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Pennsylvania Court Forces ISPs to Block Porn Sites

Posted by chrisd on from the that'll-keep-them-from-the-bad-stuff dept.

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."

2 of 531 comments (clear)

  1. slippery slope? by MarvinMouse · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This sort of approach starts us down a slipperly slope.

    Thank you for pointing out the exact fallacy in your logic. It makes debate so much easier when you opponent strikes themselves down.

    --
    ~ kjrose
  2. In Soviet Russia... by GammaTau · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I know that there are lots of jokes with "In Soviet Russia..." but this has happened for real.

    My grandparents were visiting the Soviet Union about 25 years ago as tourists. When entering the country, they had not only their passports checked but also all their luggage and whatever they had brought along checked throughoutly. My grandmother had a women's magazine that she read while traveling. The magazine had an article about nursing babies and it had a picture of a naked baby in one page. It certainly wasn't offensive to the ordinary people who read such magazines and it had no sexual or violent content whatsoever. But the officers considered it as child pornography and didn't allow it to enter the Soviet Union. If I recall correctly, my grandmother simply threw the magazine away in frustration due the delay.

    So what was the problem? The problem was that both the legislators and the people who observe the law were entirely incompetent. It's entirely wrong to put ISP techies to watch the content. How are they supposed to know what constitutes as child pornography? Surely there are some standards for that but shouldn't it be up to the police and courts to interpret the standards? Well, obviously that would mean that the government would practise censorship which is definitely out of line. So the clever trick is to pass a censorship law but make private companies to implement it. That way it might look better but it's still exactly the same issue.