U.S. Judge Blocks 1998 Online Porn Law - International Business Times -

U.S. Judge Blocks 1998 Online Porn Law - International Business Times -

COPA was knocked down, once again. I suspect this time for the full count.
Over the years various child protection groups sought a law that would toughen the regulations on sexually explicit images that are available with adult age verification.

It sounds like a law would make sense. But, they can't work without infringing on the privacy rights of adults.

When constitutional rights are impacted, the law requires a balancing of equities. Is there a less infringing method of getting from here to there?

In the case of pornography online, filtering works very well. There are also other ways of dealing with this problem, such as the .xxx proposal that would use age verifications.

This law was adopted in a batch of child protection laws in Fall 1998. It is often confused with COPPA (adopted the same day and which is alive and well on children's privacy issues).

Now, before every side gets up in arms, we need to remember that this law was enjoined from the moment it was enacted. It has never been in effect and isn't being relied on to protect kids. We have lots of ways to do that.

So, as a child protection advocate I was tell everything that this is a tempest in a teapot. We can start teaching parents how to install filters, and perhaps get some inexpenseive programs out there for them to us. AOL offers their parental controls without charge now, and Vista has built in controls as well.

They would be much more effective than a law in this area. we already can't enforce the laws we have that are constitutional. We can't put a dent in child pornography. Marketing of porn to kids has to be stopped. Fraud in search engine indexing that goes beyond the existing misleading domain laws needs to be addressed.

Porn is something that our kids shouldn't be exposed to. But, we at wiredsafety.org have lots of ways to keep that from happening.

so, don't worry about this decision. Just work to help learn about ways you can, as a parent, keep your kids safe.

visit wiredsafety.org for our parenting online booklet.
we have it in spanish as well. free printables.

learn about porn and ways to stop it from our video The 4Ps - privacy, predators, porn and piracy, available for free on youtube.com and from wiredsafety.org.

my 2 cents.