Hearing This Week in Challenge to PA Web Blocking Law

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 17:54:37 -0500
From: Alan Davidson <abd () cdt org>

> Hi Dave -  Happy New Year. Something for IP, since I haven't seen anything 
> about it yet:
>
> Proceedings are under way this week  in Philadelphia in CDT's 
> constitutional challenge to a Pennsylvania child pornography statute that 
> has resulted in the secret blocking of hundreds of thousands of wholly 
> innocent Web pages.  Our court challenge -- filed with the ACLU of 
> Pennsylvania and Plantagenet Inc., a Pennsylvania ISP -- argues that the 
> Pennsylvania law is a prior restraint on speech that violates the First 
> and Fourteenth Amendments and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. We 
> hate child pornography, but this is an unconstitutional and ineffective 
> way to fight it.
>
> The Phil. Inquirer story excerpted below does a good job at explaining the 
> issues. Briefs and more information are at: 
> http://www.cdt.org/speech/pennwebblock/
>
> Best,
>
> Alan
>
> --
> Alan Davidson
> Associate Director
> Center for Democracy and Technology
>
> -------------
>
>
> http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/7648404.htm
>
> Posted on Wed, Jan. 07, 2004
>
> Judge told that child-porn block affects other sites
> A lawsuit in federal court challenges Pennsylvania's efforts to bar access 
> to illegal Internet images.
> By Joseph A. Slobodzian
> Inquirer Staff Writer
>
> Unless you absolutely hate youth soccer, it's hard to imagine something 
> objectionable about the Web site of the Sheshequin-Ulster Community Center 
> in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.
>
> That's why Web master Laura Blain was stunned when the site was 
> inaccessible for eight days in July and she learned the problem had 
> nothing to do with technology.
>
> Instead, Blain told a federal judge yesterday, the center's Internet 
> address had been blocked because the Pennsylvania Attorney General's 
> Office had "warned" her Internet service provider that the same address 
> number was being used to display child pornography.
>
> Blain was the first witness to testify in a legal challenge to the manner 
> in which a 2002 state law is being enforced. Internet experts say the law 
> is blocking Pennsylvanians from viewing 800,000 legitimate Web sites while 
> also blocking sites featuring illegal child pornography.
>
> The lawsuit was filed in September by the Center for Democracy and 
> Technology, a Washington-based Internet policy group; the American Civil 
> Liberties Union in Philadelphia; and PlantageNet Inc., a Doylestown 
> Internet service provider, or ISP, that provides local dial-up numbers for 
> much of the Philadelphia region in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The 
> lawsuit does not challenge the state's right to move against Internet 
> child pornographers in state courts.
>
> Rather, the lawsuit seeks to block "an informal policy" implemented by 
> former Attorney General Michael Fisher, in which the state prosecutor's 
> office contacts ISPs by letter, advising them of a child-porn site and 
> threatening legal action if the ISP does not block the site.
>
> ...


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