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Ohio Net Censorship Law Struck Down
rfc1394 writes "C|Net reports that a federal judge has struck down as unconstitutional a portion of an Ohio statute which attempted to prevent minors from seeing material which would be 'harmful' to them, but was so overbroad that it would have covered a considerable amount of material which is legal for adults to view. Basically, if a website operator had reason to believe the material they were showing was visible to minors, and if the material was considered to be harmful to them, they would be in violation of the law. Since about 1/6 of the users of the Internet are minors, it's trivial to argue that anyone running a website would be aware that the material they have is visible to minors even if they had no intention of doing so."
I know, I know, I must be new here. But does anyone happen to have any more reliable statistics?
"This thing does science so hard, you say, 'I've never seen that much science.'" -Sam
Legislators draft laws in an effort to appear "Tough on crime" or to "Protect the children", knowing full well that they won't pass the muster of the courts.
Why do they do this?
It's political posturing, nothing more. The laws passed are so vague that they could not possibly stand up to the scrutiny of established case law, much less Constitutional questions. It's an old trick, by which the politician can say to his constituents, "Look! I passed laws to protect children, but that darned Supreme Court struck them down..." By trade, most politicians are lawyers, so they can draft legislation which they know is contrary to established Constitutional and case law and will be struck down. But they get the benefit of the public belief that they are doing something about the child-porn bogey man.
And what happens? We on /. make much of laws which were never intended to be enforced.
But what happens when one of these vague laws is enforced, and found not vague enough to be declared unconstitutional? Or the accused can't afford a good lawyer?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Translation: I'm a closet Stalinist who tries to wear the garb of a savior of society. I don't like something, and since I am smarter and more important than anyone else, I think I should have the right to dictate my own tastes upon the rest of my society.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You'd think that as a feminist you would be pro pornography.
Why should you, or any government, get to dictate what a woman can or can not do with her own body?
Just because pornography does not agree with your own personal moral standards does not make it a woman's rights issue. If a woman is ot have the right to choose, then she is to also have the right to choose how to make a living. If that includes having sex for money, so be it.
The solution is obviously to get rid of all the children.
IANAL, but...
Basically, the jurisdiction would never be in Ohio for websites, unless the site were doing business in Ohio.
In order to have the jurisdiction be in Ohio, the website would have to do business in Ohio or have a reasonable expectation that the products were being shipped to Ohio. If they don't take orders from people that live in Ohio and have a disclaimer that people residing in the state are not allowed, they should be immune from prosecution in the state as none of the courts there would have jurisdiction over the matter.
That definitely is not to say that people living in the state couldn't be prosecuted. Basically the only reason why offshore pornographers voluntarily submit to the age verification statutes is that it would represent a large loss of cash flow if they couldn't guarantee that they were in compliance with the letter of the law in the local jurisdiction. Hence the sites which aren't legally required to comply with our legislation doing so to avoid losing out to sites that will.
As a pro feminist, I was in favor of the law. We really need to get rid of pornography. It is degrading to women and it severely cripples the feminist movement. Pornography is not an art form. It does not deserve protection. It is indecent and vile. It is time to "clean up the tubes." I am a shareholder of Time Warner. I have submitted a proposal for voting at the next shareholder meeting for Time Warner to only allow access to whitelisted sites by default and eventually become mandatory.
*sniff sniff sniff*....I smell...*sniff sniff*....a troll!!!!!
Clues that this was a troll:
Great troll, by the way.
In all my life I've never seen a scientific study about what kind of content has the potential to harm children and why. I'm sure most of my adult peers managed to expose themselves to harmful content as children. Only the least enterprising children fail to accomplish this. And what is the end result? We're all convinced we came out fine, by the skin of our teeth, but the next child won't? What exactly was impared? Our gullibility? Our willingness to vote morons into power?
Obviously there are some children who are adversely affected by coverage of the real world on the six o'clock news. But I have a feeling this bill is not targetted at that content.