Cyberspace Wins Free Speech Ruling

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.

Comments

Of course...

[Electric Angst]

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...
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Re:Commerce Clause

[mikethegeek]

"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

[KingJawa]

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..

[technos]

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

[os2fan]

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, ....)

Re:Yeah! Censorship sucks

[mikethegeek]

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.