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     News: Court Rules Against Pennsylvania Law That Curbs Child-Pornography Sites

    Porn, Prostitution, Sex IndustryBy TOM ZELLER Jr.
    The New York Times
     September 11, 2004

     A federal court struck down a Pennsylvania law yesterday, ruling that the state could no longer force Internet service providers to block customers' access to Web sites thought to be distributing child pornography.

    The decision is considered a broad victory for both free speech and Internet-rights advocates who have argued that although the Internet Child Pornography Act of Pennsylvania was well-intentioned, its methods and unintended effects were unconstitutional.

    Sean Connolly, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general, Jerry Pappert, said his office was reviewing the 110-page decision and might appeal. "We're disappointed with the court's ruling," he said. "This law was designed to block access to child pornography. We believe it has worked well in Pennsylvania."

    The law - the only one of its kind in the United States and one that other states have watched closely as it was challenged in court - required Internet service providers doing business in Pennsylvania, upon notification by the attorney general's office, to disable access to specified child pornography items "residing on, or accessible through, its service." That proviso, opponents of the law argued, made Internet service providers liable for offending material that might reside on a private computer on the other side of the globe.

    Fearing criminal penalties and the negative publicity associated with appearing to resist legal curbs on child pornography, many local and national Internet carriers had little choice but to comply with the Pennsylvania law.

    "The blocking affected the global network," said John Morris, a staff lawyer with the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. "So a customer in England might not be able to access a site in Spain because of a law in Pennsylvania."

    The Center for Democracy and Technology, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and a small Pennsylvania Internet carrier, filed a challenge to the law last year. They argued that, in addition to procedural problems with the law, it was technically impossible for providers to isolate a single offending site, and so entire swaths of innocent sites were being blacked out with each blocking order.

    Judge Jan E. Dubois was ultimately persuaded that given the current state of technology "the Act cannot be implemented without excessive blocking of innocent speech in violation of the First Amendment."

    The court also found that the law violated interstate commerce rules established by the Constitution.

    "The Pennsylvania law was an aberration in the way the states approached this," said Stewart A. Baker, the general counsel for the United States Internet Service Providers Association, a trade group. "Our members always thought it was a distraction from the extensive efforts they make to work with law enforcement to address child pornography."

    For its part, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office maintains that the technological shortcomings cited by the plaintiffs and Internet service providers, or I.S.P.'s, were simply untrue. "We argued in court that the technology does exist to block individual sites that contain child porn," Mr. Connolly said, "and if other sites were blocked by the I.S.P., then the I.S.P. was doing something wrong."




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