Hi Dave - Happy New Year. Something for IP, since I haven't seen anything
about it yet:
Proceedings are under way this week in Philadelphia in CDT's
constitutional challenge to a Pennsylvania child pornography statute that
has resulted in the secret blocking of hundreds of thousands of wholly
innocent Web pages. Our court challenge -- filed with the ACLU of
Pennsylvania and Plantagenet Inc., a Pennsylvania ISP -- argues that the
Pennsylvania law is a prior restraint on speech that violates the First
and Fourteenth Amendments and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. We
hate child pornography, but this is an unconstitutional and ineffective
way to fight it.
The Phil. Inquirer story excerpted below does a good job at explaining the
issues. Briefs and more information are at:
http://www.cdt.org/speech/pennwebblock/
Best,
Alan
--
Alan Davidson
Associate Director
Center for Democracy and Technology
-------------
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/7648404.htm
Posted on Wed, Jan. 07, 2004
Judge told that child-porn block affects other sites
A lawsuit in federal court challenges Pennsylvania's efforts to bar access
to illegal Internet images.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
Unless you absolutely hate youth soccer, it's hard to imagine something
objectionable about the Web site of the Sheshequin-Ulster Community Center
in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.
That's why Web master Laura Blain was stunned when the site was
inaccessible for eight days in July and she learned the problem had
nothing to do with technology.
Instead, Blain told a federal judge yesterday, the center's Internet
address had been blocked because the Pennsylvania Attorney General's
Office had "warned" her Internet service provider that the same address
number was being used to display child pornography.
Blain was the first witness to testify in a legal challenge to the manner
in which a 2002 state law is being enforced. Internet experts say the law
is blocking Pennsylvanians from viewing 800,000 legitimate Web sites while
also blocking sites featuring illegal child pornography.
The lawsuit was filed in September by the Center for Democracy and
Technology, a Washington-based Internet policy group; the American Civil
Liberties Union in Philadelphia; and PlantageNet Inc., a Doylestown
Internet service provider, or ISP, that provides local dial-up numbers for
much of the Philadelphia region in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The
lawsuit does not challenge the state's right to move against Internet
child pornographers in state courts.
Rather, the lawsuit seeks to block "an informal policy" implemented by
former Attorney General Michael Fisher, in which the state prosecutor's
office contacts ISPs by letter, advising them of a child-porn site and
threatening legal action if the ISP does not block the site.
...