my ideology and theology.
Here's a rule you should all follow: No children should ever be allowed to read anything written by Steven Malcolm Anderson. Period. Please don't hold your toddlers' faces up to the screen when you are reading my comments here.
I'm conservative on that. I'm glad that I wasn't aware that a thing called sex existed until my pubescence, and even then, it took me a long time to figure out what it was. That's the way it should be. Sex should be taboo and mysterious. In my ideal world, no one would mention sex outside the Holy of Holies, the secret love chambers and the temples of the Gods and the Goddesses.
We have to discuss it now, though, and argue about it ferociously because we are in the midst of the ideological War between the "Naturalists", the "Jehovanists", and the "Gnostics".