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Challenging the Child Online Protection Act
narramissic writes, "Today in Philadelphia a federal trial got underway that will decide whether COPA is constitutional. The outcome will determine whether operators of Web sites can be held accountable for failing to block children's access to inappropriate materials. An article on ITworld outlines the arguments of the foes in the battle: the DOJ and the ACLU. If I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on the ACLU. Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge." Two courts have found COPA unconstitutional and the Supreme Court has upheld the ban on its enforcement, while asking a lower court to examine whether technological measures such as filtering could be as effective as the law in shielding children; thus this trial. The article does not mention that it was the DOJ's preparation for the trial that was behind its earlier request that search companies turn over their records — a request that only Google refused.
Comment 1: Think of the children
Comment 2: It's the parents job to police their kids
Comment 3: Parents can't police all the time
Just call this a meta-post so that we can get the generic comments out of the way.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This, even if enforced, will not protect children from themselves, or the unscrupulous... it will, however, give polititians someone to roast on an open fire to make them look good in election years.... This should be the VFMA (vote for me act) as that is how it will be used, like many other bad laws in the US
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Any child who wants to get around these screenings can, unless a credit card is required, and some kids have cards anyway, or use their parents. This law just makes a headache for programmers and people who have to prove their innocence to not being a child.
I don't see any reference to that distinction in the Constitution.....
This law sounds incredibly vague. What is inappropriate? If I have a few cuss words on my home page does that mean I have to block everybody? What about bikini pics? How about articles that some people think are inappropriate because of their religious beliefs?
How does this affect web hosting companies? We host thousands of domains and I'm sure some of them could be considered inappropriate for kids.
It's not a site owner's job to filter out people that might be offended by the content, if you don't like a site don't go there.
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children given access to the Internet by their parents?
Mod this kook down, this is a hoax. Everyone knows that Bush is going to take over this country and create the the Union of North America (UNA), not the North American Union you retard. Get the facts straight.
Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge.
Why is it that the ACLU has to fight in court to get people to understand something that should be painfully obvious? Man up people, the government is not your mommy.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"I am under 13"
"I am 13 or older."
Ok great! Now only the honest kids will be prevented from signing up to most forums. It's about as ridiculous as the "YES, I'm 18 or older" on adult pr0n sites.
It would seem as if COPA is only protecting the site operators in the event that something bad DOES happen to young childern. These kids can still get themselves into trouble if they want. I guess some people think that the fancy agreement is somehow significant (as seen in EULAs.)
It would take someone about 15 minutes tops to generate a CC# to use on one of these sites. Unless they are going to require every adult related sited to take credit cards, they are only going to hit the CC validation routines, not test if they are valid accounts. Oh, and is the US government going to give out a free credit card with every bankruptcy now also?
By the way, if I'm a US citizen, running a company based in Switzerland, hosting a site through a UK company, with servers based in Canada - does this law apply? How about if the domain is registered through a US company, but me, the company, the host, and the servers are all based outside the US?
Exactly. COPA is stupid because politicians don't understand technology, or don't care to understand. The entire COPA thing was a ploy by politicians to claim they had done something "for the children." It's a classic attempt by politicians to, A) Spread FUD to the ignorant, B) Propose fake solution that in some cases gets them elected (gains power) or helps their CEO buddies (Profit!!!). Politicians survive by fabricating problems or by making existing problems seem worse. It's their bread and butter.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
If parents raise their children in a halfway decent manner, having them exposed to some awful sites will cause revulsion but not harm.
Gah, kids don't spontaneously explode if they don't wear a helmet while tricycling.
DOS: No serial number required.
95/98/SE: To cut down on casual piracy, enter this serial number.
Win2K: Since that didn't work, it might phone home unless you ask nicely that it not phone home.
XP: Since that didn't work, it won't activate until you let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't nuke existing installations.
Vista: Since that didn't work, we'll nuke any box that stops phoning.
Or if we're talking copyright - witness the evolution of the NET Act ("It's a crime if you sell it"), the DMCA ("It's a crime if you crack DRM"), and the attempt to pass something harsher (SSSCA/CBDTPA) a few years later. (Look for another attempt after the elections, and/or something to mandate DRM into the hardware specifications, as Vista takes hold in the marketplace and is once again cracked...)
COPA was designed to ensure that under-12 kids could get Myspace pages, that under-18 kids can click "I'm over 18" to see b00bies, and that (not legally required, but I've seen it on many brewery/winery/distillery pages) under-21 people can click "I'm over 21" to read about booze.
After a few years, and after enough "horror stories" have appeared in the press about how 11-year-olds are being victimized on Myspace, 15-year-olds are seeing teh b00bies, and underage drinkers are able to read about beer, legislators will have a wide selection ready-made excuses to come up with some sort of "Real ID" or single-signon system for the Intertubes.
The courts only decide whether or not something's constitutional. Until they do so, it is constitutional. When the courts strike down COPA, it will be replaced by something even worse.
Glad it's the ACLU and not the EFF, now we might actually win!
I've been wondering, why don't the adult web-masters voluntarily put something like
.xxx domains and the parents not using filtering software have only self to blame.
<META NAME="might_be_inaporopriate" CONTENT="true">
Let the net-nanny type apps handle it, and be done with it...
Its lot less painfull than moving to
I know l33t kids could get around it, but it's an offer of hand.
I want to know what is being done to protect adults FROM children. False allegations, false accusations, baiting, online deception, vandalism, slander, and the like.
I spent two years in prison for some bullshit some kid said on me, and I had to not only prove it was impossible, but had to hire a lawyer to find a technicality in the trial to say the trial was bogus. Otherwise, without having a family on the outside with a little bit of money, I would be rotting in prison today. Go ahead, tell me children don't lie about being molested. Go ahead, tell me children don't lie. Go ahead, tell me! I will look you dead in the eye and tell you how full of **** you are.
I bristle with anger whenever anybody does anything in the name of "protecting the children". These laws are being used to go on the equivalent of modern day witch hunts. Don't believe it? Wait until they come after you, and you're in front of a jury stating as plainly as possible, how what they are saying makes absolutely no sane common sense. It doesn't matter. The jury has been cherry picked jury of neo-conservative republicans. You'd get a much fairer jury if you stood outside Walmart and grabbed the first 13 people that walked in or out the door. When has any defendant ever had any say so or oversite in the picking of a jury? Answer: NEVER. Think about that. That's why America is so corrupt, its why everyone pleads out, its why you have the right to a jury trial in name only.
I think any person who wants to protect children, needs to start by granting children more basic human rights. For one thing, to be considered as citizens of the country, and not property of their parents. To be given a say so in the development and passing of the laws under which they have to live under. To have the voluntary right to opt out of schools, which have become indoctrination camps to teach people to jump when they are told.
There is no freedom in this country. You have freedom of mobility, and that's about it (and you have that anywhere). How many of the hundreds of thousands of laws on the books have you ever had any chance to vote on, ever been asked to vote on. How many of these bogus laws ever come up from review? Never. That's why there are ludicrous laws still on the book about not spitting from your donkey on the sidewalk in front of a lady during daylight hours.
These laws are passed in some place far away in a room by a select group of people and then applied nationwide to the majority, who are too busy with their own lives struggling to make ends meet to travel to find these backrooms and stand up (even though they wouldn't be let in the door).
Why oh why can't we have a mod option for -1, Has No Contact With Reality?
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
Does the federal govt. currently hold pornographic video distributors accountable for limiting the sale (or rental) of their product to minors? If so, and if that restriction is considered to be constitutional, then I'm not sure how one can argue that COPA is not also constitutional. It just applies the same principle to businesses that distribute their product over the net instead of through a brick and mortar (or mail order) system.
With Cable TV, you have the ability to set your television set to block specific channels - thinks like Skinamax, Spice, etc. These channels aren't automatically blocked. The parent has to sit down with the remote control and program it. I don't see why the internet should be filtered for the rest of us, because parents are too lazy to look over Little Johnny's shoulder and tell him to say off the warez site with the nasty ads.
If you want the internet filtered for your kid, install and manage your own filtering software. It's the parent's responsibility to take charge of what their children are doing, viewing, etc. It's not the content provider's problem at all, particular on a medium like the internet where you have no face to face interaction (e.g. checking ID). Frankly, if you require a valid credit card, I think you'd solve the whole issue.
My objection lies with of some of the banner ads and emails, which can be really atrocious. From time to time, I get things in my Inbox that make me cringe and wish I would remove them from my brain. "Barnyard" and "hot lovin'" should NEVER appear in the same sentence. I can only imagine something like that coming to a small child....
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
I think you just don't want to pay the taxman.
Let's say - if kid wants to register for this kind of page it needs to be done by adult. How? Simple. Bu using credit card.
You're out of date. More and more minors are getting credit cards.
Of course there's a problem - less kids registered - means less income.
If you're talking about kids and porn sites, you're way off. Do you know anyone in the porn business? Kids don't have a lot of money but do have time. Kids don't like to create records of porn viewing and don't want anyone to be able to track them. They are the least likely to pay any money of all demographics. Do you know what is really bad for a porn business? Publicity. Clients like to be anonymous because of the social stigma. One case of parents catching kids using a site can cause a huge hubbub and lose them a lot of business as their clients move elsewhere to avoid any possible publicity.
Most porn cites would be very happy to have a way to stop kids from visiting their sites. It would be good for business. Most porn cites voluntarily submit their names to parental controls lists and the major ones even help fund a consolidated database to make it easier for the industry to have good listings. They also tend to use good keywords to help search cites accurately mark them as adult. Less registered kids means more income and less liability, not less income.
Just because you dislike porn doesn't mean you can tell other people whether or not they should be allowed to watch it. That's what freedom's about. You know, that thing America's founded upon but the government keeps trying to quash? Yeah, that.
Care about privacy? Read this!
In my line of work, I see a lot of boobies, and I gotta say, those are some really nice boobies!!! All naked and hanging out in the sun... WOW!!!
(My line of work is ornithology of course)
He clicked on a "sketchy" site that purported to have "hints and secrets".
A nice looking bare-chested woman popped up.
There was a couple second pause... then he nonchalantly clicked the "X".
Ok, so I am not sure what he would have done had I not been looking over his shoulder, but what more could you ask for?
As long as unexplained charges don't show up on my credit card, that is what you should expect your child to do while web surfing and "inappropriate" material appears.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
People nowadays seem to believe that the whole world must protect them (and their children it would seem) from everything... from the criminals, from the person next door, from everything bad in the whole world.
I am so tired of hearing how the world failed to protect some idiot from their own stupidity or how the world failed to be the good partent to your child that you for some mysterious reason could not, and now somehow it's all our fault and you are totally innocent and victimized. There's an article here at least every 10 days with another sickening example of this retarded behavior.
Makes me sick. People, grow up!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Sorry, no cigar.
IF the court declares something unconstitutional, it was ALWAYS unconstitutional. It "didn't exist". Get out of jail free, etc.
Not that it matters a whole lot. The problem is fourfold:
1) Until the court throws the law out, you have no idea whether it will.
2) Neither does the rest of the legal system. So it still goes after you. "Get out of jail free." doesn't refund your bondsman's fee, your lawyer's fee, replace your lost chunk of lifetime, reassemble the broken family, get you your job back - with back pay, replace your repossessed house and car, restore your credit rating, replace the expensive collectable guns you had to dispose of, fill in the hole in your resume, etc. It does purge the criminal record - which doesn't help you if the info is already out in hundreds of non-court databases. And even if they knew damned well this one would get thrown out you have no way to sue them. "I vas Chust Dooink my Chob!"
3) The courts normally don't even take up the issue until somebody gets convicted of violating the law in question AND there's NO other way to dispose of the case without addressing the issue. Even then it takes the Supreme Court to definitively strike a new law, and they can arbitrarily refuse to even hear it - which they usually will do unless two appellate courts disagree, and sometimes even then.
and...
4) It takes a LOT of time and work to strike a law. It takes the legislators and chief exec very little time and work to pass another like it, with slight tweaks.
And another. And another. And another dozen. And another thousand. And put riders on every "must-pass" bill, like the budget, or a use-of-force authorization, or
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way