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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.]"
Fisher suspends tactic in fighting child porn
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
Pennsylvania Attorney General Michael Fisher today agreed to halt his behind-the-scenes effort to get Internet service providers to block child pornography Web sites until a federal judge rules whether Fisher's tactic violates the First Amendment by indiscriminately blocking legitimate sites.
The decision was announced at a federal court hearing on a request by civil rights groups for a temporary restraining order to stop Fisher's year-old program.
U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois approved the compromise and set a hearing for Nov. 21 on the merits of a lawsuit.
The suit against Fisher was filed earlier today by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based Internet policy group; the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia; and PlantageNet Inc., a Doylestown Internet service provider, or ISP, that provides local dial-up numbers for much of the Philadelphia region in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
John O.J. Shellenberger, chief of the Attorney General's Eastern Regional Office, said his office may still move against child pornography Web sites under state law by seeking a formal court order. He also agreed that his office would contact the ACLU before seeking such an order so that ACLU lawyers could protect the interests of legitimate Web sites that might also be closed.
Pennsylvania is the first - and only - state to try to tackle the thorny problem of fighting purveyors of illegal child pornography, which has become as pervasive on the Internet as legal sexually explicit sites.
The problem has confounded Congress and software developers because the technology of the Internet makes it impossible to filter out, or block, offensive Web sites without also blocking some legitimate sites about sexual, medical or social issues.
Fisher spokesman Sean Connolly defended the law, which went into effect in April 2002, and Fisher's informal policy of contacting ISPs by letter, which advises of a child porn site and threatens legal action if the ISP does not block the site.
An ISP that receives the warning has five days to block the Web site from view by Internet users in Pennsylvania. Failure to do so could result in fines of up to $30,000 and jail terms of up to seven years.
"This informal notification process was developed at the request of ISPs," Connolly said. "We are perfectly willing to obtain a court order. We've done it in the past and we're willing to do it again."
In Doylestown, the president of PlantageNet Internet Limited, James Smallacombe, said that the way the law is written makes it "impossible" for him and others to comply.
"If we received an order to block access to a particular IP address, since we started outsourcing dial-up networks, we have no physical way to prevent any user from accessing any site, because we don't control the network that the users dial into," Smallacombe said. "But the way the law is written, we can still be ordered to do this and, if we fail to comply, suffer the consequences."
Stefan Presser, the ACLU's legal director, said Fisher's informal process effectively blocks legitimate Web sites without the owners' knowledge - or the chance for them to challenge the action in court.
"We do not support child pornography. Regardless of [Fisher's] goal, he is not complying with what the legislature suggested be used," Presser said.
Fisher's informal policy does "little or nothing to combat the crime of child pornography or the problem of child pornography on the Internet," Presser said, because it does not go after the purveyors but the communications links they and legitimate Web sites use.
Because of the Internet's technical architecture, in which multiple Web sites share the same numerical Internet address, or IP number, the lawsuit contends that numerous owners of legitimate Web sites have found themselves blocked from custom
C:\>
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.
-Tim Louden
As much as I hate Child Pornography, and the people who distribute it, if you block a million child porn sites, and only 1 non porn site is blocked, they shouldn't be blocked. Olestra chips are yummy in the tummy
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
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
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).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
When I saw this post I could only think to myself: "Pennsylvania has employed a child to block pornography?"
-raph
... is get the address info of all the child porn hosts and do police raids on them nonstop until it's shut down for good. Then we can tell the RIAA that there are illegal mp3s on those machines! Man watch the child porn disappear!!!!
But the tricky thing is separating the baby from the bathwater, if you catch my meaning. Some sites are hosted on IP blocks that share with kiddie-pron sites. I for one, would like to be aware if my ISP was allowing this kind of hosting going on and I would want to stop it.
I'm all for the blue ribbon campaign, but I'm certain it doesn't protect kiddie porn dealers (scum).
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'.
One of the few things that most nations around the world agree on is that kidddie porn is a vile abomination of deviant human sexuality. No one blames the state of Pennsylvania for doing everything they can to craft a law deflecting it. What they need are technical advisors from the computer world and the legal community to write it in such a way that it becomes realistically feasible. Legitimate sites will be blocked in the process and that represents a serious contention with the first amendment. I applaud their intentions and hope they turn to the Linux or Unix communities to try and create the most efficient filter possible (maybe with a cash prize as incentive?). Mandating the presence of such a barrier is troubling because of the precedence that this sets. Remeber that Rick Santorum, a Senator whose religious views are readily expressed on key occasions, is from this state. The possibility exists that establishing a law based on "public morality" or whatever excuse could be used a s precedent to enforce a more narrow interpretation of morality later on down the road. In the future I hope that Pennsylvania will allow ISPs to try this out on a voluntary basis first to make sure it works more effectively and to give parents a notice of which ISPs are doing the most in that area. But as long as the average user remains glaringly ignorant about how the internet works, child porn will remain disturbingly accessible regardless of the barrier in place. This is especially true about legal pron sites which usually disguise themselves as something more legitimate.
As a side note, the RIAA should also not be allowed to infiltrate the Pennsylvania legislature as the vast majority of P2P distributors are not facilitators of kiddie porn distribution despite the current propaganda.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
how is it impossible to block domain names rather than IP addresses with the currennt technology of the Internet?
It isn't. But it might get expensive on the hardware side. You'd need to filter everything based on the HTTP request instead of the IP. A lot of ISP are probably not prepared for that and would require investing in router/switches capable of this or forcing everyone thru a proxy server.
is this an intentional disruption by bad co-operation? when things are badly implemented, court order got suspended and no more need to handle blocking requests?
The implementation was not appropiate and was disruptive. Two wrongs don't make a right.
or are those ISPs have the same mind as Code-Red writer, who tried to DDOS whitehouse.gov's IP instead of the domain name itself.
Oh, I get it now... You are joking and I fell for it. Dang!
No sig
Put Goatse as the search result for "child porn". It should give some permanent eye damage to the readers.
Nothing quite like slashdotting someone as they're scrambling around trying to recover from a DDoS. I thought it was deliciously sadistic that the second link (explaining the DDoS) doesn't link directly to the info on the DDoS and instead needs another click, and another pageview.
There is an interesting side note concering the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The original two commonwealths were Massachusetts and Virginia.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
His hatred of David Hasslehoff rages on. 2 mysteries solved in one.
After sending a notice to the ISP that their servers are hosting kiddie porn, the ISP should disable the site and report them to the police along with the files stored on the server as proof.
If the ISP doesn't comply, block ALL their IP's if they reside in another country. Lock them up as an accessory to the crime if they are located in a semi-moral country.
If I was a legit business owner who lost access to my site because of this, I doubt I would have a problem with relocating my site. It isn't like there aren't plenty of other hosting services that have a bit of decency.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Finding reliable people who are emotionally capable of such a job must be an HR nightmare. I can just see the job description:
Researchers needed to evaluate questionable online material of an extremely graphic nature. Must have a professional outlook, neat appearance, and an ironclad stomach. Must also be able to pass a polygraph, and extensive background check. Computer literacy a plus, but willing to train candidates with the right enthusiasm. Benifits include full medical, dental, and a comprehensive psyciatric plan.
Actually this sounds like a shoe-in for de-frocked clergyman. I guess I answered my own question. Carry on.
Anybody have any statistics on how many children are hurt by the making of child porn? How does it compare to the number of children hurt by child abuse. If the number hurt by child porn is relatively small, mightn't it be more useful to spend that effort preventing child abuse in general?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I find it really interesting to do a general "poll" of the number of people in this thread who seem OK with the far-reaching pre-emptive blanket banning of IP addresses in this topic.
In another topic, the entirety of the board would be up in arms, but on this subject it is stirring up hot debate with the pro-block and anti-block camps looking to be about equal in numbers (at least in numbers of posts).
What does this say? That a good number of us really don't care *as much* about those freedoms that we profess to when discussing other topics? Perhaps it's just because a small group of people get so incredibly hot under the collar about this topic (and I understand, really!!).
The thing to me is that parents are always the ones to jump in and say "well, I can only imagine if it was my kid". The thing is that if you're a half-decent parent, it won't be your kid. If you let your kid be alone with someone who could be capable of posting something like that ON THE INTERNET, you are making a mistake in your parenting somewhere.
Personally, I think kids should be informed about this kid of thing at a young age so that if they are ever actually put in the situation of having to deal with it, they're capable of saying "no" and if forced, capable and willing to tell someone about it later.
But throwing down blanket bans on IP addresses <b>IS</b> a violation of our basic rights and inhibits the freedom of information, which is one of the most basic of human rights and dignities in my opinion.
It will take the cooperation of ALL the world's governments to take down these sites, which I can't see happening soon. Then the content will migrate to a service like FREENET, where the information is decentralized and fully anonymous and guess what... you won't be able to take it down anymore.
Information will flow, even if we don't want it to. Spying on the population isn't the solution. Protecting the kids is a solution. No more kids spending time with pornographers, no more porn involving kids...
That said, I also think it's scary how I, as a young white male (not old enough to be a father, but too old to be a kid myself), can't even hug my 13yo brother in public without attracting a smattering of both disgusted and prying looks from people around that just scream "WHY ARE YOU MOLESTING THAT BOY?"
WTF is up with that?
*sighs*
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
> impossible to filter out, or block, offensive Web sites without also blocking some legitimate sites
:-)
Remember how easy it was to block alt.sex.pedophilia? "Don't like it? Then don't go there." But the existence of this group was deemed "wrong", so a.s.p no longer exists, and as predicted this hasn't actually stopped the CPs who are now inhabiting alt.grannies.knitting instead, thus leading to the dual problem of people wanting knitting patterns getting a nasty shock and CP blocking now being impossible without also blocking knit-wits.
CP is a social problem, not a technological one. Reinstate a.s.p and anon.penet.fi, then it can be blocked on an induhvidual basis very easily, simply by induhviduals choosing not to go there.
Just for the terminally stupid - I'm not supporting kiddie pr0n here. All I'm saying is that there isn't a technical solution to it, just as there isn't a web site that can be blocked to put an end to drunk driving. Just like drunk driving, the solution is a social one, not a technological one. Even if we revert technology back to the stone age, child abuse will still happen in the back of caves.
This won't happen though. A lot (with a space) of my ideas seem to be crazy, such as removing a substantial proportion of drug crime my legalising drugs and selling them at Boots for a penny a pound rather than creating this enormous black market which needs similarly vast amounts of crime to keep it lubricated. Perhaps this is why my middle name is Vetinari
All Rights of BOFH belongs to Simon Travaglia (http://theregister.co.uk/content/30/index.html), But I really thought of the BOFH and his PFY here...
Bofh - So, you told me you found a job on the side ? And what could that be, seing you spend all your time either here or at home browsing porn ?
PFY - Well, Actually, I found a job at Pennsylvannia's Attorney General Office....
ROFL 8p
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker