Child Online Protection Act Violates First Amendment, Judge Rules
An American judge has struck down a law passed in 1998 by the US Government that made it a crime for commercial website operators to let children access “harmful” material.
The judge said parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech.
“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,” wrote Senior US District Judge Lowell Reed Jr., who presided over a four-week trial last fall.
The law would have required websites deemed harmful to children by “contemporary community standards” to ask for a credit card number or other proof of age before granting access. Penalties included a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.
The internet by its very nature is not safe, and can never be made safe, for children. I disagree with those who think it can. Children require supervision. So why don’t parents want to supervise their children? Why do they keep looking for a magic bullet?
More importantly, there are plenty of things on the internet other than porn that can be harmful to children. Why are we so fixated on it?
Being a parent comes with much responciblity and this is just part of it.
Plenty of child safe surfing filtering software installed that prevents children from accessing the adult content.
MSN and AOL have parental controls built in that also creates a report that the child visited.
The problem is not the adult content instead the parents and how they deal with issue.
Children do not perceive a naked woman the same as an adult would.
Children are taught that an image of a nude person is bad bad bad except in a museum where its art art art….
Growing up we have all been exposed to adult issues and it was the obligation of our parents to discuss it with us as well as drugs etc.
In my school in 5th grade the school system had the class watch a clip called the birds and the bees. That removed the mystique associated with sex and everyone moved on. All the kids laughted and said this was silly. It didn’t take long and we where playing spin the bottle.
When laws are proposed, you call for more parental supervision and monitoring, then you turn around and express anger at all that monitoring.
Parents will monitor their kids anyway in a few years when they’ll be hooked up to the VR set in the same room as the child throughout most of the day.
our way of life already becomes increasingly multi-tasked while in the next decade our geographical location will become quite fixed by virtual reality. at the end of the day, it’s just another routine sporadic child-rearing task.
The less laws that are propsed the better off we are.
Its the parents responcibility to monitor thier childrens behavior not society.
Is it ok for parent to have Vicodens, Valiums, Jack Daniels, Marlboros, Guns, Playboys, trojans, vibrators, adult movies, adult content TV and numerous adult items in their homes but when it comes to the internet the same parents want it to be safe for thier children?…geese come on now.
Next take a trip to your local store. Turn on the radio and you here adult content. every oneabee disk jockey is trying to emulate shock jock Howard Stern.
You pass a bill board that contains a sexy model doing whatever…
Then once your in the store the children are exposed to adult conent, beer, magazines and some scary looking people.
What I find alarming is the adult content hat is in this generations cartoons Like king of the hill or the simpsons.
So whats the alternative…. a represed society where woman wear veils and people have no rights.
#16
I knew you’d say that
We don’t need any regulation of the internet.