Tag Archives: Topic: Internet

AP: “Seven New York residents have been indicted on charges of running a prostitution ring on Craigslist.”

Counton2.com: “Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster says in Wednesday’s blog that he filed suit against South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order. McMaster said he will prosecute Craigslist for posting prostitution ads on the site in South Carolina.”

ACLU: “The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Tennessee sued two Tennessee school districts in federal court today, charging the schools are unconstitutionally blocking students from accessing online information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, Knox County Schools and as many as 105 other school districts in Tennessee use Internet filtering software to block Web sites containing pro-LGBT speech, but not Web sites touting so-called ‘reparative therapy’ and ‘ex-gay’ ministries . . . More information about the case, including the ACLU’s complaint and a video featuring one of the student plaintiffs, is available online at:www.aclu.org/lgbt/youth/39346res20090413.html ”

OneNewsNow: “‘I’m skeptical because the Craigslist people have said they’re going to make progress, and then there’s no progress. What they are attempting to do now is eliminate the erotic site and establish an adult site,’ [Trueman] notes. ‘I’ve already checked the adult site and it already has prostitution advertised, so I don’t expect much from Craigslist.’”

Mercury News (AP): “A Nevada Senate panel voted unanimously Wednesday for an Assembly-approved proposal allowing civil lawsuits when victims of childhood sex crimes learn there’s pornography depicting the crimes against them.”

Mark Bowes reports in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “But Commonwealth’s Attorney Wade Kizer said he still hasn’t decided how Henrico authorities should handle such ‘sexting’ incidents, which aren’t really covered by law. His office and county police are still reviewing several cases involving students at Moody Middle School.”

Julie Hilden writes at Findlaw:
There is no shortcut here: Legislators need to write new laws – and/or schools must write new policies — regarding sexting that are specifically geared toward the peculiarities of the practice as it exists among teenagers today. “Sexting” should not become a trap for the unwary; it should be addressed in a rational, consistent way, and in a way that eschews old categories to recognize its unique nature. Teens should also have clear prior notice of what they cannot do, and of what will happen to them if they break the rules.

CBS2Chicago.com: “Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says Craigslist is getting rid of its ‘erotic services’ ads and will create a new adult category that Web site employees will review.”

AFP: “A Cairo court issued a ruling on Tuesday calling on the Egyptian government to ban foreign pornographic websites, the lawyer filing the suit told AFP.”

The May 2009 Verizon Wireless Newsletter is promoting parental control options for family telecommunications that include various blocking and filtering options.

OneNewsNow: “‘What we don’t want to say is that it’s safer with respect to child pornography and child sex abuse online because there are more people everyday looking for child pornography, looking to abuse kids,’ [Pat Trueman] notes. ‘So the market for that kind of material actually grows even though the number of websites declined.’”

CitizenLink: “Pat Trueman, special counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said Craigslist should face prosecution. ‘Craigslist is certainly making it easier for sexual traffickers who want to traffic children and adults in America,’ he said.”

Houston Law Review: “Part II of this Comment shows what makes the Internet a unique medium of expression deserving special protection from outside forces, both public and private. Part III explains why regulation, a notion that seems counterintuitive to the ideals of free expression embodied in the traditional concept of the Internet, nevertheless proves necessary in certain, albeit limited, circumstances. Part IV discusses the most important methods of regulation that have been implemented, and how they should be manipulated in order to best promote the values of freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment . . .”

FoxNews: “A student is appealing his suspension from a Christian college in western Pennsylvania for appearing in gay porn videos using a pseudonym.”

FoxNews: “Lawmakers are rolling the dice on Internet gambling. Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Peter King, R-N.Y., unveiled legislation Wednesday that would enable Americans to legally gamble online.”

Reuters: “U.S. Representative Barney Frank will unveil legislation on Wednesday to roll back a U.S. ban on online gambling, he said in a statement on Tuesday. The new bill would exempt operators that are licensed and regulated from the ban enacted in 2006, Frank said.”

Wired: “Proposed congressional legislation would demand up to two years in prison for those whose electronic speech is meant to ‘coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person.’ Instead of prison, perhaps we should say gulag.”

Boston Globe (AP): “South Carolina’s top prosecutor on Tuesday called on the chief executive of popular online site Craigslist to take down ads related to prostitution and pornography or face prosecution himself.”

Boston Globe (AP): “State attorneys general from Missouri, Illinois and Connecticut plan to begin negotiations with Craigslist to eliminate what they contend are advertisements for illegal sexual activities.”

Internet Watch Foundation Press Release: “The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has published its Annual Report 2008 revealing a fall of nearly 10% in the number of international websites with child sexual abuse content. The report warns against complacency, pointing to the serious nature of the images which are often carried on commercial websites.”

One News Now: “California school district is coming under fire for a homosexual website being funded with taxpayer dollars.”

KAUZ: “Every 39 minutes a pornographic video is being filmed, and there’s no evidence the adult entertainment industry is going anywhere but up anytime soon.”

Online Casino Advisory: “Officials from the Minnesota Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division have commanded Internet service providers to block almost 200 online gambling sites.”

Suffolk University Law Review: “Although producing virtual child pornography indistinguishable from real child pornography may be a technical possibility, the First Circuit properly allowed a lay person to determine whether an image is real or virtual. Wilder posited that computer-generated images might not be distinguishable from real images, but presented no evidence either supporting this claim or asserting that the images on his computer were in fact virtual in origin. While experts disagree about the degree of availability or prevalence of virtual child pornography on the Internet, the circuits that have considered the issue agree that fact-finders are capable of determining whether an image represents a real child without technical expert testimony.”

AP: “The number of international Web sites showing sexual abuse of children has fallen by about 10 percent, but the images on these sites are more violent, a British Internet watchdog said Wednesday.”

Washington Times: “America is raising a generation of children on porn – and your child just might be one of them. According to the London School of Economics, nine out of 10 teens who go online will view pornography. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that 70 percent of those who viewed porn stumbled across it – many while innocently doing their homework – and had not been looking for it.”

NY Daily News: In the wake of the murder of Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old masseuse who met her alleged killer after posting an ad on the site, Jim Buckmaster said offers to exchange sexual favors for money are ‘strictly prohibited’ and removed.

KLIV: “A proposal to install Internet filters on computers in the children’s section of San Jose public libraries has been rejected.”

Associated Press: “Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet approved a new law Wednesday to require the vast majority of the country’s Internet service providers to block child pornography sites.”

Journalism.org: “More than a quarter of the links (26%) by blogs and social media sites from April 6-10 focused on the gay-marriage issue, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That differed dramatically from the traditional press, which devoted only 1% of last week’s newshole to gay marriage, making it the No. 15 story in the mainstream media agenda.”

Burlington Free Press: “Vermont’s Legislature is considering a bill that, if approved, would make the state one of the first in the nation to grant legal protections to teenagers who send sexually explicit photos and videos to one another with their cell phones.”

Warning: objectionable content on the site Queerty holds itself out as “Free of an agenda. Except that gay one.”  It reports: Sorry eHarmony: Just because you launched a same-sex match site doesn’t mean you’re out of legal trouble. Settling an …

Washington Post:
“Key lawmakers are pushing to dramatically escalate U.S. defenses against cyberattacks, crafting proposals that would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time . . . Addressing what intelligence officials describe as a gaping vulnerability, the legislation also calls for the appointment of a White House cybersecurity ‘czar’ with unprecedented authority to shut down computer networks, including private ones, if a cyberattack is underway, the officials said.”

AP: “A federal judge has blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three northeastern Pennsylvania teenagers over racy cell phone pictures.”

AP: “An attempt to extend a West Virginia anti-harassment law to the Internet may have some long-reaching consequences.”

AP: “The court on Monday said it will leave in place a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional because it prohibited political, religious and other messages in addition to commercial solicitations . . . The case is Virginia v. Jaynes, 08-765.”

AP:
“Australia’s communications minister has defended a proposed Internet blacklist as necessary to combat child pornography but admitted that at least one site had been wrongly blocked during trials . . .

The blacklist, maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, is provided to creators of Internet filtering software that people can opt to install on their computers . . . ”

AP: “A 14-year-old New Jersey girl has been accused of child pornography after posting nearly 30 explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com – charges that could force her to register as a sex offender if convicted . . . ”

NY Times: “A federal judge said at a hearing on Thursday that ‘serious constitutional issues’ were raised in a lawsuit filed by three teenage girls and their mothers against a county district attorney who threatened to arrest the students on pornography charges after seminude photographs of them appeared on other students’ cellphones.”

SSRN: “The filtering requirements of the CIPA present one of the first successful governmental efforts to help parents protect their children from harmful Internet material. However, the lingering issue is whether that filtering effort, as alleged by the CIPA opponents, unduly restricts the free speech rights of adults. A study was designed to determine how often adults were denied access to information at South Dakota public libraries using the federal E-rate program as a filter on library terminals.”

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has issued this press release and link to the complaint in connection with its suit against the Wyoming County DA. It begins:
“The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit today against the Wyoming County district attorney for threatening three high school girls with child pornography charges over digital photos in which they appear topless or in their underwear. The district attorney has demanded that in order to avoid the charges, the girls be placed on probation, participate in a five-week re-education program and be subject to random drug testing. The photos were among several discovered by Tunkhannock School District officials on students’ cell phones.”
Miller v. Skumanick

Related ADF Alliance Alert posts

Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
“Three students in the Tunkhannock School District in Wyoming County have filed a federal lawsuit against the district attorney there, claiming that his threats to charge them with child pornography for sending pictures of themselves either topless or in bras amount to abuse of his authority.”

redOrbit reports: “Agents and computer experts over the past decade have gone after hundreds of predators who solicit sex from kids or trade child pornography online. However, experts say the number of cases involving online sexual predators has quietly multiplied across the nation, with arrests more than quadrupling in 10 years.”

“‘I don’t think we’ve made significant progress at all,’ Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said. ‘Our community leaders don’t even know how bad the problem is. The general population has no idea.’”

The Religion Clause Blog reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a petition for certiorari filed in Caldwell v. Caldwell, (Docket No. 08-858). The suit challenged “certain content on an “Understanding Evolution” website created and maintained by the University of California Museum of Paleontology and funded in part by the National Science Foundation.”

“Jessica Logan’s nude cell-phone photo – meant for her boyfriend’s eyes only – was sent to hundreds of teenagers last year in at least seven Greater Cincinnati high schools . . . On July 3, Jessie hanged herself in her bedroom. She was Albert and Cynthia Logan’s only child . . . ”

YumaSun:
A retired FBI agent who specialized in obscenity and sexual crimes against children for 23 years while with the bureau, said the investigation and prosecution of illegal adult pornography in many instances could reduce the number of children getting sexually exploited . . .

OneNewsNow: “The proposal of a triple-X domain for Internet pornography is being negotiated. Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, notes ICM Registry has failed in the past, largely due to public pressure, but the idea is being reconsidered. ‘They were turned down by the Internet governing agency ICANN on two occasions, but now they’re in arbitration, which is before a third party,’ he explains.”

The 6th Circuit has certified a number of questions regarding Ohio Revised Code § 2907.31(D)(1)–which prohibits the “dissemination or display of material harmful to juveniles”–to the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Macon.com (AP): Authorities have arrested 25 people, including two state-certified correctional officers, in a statewide crackdown on Internet child pornography described as the largest operation of its kind in Georgia.

The DOPA, and any similar legislation would fail to meet constitutional requirements due to the large burden placed on protected speech. Because the proposed filters target the technology of the site, and not necessarily the content, the reach of this legislation is so broad that it is irrational.

“Faced with increased competition from former phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon, satellite and cable companies are loosening their chastity belts and getting more aggressive about promoting adult content on other male-heavy channels . . . ”

Warning: The link is provided below for researchers, but the site may contain graphic or pornographic materials. Rhett Pardon reports at XBIZNewswire (20090310): ICM Registry’s Stuart Lawley is hopeful that his top-level domain .XXX proposal will get a green light …

Robert J. Ambrogi writes at Legal Blog Watch: “One major difference between publishing online and publishing in print is that the online publisher is not legally responsible for information posted by others. For this shield from liability, publishers of blogs, …

Mike Sakal, writing in the East Valley Tribune: “Law enforcement authorities announced this week that they made 12 arrests of men accused of sexually exploiting children on the Internet.”

David Hudson, Jr. writes at the First Amendment Center:  ”In its Feb. 27 ruling in Independent Newspapers Inc. v. Brodie, the Maryland Court of Appeals said those who file libel suits against unknown online posters must establish a prima facie, or basic, …

The Salt Lake Tribune:  Besides its political bent, Utah’s per capita appetite for online pornography makes it the nation’s run-away red-light state. A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states — which …

Des Moines Register: “Child care providers or parents who allow children access to pornography would be guilty of child abuse and listed on the state’s child abuse registry, under legislation being considered by lawmakers . . . The legislation is …

How Appealing links to the opinion and several reports: “Maryland’s Court of Appeals issued a decision yesterday protecting the identity of three anonymous Internet posters and, for the first time, offering guidelines for state courts to follow in libel cases …

AP: “A Connecticut police officer who poses as a 14-year-old girl to catch Internet sex predators has arrested a Maine man for allegedly attempting to impair the morals of a minor . . . “

Attorney General Jack Conway, Kentucky Child Now, and the Kentucky Department of Education today announced a $77,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation to help fund cybersafety initiatives in Kentucky.

Marcia Segelstein writes at One News Now: “Most people probably don’t picture kids when they think about who’s viewing pornography.  But according to statistics cited by the non-profit advocacy organization Enough Is Enough, the largest group of viewers of Internet pornography …

Online Casino Advisory: The Presidential election this past fall revealed a rift between the two main components of the Republican Party, and the response to a Democratic bill legalizing online gambling may indicate which branch will control the Party’s future. …

“A federal judge in Connecticut has ordered a man convicted of possessing child pornography to pay about $200,000 in restitution to a woman photographed as a child while being sexually abused . . . ”

The Christian Post: A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law that requires pornographers who take photos of people engaged in sexually explicit acts to provide “proof of age,” a ruling that strengthens prevention on the exploitation of children …

With the modern landscape of tech-savvy youths, today’s sexual predators employ online social networking sites (“OSNs”) as the new frontier for clandestine hunting grounds. These faceless cyber-sharks–the illicit spawn of the robust shelters created by § 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”)–have rapidly adapted to the free reign enjoyed in the unbridled habitat that is the internet. This Comment examines the surprisingly expansive immunity currently afforded to OSNs under the guise of the CDA. It also endorses the policies of website accountability and online sex-offender registration as complimentary techniques of combating today’s online predator crisis. Lastly, it serves to meet a growing need for the assemblage of cyber-law related information into an organized legal paper that explains several emerging concepts of liability for interactive internet service providers.

ADF President Alan Sears authored law recommended by pornography commission under U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III

. . . the 6th Circuit sitting en banc has upheld § 2257 of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988 . . . which requires porn producers to create and maintain” records relating to their depictions . . .

The Chinese authorities continue to block many Catholic websites, like Radio Veritas of Asia, the website of the Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference, all of the Catholic sites of Taiwan, and those of the diocese of Hong Kong. The government says that it wants to fight pornography on the internet, but it is systematically taking measures against sites with no pornographic content, which however present information not entirely in harmony with the version of the Communist Party.

The NY Daily News: “A state proposal to add a 4% tax for downloading movies and music will also apply to Internet porn. Gov. Paterson recently suggested the so-called iPod tax to help close a $15 billion budget deficit, but …

Yale Daily News: “A case pitting Connecticut public school administrators against a high school student’s personal blog took center stage at a Yale Law School conference on free speech over the weekend. The case, Doninger v. Niehoff . . . …

School officials are also forced to adapt to the growing availability of technology that is literally at the fingertips of modern day students. An incident last week where a male high school student may have sent revealing photos of a female student to all of his friends forced school officials to adapt to the new world.

Vice Speaker of the Federation Council Alexander Torshin supported the idea of establishing the Public Council on Morality at the television and backed up the federal religious TV channel.

Gov. Paterson recently suggested the so-called iPod tax to help close a $15 billion budget deficit, but few realized the levy would also apply to XXX-rated material.

Americans have grown accustomed to finding just about anything they want online fast, and free. . . . Pacer, the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records . . . Cumbersome, arcane and not free, it is everything that Google is not.