Tag Archives: Topic: Internet

Internet Child Protection Registry Acts: Protecting Children, Parents and . . . Pornographers? Allowing States to Balance the First Amendment with Parents’ Rights to Privacy and Sovereignty in the Home
Samuel D. Castor, 59 Cath. U. L. Rev. 231 (2009)

“This Comment evaluates states’ role in the tug-of-war between governments attempting to help parents protect children from unwanted, and potentially harmful, electronic communications and the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from abridging a person’s freedom of speech.”

Pornography Harms, is a one-stop location for sound research, news articles and opinion pieces demonstrating the harm from pornography,’ said Patrick Trueman, creator of the site.

Spiegel Online: “The lower house of the French parliament has approved a draft bill that will allow the state unprecedented control over the Internet. Although the government says it will improve security for ordinary citizens, civil rights activists are warning of a ‘new level’ of censorship and surveillance.”

Post-Tribune: “Lawmakers plan to research the issue of teen ‘sexting’ this summer before they pass a bill making it a delinquent act for minors. The announcement was made in a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Led by Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond, the committee is expected to amend a Senate sexting bill next week.”

Miami Herald: “A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher – and was later suspended – had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled.”

AP: “Roughly 40 percent of Americans do not have high-speed Internet access at home, according to new Commerce Department figures that underscore the challenges facing policymakers who are trying to bring affordable broadband connections to everyone.” The report also reports usage data based on race and income.

Sex, Privacy, and Webpages: Creating a Legal Remedy for Victims of Porn 2.0
Ariel Ronneburger, 21 Syracuse Sci. & Tech. L. Rep. 1 (2009)

“The problem of regulating the world of Porn 2.0 thus persists. This paper addresses this problem by proposing an amendment to the CDA, creating potential liability for service providers who fail to at least investigate claims of non-consented pornography. The proposed amendment is modeled on The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (‘OCILLA’) portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’). If a service provider is on notice that it is hosting copyrighted material, OCILLA requires the service provider to remove the material from its servers in order to obtain safe harbor from copyright infringement charges. Thus, service providers must act upon notice of hosting copyrighted material. According to this Article’s proposed amendment to the CDA, online service providers would have a similar duty to act upon notice that they are hosting nude images of unconsenting individuals.”

Download Squad: “Next Tuesday French lawmakers will vote on a bill dubbed ‘Loppsi 2′ that will give the authorities the power to force ISPs to block access to any web address . . . ”

NY Times: “In the view of both political analysts and technology experts here and in the United States, China’s attempts to tighten its grip on Internet use are driven in part by the conviction that the West — and particularly the United States — is wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally.”

Gerald Warner writing in The Telegraph: “The American blogosphere is going increasingly ‘viral’ about a proposal advanced at the recent meeting of the Davos Economic Forum by Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, that an equivalent of a ‘driver’s licence’ should be introduced for access to the web. This totalitarian call has been backed by articles and blogs in Time magazine and the New York Times.”

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Wall Street Journal: “Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out.”

Protecting Childhood: Rights, Social Goals and the First Amendment in the Context of the Child Online Protection Act
Elizabeth Blanks Hindman, 15 Comm. L. & Pol’y 1 (2010)

“Through the prism of collectivist and individualist political philosophies, this article examines how three levels of federal courts articulated the conflict between individuals’ rights to speak and to access pornography and society’s need to protect children from harmful material. First, it briefly examines legal philosophy literature to set the stage. It then focuses on how judges expressed the conflict between the individual and society. It concludes that the courts should have treated both the right to speech and the need to protect children as benefits to society, which would have allowed a logically coherent discussion on social values.”

The Evening Sun: “State Rep. Seth Grove, R-Dover Township, said he was genuinely surprised to learn that the Pennsylvania ACLU is objecting to his proposed legislation on the subject, because his goal is to reduce the penalty for teens … He’s proposed legislation that would reduce the charge to a misdemeanor for offenders who are 13 to 17 years old.”

OneNewsNow: “‘Apple is responding to public complaints about the pornography that they make available for download onto iPhones,’ Trueman explains. ‘Lots of people, particularly young people, have an iPhone, and you can get various applications that you can play on your iPhone through something called iTunes.’”

“United States v. Little concludes that Internet obscenity distribution prosecutions may rely on the community standard of the place in which the material was distributed . . . ”

FYI by PLS: “The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania hosted a teleconference to discuss legal and social ramifications of Pennsylvania’s proposed sexting legislation. Vic Walczak, Legal Director for the ACLU of PA said HB 2189 is ‘fatally flawed’ and would ‘make minors criminals.”’

CNET: “But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They’re pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.
CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created . . . ”

The NY Times carries this report on the emerging debate over restitution for child porn victims.

Washington Times: “In another case, investigators found that an SEC headquarters enforcement employee had received 406 access request denials for pornographic sites from February to April last year. He was suspended for three days, records show. Managers proposed a one-day suspension in another case involving a regional office branch chief who had received 271 access denials for pornographic sites during work hours.”

LA Times (AP):  ”Muslim advocates are demanding an apology from a California city councilwoman for posting anti-Muslim comments on her Facebook social networking page . . . ”

Supreme Court of Ohio Press Release: “The Supreme Court of Ohio today agreed with the state attorney general’s interpretation that a state law banning electronic transmission to minors of pornography or other material ‘harmful to juveniles’ applies only to personally directed communications such as instant messaging, person-to-person emails and private chat rooms, and exempts from liability material that is posted on generally accessible websites and in public chatrooms.”

AFA of Indiana: “Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters held a hearing on a bill authored by Senator Jim Merritt regarding the dissemination of indecent material. The bill has been called the “sexting” bill because it mostly focuses on the problem of youth and teens sending and receiving sexually explicit mater in text, cell phone or electronic messaging.”

Under a proposed settlement filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, eHarmony will link its straight and gay Web sites and allow people to use both without paying double fees.

Philly.com: “The ACLU has been arguing that the threat to prosecute the girls is a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech. The ACLU told Timesleader.com of northeastern Pennsylvania that ‘There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction by many prosecutors that if you find some naked photos, you throw the book at whoever you can identify.’ I don’t find that persuasive. In fact, Donohue told me that “The transmission of photos of naked children draws predators like mosquitoes are drawn to a swamp.” As a result of the prosecutor bringing this case, a predator was caught with the photos and is now in jail. This underlines one of the D.A.’s major concerns.”

Radley Balko writing at Reason Magazine: “There have now been several cases across the country where young people who either pose for, snap, or forward provocative or nude photos of other minors are being charged or threatened with felony child pornography . . . These cases are the natural culmination of two trends. The first is the continuing view among politicians that there’s no punishment too severe for sex offenders. Moreover, to show how serious we are about sex offenders, we should broaden the class of people we classify under the label . . . The second trend is the ‘for the children’ excuse that no law ought to be questioned if its intent is to protect young people. The resulting paternalism is built in.”

Community Defense Counsel linking to the Blog of the Legal Times: “In U.S. v. Love, a three-judge panel on Jan. 22 upheld the Internet ban that was imposed as a condition on Allan Love’s release after he has served his sentence for transporting or shipping material involving child pornography.”

“Child pornography victims could sue anyone convicted of producing, promoting or possessing their sexual images for at least $150,000 in damages under a proposal backed by the Missouri attorney general.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “So Tuesday, the Judiciary Committee will discuss House Bill 2189, introduced by Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, which would classify sexting by minors — youths under 18 — as a second-degree misdemeanor instead of a felony, as it now can be classified.”

NY Times: “China delivered a bristling response on Monday to the United States’ demand that it investigate recent attacks on American computers from Chinese soil, saying that any suggestion that it conducted or condoned the hackers’ intrusions was “groundless and aims to denigrate China . . . ”

CNBC: “The latest financial crisis, mixed with rampant piracy problems, has taken its toll. Profits are down and porn production studios are folding at a pace faster than anyone would have imagined two years ago.”

Time: “Hot on the heels of the Google vs. China censorship dispute, a new front in the showdown between state power and Internet freedom is opening in Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government is pushing through new measures that would give the state control over online video content and force anyone who regularly uploads videos to obtain a license from the Ministry of Communications. The move is seen as yet another challenge to Google — owner of YouTube — which says the new rules would in effect force Internet service providers to police their own content.”

NY Times: “The Chinese Foreign Ministry lashed out Friday against criticism of China in a speech on Internet censorship made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling on the United States government ‘to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations.’”

Morality in Media on the Christian Newswire: “Morality in Media president Robert Peters had the following comments: ‘It is no secret that GoDaddy.com loves to ‘push the envelope’ when it comes to the content of its ads; and it would appear that this year’s Super Bowl ads may push as close to the indecency line as CBS Network ‘censors’ will allow, which could be as close as CBS thinks it can get away with.’”

The Independent: “Europe’s main security and human rights watchdog said yesterday that Turkey was blocking some 3,700 Internet sites for ‘arbitrary and political reasons’ and urged reforms to show its commitment to freedom of expression.”

AP: “The visitors are Internet refugees from China’s western Xinjiang region, whose 20 million people been without links to the outside world since the government blocked virtually online access, text messages and international phone calls after ethnic riots in July. It’s the largest and longest such blackout in the world, observers say.”

” . . . all three judges seemed skeptical of the prosecutor’s claim that child pornography laws are violated when a teen transmits a nude image of herself.”

Education News: “This paper summarizes the discussion with senior officials from Ministries of Education, national information and communication (ICT) policy bodies, or national school networking organizations from Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK, the USA and Australia regarding Internet Safety.”

NY Times: “Two days after Google announced that it would quit China unless the nation’s censors eased their grip, the Chinese government offered an indirect but unambiguous response: Companies that do business in China must follow the laws of the land.”

Newsweek: “China is fighting the Internet. And like everyone else who fights the Internet, China will lose.”

“The case is the first in the country to challenge the constitutionality of bringing child pornography charges in the context of sexting.”

The Enterprise: “Two separate bills on Beacon Hill would crack down on ‘sexting’ as part of proposals to curb bullying in schools . . . The Senate and House bills — S.B. 228 and H.B. 483, respectively — both require school officials to implement bullying prevention policies and develop strategies for reporting and investigating any cases.”

Wall Street Journal: “To many CEOs, China seems a land of immense opportunity. That’s tempered, of course, by the many difficulties of actually doing business there—the regulatory strictures and caprice, corruption and the myriad quirks that come with operating in any developing economy. But do the benefits of being in China actually outweigh the costs? Two recent cases, one big and one small, suggest some businesses think well, maybe not.”

Wall Street Journal Digits blog: “The Ad Council has launched a series of Public Service Announcements promoting the slogan ‘Think before you post’ . . . The Family Violence Prevention Fund has launched ThatsNotCool.com, a site aimed at making teens aware of ‘textual harassment’ . . . Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that helps parents and educators become aware of media and entertainment issues, offers parents tips for discussing the topic with teens.”

Law.com (The National Law Journal): “The fast-moving dispute over broadcast access to the federal trial on California’s ban on same-sex marriage has triggered a dustup within the leadership of the federal judiciary. Last Friday, on the eve of the San Francisco trial, top officials of the Judicial Conference of the United States sent a stern letter (pdf) to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reminding him of Judicial Conference policy against televising trials. Kozinski wrote back on Sunday, warning that, if federal courts don’t experiment with access and technology, Congress will force the federal courts to act.”

“The U.S. search giant’s announcement that it will stop censoring its Chinese search site, and may withdraw from the country altogether, triggered an outpouring of concern, and some anger, among Chinese Internet users . . . ”

Washington Post: “Google said Tuesday that it may pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating there and targeting its e-mail service and corporate infrastructure, a threat that could rattle U.S.-China relations, as well as China’s business community.”

Sex, Cell Phones, Privacy, and the First Amendment: When Children Become Child Pornographers and the Lolita Effect Undermines the Law
Clay Calvert, 18 CommLaw Conspectus 1 (2009)

“It is a sure-fire recipe for legal trouble: combine hormone-raging teens with image-transmitting technologies, and then stir them together in a sex-saturated society replete with outdated laws and a criminal justice system that never could have anticipated such a combustible confluence of forces. Signs and symptoms of this salacious problem are cropping up across the United States.”

Findlaw (AP): “Colorado Attorney General John Suthers has joined Democratic Rep. Nancy Todd, the Entertainment Software Association and Web Wise Kids to unveil an Internet safety program to help parents keep their children safe online . . . ”

Visit: Web Wise Kids

Telegraph: “Google has denied favouring Islam over other religions in its suggested searches, after allegations that phrases criticising the faith had been censored.”

Wired.com: “If you type, ‘Buddhism is’ or ‘Christianity is,’ Google will quickly show you suggestions for what it thinks you might be trying to type. In the former query’s case, the Google guesses ‘not a religion,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘not what you think.’ Christianity gets tougher treatment with the suggestions [bleep] . . . and ‘not a religion.’”

On a related note, try Googling “National Organization for Marriage.” As of this posting, the first hit is to a Wikipedia article. The second hit is to the “Human Rights Campaign” website. The third hit is to a You Tube video titled: “YouTube – Lies from the National Organization for Marriage.” Most of the other links in the top ten hits are to homosexual or left wing organizations. No direct links to the National Organization for Marriage appears in the first ten hits except for a link to a defunct webpage from the NOM California. Is this mere coincidence based on neutral computer programming?

The Globe and Mail: “The Grade 11 student was found Thursday afternoon, after his parents spent two days desperately appealing for his safe return. On Wednesday, police had released pictures of Lauri Price, a Texas mother of four who had allegedly flown to Toronto and driven a rental car to collect the teen after striking up a relationship with him while playing the popular online game . . . The teenager had told Ms. Price he was 20 – the age of consent in Canada is 16 – and police said she will not face criminal charges . . . ”

Pew Forum: “The two Michigan State University professors argue that no couple should have to be physically present to be married and that any two adults should have the freedom to take advantage of another state’s marriage laws, whether or not the pair resides in that state. How exactly? With the help of the Internet, in what Candeub and Kuykendall are dubbing ‘e-marriage.’”

“On Monday, Judge Patrick Schiltz in U.S. District Court in St. Paul issued an order demanding to know why restitution was not even requested by the U.S. attorney’s office in the case of a Minnesota man who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.”

PRNewswire: “[Ron] Jeremy will air his views on pornography and square off with anti-porn pastor and XXXchurch.com founder Craig Gross at the 2010 CES International conference in Las Vegas in an event called ‘The Great Porn Debate’ being sponsored by InternetSafety.com. The pair will weigh in on whether pornography is good or bad for adults, how the Internet has changed the pornography business, and the effect that the $10 billion online pornography industry can have on children as well as what to do about it.”

The Dartmouth: “PhotoDNA, a new child-pornography tracking technology developed in part by Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid, may soon enable Internet service providers to better curb the availability of online images depicting child pornography. The technology was donated to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in December.”

Reuters: “Chinese police arrested thousands in a drive against Internet pornography throughout 2009, officials said, vowing a deepening crackdown that critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.”

OneNewsNow: “A disappointment came to warriors against pornography, especially that which victimizes children as the high court refused to revive the Child Online Protection Act, which is designed to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet. Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, disagrees with the court’s decision . . . In Iowa, the state Supreme Court declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional — an action which ultimately legalized same-gender ‘marriage.’ Alliance Defense Fund attorney Douglas Napier notes that one poll released around that time indicated that 62 percent of Iowans opposed homosexual marriage.”

Blog of the Legal Times: “However, at a hearing today the judge said he would consider allowing defense lawyers to file an immediate appeal of his decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit . . . In a motion to dismiss the case, Stagliano’s lawyers argued that the standards set by federal obscenity laws — such as the use of “contemporary community standards” to determine what was obscene — were too vague to govern Internet speech.”

This post may be updated.

Associated Press: “. . . part of a three-phase plan to target what it called pornography accessible through cell phones. The regulations require telecom companies and Internet service providers to carry out ‘complete and thorough’ checks to determine if Web sites are officially registered. Any Web sites that have not registered with the ministry should be taken off the Internet, the order says.”

OneNewsNow: “Microsoft has developed PhotoDNA, software technology that helps calculate the distinct characteristics of a digital image to match it to other copies of that same image . . . Trueman says that ‘if the National Center has perhaps a thousand new child pornography photos that come in on one day, they might be able to identify ten children in those photos. With the Microsoft software, the other photos will be looked at for characteristics which the software can identify and tie to particular children.’”

New York Times: “The authorities say the stricter controls are intended to protect children from pornography; to limit the piracy of films, music, and television shows; and to make it hard to perpetuate Internet scams. But the measures also appear devised to enhance the government’s already strict control of any political opposition.”

OnlineCasino.org: “It has recently come to light that the hugely popular social networking site Facebook has decided to restrict certain services from advertising with them. Spy equipment, smoking productions and weapons are already on the list, but now gambling is among the prohibited content.”

Citizen Link: “PhotoDNA will be used by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to identify child pornography.”

Psychology Today: “The Pew Internet & American Life Project is nonprofit research group, who surveyed 800-teens, and reported that 15% of cell-owning teens (ages 12 to 17) had “received nude or nearly nude photos by phone. 4% of the teens said they had sent out sexually explicit photos or videos of themselves.” (cnn.com) Another poll reported that 1/3 of college students engage in this activity (wcbstv.com). Although many teens and young adults may be blasé about sexting, other acknowledge that it can be very dangerous and in addition to creating “drama” it has also been deadly . . . ”

US News and World Report: “Parents’ concern for their children’s risky behavior with new technologies is an untapped market.”

Washington Post: “Members of the Virginia State Crime Commission refused Tuesday to recommend legislation concerning sexting, but the issue is likely to come before lawmakers next month.”

Anita Ramasastry writes at Findlaw: “More generally, public officials are finding that their Facebook conduct (including their ‘friending’ practices) is being scrutinized. Since Facebook and similar sites are a mixture of public and private, this issue isn’t going to go away any time soon. Thus, state ethics bodies – including those that govern judicial ethics — are well-advised to confront the issue sooner, rather than later.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “About 15 percent of American teenagers have received nude or sexually suggestive photos on their cell phones, and that percentage doubles as teens get older, according to a study released Tuesday about the tech-fueled trend called ‘sexting.’”

Breitbart (AP): “Australia plans to introduce an Internet filtering system to block obscene and crime-linked Web sites despite concerns it will curtail freedoms and won’t completely work.”

How Appealing carries links to numerous reports on the case.

SCOTUS Blog links to more commentaries and reports.

Related background materials: Supreme Court may hear appeal on workers’ text message privacy

Reuters: “Chinese police have detained some 3,470 people so far this year during a crackdown on online pornography and closed thousands of pornographic websites, state media said on Saturday.”

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear “a case in which employees won a constitutional right to privacy in their text messages, even when the messages were sexually explicit comments to co-workers.

Emily Bazelon writes at Slate: “Last week, Hope’s suicide became the second with a clear link to sexting and the peer torture that can follow from it. At the end of seventh grade last spring, Hope sent a photo of her breasts to a boy she liked, and the picture went viral at her school.”

Legal Blog Watch reports: “On its blog, the CMLP [Citizens Media Law Project] announced yesterday that it has created and will now be maintaining a guide to live-blogging and tweeting from court.”