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The Truth in Domain Names Act
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Tuesday, March 11 @ 23:51:13 EST
Contributed by eptitude
Civil Liberties
eptitude writes "Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) recently introduced H.R. 939, the "Truth in Domain Names" Act. In the guise of protecting his children from the horrors of the Internet, this Act amends 18 USC 110, by adding section 2252B, which states:
Whoever knowingly uses a misleading domain name with the intent to attract a minor into viewing a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct on the Internet shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. For the purposes of this section, a domain name that includes the word 'sex' is not misleading."
Besides being in restraint of speech, this bill won't even accomplish what it sets out to do. It could be interpreted as putting "Whitehouse.com" in violation, while leaving "teensex.net" in operation. Am I naive in believing that a bill this vague and patently unconstitutional will never make it out of committee? Or is the fear of kiddie pr0n so overwhelming that our elected reresentatives will be swayed by Congressman Pence's story about helping his daughter with her homework and feeling he "...had to cover her little eyes and see first what popped up because of the type of prurient materials that would come with the most innocuous word search.""
 
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Re: The Truth in Domain Names Act (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 12 @ 13:23:16 EST
the type of prurient materials that would come with the most innocuous word search. I'm not sure what kind of words he's searching for, but in all my years on the internet (oh, 7 or 8 at least) I've only had "prurient" material show up when I was looking for something "innocuous" about a half-dozen times. Because of this, I'm of the opinion that, for the most part, if people find sexually explicit material on the web it's because they're looking for it (or have accidentally opened some porn spam, but that issue isn't addressed in Pence's concerns).


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Re: The Truth in Domain Names Act (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 12 @ 19:48:48 EST
From the article:

>> however knowingly uses a misleading domain name with the intent to attract a minor

And the submitter's analysis:
> Besides being in restraint of speech... patently unconstitutional

I don't believe fraud is generally considered to have Constitutional protection.

> It could be interpreted as putting "Whitehouse.com" in violation, while leaving "teensex.net" in operation

Right. Impersonating the government: bad. Honest discourse: good.




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Re: The Truth in Domain Names Act (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 13 @ 16:18:12 EST
So where would this law leave O magazine's website
o-magazine.com? That is the original O magazine, and
the site is probably not work-safe.

Okay, not such a great example. It is recently been ruled
that there would be no confusion between those two,
but I can't help but feel that this would end up requiring
the word 'sex' in the name of any site with sexual content.


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Re: The Truth in Domain Names Act (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 13 @ 16:41:31 EST
I agree that Rep. Pence's approach is inartful and clumsy. Just from an enforcement standpoint, I'm curious how he would prove the intent element of the crime.

Still, I can't help thinking that he might be on to something here. Perhaps a more elegantly drafted domain-name marker requirement like this could be the "plain brown wrapper" for the Net.

The content would still exist on the Website, it'd just be "behind the curtain," so to speak. It sounds like it could be a time, place, and manner restriction of the kind that's been repeatedly upheld in the physical world.

At the very least, it might make filtering software more effective, which would go a long way toward putting this issue to rest.

I dunno. It's something to think about, anyway.


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