Pennsylvania Court Forces ISPs to Block Porn Sites

jkastner writes "Salon is reporting that Pennsylvania is forcing ISPs to block web sites that have child porn. While we can all agree that child porn is bad, this sort of approach starts us down a slipperly slope. If one site slips through, does that make the ISP liable? In addition, the court ordered blocking may prevent access to legitimate sites that are hosted on the same server."

Comments

Court orders without how to do it.

[WPIDalamar]

It's wacky that courts can order companies to do things, and not suggest ways of doint it.

This wouldn't be news if the court had listed the sites it wants blocked. Let the court make the distinction between allowed and not allowed once, instead of making every single ISP make those choices.

Kind of like a court saying, "Hey, <INSERT POWER COMPANY HERE> you have to start using fusion power next year."

Huh?

[Qzukk]

How do they block it without knowing what the sites are?

If they know where the sites are, why haven't they been shut down?

Now, how is this going to work?

[Pig Hogger]

I RTFA, and:

Connolly, the spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general, said Wednesday that in such cases involving a Web site with a shared address, authorities contact the Web-hosting companies and order them -- under threat of legal action -- to pinpoint and shut down the illegal pornographic sites.

Does the reach of the Pennsylvania attorney general extends beyond the border of Pennsylvania, or, for that matter, beyond the border of the USA? No? So, how it's gonna work?

But....

[b96miata]

What I'd like to know is how they expect the ISP's to know what sites do and don't have child pornography on them. I mean we've had software on the market for years to block regular porn, and look how effective that's been. This kind of thing is just not the realm of the judiciary, or even the legislature. PA's always been stupid on stuff like this, I believe there was some previous ruling/bill about blocking access to obscene material which cause standard porno boilerplate to add "if you live in PA" alongside "if you're a minor" in a number of cases. I'm not dissing pennsylvania, I live here, but the old adage about PA being Philly and pittsburgh with alabama in between is really quite true

Again, the problem is definition

[YrWrstNtmr]

Is a picture of a 2 year old in the bathtub on a family website 'child porn'? It IS a picture of a naked child. And some kiddie porn purveyors would salivate over it.

Yes, child porn is bad. So intensely bad that the website owners need to be hung up by their testicles, and then drawn and quartered.

But...let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the webhost can be identified, and the website known....why are we not going after the website owner/designer?

Don't just block it....put the ass in jail.

Great, and this is how they need to do it

[antis0c]

Pennslyvania needs to provide ISPs a list of websites it says contains child porn. It's not an ISP's job to determine what is and isn't child porn. It's only job should be to block it if the state deems something child porn. You can't just go off enabling filters that filter out key words like child porn, etc without disabling other legitimate websites. In fact, that article itself on ISP's filtering child porn would probably be marked as a child porn site and thus filtered.

Ah, nevermind I'll stop beating the horse.

Why just the Internet?

[faust13]

If PA is so intent on blocking child porn, why don't they fine the USPS for delivering porn?

Re:Won't this just worse-ify the problem?

[orangesquid]

This will get my lynched, no doubt, but...
Is there a good essay that examines just "what is wrong with child porn?"
I keep seeing posts like "Child porn is bad. So bad that ..." but nobody has explained the logic behind their position, which is strange to see on slashdot.
I understand perfectly well the problems inherent to the creation of child porn and the mental problems associated with the people interested in child porn, but wouldn't it be better to fix the problems, not the symptoms?
Or does it depend on context? What about high school yearbooks, where parents often send in "embarassing" naked-little-kid pictures? Isn't that child porn? What about parents who take pictures of their kids in the tub because the kid is doing something cute? That's also child porn...
And how does child porn relate to age of consent? In many states, the age of consent is 16, yet you can't take nude photos of someone under 18 (legally, anyway), even if they are begging you to. I've never quite understood this, either.
I suppose the lawmakers assume the typical person interested in naked 16-year-olds is a 45-year-old male, but what about other male 16-year-olds who always click the "Yes, I am over 18" button anyway?
Bah, OK. I tried to come up with some interesting questions, so I'm expecting some interesting answers (and probably many trolls, too).