WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites

Cutriss writes "Seen on Wired, this article briefly mentions how the Pennsylvania State Government is forcing UUNet to block access to five child pornography sites, under their new state law. No mention was made as to whether they were domestic or foreign. I'm certainly no fan of kiddie porn, but this ruling also serves as a blow to the 'common carrier' status that any whatever-tiered ISP should have in theory, and in practice. Also, this is a state law, not a federal one, but the end result is nationwide. This isn't a whole lot different from Yahoo! France being sued for making auctions of Nazi propaganda viewable by French citizens."

Comments

Yeah but surely this is different

[RiotXIX]

I'm no fan of censorship of opinion (even if I hate inbred nazi/kkk cocksuckers), but the posession or acquisition of kiddie porn by a photographer is illegal.

Common Carrier Sueing Frenzy?

[SScorpio]

Won't this law then enable the whole "Your blocking these kiddy porn sites, why no block these warez sites?". Basically isn't this law now removing the protection granted over what is transmitted over the lines? By no longer getting unresponible for what is being transmitted I can see many companies sueing if they don't like what's being transfered. This will cause packet filtering at every router, hell I can see the RIAA and MPAA trying to get the routers to determine if whats being transfered is a copyrighted song or movie. My suggestion is for WorldCom to completely avoid this new legislation by stopping all service in Penncilvania. Having all their citizens bitching should get this law overruled pretty quickly.

Re:Not a Common Carrier

[Mitchell Mebane]

Ah, but that spam filtering can generally be turned off by the user. It is entirely at their discretion. Not the discretion of some government or large corporation.