PA Child Porn-Blocking Law Challenged, Suspended

An anonymous reader submits: "Pennsylvania's controversial child porn controls have been challenged in court, and in a surprising twist, suspended by the state. If you recall, PA required ISPs within the state to block access to sites hosting child porn. The list (which used IP addresses) is compiled solely by the State Attorney General's Office. The use of IPs resulted in the unnecessary snagging of other sites on the same hosting service. The plaintiffs are the ACLU, CDT, and a Doylestown PA ISP. The State AG, in an odd move, suspended the law and the list indefinitely. [Note: Philly.com appeared to suffer a DDoS earlier today. Please be kind to their admins.]"

Comments

The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[TLouden]

Good to see an effort to stop child porn
Bad implementation is a little dissapointing
So, who's gunna make the next filter for the ISPs to block the sites without hurting others sharing the IP?

I think something like this is just waiting for the proper implementation to really get it going and then other states (countries?) might follow suit.
Keep up the good work.

Re: The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[Black Parrot]

> Good to see an effort to stop child porn
Bad implementation is a little dissapointing
So, who's gunna make the next filter for the ISPs to block the sites without hurting others sharing the IP?

If they know the IPs, why don't they just raid the creeps and cut it off at the source?

Re: The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[vDave420]

Yet you apparently think the "consumers" of child porn--the ultimate reason for its existence, and for the exploitation of helpless innocent children--are blameless to the extent we can't even consider them "creeps" if they are friends or relatives?

Har har har.
Be careful, your reasoning cuts both ways:

Automobile accidents cause more than 40,000 deaths each year in the US alone (far more than child pornography and terrorism combined!!), and yet you, the consumer, are the ultimate reason for the existance of these horribly deadly "Automobiles!", and ultimately, the death and destruction of millions of dollars of property and loss of countless lives.

Does that mean you are a creep because you use said product? NO!

In fact, the (by far) most likely scenario (that I can see) is that you are a nice, "normal" person who doesn't use his car for bank robbery, vehicular homicide, etc.

However, since those creeps cause deaths and destruction, and you use the same end product, by your logic YOU ARE THE CREEP WHO SHOULD BE LOCKED UP!

What kind of creep did your parents raise? How can you (the consumer, and ultimate reason for the existence of these automobile tools-of-death) live with yourself?

Right?
Of course not.

Please, PLEASE don't fall for (or propegate) the "save the children" rant. They are plenty safe, and people who view said pictures are NOT hurting them or causing them pain, anymore than you are responsible for other people's automobile deaths because you use a car.

Do you see the problem with your reasoning?
I doubt that you will, because it involves children, and (as politicians know) that is the way to influence anyone to agree with anything.

-dave-

Suspend Kiddi porn law and sue them

[deadmongrel]

I don't understand how the law works. You suspend Kiddi porn law and you go after them for sharing music. way to go. again I repeat. America - Land of the Free* ________________________________________ * Free but conditions apply

Porn and spam

[sbszine]

It's interesting to see that the same collateral damage problems occuring with this government porn blocklist that were affecting spam blocklists like SPEWS. Like spammers, porn site operators presumably changed accounts enough that the list operators had to block whole ISPs to guarantee filtering them.

Of course, unlike receiving spam, surfing a porn site is a personal choice (excepting porn viruses etc).

I used to work for a porn host

[Anonymous Coward]

When we found child porn (or cp as we called it), we just deleted it. We didn't tell anyone. When we tried to cooperate, local police would tell us one thing, US Customs another, and the FBI would tell us something else. And they all acted like they were minutes away from arresting you. The laws vary so much and the agents were such dick heads, that we just quitely deleted it. By the way, it was easy to find. Just watched the logs, any new user that immediately sky rocketed in bandwidth usage was almost 100% cp. Hehe, I still have a plastic file box that we would keep the records in (when we were cooperating.) It had a label on it that read 'The PedoFile'.