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U.S. Supreme Court to Debate COPA
il dus writes "The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which seeks to restrict adult content on the internet, will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. This law has already been declared unconstitutional twice by federal appeals courts because it is, in their opinion, overly broad and restrictive of free speech on the Internet."
Looking at COPA, there are the names of several liberal Democrat senators involved, and one moderate Republican (McCain).
Those evil right-wing republicans trying to censor the Internet! How terrible!
I remember in the mid-nineties, Marilyn Manson was almost ready to release his album "Antichrist Superstar" but there was a problem: in the inlay he had a picture of himself naked at age four - just sitting on the couch, nothing weird or interesting. I'm not sure what the point of the picture was, maybe it was to show that he came from the same start-in-life as the rest of us.
Anyway, he was told he'd have to redo the inlay and get rid of that picture because anti-child-porn groups would string him up.
He wasn't happy about that. It was an innocent photo (a photo of innocence?), and it was of him, and he owned the photo, and he didn't mind it being released, and...
Well, the inlay got redone.
Of course, I can see a counter arguement - what if poor people out of desperation started selling their childhood nude photos - but it's worth keeping in mind that the "liberals" of this issue are mostly silent, and understandibly fearful.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Most implementations of the COPAA basically boiled down to a link asking if you where born after a certain date or not, if you where under 13 and clicked the appropriate link you where usually sent to a page saying the site didn't allow people at that age to register for the site with out parent permission and giving a link to a form their parent/guardian could fill out and mail in. Most of the kids two a couple extra brain cells, click back and register saying they are old enough and just never tell any one they are under age. We won't even go into how many sites have no information for parents/guardians to fill out and send in. A quick stroll though the info on the COPAA makes it seem as if it where more aimed at educating kids in technologies and the proper use of them than protecting them from inappropriate things which leads me to believe it was just one of those things that gets tagged on to a bill that was in some sort had a purpose in the start
GeekLeak.com - Silly name, serious geeks
The "good-ole-U-S-of-A" doesn't own the internet, and hence can't regulate it...
That being said, they can regulate servers based in the US, but that's about it
maybe the supreme court will realize this... bah who am i kidding/what am I smoking
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
so if somebody decided to put up these materials for free that anybody could view without having to pay, it would be legit?
This is one of the key questions in front of the Court. The 3rd Circuit (from which the case was appealed to the Supreme Court) ruled that COPA's definition of "commercial purposes" was overbroad. We will see in the next few months whether or not the Supreme Court agrees.
This is not the first time COPA has come before the Court. Two years ago, the 3rd Circuit ruled that the definition of "community standards," the standards by which the obscenity of questioned material must be judged, is overbroad. The Supreme Court agreed, but stated that this was not enough to overturn COPA by itself. It remanded the case, and now the 3rd Circuit has come up with even more reasons to overturn it.