Although porn sites disgust me and I delete any and all porn "spam" without reading, I agree completely with this ruling. Tom Fosson --------------------------------------------------------- (from USA Today 19990202) Judge blocks Net porn law Ruling cites free-speech protection By Leslie Miller USA TODAY A federal judge blocked enforcement of a law restricting material considered "harmful to minors" on commercial Web sites Monday, saying that although he sympathizes with parents who want to protect kids from Internet porn, the Constitution must be upheld. "Indeed, perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if the First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection," wrote U.S. Judge Lowell Reed of Philadelphia granting a preliminary injunction against the Child Online Protection Act. Reed, an Internet user who kept his laptop beside him during a six-day hearing that ended last week, posted the decision on the court's Web site (www.paed.uscourts.gov ) shortly after 6 p.m. An earlier restraining order was to expire at midnight. The immediate effect of the ruling is that "kids are on their own" on the Net, said J. Robert Flores of the National Law Center for Children and Families, which supports the law. "We would certainly urge parents to be very careful." Supporters in Congress also were disappointed. The law was an attempt to address problems in lawmakers' first anti-porn Net law, the Communications Decency Act, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in June 1997. "We continue in our steadfast support of (the act), and we urge the Department of Justice to continue defending this law ... all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court ' said Reps. Tom Bliley, R-Va., Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, and James Greenwood, R-Pa., in a statement. The government can either pursue a full trial before Reed or immediately appeal. "We are reviewing the judge's decision ' Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said. The law makes it a crime for commercial sites to communicate material considered "harmful to minors" and imposes fines of up to $150,000 a day and up to six months in prison. It requires sites to collect an adult ID or credit card number, a system described as an "electronic brown wrapper." "The court was able to cut through a lot of very complicated evidence and focus on what this case is really about: First Amendment speech," said Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union. It challenged the law on behalf of 17 plaintiffs including on-line media sites, bookstores and an on-line community for gays and lesbians. Justice Department attorneys said the law is intended to apply only to porn merchants, who must bear the burden of keeping material away from the 16 million kids under 17 who surf the Net. ----------- N E W ! E - W O R K S N E W ! ------------ http://eworks.mympc.com/members/tomf.html - The most powerful marketing TOOL ever developed for the Internet! ------------------ W E B H O S T I N G ---------------- 250 Megs of Web Space - Unlimited Autoresponders MIVA programming and scripting - T3 connection Unlimited email aliases - Personal CGI-BIN Directory Free Domain Name hosting - NO SETUP FEE - MUCH MORE! http://www.moreprofits.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/346/ ---------------- S I T E D E S I G N ------------------- Websites designed and published by Cyberspace Publishing 5515 N 7th Street, Ste 5-552, Phoenix, Arizona 85014 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://www.amug.org/~cyberpub/ ---------------------- e G o l d ------------------------- https://www.e-gold.com/newacct/newaccount.asp?cid=102027 ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT: Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/ Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants Give the Gift of Life This Year... Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/ To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
