The latest Court decision
AP release
As an aside: Ever notice that whenever someone uses 'Court', with a capital 'C', it always refers to the Supreme Court? Are we beginning to hero-worship the Nine?
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that COPA (Child Online Protection Act) may violate the first amendment. The law permitted fining web sites posting unguarded material considered "harmful to minors". I haven't read the act (it was evidently passed in 1998), but I would assume that a sufficient guard for such material would be some sort of authentication system where a user wishing to view the material must provide some age authentication, and will in return receive a cookie that permits access to the site. All other pages within the site first check for the presence of the cookie, and redirect the viewer to the authentication page if it is not found. For some reason, the article instead mentions filters, which are a technological solution for individual computer users to shut off access to such sites entirely - filters operate at the other end, at the personal computer rather than the website, and generally web site designers do nothing to make themselves blocked by a filter. Perhaps the COPA law required web sites with adult content to register with some filtering software company to make the filtering process easier.
Free speech on the Internet is an interesting question. We tolerate some degree of restricted speech - for example, FCC regulations on nudity and swearing in broadcast television. Some environments, such as private in-person meetings, are at the other end of the spectrum - you can talk about whatever you want, with the possible exception of conspiracy to commit a crime (not sure about the legal boundaries there). The internet contains elements of both of these mediums - there are very well guarded private forums in which all actions are acceptable, and public news sites which rarely involve material such as swearing or nudity. But most of the web is fully and freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, as broadcast television is fully and freely accessible to anyone with a television, and yet it operates under significantly looser standards. If you look solely at the question of availability, then content restriction seems to make sense.
But the Internet is a different medium than television, because the content comes from individuals. It is a public forum, where participants talk as much as they listen, rather than a commercial producer-consumer market. It is the first environment ever where a single person can make their voice heard to hundreds of millions of people (if they have anything to say); the current trend of blogging has made this process even easier. This is truly a utopian environment, and restriction is unthinkable.
Update: Some links to articles from other sites on the decision
Center for Democracy and Technology Headlines - article includes links to the decision and more info about COPA
LawMeme - Ashcroft v. ACLU - explains the discussion of filters (majority opinion asks whether modern technology filters, as opposed to 1998 versions, can be acceptable and less restrictive); also gives individual justice opinion summaries
As an aside: Ever notice that whenever someone uses 'Court', with a capital 'C', it always refers to the Supreme Court? Are we beginning to hero-worship the Nine?
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that COPA (Child Online Protection Act) may violate the first amendment. The law permitted fining web sites posting unguarded material considered "harmful to minors". I haven't read the act (it was evidently passed in 1998), but I would assume that a sufficient guard for such material would be some sort of authentication system where a user wishing to view the material must provide some age authentication, and will in return receive a cookie that permits access to the site. All other pages within the site first check for the presence of the cookie, and redirect the viewer to the authentication page if it is not found. For some reason, the article instead mentions filters, which are a technological solution for individual computer users to shut off access to such sites entirely - filters operate at the other end, at the personal computer rather than the website, and generally web site designers do nothing to make themselves blocked by a filter. Perhaps the COPA law required web sites with adult content to register with some filtering software company to make the filtering process easier.
Free speech on the Internet is an interesting question. We tolerate some degree of restricted speech - for example, FCC regulations on nudity and swearing in broadcast television. Some environments, such as private in-person meetings, are at the other end of the spectrum - you can talk about whatever you want, with the possible exception of conspiracy to commit a crime (not sure about the legal boundaries there). The internet contains elements of both of these mediums - there are very well guarded private forums in which all actions are acceptable, and public news sites which rarely involve material such as swearing or nudity. But most of the web is fully and freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, as broadcast television is fully and freely accessible to anyone with a television, and yet it operates under significantly looser standards. If you look solely at the question of availability, then content restriction seems to make sense.
But the Internet is a different medium than television, because the content comes from individuals. It is a public forum, where participants talk as much as they listen, rather than a commercial producer-consumer market. It is the first environment ever where a single person can make their voice heard to hundreds of millions of people (if they have anything to say); the current trend of blogging has made this process even easier. This is truly a utopian environment, and restriction is unthinkable.
Update: Some links to articles from other sites on the decision
Center for Democracy and Technology Headlines - article includes links to the decision and more info about COPA
LawMeme - Ashcroft v. ACLU - explains the discussion of filters (majority opinion asks whether modern technology filters, as opposed to 1998 versions, can be acceptable and less restrictive); also gives individual justice opinion summaries
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