Supreme Court Bars Enforcement of Internet Porn

[mansites-craig]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/29/sc....ap/index.html

Hey Everyone,
The morning read. I'm curious about your thoughts on this, and the impact it will have on our industry.

-Craig

[Lee]

Very interesting story indeed.

I bet we will see a lot more companies pushing the limits of the type of content they use for their paysites now this has been made a precident.

Regards,

Lee

[Gary-Alan]

I'm with Lee on this... I think some companies will redefine what they have been doing and go press the limits.

Many of us have been around for the first round of COPA, the CDA and the CDA 2... each time there was mass move to tone down the explicit imagery that was available. Then once the law was challenged or struck down, it was back to the way things were.

This time around, I didn't see a lot of that going on. While some companies did make an attempt, most didn't. Which concerns me, personally, that some of us may have fallen into some type of complacency when it comes to the governments and their attempts at writing an internet porn law.

From what I've been reading the only reason the Supreme court made this decision was based on 'unfinished' decisions from the lower court. And basically they are sending it back to the 3rd District Court to complete. So this isn't over.

I'm going to stop here, because I want to read the rulings and opinions that the court rendered in full.

My two cents for the moment...

GA

[desslock]

Well another great supreme court decision handed down here. This definately was very relevant to our industry - here's some points on the decision:

+ U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday barred enforcement of a 1998 federal law [ COPA ]designed to keep Internet pornography away from minors because it likely violates constitutional free-speech rights. COPA has never been invoked in prosecutions.

+ The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy means the Justice Department will continue to be barred from bringing any criminal cases under the Child Online Protection Act.

+ The decision was 5 - 4 --- Kennedy writing the majority opinion. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer dissented.

+ Good point made in the majority opinion: The plurality opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, suggested that a trial may show that filtering software was a more-effective way of preventing children from seeing inappropriate material than relying on criminal laws that can't reach overseas. A "filter can prevent minors from seeing all pornography, not just pornography posted to the Web from America," Kennedy wrote.

* Minority dissenting opinion: A dissent written by Justice Stephen Breyer said that COPA "imposes a burden on protected speech that is no more than modest" and should be upheld as constitutional. COPA "does not censor the material it covers," Breyer wrote. "Rather, it requires providers of the 'harmful to minors' material to restrict minors' access to it by verifying age. They can do so by inserting screens that verify age using a credit card, adult personal identification number, or other similar technology. In this way, the act requires creation of an Internet screen that minors, but not adults, will find difficult to bypass."

+ Congress has now struck out twice in passing a federal law regarding Internet porn. --- COPA represents Congress' second attempt to restrict sexually explicit material on the Internet. The Supreme Court in 1997 rejected the Communications Decency Act, which covered "indecent" or "patently offensive" material, as unconstitutional.

-Steve

[retrograde]

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/03-218.pdf

If you're wanting more detail.

[RainGurl]

ah craig beat me to the post...

i too remember the days of the original copa. at the time i managed adult advertising for hitbox and we changed out literally hundreds of "hardcore" banners to those showing no nudity at all... just to change them back in a few weeks. CTR literally was cut in half with the softcore banners.

people will continue to push the limits to whatever degree they can get away with. many companies self-regulate and take steps to keep their content away from children and it makes sense. if not for the moral reason, simply because children don't have credit cards.

I've seen the industry come a long way in this regard, but there will always be people who just don't care, and internet porn will always be a target of the government, regardless of who i sin office. I don't think there's a way around it. In my opinion, the best option is to just be responsible with your content and most of the legal issues that come up won't affect you.

my 2 cents

[BDBionic]

Some how I think those inclined to really push the limits and skirt the edge aren't reading up on SCOTUS rulings on a regular basis.
I see things being pretty status quo for the most part. And that a visible change won't take place any time soon in how people conduct business on account of this ruling.

[djdez]

Well I really don't think there is a precident here. When the first legilation was passed people did make changes. But now it seems that very few companies are making any changes when these laws are written until the legislation is upheld by the courts.

What i think is interesting is that the first version of copa was reject unanimously. COPA 2 was rejected 5-4 with 2 conservative judges (thomas and kennedy) rejecting it. I predict the next round of legislation (COPA 3 perhaps) will be 6-3 in favor of the legislation.

[desslock]

Originally posted by djdez
I predict the next round of legislation (COPA 3 perhaps) will be 6-3 in favor of the legislation.

Well I'm not so sure. The interesting thing about this is that the Court is creating a free speech concept that I think all of us in the business can applaud.

Kennedy writes that the solution to prevent minors from viewing pornography is with adult content filtering software. That's essentially the modern day equivilant of saying "if you don't like what's on television, turn the thing off"

In other words, the court is telling Congress that it cannot pass laws that just blanketly prohibit pornography - but rather to force the users / parents to exercize their V-Chips and filtering software. The Court is really giving Congress fewer and fewer options here, and the options that it has will be ones that hopefully will not abridge free speech rights nor interfere with us running our business to provide legal adult entertainment to consenting adults.

This is a very insightful concept, and it will give our industry stability. (at least that's my 2 cents worth)

Steve

[Dzinerbear]

I always hate it when these kinds of cases come up because the larger population doesn't get that it's a freedom of speech or freedom of expression issue. They just think the court is saying it's okay to abuse kids sexually. And of course it isn't at all, and that's not what the courts are saying.

The courts are trying to do is prevent us from going down that slippery slope where we ban one thing and then another and another, and pretty soon, we living in a state where everything we say and do is censored and controlled.

Cheers
Dzinerbear