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House restricts Internet porn even more |
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Posted by Steven Wu on Friday, March 28 @ 03:13:56 EST
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News.com says:
During a debate over a bill to create a notification network for child kidnapping cases [namely, the Child Abduction Prevention Act (CAPA)], House members added two technology-related amendments to the legislation. The first measure, which was approved by voice vote, says . . . anyone who uses a misleading domain name to try to lure people into visiting an obscene Web site faces up to two years in prison, and anyone who tries to lure a minor to a sexually explicit site that is "harmful to minors" faces up to four years in prison. It applies to all domain names around the globe, even those in other countries and ending in suffixes such as .nl or .uk.
The other amendment, which free speech advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union argue is unconstitutional, would ban the creation or possession of "a digital image, computer image or computer-generated image" that is "indistinguishable" from a real minor.
The second amendment may seem suspiciously similar to the statute struck down by the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition (2002). (Download the amendment here [PDF].) In fact, the amendment differs from the unconstitutional statute in at least one significant way. The statute in Ashcroft prohibited any visual depiction that "is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct." The amendment here prohibits any visual depiction that "is, or is indistinguishable . . . from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct."
The revision seems to be based on Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissent in Ashcroft, which argued that the statute did not violate the First Amendment because "[t]he [statute] is targeted to [the compelling state interest of prohibiting child pornography] by extending the definition of child pornography to reach computer-generated images that are virtually indistinguishable from real children engaged in sexually explicit conduct." However, in the majority opinion, against the government's argument that virtual child porn was "virtually indistinguishable" from real child porn, the majority responded that real child porn is prohibited regardless of its artistic merit or value because it is "intrinsically related" to child sexual abuse (the creation of speech involves child sexual abuse, its distribution promotes more child sexual abuse, etc.), and that this justification for prohibition disappears when no child is actually a subject of the visual depiction.
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Re: House restricts Internet porn even more (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Friday, March 28 @ 19:59:33 EST | The example on another news site was the porn site whitehouse.com
In NZ, there is a bar-strip-sauna establishment called The White House.
Does that mean that the legislation relies upon the agreed upon American meaning of a word being construed as misleading? Is this not a form of prejudice as it precludes others from adopting names that America has ordained are "not ok to use for a porn site" because of an American use?
More on my weblog: bustedinfo.org
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Re: House restricts Internet porn even more (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Saturday, March 29 @ 11:39:03 EST | As I understand the Supreme Court ruling, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of a child (voluntary or not) in a sex act. This is similar to statuatory rape, a minor can not agree to certain activities, therefore the production of child pornography is illegal.
The problem is that by using computer generated images (no child), no law has been broken and the actual distribution (and production) is legal.
The Supreme Court has found (correctly) that this is protected under the Constitution..
The problem here is that Congress is trying to circumvent the Constitution without a constitutional amendment. The simple answer is to write and pass a Constitutional amendment which exempts Child Pornography from Constitutional protections.
The question is, could you get this ratified? IF this actually came to a vote of the american people, would you get the vote to ratify the amendment.
Evidently our law makers do not think so because they could have taken this route years ago and did not. This implies they are trying to pass a law that they KNOW is illegal and a violation of Constitutional Protections. Now that I do not like.
PS. I personally would vote for a properly worded constitutional amendment criminalizing any form of Child Pronography.
Tom |
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