Challenging the Child Online Protection Act 213
narramissic writes, "Today in Philadelphia a federal trial got underway that will decide whether COPA is constitutional. The outcome will determine whether operators of Web sites can be held accountable for failing to block children's access to inappropriate materials. An article on ITworld outlines the arguments of the foes in the battle: the DOJ and the ACLU. If I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on the ACLU. Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge." Two courts have found COPA unconstitutional and the Supreme Court has upheld the ban on its enforcement, while asking a lower court to examine whether technological measures such as filtering could be as effective as the law in shielding children; thus this trial. The article does not mention that it was the DOJ's preparation for the trial that was behind its earlier request that search companies turn over their records — a request that only Google refused.
The name is wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll just say it in advance (Score:1, Insightful)
Isn't thinking about children a little too much what is causing all the trouble here?
Copa is idiotic. (Score:3, Insightful)
Political vs Commercial Speach (Score:4, Insightful)
What is Inappropriate? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does this affect web hosting companies? We host thousands of domains and I'm sure some of them could be considered inappropriate for kids.
It's not a site owner's job to filter out people that might be offended by the content, if you don't like a site don't go there.
Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)
nanny state (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that the ACLU has to fight in court to get people to understand something that should be painfully obvious? Man up people, the government is not your mommy.
Re:What is Inappropriate? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about bikini pics that you can make out anatomy through (oh wait, JC Penneys add three months ago had that and it ran in the newspaper too).
What about a lady in a full corset & stockings (that cover more than the bikini).
Someone else said it best here in the past.
PLEASE post a web page with a continuam of pictures from fully appropriate to fully inappropriate with each one flagged as to how appropriate or inappropriate it is. That way we can all go to it and see what is an is not appropriate to have on the web.
Re:COPA is idiotic (Score:4, Insightful)
It would take someone about 15 minutes tops to generate a CC# to use on one of these sites. Unless they are going to require every adult related sited to take credit cards, they are only going to hit the CC validation routines, not test if they are valid accounts. Oh, and is the US government going to give out a free credit card with every bankruptcy now also?
By the way, if I'm a US citizen, running a company based in Switzerland, hosting a site through a UK company, with servers based in Canada - does this law apply? How about if the domain is registered through a US company, but me, the company, the host, and the servers are all based outside the US?
Re:COPA is idiotic (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment 4: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gah, kids don't spontaneously explode if they don't wear a helmet while tricycling.
No, COPA is working as designed. (Score:5, Insightful)
DOS: No serial number required.
95/98/SE: To cut down on casual piracy, enter this serial number.
Win2K: Since that didn't work, it might phone home unless you ask nicely that it not phone home.
XP: Since that didn't work, it won't activate until you let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't nuke existing installations.
Vista: Since that didn't work, we'll nuke any box that stops phoning.
Or if we're talking copyright - witness the evolution of the NET Act ("It's a crime if you sell it"), the DMCA ("It's a crime if you crack DRM"), and the attempt to pass something harsher (SSSCA/CBDTPA) a few years later. (Look for another attempt after the elections, and/or something to mandate DRM into the hardware specifications, as Vista takes hold in the marketplace and is once again cracked...)
COPA was designed to ensure that under-12 kids could get Myspace pages, that under-18 kids can click "I'm over 18" to see b00bies, and that (not legally required, but I've seen it on many brewery/winery/distillery pages) under-21 people can click "I'm over 21" to read about booze.
After a few years, and after enough "horror stories" have appeared in the press about how 11-year-olds are being victimized on Myspace, 15-year-olds are seeing teh b00bies, and underage drinkers are able to read about beer, legislators will have a wide selection ready-made excuses to come up with some sort of "Real ID" or single-signon system for the Intertubes.
The courts only decide whether or not something's constitutional. Until they do so, it is constitutional. When the courts strike down COPA, it will be replaced by something even worse.
How about voluntary filtering? (Score:3, Insightful)
<META NAME="might_be_inaporopriate" CONTENT="true">
Let the net-nanny type apps handle it, and be done with it...
Its lot less painfull than moving to
I know l33t kids could get around it, but it's an offer of hand.
how are other media handled? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this different that TV? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want the internet filtered for your kid, install and manage your own filtering software. It's the parent's responsibility to take charge of what their children are doing, viewing, etc. It's not the content provider's problem at all, particular on a medium like the internet where you have no face to face interaction (e.g. checking ID). Frankly, if you require a valid credit card, I think you'd solve the whole issue.
My objection lies with of some of the banner ads and emails, which can be really atrocious. From time to time, I get things in my Inbox that make me cringe and wish I would remove them from my brain. "Barnyard" and "hot lovin'" should NEVER appear in the same sentence. I can only imagine something like that coming to a small child....
2 cents,
QueenB
Re:COPA is idiotic (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you just don't want to pay the taxman.
Re:nanny state (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't trust your kid to obey the simple rules, by what right do you allow them to travel unescorted in public? You can and must be there every time your kid is unescorted by an adult; until such time as that child is old enough to be responsible for their own behaviour.
It's no one else's job to enforce your personal little taboos. Maybe you think women need to have their heads covered with scarves, and that your children shouldn't have to see women with their heads bared. Maybe you don't think they should hear anything aside from your religious beliefs. Maybe you want to indoctrinate them in any one of a thousand different ways.
Tough. Other people have rights, too. It's called free speech. If you don't want your young kids in a porn store, keep an eye on them until they're old enough to decide if they want to go in on their own. Once they're an adult, they get the right to make their own decisions. Until then, *you* have to take responsibility for their decisions.
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Half would say "ewwww" and half would start laughing, then they'd all turn on the TV or go out and play. Kids are not as fragile as we make them out to be, and most are terribly uninterested in all of that icky adult stuff.
Or to quote, "Stop. They're KISSING again. Go on to the fire swamp, that sounded good..."
Re:I'll just say it in advance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:4, Insightful)
If a parent purchases all of the naughty cable channels, then their kids have access to those as well. The cable company does nothing to prevent those kids from seeing those channels. If the parents want to prevent their kids from watching that, they use the filtering built into the client, the TV.
The same goes for the internet. The parent purchases access to the whole internet. The ISP does nothing to prevent kids from seeing naughty sites. If the parents want to prevent their kids from visiting those sites, they use the filtering software available for the client, the computer.
Re:HOW ABOUT PROTECT ME FROM THE CHILDREN (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit! (Score:1, Insightful)
Despite my beliefs, I'm not going around telling others how to raise their kids. It's none of my business. If parents and guardians fail to take responsibility for children in their care, that's none of my business either. If parents are not capable of supervising their children, the kids should probably be put in state care.
If I'm expected to take responsibilty for others kids then the first thing that needs censoring is religion. All of it. Let us rid ourselves of this poison!
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How is this different that TV? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forcing your morality on others (Score:2, Insightful)
Freedom is about many things.
Including the freedom of a community to take collective action against conduct it regards as profoundly anti-social.
Freedom of Speech in American constitutional law is rooted in a shared democratic faith in unconstrained political debate.
It is not and never has been an license to make of every public forum a distribution center for pornography. It is not and never has been a license to draw children into the production of pornography or into the market for pornography,
it all just keeps coming back to the same thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I am so tired of hearing how the world failed to protect some idiot from their own stupidity or how the world failed to be the good partent to your child that you for some mysterious reason could not, and now somehow it's all our fault and you are totally innocent and victimized. There's an article here at least every 10 days with another sickening example of this retarded behavior.
Makes me sick. People, grow up!
Re:HOW ABOUT PROTECT ME FROM THE CHILDREN (Score:2, Insightful)
You're talking about a country where a huge percentage of the population still thinks the world is 6000 years old. These are your peers, as in "jury of your peers". The OP has a point -- justice in the American system has the illusion of fairness, but it is really quite silly.