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

Read the article

[setzman]

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

Re:Read the article

[lelnet]

>illegal child pornography, which has become as pervasive on the Internet as legal sexually explicit sites

I have to wonder whether the person who wrote this is wildly exaggerating the amount of child pornography on the internet (or in the UNIVERSE, for that matter) or wildly understating the amount of regular porn. :)

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

[La Temperanza]

Perhaps because it's difficult to raid a site, and equally difficult to convince local governments to, in Vietnam or Bulgaria or similar countries.

Re:The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[TLouden]

You're confusing the subject a bit. You're right but we aren't talking about harassing people. Where talking about an affective way of keeping child pornography out of the US.

Re:The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[C10H14N2]

No, I'm not confusing it. Yes, we're talking about an effective way of keeping child pornography out of the U.S. I'm pointing out the patently obvious fact that using IP addresses is directly comparable to using telephone numbers. They're essentially arbitrary and of no informational value.

When such arbitrary information is used to identify people for crimes (think of the truncated passenger name lists in CAPPS), people get harassed. It may not be the intention, but it is the effect. It is also inexcusable to use useless information when useful information exists simply because it is easier for a completely ignorant moron (read: a politician) to say "a-ha! I have your IP address" and then proceed to legislate. The problem is that when politicians are allowed to legislate such dreck, they invariably create systems that are easy to be put into, but nearly impossible to get out of.

Re: The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[Illbay]

Many people that you think you know, including potentially some of your friends and relatives regularly view child porn. Are they creeps?

The fact that you feel like you can even pose such a question and have anyone take it seriously is a sad, sad commentary on what we as a society have become.

If I said to you "my brother-in-law regularly takes truckloads of toxic sludge in the dead of night and dumps it in the local river. Does that mean he's a creep?" I can almost guarantee your reaction.

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?

What kind of monster did your parents rear?

Re: The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[Stiletto]

First of all...we're talking about children here. NO child under the age of 18 can consent to committing sexual acts...period.

So, you obviously agree that there is nothing wrong with prosecuting these folks:

http://www.debaser.us/content/news/000307.shtml

Summary: Two 14 year-olds are charged with raping each other. The ridiculous claim is that they are both rapists AND victims simultaneously because they were having sex with one another, both incapable of consent.

Your Black-And-White-World mentality is why we paint so many people as criminals these days.

Re: The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[danila]

Fact: People who are aroused by images of children engaging in sexual acts are a very small minority.

Yep. So what? People who are aroused by images of pregnant chicks or by wearing diapers are a minority as well. Does that mean these practices should also be prohibited?

Fact: The vast majority of people are sickened by such images.

False. Reality is that the majority of people have never seen such images. And just like everyone and his dog in the USSR was against Boris Pasternak when party started the famous defamation campaign without even reading any of his poems. There are some sick child porn images, but then there are many normal ones that would probably make a normal person aroused, not sick. As for the sick porn, the sickest I ever saw was some sadistic anime with some pretty girls cut into slices alive. :) Now that was sick. Compared with that any child porn would look mainstream.

Fact: Viewing of such images is very strongly correlated with acting on the fantasies represented there, in other words having sex with children.
First, any data is skewed, because as you are well aware, people do not normally reveal the fact that they enjoy child porn. The only ones that we know about are those that were busted by the police. Not a very representative sample. Second, correlation does not equal causation. Obviously, child abusers would be interested in child porn, but that doesn't mean that child porn viewers are likely to become child abusers.

Do straight guys seek out gay porn?
Do straight guys seek out lesbian porn? Again, there is some correlation between your tastes in porn and your sexual preferences, but trust me, not every hentai fan wants to be raped by a giant squid. :) And as I said elsewhere, rape porn is legal and it doesn't turn people into rapists. Why should child porn be different. Most people are capable of self-control and know the difference between fantasy and reality.

Coercing children to have sex--raping children--causes profound psychological damage which takes at minimum years for them to get over.
1) You can have sex without coercing anyone. You ignore the fact that some kids might be ok with having sex with adults. Consensual sex with kids is illegal in the US, but there is nothing unethical about it.
2) Raping kids is not much different from raping adults. And nobody is advocating raping humans of any age (of course, I mean real rape, statutory rape is ok in many cases). But there is no proof that child porn viewers will turn to raping kids in reality.
3) There are some indications that psychological damage is caused by joint efforts of police, family and psychologists. Many kids are just fine after having sex with adult, but are royally screwed by people who care more about jailing a paedophile than about the well-being of the child.

some never manage to live normal lives.
Fact: Consensual sex with other kids before 18 doesn't not lead to any harm and is perfectly ok in most cases.
Please tell me how it is so much different in case of an adult? Physically sexual contact with adult is possible as early as in 5 years or so. Psychologically some kids are ready as early and many are ready around 12 years or so.

I don't believe you are a monster; I just believe you are an ignorant fool. :)

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-

Re: The good, the bad, and the opportunity

[danila]

Thanks for an interesting post, I tend to agree with many things.

But not with all. :)
Replace "a child porn image" with "an mp3" and you'll have 100,000 people here jumping on your throat to explain you.
These are very different industries. You can't really imagine a person downloading a crappy MPEG child porn video, enjoying it and then ordering a DVD, can you? :) First, after he had an orgasm, he is not exactly in the mood to order a DVD. Second, you can't easily order a child porn DVD. And third, the quality is probably not the most important factor - paedophiles are quite different from auidophiles. ;) So, honestly, I don't think that downloading the file feed the industry somehow, especially because nobody downloads the files directly from sellers of child porn, no, it's downloaded from the guy, how downloaded it from the guy, who ...... who found it on some obscure BBS and nobody knows how it got there.

My point about grey areas was simply to illustrate that the whole problem is not as black and white as many people in this discussion assume. You see, I agree that making child porn generally (on average) is a bad thing, but I disagree that one photo equals one completely maimed, twisted, fucked up innocent kid with incurable psychological problems for the next 1000 years. There are much worse things that are done to kids, like simply raping them without photos, like killing them, like bombing them from the sky, like suicide-bombing them when they have a disco or a wedding, like destroying the school system and fucking up their mentality more than any paedophile ever could. And then you have bullying in school, you have all kinds of crap that kids have to endure every day in every corner of this beautiful blue speck flying through space... And to single out one particular problem and proclaim it the root of all evil is simply untrue and it smells like a witchhunt.

If you remove the negative impact of parents+police+psychiatrist from the child abuse case, I am not sure if the long-term damage is greater than from a very bad teacher at school. Exploring their sexuality is natural for kids, often they do it with other kids of the same age, sometimes with older children, sometimes with teenagers and sometimes with adults. There are many well-known cases when there is no psychological damage to kids whatsoever. Sex doesn't kill.

Yes, if the abuser kidnaps the child, rapes him/her, enslaves and forces to pose for child porn, this is bad. No doubt about it. But the fact that the child is exploited for child porn is irrelevant. It's not the picture that harms him/her, it's the abuse from the adult authority figure who somehow controls the kid. Poor treatment of the child is not a requirement of child porn. It's simply a consequence of the socio-economic situation. If you can buy a same kid for 100$ in that country, you won't treat him/her well. When child porn was legit a few decades ago, it was definitely a much smaller problem (in Europe and the US). Yes, it never was mainstream, because the sexual revolution didn't not penetrate the whole society to a necessary extent, but it was a much lighter topic. If child porn was to be legalised today, models would be treated the same or better as child actors in movies, TV films and fashion industry are treated. There are definitely many kids (defined as younger than 18) who can have sex without going crazy after it. Some of them would probably be happy to earn good money by starring in child porn. Of course, we can't expect legalisation any time soon, although I hoped that virtual child porn would emerge as a substitute for real child porn. Apparently, people/companies are so scared by the government and the media, that they are afraid to touch this in any way.

I hope you see that there is nothing inherently bad about child porn photos/videos. Now the question of is it moral/ethical to download child porn now, when most of it isn't made in noble ways. We

Well

[SargeZT]

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

Re:Well

[ergo98]

I would say even if 10% of the sites which are blokced are not child porn, then that is acceptable.

Brilliant! As the region's Office of DoubleTruth Information, I would like to thank you for your clever idea. We will now being the campaign to populate the 10% misinformation buffer. "Oh, I'm sorry, we heard that that Democratic Party page was child porn.". Or even better "accept it or imply that you support child porn".

I also think states must work together to track down the providers of child porn and arrest and jail these scumbags. They should be forced to go to jail.

I don't think you'll find much disagreement, and when childporn is found of course people do go to jail, and then they should investigate the perps computer and find the trails leading to his child-porn friends, and the network of childporn traders implodes. That's good investigative work, and is the way it should work. The government running some sort of NetNanny service is wholly unacceptable, though, because we know that the span between the theoretical implementation (eliminating childporn) and the realistic implementation often is a massive one. Instead you have the blocking tonnes of sites that have nothing to do with childporn whatsoever. Indeed, it could just be plain old fashioned, entirely legal, porn being blocked under the moral auspices of blocking child porn...and who's going to call up the state because their Woman-on-Woman site isn't working?

Re:Well

[gfody]

Then they should just block the range 255.255.255.255.. that of course blocks all child porn sites (and all spam sites too).

the people who are not kitty porn or spam sites can just call and have their ip's removed from the list. the ACTUAL kitty porn peddlers wouldn't have the audacity to call and lie about it

Re:Well

[Quothz]

People can always write to the Attorney General and appeal that they are not a child porn site. I would say even if 10% of the sites which are blokced are not child porn, then that is acceptable. What is not acceptable is doing nothing.

This is, in formal logic, what's known as a false dichotomy. You can do _something_ without blocking legitimate sites. For example, you can attempt to identify and prosecute the creators and distributors of child pornography. "Deputizing" ISPs without their consent is just silly. If they're aware of any kiddie porn, they should act, but forcing them to monitor everything that passes through their network is just silly. Anybody seriously suggest that telecomm companies be liable for stopping drug deals that occur over the phone?

I also think states must work together to track down the providers of child porn and arrest and jail these scumbags. They should be forced to go to jail.

I agree. But we, as a society, pay people to round up these scumbags (the kiddie pornographers, not the ISPs). Foisting off the responsibility onto someone who isn't employed to do so is just passing the buck.

Yes, there's shades of grey here. Hotel proprietors are often required to run off any known prostitutes, but you don't see laws requiring them to monitor all rooms at all times to prevent it, nor would such laws be feasable.

Similarly, requiring that ISPs report known child pornographers is reasonable (and is currently the law, AFAIK). Requiring ISPs to monitor and make a judgement on everything that passes through their servier is not reasonable.

Re:Well

[jlaxson]

Now that's all well and good, but the way it stood, such a site could be blocked quitely and instantly without any sort of appeals process nor warning.

If you're a business doing, say, $1000 of sales a day on the web to customers in PA, and they accidentally block you, what do you do when sales all of the sudden drop by that amount. You wouldn't know anything about your server's IP address being blocked by ISP's, nobody would have told you. Then it takes 2-3 days to find out. Goodbye $3000. A few more days to get a court order to unban, $2000. Then all the ISP's have to go back and un-ban your server, another $1000-5000. There's a possibility of $10,000 of lost sales there, not to mention lost customers who took their purchase elsewhere when they couldn't reach you.

No, if you want to institute some sort of banning, fair notice must to be given to the owner of said IP address, who can then alert their customers to the coming events, and try and appeal. But, whoops! Now the pornographer knows all about it and jumps ship just as soon as they have a backup to $media.

Now we're back to the beginning again. The Child pornagrapher is on another site, another IP address to get banned then appealed. I don't see any way a pre-emptive ban like this could work without harming innocent business.

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

Re:Suspend Kiddi porn law and sue them

[ogre2112]

Trying to reduce kiddie porn by blocking IPs is like trying to reduce the sale of beer by bulldozing the road that leads to the grocery store. It's not gonna work.

Did you read the article? Legitimate businesses, and other sites are being blocked by these filters. If they want to remove these sites, they need to do it by prosecution, not by technical workarounds.

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).

Re:Porn and spam

[arvindn]

I see the similarity, but there is also a difference: in the case of the SPEWS blocklist the decision of an admin to use it is voluntary, and not mandated by the government. Therefore it can be argued that blocking a whole ISP that hosts spammers is not a bad thing -- if all the customers of that ISP are affected, they will move away, and it will hit the ISP where it counts -- money. As long as they aren't made to suffer financially, there will always be ISPs willing to host spammers. I'm only saying that this sounds like a reasonable argument, not that it is unequivocally right. Tricky questions, certainly. A recent controversy about this aspect of the SPEWS blocklist produced some interesting arguments for both sides. When the blocking is required by law, of course, we must be far more circumspect, since the possibility of abuse is great.

Off topic - PA Child Porn-Blocking

[ralian]

When I saw this post I could only think to myself: "Pennsylvania has employed a child to block pornography?"

Re:Off topic - PA Child Porn-Blocking

[Skyfire]

Makes sense to me, they probably are the best at finding it.

What they should do...

[dolo666]

... 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).

Re:What they should do...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Sorry, but being involved with a hosting company and being in charge of finding it and deleting, I will tell you this: There is so much of it, in so many places, that it will be impossible to stop. A US customs agent once told me that the internet has made things next to impossible for them. He had been in it for thirty years. He used to hunt them down in person and arrest the people who take the pictures. He used to know the kids in the pictures. These days, most of it comes from places like Russia. With digital cameras and proxies and know how it has become an unstoppable fact of life. With all the free hosts out there and the ease of dropping a box on the internet, how are they ever going to stop it. At the host I worked at, this shit popped up daily. I could go weeks at a time deleting shit every single day. And I am talking stuff that lived on our servers for less than 24 hours. Often, by the time we had found it, it had consumed 1 or more Gigabytes of bandwidth (We had 2 100 megabit circuits, most of the time they were running at 80-90%.) This shit is here to stay. Technology has made that a fact.

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'.

Good intentions, Bad laws, Potential Solution

[Dukeofshadows]

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.

Re:IP instead of domain name

[secolactico]

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!

Gotta be cruel to be kind

[Fr33z0r]

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.

Block the ISP

[FullCircle]

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.

Child porn?

[be-fan]

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?