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Child Online Protection Act Appeal Rejected
TarrVetus writes "The Associated Press reports that a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has ruled that the Child Online Protection Act will not be revived, upholding a 2007 decision that the unimplemented 1998 law is unconstitutional. The law, which made it a crime for websites to allow children access to 'harmful' material, was declared a violation of the First Amendment because of existing elective filtering technologies and parental controls that are less restrictive to free speech than the 'ineffective' and 'overly broad' ban."
This law is 11 years old and it's still squirming through the courts. For all those that say that free speech is protected by the constitution and that certain branches will do away with unconstitutional laws: here is an example of how long you can potentially have laws affecting you while you're fighting it in court.
Of course this law is unimplemented but several other laws like DMCA and Patriot Act ARE implemented and unconstitutional. It takes longer than a 2 term presidency to do away with a dead law, how long do you think it would take to repeal a law that has been in use?
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To be clear, this has nothing to do with child porn. This is a law intended to prevent children from accessing porn.
Most porn sites nowadays have intro pages that ask the user to confirm if he/she is over 18. Would eliminating this law mean that those sites are no longer required to have these intro pages?
They never were required to have them, at least not by any federal statute. Porn sites did this of their own (or their lawyers') volition.
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if only the *parents* out there shared a similar view...
Now, most parents do indeed want to keep kids away from it, yet they willingly turn over the keys (computer) and let kids drive the Indy 500 (internet). They just can't be bothered to actually administer and moderate what their kids are doing.
Yes yes people are busy, but if you're that busy, why did you have kids in the first place? I don't want my access to whatever material I see as reasonable restricted simply because someone else refuses to take their own responsibility.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The trick lies in blocking adult entertainment from children while making sure it's delivery is unhindered to the adults who are legally allowed to view it.
Furthermore, you have to be sure to seperate adult entertainment from sites talking about, say, breast cancer, that kids may need for research projects in high school.
So, while I'd wager many share your view, many of us here have to come to the realization that a comprehensive solution is too unwieldly to even imagine.
This is where parental supervision comes into play, and often where the kick falls short.
Two things: first, this is a parental issue, not a government issue. Parents should be instructing their children to close any browser window that has pornography in it; second, and this is somewhat based on the first, is that teenagers going through puberty are not going to be harmed by viewing pornography (it is debatable whether or not prepubescent children would be). It is a matter of maturity, and again, only the parents can really judge whether or not their kid is mature enough to view "mature content." If a 15 year old is looking at pornography that they downloaded over the Internet, what is the problem? This material is only of interest to sexually mature people, and teenagers generally fall into that category.
Palm trees and 8
Why?
If it is covered by free speech, I don't see how you can say "you must be *this* old to use free speech". Is porn harmful to people under 18? Even if they are legally allowed to have sex?
Why not violent material?
Absolutely, that is where this kind of oversight belongs.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I'm glad this happened.
Allow me to be blatantly honest. I think kids should have the right to explore their sexuality in a safe manner online. I know I did.
Why is "adult entertainment" so exclusive anyway? You know, they could have extremely tame erotic websites to cater to kids who are interested. Probably like softcore Playboy pics or something.
And yours didn't question you reading Playboy at 9 years old?
My parents restricted the hours I watched TV and kept tabs on what I watched. They took an interest in what I did and with whom I did it. Reading was things that they provided or I asked for (and they approved before I got).
Is that really so hard to comprehend? It's called childhood, your parents are responsible for you (and liable to a pretty wide degree).
Indeed many things can happen outside of a parents view, but the stuff that's inside their OWN HOUSE, they have to own up to responsibility for.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I hope you're joking. Have you seen the state of the world today? It's a shambles! The economy is collapsing, and I think we all know the reason. Every single one of our children sees naked female breasts from the very day they're born. This has to stop, and it has to stop now: the children are our future, and if we don't protect them from the naked horrors of pornography, who will?
I would rather you did it as well. I would rather we not leave it up to the government.
It's your job to be a parent to your children, not the government's.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with child porn. This is a law intended to distract the public from real issues and generate new revenue streams for politicians and their allies
there, fixed that for you.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
I'd imagine Its sort of like monitoring what they watch.
- Set them up on a restricted account (on whatever OS you use), so that they CAN'T change things/install things without your approval. That might mean that you need a different
computer for YOUR use, vs. the "whole families use".
- Add a password, don't tell them what it is. If they want to use the computer, then an "adult" needs to be monitoring their usage. Yes, you might sometimes just unlock it and let them play on site X, but if they want to get on-line, you have to know they are there. Check in from time to time at random and see how its coming. Maybe spend some time playing their games with them, or just watching.
- Install "parental control" software (yes, its not 100% effective, but its at least a step up).
Talk to your children and let them know about the "dangers" to both themselves and their computer of going to random web sites, "accepting digital candy/files from strangers", etc.
Realize that at the point they can bypass all of your "controls" to look at pornography, they are doing the equivalent of you sneaking into your fathers drawer of Playboys (albeit quite a bit more graphic)
Alternatively, perhaps one idea is to make a drawer of playboys something that they can "sneak into" so they have less initial dive to get at the hard-core stuff?
At a certain point they will be old enough that it just won't matter, part of that is their age, and part of that is how you raise them (and who their school friends are).
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a physics professor, in fact, who happens to be a friend of mine, puts it this way:
"They correlate marijuana use with other drugs, and say '70% of hard drug users started with marijuana.' But they are missing something: they ALL started on milk!"
You could try raising them properly, instilling proper values, ensuring there are open lines of communication; you know, try parenting. As for specifically how to stop them from surfing porn on the internet, take the computer out of their room and put it in the living room (or whatever room you habitually hang out in). And make sure the screen is facing out into the room. That way if the little bugger is surfing porn, you can enjoy it too ;)
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
>>>seperate adult entertainment from sites talking about, say, breast cancer, that kids may need for research projects in high school.
If they are that old, there's no reason to censor it. They are their peers are already discussing sex - possibly even practicing it (oral is popular these days). Remove the filters so these young adults can gain access to accurate information ("yes you CAN get pregnant the first time"), instead of being fed bunk through the in-school rumor mill.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I would love it if the porn sites simply said that their money comes from adults and they have no business luring children into it (like smoking companies) and voluntarily made more protection for our kids to help make my parenting that much easier. I know this is wishful thinking, but at some point, freedom of speech is taking to a point of hurting our society and not helping.
What is this 'luring' ?
I've been browsing the web for ~15 years now, and I've _never_ ended up at a porn site "accidentally". If your kids are hitting porn sites, it's because they're looking for them deliberately.
This is absolutely a free speech issue, and while the government has the power to regulate speech, this generally applies to the time, place and manner of the speech rather than its content.
The Supreme Court has long held that if the government wants to regulate speech based on its content, the regulation must serve a compelling government interest, be narrowly tailored to fit that interest, and be the least restrictive means possible. This test is referred to as "strict scrutiny." ( Source)
In this case, COPA is simply way out of line. While the status of protecting minors from the horrors of breasts as a compelling government interest is debatable (I would argue that it is none of the government's beeswax), COPA is definitely not the least restrictive means possible to protect the children. Responsible parents can and should control the content that their children access through the means available to them, and thus any government regulation beyond this is by definition not the least restrictive means possible. So any government regulation to this end is unconstitutional as long as free speech is involved and parents have at the very least the opportunity to parent responsibly.