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Judge Strikes Down COPA, 1998 Online Porn Law
Begopa sends in word that a federal judge has struck down the Child Online Protection Act. The judge said that parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit others' rights to free speech. This was the case for which the US Department of Justice subpoenaed several search companies for search records; only Google fought the order. The case has already been to the Supreme Court. Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. wrote in his decision: "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."
For once, the mouth on the Censorship icon should have the black strip removed. This law has been the dark specter over every forum I've seen for years, and many non-communication-related services, too.
The question is, is COPA finally dead, for good? No more judgements to be made on the case? Please? The article doesn't specify if it could be appealed again.
I realize they'll just pass another law with similar provisions, but at least this helps set the tone in the courts.
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Its about time that courts are finally seeing that our personal liberties are more important than fascist legislation that only appears to protect us and/or our children. Lets hope more are to follow.
This is a Good Thing®. I'm so tired of hearing about how people aren't being responsible enough, so we need to remove those responsibilities from them. Seems kinda counterintuitive to me.
Community standards are not a good way to police a country that promises liberty and justice for all.
Forget the federal attorneys, he obviously intended to sack all the federal judges and replace them with new ones loyal to the Empire
"It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government's addressing the problem at its source," a government attorney, Peter D. Keisler, argued in a post-trial brief.
Mr. Keisler then pointed at a child in the back of the the court playing a PSP and continued, "I mean, it's not like I have time to watch this brat."
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I for one thank our porn permitting overlord!
The original generic sig.
Man, the moms from Mothers Against Canada are gonna be so mad.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I know Google has been falling out of favour with the /. crowd of late, but I think they really deserve some big kudos on this matter. If they hadn't stood up to the DoJ on this one, no one would have and this law would still be in place.
Way to not be evil!
Boo for AOL, MSN and Yahoo.
And just how many families are going to give up that unnecessary second income? *crickets chirping* I thought so.
I've seen a lot of people of both sexes talk the talk, but then not even walk at all when it's time to walk the walk.
Parental responsibility includes a recognition that your needs aren't important compared to your family's. You like your job, but don't need it to support your kids? You have a moral obligation to quit if it is getting in the way at all of being a parent.
But we can't say that today because that's "sexist" and "backward." Funny how well "modernity" seems to be working out for families. Divorce rates through the roof, kids screwed up right and left, but hey, let's ignore all of that and focus on abstract ideas that make us feel good, right?
If a judge struck down the Copa Mundial, I'd throw a fit.
Finally a Judge who understands the First Amendment. Now if we could just get "Inciting a Riot", and "Disturbing the Peace" laws struck down.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
As I read the article, the following jumped out at me.
"The Web sites that challenged the law said fear of prosecution might lead them to shut down or move their operations offshore, beyond the reach of the U.S. law."
Move their operations offshore?? We see how that worked for the casinos, They will get you when changing plains. :
How about move it offshore, Move out of the country, and NEVER set foot on US soil again! A hard thing to do in these times. Next you know the US will divert plains and instruct them to land on US soil, just to arrest some one.
Oh well, welcome to the Land of the Free and home of the Brave....
Please note that the above statement predates the current laws restricting your freedom of speech, Freedom of the press and freedom to assemble(1). The restrictions on gun ownership(2), The no-knock warrants (4), Holding people with out a trial outside of the country (5,6), Setting bail above the amount a person can make in there lifetime (7), and the loss of amendments 9 and 10 after the civil war. But you are free to excersize you 3rd amendment right! "Amendment #3 No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Oh, and as for the Brave part. You can not be brave and defend your self with deadly force unless you have first tried to run away and hide. If there is no where to run, then you can be brave and defend your self.
I am all for a constitutional Tea party to show that the Americans have not lost the spirit of what was started, Just this time we should sink cigarette trucks! The Tax on them is through the roof! The government makes more from a pack of cigarettes than the cigarette companies do!
Ok, I am going to put away my soap box and get back to work.
That quote about First Amendment rights being "chipped away", is from Reed's opinion in ACLU v. Reno, 31 F. Supp. 2d 473, issued in 1999.
This is not my sandwich.
You didn't say which parent should quit their job and it doesn't matter. If one of the two incomes in a household can support the household, the other one can and probably should quit. It doesn't matter which parent that is.
Though the truth is that almost everything is sexist one way or another. The average person would probably assume that the statement above was referring to the female in the household. The "femenist" would assume the same and get pissed about it because it is sexist. But try being a good father with a good job and trying to get full custody of your kids from a bad mother and see what happens...life is skewed one way or the other.
Back to the decision, I applaud it. I'm tired of parents not taking responsibility for their kids. If they don't want them to see porn on the internet but aren't willing to put forth the effort to filter the content, then they should cut off their kids' access to the net. It really is that simple, no matter what they say.
Wow, that is one American that doesn't make me laugh!
Well, thank the founding fathers, at any rate. Yes, the world has changed and the powers of the federal government have grown beyond the dreams of Jefferson and Madison and those folk. And Yes, maybe they're a bunch of dead rich white slave-owners. But they weren't nincompoops!
The legal system in this country is pretty messed up, riddled with inefficies and outright injustices. But it still does some things right. =)
He has managed to see the forest to spite all the trees.
My wife and I already plan on her staying at home to raise our kids when they are spawned. For reasons just like this. Parents have a responsibility to be the safeguards of their children. If you aren't up to that responsibility, don't have kids.
Now , if we could just get clones of this judge to march on Washington.. maybe curtail this damned Nanny State we have brewing.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
It's all about "what you've got" in our society. It's been so since the beginning of man. Some would even say it's genetic.
There was a man, a couple of millenia ago, that said something about taking care of one's family being more than "providing" for them. He advocated change to make both governments and parents, even individuals, responsible for their actions. His mentor's book is the number one best seller every month. It's been at the top of the list for so long that people don't even mention it on the list anymore. I think everyone should give it a read once in a while.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
For once, we leave raising children to the responsibility of the parents rather than the government. Think the same thing will happen with videogames? Or will we still have those insisting that violent games are to blame for children who commit crimes, not bad parenting?
I disagree with the responses you're getting, MikeRT.
If you can't manage two cars and a big, or even medium sized, house without both parents working, here's a novel idea to help you out:
Sell the house and get a smaller one. Poof! Less debt, and if you managed your equity correctly, you have a major down payment on a smaller house, giving you a substantially lower house payment as opposed to just a lower one.
Then when the kids are old enough for their own jobs (and thus old enough that you have little else that they will learn without experience) you can re-upgrade your house and the homemaker probably won't even need to get a job if the commuter has impressed his/her employer.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Why do you think I explicitly put the qualification, "unnecessary" in there. Please, don't lecture me on this because I can actually appreciate how hard it can be to live on one income because I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the richest and most expensive parts of America. When many Americans in smaller areas were whining about $2 gas, we were contemplating driving down to the small towns to buy our gas there!
What I am talking about are the families that really don't need a second income. There are more of those than you probably realize, and if you cannot afford to live on one income, you might need to move to a new town or city, if for no other reason than it'll increase your own happiness and ability to feel like you can make it.
The problem is that to live on one income, unless the one income is very large, you need to make things like going to Starbucks a once a week luxury, not a daily or several times a day activity. You cannot have a big TV, you cannot have an expensive car; you'll have to go for that Honda Accord instead of the Acura TL or RL or Lexus equivalents. See what I mean?
My fiance and I are following what seems to be more and more the pattern of religious couples we know, which is that she will work hard for 3-5 years when we get married, then have kids. That 3-5 years will give me the chance to build up my career and for us to save some serious money so we have options. I know couples that are living in one bedroom apartments just to save money to compensate for not having a terribly large combined income, but it works for them while they're making their plans on where to move to.
American Parents need to be prosecuted by our laws for the actions of their children. Growing up, I was constantly reminded by my teachers and my parents that if I commit a crime as a minor, my parents could be held equally accountable. Not knowing if that was actually true then, it seems like a pretty good idea to me. Placing the entire responsibility in plain view like this would be a positive post-action to this decision. Sure the liberals will quip "but what if [substitute a situation]", but lets get one thing straight here: You are the conscious of your children until they are 18 years old. Therefore, the ultimate responsibility for protection from all things evil and wrong is the parent. "What if my child is just wild, and just commits a crime to get me in trouble?" Let me say this: If you have a precedence set which shows you have done everything imaginable to prevent that crime from happening, how can you be held accountably negligent? In itself, this wipes out the majority of slacking little fund sucking little freeloading parents in the US that are basically asking Legislators to raise their children- in the schools, in the afterschool programs, and on the weekends. I'm sick of all the oversite. Childporn is wrong, disgusting, and a very real problem. However, the gating point for access to my children is me
Isn't this a concept. That those charged in the protection and upbringing of children should take care of these things, and leave our personal freedoms alone. Who is this judge, and someone give him a promotion and a raise for using common sense and some foresight.
I liked this as well: which they will with age inherit fully
Gives some real insight into the Protect the Children mentality. How about we protect what they will value as adults?
- Kal`Goblez
Queue obligatory joke about how Slashdotter's can't get laid in the first place.
No sig for you!!
You ask for bravery and I will show you an unarmed man who stands in front of a gun to give time for complete strangers to get away and tells the would-be assassin that he should think about the consequences of what he is doing.
You ask for cowardice... and I will show you a man standing over a dead would-be burglar dialing 911 with a smoking gun in his hand.
Bravery != Killing People
Bravery == Saving Lives
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
At the risk of sounding like a newb, can anyone recommend a good content filtering system for a home?
I don't worry about these things normally (because I am unmarried) but my sister and brother (who both have small children) are petrified about letting their child touch a network-enabled computer.
From a standpoint of ease of use and effectiveness, what's good?
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Oh, that's right. I forgot about that part of the First Amendment that says that the protections it guarantees are limited to people above a certain age. Can somebody remind me exactly which age group of people it is to whom the Bill of Rights doesn't apply?
Goodbye mod points, but I feel too strongly about this to keep my trap shut...
No jokes, please
Clap, Clap, Clap. About fscking time a person with influence in lawmaking didn't have his head up his ass clear to the waist. Make parents somewhat accountable and quit shifting the blame around. (Note: I do understand that some kids are just bad, but for the most part that's not the case.)
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
The US Constitution was written is a different time. Because of this, it isn't quite as infected with the rampant legalism most current US laws are - to be more specific, the need to specify each & every point, down to the letter. It can be fairly safely assumed that anytime "the people" is used in the Consitution, what they actually meant was "full citizens of the United States."
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Nice spin on the "think of the children" angle.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
No couple is forced to work two jobs. If a couple works two jobs, it is more likely that they are living beyond there means. That could be buying expensive crap they don't need to inflate their ego in relation to their peers, or they are in a mountain of debt, most likely related to the results of living beyond their means.
In the US, we have to have everything now, we can not wait for it to go on sale, and we deffiently can't wait to save up money to buy the product. I guess that is why the US has a negative savings rate.
dontthinkofthechildren
I bet the people who wrote COPA knew full well it wouldn't pass constitutional muster in a court challenge. This way the legislators get to look like they're "protecting the children", and can blame "activist judges" for the failure of the law to be enforced. Win-win, right?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
This is a disgrace, child porn is no more free speech than murder.
Please think critically. I got sucked into the Internet porn trap when I was about 12. By the time I realized that it was not something that I wanted to be involved with in any way (when I realized it was wrong) I found that it was too late and I was addicted. I got addicted before I realized that I should stop. Ten years later I was finally set free from it.
Maybe we should just give kids cigarettes or drugs. After all, they're certainly able to handle it, right? The only thing you might try to argue against this analogy is that cigs/drugs are bad for you and porn is not. I am not going to argue that point. If you wanted to know the truth you would find it without me having to tell you. All I will say is that it was the worst ten years of my life. It marred and eventually stole the vast majority of the joy of my adolescence.
Maybe if we followed Christ's 2nd greatest commandment (Love your neighbor as yourself), we would be willing to say something like, "Even if I see no problem with porn, I would be willing to give up my easy access to porn out of love for my neighbor who suffers because it." But you know nothing of love because you do not know the One who gives it.
It's not the government's job to educate children, either, is it? Isn't that the parents' job also? And yet, it seems most people entirely support public schools, and in fact, public school curriculum being regulated by the government (e.g., the whole debate regarding evolution/intelligent design being taught in schools). Double standard, perhaps? IS it the government's job to educate but not protect children? What about when children are at school, should they be allowed to access whatever they want there?
lose != loose
Won't somebody, please, think of the felons ?
While I don't agree with many of the laws that make one a felon, those that are felons for violent crimes and crimes of depravation, I don't care one wit for their rights beyond that of basic, very basic, human rights.
I'm the scary kind of Buddhist. I understand the concept. We do more harm to the person by locking them away. We do harm to many others by releasing him into the population. It is a kindness to stop a person from harming others and himself by sending him to next next incarnation sooner, so that he may start his healing and learning all that much faster.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I get pulled over for speeding - 60 in a 55 zone, and pay my fine. Three months later I get pulled over again in the same spot again doing 60. Clearly I haven't been rehabilitated of my wanton need for speed. How do you deal with me?
Cut yer nuts off... then we'll ask you if you still feel like hotrodding through our town's streets.
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."
As I like to frequently say... The children will be entirely safe once freedom is entirely destroyed.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
First of all, there's nothing to protect them FROM. Sex is not harmful per se.
Second, they shouldn't be "protected" even if there were such a thing - they should be "trained".
Finally, that was never the motivation anyway - that is just a cover for a bunch of religious assholes to impose their "morality" on everyone else and for a bunch of politicians to seize more power of what people can say or do.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yeah! That's such a great idea! Kill two birds with one stone, right? Nobody wants those pesky poor people around anyway. Their ghettos get in the way of my sunset vista. We could take a pointer from fucking China! Regulate births! If you fall below a certain tax bracket and you want a child, well, sorry, you're fucked! Just treat 'em exactly like you would a fucking television!
Nice thinly veiled classist and racist bullshit, dude. Hopefully one day you will end up poor with children to raise, and we can all see how quickly you backpedal.
Here's one last fucking hint, douchebag: It is not a fucking endless summer, by any means, to be a parent with a low income, but you know what? Weirdly enough, some people love their children regardless. The minute you start advocating treating them like material fucking goods, you have shown yourself to be devastatingly ignorant.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Once heard an interview with a very respected older society woman who had taken on charitable support of released prisoners and who had come to the conclusion that any sentences over five years crossed the boundary where the prisoner lost hope and thus became a greater danger.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
can be found under http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2000/2pet/7pet/200 0-1293.pet.aa.html
"VII. Conclusion" is the paragraph with what the judge said in his decision.
I don't think money is a big part of this problem. Bigger problems are independence and creative urge. Some people cannot depend on their spouse for the rest of their lives for support. That is a very difficult decision for any independent person. It also requires perfect trust in your partner. The second big problem is that if a person has worked for some time, they miss the interaction with their peers. Living at home and interacting with people around you, that don't have similar interest as you is not that interesting. It makes people bored to death.
The solution really is Telecommuting. That is the only way we will see better child support and lower divorce rates.
Anybody who goes into double income just for the money, is being stupid. Double income does not increase standard of life. It does increase the chance that you will fall out of love, and that there will be a divorce and children will suffer in the. Even when the worst scenario does not happen children still get neglected, which is not good for them.
On the other hand, an older child who knew what sex was, but wasn't ready to watch would run from the room screaming, "Ewwww! Gross!"
And then you have your teenagers, who you are ok with being exposed to porn, anyway.
If you think about it, kids have been exposed to sex for centuries. Ever watch Little House on the Prairie? I sure as hell did not, but we're talking families with 5+ kids living in a 1 room (not 1 bedroom, 1 room) shack. I'm pretty sure those kids were exposed to mommy and daddy having sex, and they survived.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Don't be so smug.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Just to illustrate how wrong you are, consider this. My wife has to take nasty medication that shows up in breast milk, but it isn't necessary that she get in the meds right away after giving birth, so she'd breastfeed for a while before switching to formula. Do you have any idea how much extra food she would wind up eating in order to make breastmilk? She'd eat way more than me, and she'd be dropping weight like mad! She easily ate more that $3 worth of extra food each day while she was breastfeeding , which is more than the cost of formula.
Yes, you read right. Breastfeeding, at least in my wife's case, is more expensive than formula feeding.Several thousand on a nursery?
- One bucket of paint: $20
- One dresser bought off Craigslist: $75
- One glider: $95 at Baby Depot
- One crib: $250
- Look on your face while I'm laughing in it: priceless.
Thank god you started talking sense at some point. I was getting worried. My tenants have nicer cars and TVs than I do. We don't even have cable.Hey, how come you started talking sense? I would have never responded to you if I knew you had some sense in you. My wife's engagement ring cost less than one day's salary.Very, very true.Ok, I learned my lesson. I won't respond anymore before reading all the way to the bottom. You somehow got to the right conclusion, even if you started off based on incorrect assumptions.
Cheers!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
At least you think you'll wait.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three women who got pregnant while on the pill. I can think of one more who may have, but it's rude to ask (know she had an "oops", but asking about birth control methods is a little personal, eh?).
Good luck!
P.S. No, my wife was not one of them. All of our pregnancies were planned months in advance.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock