[IP] Judge Nixes Internet Child Porn Law in Pa.
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Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889
...... Forwarded Message .......
From: "James S. Tyre" <jstyre@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:02:22 -0700
Subj: Judge Nixes Internet Child Porn Law in Pa.
110 pp. decision at
http://www.cdt.org/speech/pennwebblock/20040910memorandum.pdf.
Unconstitutional on both First Amendment and dormant commerce clause
grounds. On the former, the court did not decide if strict or intermediate
scrutiny applied, as it found the statute to be unconst. under either.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Online-Porn.html?pagewanted=print&position=
September 10, 2004
Judge Nixes Internet Child Porn Law in Pa.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A federal judge threw out on Friday a Pennsylvania law
requiring Internet service providers to block Web sites containing child
pornography, saying the law was unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.
Enacted in 2002, the law gave Pennsylvania's attorney general the power to
require that companies like America Online Inc. block customers from
viewing Web sites that had been identified by the state as containing
illegal content.
No one challenged the state's right to stop the distribution of child porn,
which is already illegal under federal law, but lawyers for the Center for
Democracy and Technology and the American Civil Liberties Union had argued
that the technology used to block those Web sites was clumsy.
Over two years, the groups said, ISPs trying to obey blocking orders were
forced to cut access to at least 1.5 million legal Web sites that had
nothing to do with child pornography, but were part of the same Internet
cluster as the offending sites.
Lawyers for the state said the technology exists for ISPs to block
selectively and blamed Internet companies for not wanting to upgrade their
systems.
U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois disagreed, saying current state of
technology meant the law ``cannot be implemented without excessive blocking
of innocent speech in violation of the First Amendment.''
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James S. Tyre mailto:jstyre@xxxxxxxxxx
Law Offices of James S. Tyre 310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)
10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512 Culver City, CA 90230-4969
Co-founder, The Censorware Project http://censorware.net
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