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Pennsylvania Law Requires ISPs to Block Child Porn
feed_me_cereal writes: "Salon
has an article describing a new law in Pennsylvania which requires ISPs to prevent access to child pornography on the internet. Under this law, the government can give ISPs a list of websites to block. Failure to do so can result in fines from $5,000 to $30,000 + jailtime. While stopping child pornography sounds noble, it seems that these powers will do little to meet this goal and much to allow the government to decide what websites are suitable for public viewing." Reader lightspawn provided this link to the law itself as well as another story at freedomforum.org.
We have an extreme version of this at our school - originally put in place to block porn, it was later extended to terrorism (fair enough), but then also anything under the "fun" category, the "online sales" category, and finally the "personal" category - laughably this last one includes ANY address with a ~ in the url.
Needless to say, the potential for abuse here, as well as complex legal arguments, is HUGE
I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...
If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
No, it's not. Read the law; it was prepared roughly two months ago, and it's just going into effect 'round now care of the 60-day delay.
And the state AG is the one that makes the blocking decisions; the law explicitly states that the ISPs are under no obligation to go searching on their own, to monitor content (to decide what to block), or to otherwise search for affirmative evidence of wrong-doing.
Now, the proxy issue... the law says "disabling access", which could be interpreted as either accessing directly (which makes a certain degree of sense, as the law mentions that banning requests should include URLs -- so ban the URL might be sufficient under that) or even banning indirect access (proxies, mirrors, and other foo).
I'd be inclined to think that the former was meant (ban direct accessing of the specific URL), but... you'd probably have to check the debate records to find out.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Is the ISP supposed to just carte blanche kill off anything that even resembles child porn?
Please retract knee from jerked position.
It's really simple. If the government notifies you that you're distributing child pornography, and you don't take it down within 5 business days, you get fined. If you do it three times, you go to jail.
Ineternet Service Providers should be required to focus on effectively providing a link to the network and thats it. Routing and reliability is the job that I look to my ISP to perform. The governement threatening an ISP as a means to force their misunderstanding on the people is not something I welcome and I hope the message gets across soon.
If someone is hosting something that is illegal then go after the someone and not their ISP or even worse the ISP of someone else that just happens to be linking to the same internet. If you can't get to that someone then deal with it. The internet is much bigger than Pennsylvania and the narrow views of whatever government entity that gets to tell my ISP what I can see.
I for one will always be in favor of deciding what filtering needs to be done on my connection to the internet and think that the voters in Pennsylvania should let there representativers know that this heavy handed attempt is nothing short of an attempt to control something that can not be controlled in this manner.
its the way the free market works. people will pay money for these things, and laws and court rulings dating to the 1980s say that they can't be held liable for what users do with their service. so naturally they carry them. if you don't like that you can move to china, i hear they have a very pervasive and effective filtering system to keep that kind of thing out.
Absolutely - those kids have a right to get naked in front of the camera - just like anybody else.
We've got a law that allows 'dangerous people' to be arrested and held indefinitely without being charged or brought to trial. If that doesn't sound like it has potential to be abuse, I don't know what does.
This latest one will be another with enormous potential for abuse. It'll censor unfairly many sites that don't have child pornography on them. It would also be possible for someone saying something that isn't liked to be put on it 'accidentally.'
But, I'm probably just paranoid, there's no reason not to trust the gov't. They are here to protect us.
(I live in PA, btw)
hey, i hear you can get lots of hot kiddie porn on #cooch/EFNet"
heh.
-- LINUS TORVALDS, (cnn): Because their operating systems (Windows) really suck.
Dear Mr. Kennedy: Thank you for your message. First, I must say the story you read is less than complete. I would like to give you a little more information. We were asked to take a look at this bill by some ISP folks. As originally written, the bill did not require that a court review a site before a provider was required to block it. After we got involved, the bill was changed so as to require the Attorney General or the District Attorney to go to court to seek an order for a site to be blocked. That was the constitutional issue we saw as child pornography is not protected by the First Amendment.
I spoke with the reporter who wrote the story and I would say it is a mischaracterization to say we blessed the bill. It would be accurate to say that because our involvement the most significant constitutional flaw in this bill was remedied.
Finally, under the final version of the bill, the Attorney General must notify the ISP. The ISP is not required to monitor its service.
(Also, the ISPs were involved in the legislative process)
Larry Frankel