"Defend Our Porn"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:57 PM

That's the title of a website that has just been launched by the company and individual recently charged with federal obscenity crimes. (The subtitle is "Protect Our Freedom.") The site has news about the case, a guest book with some interesting posts from supporters, and information about donating to the cause. Seems the Justice Department was so enamored of this case that its press release announcing the indictments preceded (by days) any official notification to the targets. Here's the site's Mission Statement, from the "Donate" page:

DefendOurPorn.org is a site started in 2008 as a direct result of the Federal government filing an obscenity indictment against John Stagliano, John Stagliano Inc and Evil Angel Productions for the traffic and interstate commerce of two pornographic movies and the website available of a trailer for a third pornographic movie.

In the days following the indictment, Mr. Stagliano received an outpouring of support from adult industry members and fans, asking how and where they could donate money to help fight the legal case. DefendOurPorn.org was founded.

Any money which is donated and not used towards the legal defense of the John Stagliano / Evil Angel case will be rolled over in the DefendOurPorn fund and will be earmarked for future First Amendment / obscenity prosecutions.

Note from Karen Stagliano: In the very near future, DefendOurPorn.org will be formed as a non-profit organization. Unfortunately, the Justice Department released a press release about the indictment against John Stagliano / Evil Angel before actually notifying the defendants, so we have been organizing things here while keeping day-to-day operations on schedule.

Thanks to AVN.com for the pointer -- link Not Safe For Work.

Labels: obscenity, pornography

 
Internet Porn Stats
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:36 PM

Top Ten Reviews hosts a webpage that is chock full of statistics relating to pornography generally and internet pornography specifically. For instance, it seems that China is the largest market (in value terms) for pornography, though in per capita value terms, South Korea is dominant: porn "revenues" in South Korea exceed $500 per-capita per year, versus less than $50 in the US of A. (Revenues for porn may well be falling in the US.) Search engine requests for "sex" are most prevalent (in per capita terms?) in Pakistan, whereas South Africa is top of the table for "porn" searches. Among US cities, one stands out for naughty internet searching, leading the country in the "sex", "porn", and "xxx" categories. I am sure that by now you have guessed that this hotbed of perversion is, er, Elmhurst, Illinois.

Do you think that Elmhurst (located in the Northern District of Illinois) leads in those searches because some Elmhurst residents are trolling for potentially obscene material to pass along to the Feds? Or maybe there is one very active fellow who lives in Elmhurst?

Incidentally, I am uncertain about the provenance of many of the numbers reported on the Top Ten webpage, so I would take them with a grain of salt. (I am pretty confident about the "Elmhurst factor," however.)

Update: Please drop what you are doing right now and go watch Michael Pollan (of, among other things, The Omnivore's Dilemma) give a TED talk. Just in case you are new to this, TED talks are the best things on the web; while there, check out Freakonomics guru and general good fellow Steve Levitt. [I almost forgot: Pollan has been mentioned on Vice Squad before (surely his greatest honor) in part for the following quote: "As a result of the war against cannabis, Americans are demonstrably less free today." Levitt, too, has had his days in the Vice Squad sun.]

Labels: Illinois, internet, obscenity, pornography

 
"The Adult Film Industry: Time to Regulate?"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:20 PM

Yesterday Vice Squad linked to an article with the title of this post; the article appeared in PLoS Medicine in June 2007, and was written by Corita R. Grudzen and Peter R. Kerndt. The article has lots of interesting tidbits about the porn industry, so I thought I would list just a few of them today:

(1) Here's the opening paragraph, sans endnotes: "The United States adult film industry produces 4,000–11,000 films and earns an estimated $9–$13 billion in gross revenues annually. An estimated 200 production companies employ 1,200–1,500 performers. Performers typically earn $400–$1,000 per shoot and are not compensated based on distribution or sales." It kept me reading.

(2) Production of gay sex films is much more likely to involve condom usage than is production of heterosexual films. The authors argue that depictions of unsafe sex in movies could alter norms in society more generally, and make unprotected sex more common outside the industry. Brazil's adult industry is second in size to that of the US, but the majority of Brazilian films involve condom use. There are various filmic techniques that minimize the perceived presence of condoms.

(3) "Among 825 performers screened in 2000–2001, 7.7% of females and 5.5% of males had chlamydia, and 2% overall had gonorrhea [endnote omitted]."

(4) Among the potential policy changes that the authors list are mandatory condom use and a rating system that reflects the safety of the filming.

Labels: California, pornography

 
Adult Entertainment and Sexually-Transmitted Diseases
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:21 PM

Back in 2004, there was an HIV outbreak among performers in adult movies; eventually five performers were found to be infected. The virus's spread might have been much broader had it not been for the Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation (AIM) and its founder, Sharon Mitchell. Among other things, AIM tests adult performers for STDs. Yesterday, Dr. Mitchell and AIM put out a warning about travel to Europe for adult workers, due to a syphilis outbreak within the adult industry on the continent. There can be significant lags between contracting an STD and positive test results, so unprotected sexual activity with someone who has just tested negative for an STD is not free of disease risk (and of course, even condom protection is less than perfect).

Dr. Mitchell is not a supporter of governmental mandates in the area of sex worker health; AIM works with performers and producers on a voluntary basis. (Some of their practices, such as informing other performers and producers of positive tests, are at odds with California health privacy rules.) But STD rates in the industry are still much higher than within the public at large -- this is not the case for workers at Nevada's legal brothels -- and some people are calling for state regulation. Dr. Mitchell has suggested a "seal of approval" system, one that is paralleled by a proposal in this article:

Short of legislation mandating performer protection, restricting distribution of adult movies to condom-only films may be the one way to have an impact on the industry. If there were organized and truly effective advocacy for performers, then large hotel chains, video retailers, and cable networks could be pressured to purchase adult films under a condom-only “seal of approval.”

I learned about AIM's alert on the syphilis outbreak from (not work safe) Adult Video News.com; I found the article discussing regulation through SWOP East Sex Workers Outreach Project.

Labels: HIV, pornography, testing

 
The Next Attorney General (?) and Porn
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:45 PM

The two attorneys general nominated by George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate, John "Comstock" Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, both promoted anti-obscenity as a priority of their department's enforcement efforts. But those efforts never met the high standards of some anti-porn organizations. Can we hope for a further perfecting of the anti-porn plan if Michael Mukasey becomes AG? Senator Orrin Hatch wants to know, especially with respect to a campaign against mainstream porn, and the nominee offers reassurance: "...we have to make sure that this stuff does not affect children and does not wind up undermining families." Is that in Miller v. California, the notion that we can suppress sexually-explicit material if it undermines families? It must be, what with Mr. Mukasey being a retired judge and all. Mukasey seems much more categorical with respect to mainstream porn than waterboarding.

Labels: obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Trying to Imprison a Dissident Writer
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:24 AM

A story in the New York Times today begins thusly: "Sometime early next year, Karen Fletcher, a 56-year-old recluse living on disability payments, will go on trial in federal court here [Pittsburgh] on obscenity charges for writings distributed on the Internet to about two dozen subscribers." No pictures involved, only words. Since the 1973 landmark obscenity case, Miller v. California, there have been no federal convictions for purported obscenity of the image-free variety. Fletcher's short stories involve "detailed fictional accounts of the molesting, torture and sometimes gruesome murders of children under the age of 10, mostly girls." But she is not charged with violating any child pornography laws -- only the (adult) obscenity rules. She is charged with being a commercial filth purveyor, because she established a fee of $10 to grant her small coterie of readers access to the site. According to the Times, Ms. Fletcher's lawyers "argued in court that the fee barely covered her expenses and was imposed only because she believed using a credit card requirement would prevent minors from signing into the site. In the end, only 29 people subscribed, at least one of whom is likely to have been a police informant." Lots of prosecutorial resources are being expended so that lots of prison resources can be expended to keep the likes of Ms. Fletcher locked up. Right then, that should take care of this internet filth. I feel safer already.

Labels: obscenity, pornography

 
An Anti-Pornography Campaign
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:38 PM

A new anti-pornography website, HerStoryLives.com, opened this week. (Thanks to Adult Video News.com (not work safe) for the pointer.) The website features stories of people whose lives were negatively impacted by pornography. Though I support legal pornography, it surely is important to know the social costs of porn, so I welcome the website.

Her Story Lives is associated with the Lighted Candle Society, which also operates an anti-porn blog. The Lighted Candle Society hopes to bring civil suits against porn producers and distributors, actions akin to anti-tobacco lawsuits. But tobacco has more obvious health costs, and nicotine ingested via cigarettes appears to be highly addictive. To develop parallel types of evidence, the Lighted Candle Society hopes to fund functional MRI research that would demonstrate neurological effects from pornography exposure. How convincing can such evidence be? Wouldn't eating and drinking and yes, even sex, show some sort of impact via an fMRI? Does this make a case for banning eating, drinking, or sex, or suing their purveyors?

Labels: pornography

 
Legal Developments in Adult Entertainment
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:10 AM

Adult Video News.com has redesigned its website. Two changes stand out, at least for me. First, the website seems to be closer to work-safe. (Do not rely upon this characterization.) Second, the page on legal matters is much improved, with recent news and helpful links to blogs and other commentary.

Speaking of recent news, there are a couple of stories related to what happens to your porn collection if you are in trouble with the criminal law for sex-related matters. First, a 73-year old Oregon man, on probation for a sex offense, violated that probation by possessing porn at his home. So (presumably) to maximize the publicity, the probation officer destroyed the porn collection in public by driving over it in an "8-ton double roller," whatever that is. (You can see a bit of it in the photo accompanying the article.) Second, a man recently released from a prison term imposed for secretly videotaping women has filed a suit to force the police to return his sizable pornographic movie and magazine cache, which had been seized in 2002 as part of the investigation into the videotaping charges. Perhaps he will win, as he is dealing with authorities in Northern California, not Oregon.

Labels: pornography

 
Local Alcohol Prohibitions in Alaska, Australia
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:31 AM

Many Alaskan native communities in rural Alaska are officially dry. Indeed, they are drier than the US was during Prohibition (and drier than typical dry counties or municipalities elsewhere in the current US), as they have outlawed possession of alcohol. And these prohibitions might even "work". Researcher Paul Gruenewald (as quoted in this article), notes that “Although national prohibitions on alcohol are generally ineffective, and in terms of crime, counter-productive, local prohibitions can be very effective in reducing harms related to alcohol.” But even these prohibitions are being enforced with an extraordinary reliance upon informants, as a recent item in JuneauEmpire.com's Alaska Digest indicates:

FAIRBANKS - A tip line set up to try and bust bootleggers is heightening the police presence at Fairbanks International Airport, where alcohol and drugs are sneaked into rural Alaska aboard small planes.

The toll-free line was established in April. So far, airport police have received 40 tips.

The toll-free line, (877) TIP4FIA, is credited with nearly doubling the number of contacts officers make with passengers suspected of carrying illegal cargo. Three ounces of cocaine; up to eight gallons of beer and whiskey; and a pound and a half of marijuana have been confiscated, Officer Robert Dickerson said.

Australia has instituted some alcohol bans in Aboriginal areas, but recently the Prime Minister announced plans to take things much further in the federally-controlled Northern Territory. Specifically, alcohol and hard-core porn are both slated to be banned.

Labels: alcohol, Australia, policing, pornography, Prohibition

 
Porn Again
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:18 PM

XXX.Church.com is in the news (2-page pdf of New York Times story) again. (Again, you ask? But surely you remember the Vice Squad post of November 2, 2004?) XXXChurch is the anti-porn ministry, but one that spreads its message in a relaxed way, and directly to porn stars, among others. They have lots of ongoing events, including church breakfasts around the country ("Porn and Pancakes") and a debate series featuring one of the pastors along with porn star Ron Jeremy. (I am slated to be out of town, alas, during the August 6 Chicago debate.) Then there is National PornSunday, scheduled for October 7, 2007, though I suspect that this isn't one of those national commemorations that gets a sound byte mention from the president. This is in addition to lots of other dimensions to XXXChurch.com's work, including two elements we mentioned in the 2004 post: accountability software (X3watch) that sends a list of your suspected internet porn wanderings to your designated partner, and the "God kills a kitten every time you masturbate" campaign, now featuring an Operation Save the Kittens video. XXXChurch is John Stuart Mill's kind of anti-porn lobbyist: they are not about passing laws to shut down the porn industry, or coercing people to avoid porn. They employ entreaty, not command, and thus earn Vice Squad (somewhat short of national) commendation.

Labels: internet, Mill, pornography, sex

 
Porn Past Peak?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:25 AM

In Book I, Chapter 10, part 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith noted that in advanced states of society, hunting and fishing become recreations, and that people "pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity." As a result, it is hard for a person to make a good living as a professional hunter or fisher: "they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime."

The Smithian logic seems to have been brought to bear upon the pornography industry. The New York Times on Saturday noted that in dollar terms, sales and rentals of porn movies fell some 15 percent between 2005 and 2006. The internet, which provided a great boost to the porn marketplace by easing home consumption, has progressed to the point where it has also simplified the amateur production and distribution of porn -- and many people are now pursuing porn supply as a pastime:

“People are making movies in their houses and dragging and dropping them” onto free Web sites, said Harvey Kaplan, a former maker of pornographic movies and now chief executive of GoGoBill.com, which processes payments for pornographic Web sites. “It’s killing the marketplace.”

The 'traditional' porn producers are responding, according to the Times article, both by focusing on quality and by sophisticated marketing to lure consumers. Recall also the New York Times Magazine article from a month and a half ago that suggested that niche production was another method for earning money via internet porn.

Of course, the decline of barriers to entry into the porn business might be bad for the profits of traditional professional porn suppliers, but it is good for porn consumers, who have a wide variety of free and low-cost porn products available over the web.

Labels: internet, pornography, Smith

 
A Filtering Irony
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:47 AM

Last night I posted about the initiative in Monroe County, New York, to make it difficult for library patrons to access "pornographic" websites on the internet. The post was motivated by this (not work safe) article in Adult Video News. The AVN article quoted Bill Smith, a Monroe County legislator. I didn't mention the quote in the blog post, but I e-mailed Mr. Smith last night concerning his quote. I wouldn't have mentioned the e-note on Vice Squad at all, except that my e-mail to Mr. Smith was not received because it was filtered out, according to the automatic reply I received last night. This is not the first time this has happened to me -- because vice policy-related e-mails often contain words which alarm e-mail filters, they occasionally are screened out by over-inclusive filters. Yes, filters are both under- and over-inclusive. In Buffalo, soon-to-be required filters will be screening out internet content at public libraries. I suppose that it might be hard for legislators to imagine that there might be "legitimate" reasons to access "pornographic" websites, but as a vice policy researcher who both frequently uses library internet connections and who visits sites such as AVN.com, I can assure them that it is so. I take these filters somewhat personally, as I am more likely than most people to be inconvenienced by them. Anyway, as I cannot successfully transmit my e-mail to Mr. Smith directly, I will append the text of it below. I was pointing out the difference between a library collection decision and the filtering mandate, using Justice Souter's words. (I misspelled Justice Souter's name in the original email but correct it below; I also omit the url of the avn.com article in my reproduction of the email.) Hello, I just read a story by Jed Nottingham, "Rochester Library Will Censor Web Viewing," which included a quote from you. (The article is at avn.com, a website that could easily fall afoul of internet filters; the article's precise url is [omitted here -- see above].) The paragraph including your quote is... "If adopting the recommendation is censorship, then this library is already in big trouble," said Bill Smith, the Republican majority leader of the county legislature and a county library board liaison, "[The] act of choosing books is censorship and [you] have a collection policy that implies and, in fact, results in rejection of material all the time." I just wanted to point put that there is what I take to be a significant difference between a collection policy and the internet filtering. I'll let Justice Souter make the point, from his dissent in US et al. v. American Library Association, Inc., et al., 539 U.S. 194 (2003): ...In the instance of the Internet, what the library acquires is electronic access, and the choice to block is a choice to limit access that has already been acquired. Thus, deciding against buying a book means there is no book (unless a loan can be obtained), but blocking the Internet is merely blocking access purchased in its entirety and subject to unblocking if the librarian agrees. The proper analogy therefore is not to passing up a book that might have been bought; it is either to buying a book and then keeping it from adults lacking an acceptable “purpose,” or to buying an encyclopedia and then cutting out pages with anything thought to be unsuitable for all adults. All the best. Regards, Jim Leitzel Update! Blocked again! I emailed Monroe County to provide the url of this post, and once again, could not get my e-mail through. That's quite an efficient email filter they have there. I'll try another message from my yahoo account. Further update: it looks as if the yahoo e-note made it past the vigilant Monroe County filter.

Labels: internet, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Library Internet Censoring in Rochester
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:57 PM

Thanks to CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) and its Supreme Court blessing, many public libraries throughout our land already have filters aimed at blocking smut placed on all of their internet-connected computers. Monroe County, New York, intends to go CIPA one better, according to this (not work safe) AVN.com article about the new library smut policy:

The policy, which is expected to extend to all libraries in the county, calls for use of the library's Internet-filtering system to block all pornographic sites unless — after a written request — an administrator deems a site appropriate for a patron to view. While the county library board adopted the policy, there was no clear sense of how to implement it.

They also finessed the matter of what exactly constitutes a pornographic website.

Despite the CIPA precedent, I believe that there is a chance that the Monroe County policy could be found to violate the First Amendment. CIPA survived a per se challenge, but Justice Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion specifically for the purpose, it seems, of pointing out that CIPA might later be challenged not on its face, but as applied, if the method of disabling the filter for an adult patron proved onerous: "If some libraries do not have the capacity to unblock specific Web sites or to disable the filter or if it is shown that an adult user's election to view constitutionally protected Internet material is burdened in some other substantial way, that would be the subject for an as-applied challenge, not the facial challenge made in this case." Sounds to me like having to ask permission from an administrator in writing, and possibly even being turned down, burdens an adult's choice to view constitutionally protected material in a substantial way.

Labels: CIPA, internet, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Kansas Community Standards
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:36 PM

Sexually-explicit forms of speech in the US can be regulated or banned provided that the three-part test from the 1973 case of Miller v. California is satisfied. The first part of the "Miller test" is that the work, taken as a whole, and in applying contemporary community standards, appeals to the prurient interest in sex. The second prong of the Miller test relating to "patent offensiveness" also relies upon contemporary community standards. (The third prong concerning the lack of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value is not to be judged by community standards, according to a later Supreme Court decision, Pope v. Illinois (1987).)

I bring it up because I am wondering about the latest activities of anti-obscenity crusaders in Kansas. They have presented county prosecutors with petitions urging that grand juries be empaneled with the aim of bringing obscenity charges against some local businesses -- not one or two businesses, but, er, 32. Doesn't the very fact that they can identify 32 filth peddlers suggest that these businesses are operating in accord with community standards? I mean, maybe one or two businesses might be able to make a go of it even while flying wildly in the face of community standards -- but 32?

The anti-obscenity crusaders should be careful in opening up this petition thing. In Hong Kong, a student journal that included a quiz asking about incest and bestiality fantasies provoked 184 complaints, leading to a finding that the journal was indecent. But then a website went up describing some Biblical scenes; more than 1700 complaints have now been submitted to the indecency authorities about the Bible.

Labels: Asia, Kansas, obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court

 
The Business of Kinky Internet Porn
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:43 AM

Sunday's New York Times Magazine includes this informative piece about a company, Kink.com, that produces fetish porn for the web from a former armory in the Mission District of San Francisco. Much of the article concerns the professionalization and mainstreaming of internet porn. The dot.com bust was a bit of a blessing for internet porn, as highly-trained technical people became available to work in the industry. The Kink company has developed an elaborate protocol to ensure that their BDSM-style shoots are, and are perceived to be, fully consensual. The protocol includes the filming of pre- and post-play interviews with the participants. One of the problems that web-based porn purveyors face is receiving payments: many credit card issuers and other standard payment mechanisms (including American Express and PayPal) will not deal with porn sites, in part because a large number of the processed payments were challenged by cardholders or clients and rescinded. Apparently, more narrowly-focused sites have less of a problem with chargebacks, as their clientele is more dedicated. The article covers legal issues, too, such as whether Kink-style pornography might be adjudged to constitute illegal obscenity. The problem of determining the relevant "community standards" for web-based porn -- a crucial component of the US obscenity test -- is noted, as is the likelihood that the more such porn produced and consumed, the harder any legal challenge will be: "It makes itself unobscene." In any case, the article sheds a good deal of light on one generally opaque sliver of the vice world.

Labels: internet, obscenity, pornography

 
Seconds on Secondary Effects
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:55 PM

A couple days ago Vice Squad mentioned the "secondary effects" analysis that is the dominant strain in the body of US Constitutional law relevant for erotic dancing. The secondary effects are unhappy developments, including increased crime and lower property values, that might arise in the vicinity of an adult-oriented establishment. They serve as a basis for justifying, in a constitutional sense, some restrictions on the nature of adult-oriented activities that are permitted.

In California, purported secondary effects are being put to a new use, an attempt to justify a tax aimed specifically at the porn and adult entertainment industries. The proceeds of the proposed tax are earmarked for programs that combat crime.

The folks at Adult Video News are not impressed by the pending bill (as always with AVN, the link is not work-safe), calling it "a clearly unconstitutional attempt to selectively tax speech on the basis of its content." I agree with their characterization. The Supreme Court's secondary effects analysis is only applicable for controls upon speech that are deemed to be content-neutral, that would apply just as well to political speech as to commercial speech as to any other type of speech. It is a stretch to label a nude dancing ban (or, for instance, a G-string requirement) as content neutral, but that stretch is now established law. A tax on adult-themed enterprises is much broader than a nude dancing ban, and as it doesn't seem to apply to any other types of businesses that might spur crime or lower property values, seems on its face to be a content-based restriction on speech. And these sorts of restrictions must pass a higher bar to be consistent with the Constitution -- a bar placed so high that few restrictions can clear it.

There's a nice post from October 2006 concerning the jurisprudence around secondary effects on a blog entitled "talkbacknorthampton," which has many interesting posts defending free speech.

Labels: dancing, obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court, taxes

 
Obscenity in Singapore
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:32 PM

Singapore seems to have an interesting and altering relationship with vice. Prostitution is legal in Singapore. Pornography is forbidden, though it appears to be available easily over the web. The first 'adult' magazine, quite tame by US standards, became available recently. Legal casinos are on the way -- but not with the participation of Macau's questionable gambling monopolist.

This week marked a milestone of sorts, when a play about a native Singaporean ex-porn star opened. The actress, who featured in a 1995 movie shot in California, is apparently well-known in Singapore -- and the new play will enhance her celebrity -- but the movie itself, of course, cannot legally be sold there (in Singapore, that is, not in California).

Labels: Asia, obscenity, pornography, Singapore

 
XXX X'ed
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:49 PM

Do you know that common internet problem, when you are searching for some adult-themed material and you can't decide whether the best domain names end in .org, .gov, .edu, or .com, among others? For years now, some public-spirited individuals have been hoping to solve that problem, by creating the .xxx domain for the exclusive use of pornographic sites. But this week, the folks in charge of domain names, the super-mysterious ICANN, said ICANNT for the third time to the .xxx domain. Some of those opposed to the proposed domain cited the possibility that the voluntary registry, once established, might be made mandatory for pornographic sites, and ease the way for censorship. Further, ICANN might then find itself in the censorship game, as its decisions as to what sites merited the .xxx domain would determine (in combination with censorial legislation) the access of users to the sites. The opposition-to-.xxx forces include some strange bedfellows, pornographic sites that fear a slippery slope towards censorship along with religious groups that fear that an .xxx domain might further legitimize pornography.

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is responsible for giving every human a unique name ending with .abc, where a,b, and c can be any alphabetic string, as well as tattooing a universal product code on every human. Or maybe it "is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers" -- url, upc, the whole thing is quite confusing. If you are worried that ICANN is above the law, do not fear. Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu argue, in Who Controls the Internet?, that the US and other national governments are the ultimate authorities, though the US has permitted ICANN to develop "a form of technocratic self-governance [page 182]."

Labels: internet, pornography

 
COPA Redux
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:56 PM

When the Child Online Protection Act last went before the Supreme Court, the preliminary injunction preventing its enforcement was kept in place. Nevertheless, a full hearing at the district court level still had to take place, and the Supremes expressly noted (in keeping with their decision on internet filters in libraries) that a look at advances in filtering technology would be in order. The district court opinion (84-page pdf) was handed down earlier this week, and Judge Lowell Reed struck down COPA as inconsistent with the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution.

One important element in Judge Reed's reasoning was the notion that filters installed on individual computers (or through portals such as AOL) are quite effective at screening kids from adult content. Indeed, it seems as if filtering technology has made vast strides in the last five years or so. Another element is that age verification (via credit cards or otherwise), which would have been required of commercial adult-oriented websites under the terms of COPA, is not yet at the same level of reliability, and such barriers are costly for websites (or web surfers) to implement and maintain.

COPA is a content-based restriction on speech -- speech that is legal for adults -- and as such is subject to 'strict scrutiny' by the courts. This means that COPA can only be upheld if it is narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling government interest of keeping kids away from internet smut, and if there do not exist alternatives, less restrictive upon speech, that similarly serve the government interest. Judge Reed ruled that the US had not shown that other alternatives are less effective than COPA -- because COPA would not apply to foreign-based websites, there is a strong case to be made that filters are more effective than COPA at shielding kids from internet pornography. And COPA's under and over-inclusiveness indicates that it is not narrowly tailored, either. Oh yeah, COPA was ruled to be vague and overbroad, too.

Labels: internet, pornography, teens

 
Prosecution & laws gone wild
- posted by Michael @ 1:08 PM

A few days ago, a substitute 40-year old teacher in Connecticut was convicted of exposing students to pornography on a computer at a middle school. The teacher was apparently a victim of spyware that caused x-rated ads to pop up on the screen after she accessed a website completely unrelated to pornography. A good discussion of the case is here. This is indeed a fine example of prosecutorial excess and I don't have much to add to that point. It's not that unusual for the prosecutors to be overzealous, however. Just look at the Duke lacrosse case. What is perhaps more amazing is that apparently the jury (I assume it was a jury trial) went along with the prosecutors here. Generally, I do not like to question jury decisions, because they hear the entire case and I don't. But in this particular case, it is hard to avoid reasonable doubt.

Even more outrageous, however, is the fact that a person can get 40 years in prison (and presumably be labeled a sex offender for the rest of her life) for exposing children to pornography. The entire argument in the case was apparently whether the teacher clicked on the porn sites herself or whether it was a pop-up caused by spyware. But what was going through the head of the state legislators who came up with a 40 year prison term for this crime?

The sentencing is on March 2.

Labels: internet, pornography, teens