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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
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.