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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.
aka if a stat says you can't see this... and isps have to follow .. then everyone ealse who has a net connection provided for others must follow as well...
.. oh what a mess this will be..
now the question is what if somone in pensilvenia uses some sort of web proxy to view such pages.. hrmm makes the isp still liable? does that mean that the isp has to block all web proxies out there
Stop providing internet service in Pennsylvania.
No internet, no kiddie porn websites.
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
First, this is obviously a kneejerk reaction to Candyman.
Secondly, who's to decide what's what? Is the ISP supposed to just carte blanche kill off anything that even resembles child porn? What happens to people trying to look at Anne Geddes images? Who do you appeal to if an improper decision is made, and how does it work?
This seems like too much idealism and not enough rational thought.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
That I almost suspect its not supposed to be a real law, but rather something to make mothers feel better.
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
As long as there's a decent oversight so they only block access to child porn I don't have a problem with this. If they start blocking other stuff, that would be bad. It would also be bad if they used some kind of automated system, because that can go wrong. A person must verify these sites before they get put on the ban list.
Of course the big problem with this.. There is now a nice and complete list of child porn sites.. and you have people looking at this stuff all day.
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I am a little unclear on the standards of child pornography. It seems to me that if you put such a broad block, you can lose a great deal of meaningful content. Example. You're doing research on rain jungle aboriginies and there are pictures of children unclothed as they frequently are. (Ever watch a National Geographic?)
I admit this is a weak argument, but this is part of a larger issue. No Internet content ought to be blocked. The only filter should be your own brain. If you find this image offensive, don't look at it! It's just that simple. I agree, child pornography is absolutely sick, and the government should take steps to eliminate it and prosecute those who produce it. They should not on the other hand, enforce tactics for trying to regulate the flow of information to clients. This is impossible.
Consider the choices: regulate content flow to a billion+ clinets, OR, eliminate a few thousand content sources. *sigh*
Why bother.
The law specifically says that a site has to be kiddie porn, as defined by their statutes. So:
Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow...kiddie porn, then...kiddie porn!
Not only that, but a judge has to sign off on EACH AND EVERY SITE to EACH AND EVERY ISP. That's a pretty safe system.
That's not really a good example, though, is it? Your sister's bathtub photo was probably taken by your parents, so either you're saying that Mom and Pop are child pornographers, or else you think that masturbation should be a crime.
Which is a good question, actually: although some child pornography is very harmful to the child, I imagine (not having investigated myself) that some of it is probably at that "kid in a tub" level. So is it really exploitative for Mom to have snapped that photo of me on a bearskin rug? Or does it become exploitative when it's on the Internet? Or am I only exploited when my photo arouses someone? What if nobody saw the photo until I was grown up - am I still exploited? What if Mom only gets out the photo at family gatherings and also to show my prospective girlfriends - is that when the exploitation occurs?
I'm not trying to minimize the harm that child pornography does to children, of course. I'm just pointing out that you could have found a better example to get all uppity about. And, also that the popular conception of "photos of children == evil" may not be so black and white as we would think. There's a lot of black, and there's some amount of grey.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then..."
"once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder..."
That is the classic slippery slope fallacy.
In this case, the slope isn't all that slippery, anyway. Child porn is unique in that it is fairly straightforward both to define (as depiction of minors engaged in sexual activity) and to establish the harm that it causes (since engaging kids in sexual activity tends to harm them, whether or not the activity is recorded or not). For most other kinds of porn, the definition and establishment of harm are a lot more ambiguous.
See:
SmartFilter's Greatest Evils:e stevils.php
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/great
BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity):
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php
The Pre-Slipped Slope - censorware vs the Wayback Machine web archive
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/slip.php
All of them, and a few others on http://sethf.com/anticensorware/ , deal with this issue of the technical requirements for the control system.
The short version is that "disable access" arguably entails banning anonymizers/privacy sites, language translation sites, and more, since these all can act as a means of escape from the blinder-box.
Maybe access through these sites doesn't count as "accessible through its service". But I sure wouldn't want to be the ISP facing child-pornography charges over that argument ("You mean you allowed access to this anonymity service, which is used by CHILD MOLESTORS?!")
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Oh, but then the article goes on to say that the law was passed last month: And reading even further, we see that this has been in the works for years: Please, read the facts before starting your rant! Now on to the important issue..this does seem to be a dangerous opportunity to for the government to begin censoring/banning web sites at will. I'm all for getting rid of the child porn websites, but I would rather it be done in a way that does not remove the freedom of surfing the web.
Rather than ranting and raving about how bad this is, why don't we try to come up with an alternative solution.
-- Find the Truth...
If they know of a site that has child porn on it, why in the hell are they not going after the site instead of just blocking it?
I understand that its not as easy as it sounds, but there are other remidies that I would think would be much more effective such as having the DNS entries yanked, the ISP of the site hosting killing the site. Maybe even the FBI raiding the place (obviously not feasible if located outside the US).
But to require ALL ISP's to block sites seems like a band-aid approach to the problem.
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Damn, and I used to work at an ISP in Pennsylvania. That list could be worth money to lazy pedophiles that don't know how to use Google.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
It may seem obvious but newsgroups seem to offer the relative anonymity that encourages distribution of this type of material.
Websites have to be hosted someplace. Content can be identified and prosecuted.
I'm still not sure why some newsgroups are carried by ISP's. What possible legal use could there be for alt.binaries.sex.children or similarly named groups?
This is not a flame or a troll but I think there's general concensus that certain material should be prosecuted and every effort made to eliminate its presence from the net. I'm not referring to all porn but pornography involving the exploitation of children.
Banning these websites may be a particularly ineffective way to achieve that goal but at a minimum something should be done about the newsgroups.
> What exactly is the problem here??
Several things actually:
1. This puts the burden of doing this on the ISPs, who will remain uncompensated. While AOL can amortize the cost of processing the blocking list across millions of subscribers, the little ISPs don't have that kind of user base. Penn. should pay the ISPs for their costs to do this.
2. How will an ISP block access to kiddie porn websites when people try to access them through, say, www.anonymizer.com? The ISPs would have to mount a man-in-the-middle attack and decrypt all such traffic.
3. The Attorney General is being given the power to simply declare something as being kiddie porn without a judge, jury, or trial. I can easily see them shutting down a web site that consisted of erotic photos of young looking, but legal age, adults. Worse still, I can see a born-again-Christian-zealot Attorney General defining kiddie porn to further their own agenda. It could include everything from Japanes anime sites to sites devoted to helping prevent the spread of STDs among teens.
ISPs should not become uncompensated censors for the government.
to answer your question, the article says who's to decide what's what: the state attorney's office.
i just can't believe how stupid the whole thing is. if the law enforcement officials KNOW a site is child porn then wouldn't they be much better off going after the site itself rather than alerting the site owners by putting them on a hunted list?
moreover, wouldn't it be more useful to LET people access a known child porn site? a swift enough equipment seisure could offer further leads in email, log files, and so on.
i got all huffy when the french decided to sue some american companies for not blocking access to nazi paraphanalia sales when the sites, themselves, didn't control the sales. i see this as the same thing, though the subject matter is an order of magnitude more detestible. still, i say pennsylvania's going after the wrong people.
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
John D. Ashcroft, Attorney General, et al., v. The Free Speech Coalition, et al. will decide whether virtual child pornography can be treated as the real thing. It was argued in the Supreme Court last October, and they still have not issued an opinion.
If you can treat the virtual like the real, then it becomes much easier for the AG of Pennsylvania to do something. He doesn't have to care about the difference. Otherwise, sorting out whether it is virtual or real could pose difficulties.
Interesting that CANDYMAN happened while the Supreme Court was noodling over the issue. I wonder if they know.
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)
> This isn't just ineffective. It will be counter productive: forcing the underground further underground...
Kinda makes you want to jerk a knee with "Prohibition" or "War on Drugs" tatooed on it, donit?
These laws probably aren't supposed to be effective. At best they are a cynical attempt to get votes by giving the politicians something to point to as "evidence" that they're Doing Something About It. At worst, they become another black hole for tax money, a source of corruption in law enforcement agencies, further erosion of our traditional liberties from the legislatures and courts, and a huge revenue boost to criminal organizations.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is slowly becoming the end of the information highway. It is turning into the censorship highway. Of course someone will moderate this down as being overrated, and maybe it is a little bit, but I have been on the internet since 94 and it is not as free as it used to be. We now have more ads then ever before. There are now more spammers then there were and more people online. There are more sites and people using 'family safe software' that blocks 'bad content'. But who is defineing this bad content?
Well believe it or not much of this is being driven by religious conservatism and right or wrong how long will it be before a site that you visit that is NOT pornographic or bad is blacklisted because it is considered 'subversive' or a terrorist threat? in France they are demanding the blockage of the sale of all Nazi memorabilia (sp), asia they block some western ideas. Soon it will be up to those in power to determine what content they want you to read.
Fantasy, well most people are young here and will live to see if this is going to be more real than fantasy.
Only 'flamers' flame!
(1) ISP's, nor the government, should not be in the business of banning certain websites, or blocking access to them. There's no difference between that and banning, or burning, books. Fucking nazis.
(2) In regards to "simulated child pornography", if its simulated, who does it harm? In such a case -- i.e., an 18+ woman who looks younger, or a computer-generated image -- no one's privacy is voilated, nor was anyone's rights violated in producing the image. Banning that is just christian bullshit where they want to control your mind. It's a victimless crime in that case.
(3) In regards to real pornography, which was actually derived from children, there are three classes: (a) Forced; (b) Exploitative; (c) Self-done. Here's my take on each of them:
a. Forced. If a child is forced (raped) into sexual poses/positions/whatever, and the image of that taken is distributed on the web, there's no reason the government shouldn't be able to take down that image from the website, in protection of the child. Every minute the image is up there is a VIOLATION of the child's rights to privacy, self-dignity, and her body.
b. Exploitative. When the child is not "forced" per se, but nevertheless is taken advantage of by an adult. The act itself should be illegal in most cases; I don't think we should be ardent about "exact" age limits. The legal age for consentual sex with older people is 18 most places; if a guy has sex with a girl a month away from being 18, so what? Of course, we need to have precise laws, so people know exactly what they can and cannot do. I suggest keeping the legal age at 18, but varying the punishment for statutory rape depending on the age-difference of the "victim" and of the adult. There's a big difference when a 60-year old man sleeps with a 16-year old girl, as opposed to a 19-year old man doing the same.
c. Self-done. When an underage person engages in sexual poses/sex, and photographs themselves; then they either post it online immediately, or wait until they're older (18) and publish it then. There's nothing wrong with this, though current laws prohibit it. If someone took pictures of themselves having sex at 16 and wants to post it on the web later on, that's their right: it is their body.
Even in case (a), where I feel the government does have the obligation to -- in protection of minor's rights -- stop the distribution of child-pornography, that doesn't justify any means. The government is free to do so via any means that are non-draconian. They are not permitted to, for example, take down an entire P2P network to stop some porn, nor to spy on what all of us put on the web.
I really think that child-molestation laws are unneeded. They are redundant with rape laws. The standard in rape law is, "could/did the person give informed consent". Obviously, a 6-year old child can't give informed consent, as that person doesn't even know what sex is. Obviously, a woman who says "no" can't give informed consent. Obviously, a woman passed out drunk can't give any kind of consent.
But there are some sticky situations where its a little vague. What about when the person is 16-18? When can they give informed consent? Obviously, some people make better sexual decisions at 16 than others do at 30. Well, maybe you can have a "sex license" sort of like a drivers license, which verifies that you know about basic sexual issues. Sounds kinda stupid, huh, a "license to have sex"? But its alot better than setting unmeaningful absolute standards which don't apply uniformly.
What about a case where a woman is drunk and is the sexual aggressor? Should the man be charged with rape if he has sex with her? I don't think so. Another consideration is, "who was the initiator"? Was it the man, the woman, or both? I think that if there is an "initiator" and the other person accepts the advances, it should never be considered rape (unless the other person was purposefully stoned to make them "easy"), except in cases where the person doesn't have their "sex license".
But even that has problems. For example, do we really want to say that a person mentally retarded can't have sex, except with other mentally retarded people?
It is clear to me that this society has not thought enough about sex; all of our answers the a complicated issue are black/white, clearly goaded on by Christian humbug.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If they know of a site that has child porn on it, why in the hell are they not going after the site instead of just blocking it?
Sure, if the site is in the US. Try to start shutting down Web sites that may be perfectly legal in other countries but that those of us in the United States find offensive, and you're opening an ugly can of worms.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Blocking child pornography is essentially impossible. Blocking any sort of "content" or "IP" is an extremely difficult task. It's one thing to block port 25; unfortunately the IETF has yet to standardize on a port number for kiddie porn.
First, there's the problem of deciding what to block: Let's take the obvious example, of blocking a jpg. This means someone has to determine the age of the person in that jpg. I looked at about 1,000 jpgs last nite, and I pity the fool who has to monitor my drunken pr0n surf.
Perhaps it would be possible to use some VERY sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm, but, like spam filtering, you're never gonna block 100% of the bad stuff while letting 100% of the good stuff through. Nevermind the incredible resource hit of scanning each downloaded jpg, or the fact that your CRC-matching database of known jpgs ain't worth shit once I take the 640x480 jpg and save it as 644x483.
But that's not even the real problem. No, the real problem is THE DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY. Basically it depends on things like "community standards" and such which don't really make sense on the Internet. With child pornography, the definition gets even more complicated; things that are otherwise acceptable become pornography when the subject is under 18, such as a picture which shows the outline of the vulva through clothing isn't porn if the girl is 23 but is porn if she's 9.
(In fact the entire laws about kiddie porn in this country are totally fucked. The gov't can offer to sell you kiddie porn, say from an ad in the back of a magazine, and then sell it to you, and then bust you for possession. This would normally be entrapment, but the Supreme Court decided that kiddie porn is such a scourge that normal constitutional protections are outweighed by the need to lock up pedophiles. Hmmm... "First they came for the pedophiles, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a pedophile. Then they came for the Arabs..." But I digress.)
To make matters worse, pornography doesn't even have to be a picture or movie. Text can be pornography. For instance,
I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself from licking 15-year old Timmy's perineum as he lay unconscious.
That could be construed as kiddie porn, believe it or not. Of course in this context I won't be going to jail (I hope) since my INTENT isn't prurient (but who can really tell my intent?). But if I logged on to some kiddy chat room and made that comment, I would be in big trouble, esp. if the moderator knows what a perineum is.
So not only do you have to filter the content, which is a subjective process in the first place, you have to ascertain the context of that content. In other words you have to Meta-Moderate, and we all know how much fun that is!
No, this will never work, and the "blacklist" that gets passed from the Penn. A.G. to the ISP's will have all the same problems as the anti-spam blacklists: How do you get off it, do you notify someone that they're on it, or would that just tell them it's time to get a new IP address, etc.
Here are some links to interesting legal stuff:
Supreme court def. of pornography (pdf, sorry)
has the famous "I know it when I see it" qoute from Justice Potter Stewart
Google HTML version
Guy in jail for selling videos of girls in their panties
Guy acquitted after gov't got him to order kiddie porn thru mail and then busted him. He was acquitted because the gov't hadn't proved intent, not because it was entrapment
I am not a lawyer, but I play on on Slashdot.
There are technical means that ISPs could use to implement Pennsylvania's orders - they could install proxy servers on all of their connections leaving Pennsylvania, either forcing users to explicitly proxy their browsers, or using transparent proxy servers. Some ISPs do this, to take advantage of caching and reduce their overall bandwidth needs, but except for local ISPs that happen to be entirely within Pennsylvania, most of them didn't build their network to easily keep track of state lines so they can enforce the "Banned in Boston" rules in Boston, "Banned in Philadelphia" rules in Philly, and "Banned in Pittsburgh" rules in Pittsburgh.
Does anybody know if any national ISPs were consulted on the implementation issues? I suspect most of them are perfectly willing to comply with orders to take down web pages, but would have lots more trouble with the blocking requirements - it's much cleaner to implement on the edges of the network, in the user's browser where there's enough information to decide.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
im interested in how you see those few players surviving very long with expensive internet access? who's going to be paying 60$ a month for a 56k dial up connection? wouldn't a worser case be that eventually there's no internet in PA. sure it might not come to that once those lawyers sort it all out.
as another twist, how about satalite connections? if i'm living in PA, i could run across to VA or OH, or NY and get me one of them there sat-a-lite internet dishes go home and i'm all set.
the analogy of kiddy porn to pot is to show that there are dumb ass laws being put on the books which have no business there. these laws are put there for feel good measures to get a few votes next time around. maybe i should take it to a arguably more socially accepted level? are the insurance companies lobbying for anti-cell phone laws? most of the current anti-cell phone while driving laws are at the local level (cities, towns, villages,etc). if it were a real problem for vehicle accidents, the insurance companies would be harassing the hell out of those slimy congress folks in D.C.
now, back to the main point. this law is down right basackwards and unnessarry. there's laws against making kiddie porn. laws agains distributing it. probably laws agains posessing it. now there's a law that an ISP has to police its networks for the stuff and keep it out? i'll have to go back to my pot analogy on this one. it's illegal to make pot. illetal to sell pot. probably illegal to posess it to some extent. should the right prudent folks of the commonwealth of PA force their phone companies to monitor all phone conversations (gotta include the cell folks) for possible pot deals? how is this really any different? sure kiddie porn is bad stuff, but you can go around making insaine laws and just blow it off saying "well, that kiddie porn is bad stuff and we're doing our part to keep it out of PA"
Because many ISPs block them already, or the groups are getting spammed/bombed to death, but the people just move to some less explicitly named groups, wreaking havoc on those actually looking for normal or artistic or nudist pictures by mixing it with hardcore stuff. It's been done, and it doesn"t work...
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