Become a Criminal - Post Banned Material!

The so-called Communications Decency Act maked it very easy to become a felon - all you had to do is put indecent material on the net where some young person could access it (by whatever means necessary). So it was easy to write rants about it, and the EFF and ACLU got it booted out 9-0 by the Supreme Court. But some people don't know when to quit, though Clinton may have just been trying to restrict the Starr Report. The new law bans material posted for commercial purposes, knowingly sent to children under 18, that's "harmful to minors", a really fuzzy term of art, and you only get six months in jail and $50000/day fines, rather than being a felon. So send me 2 cents and your age and read on!

yes, some of this rant is just the old law, not the new one

In spite of the rhetoric put out by the pro-decency forces, the law bans a lot more than just perverts mailing unsolicited pornography and bomb-making instructions to your kids; you can violate it for much less, and the law isn't really about stopping that. It's about adults talking to each other. It's about teenage kids talking to each other [in commecial chat rooms] in language that your parents consider impolite but Beavis and Can't say his name on the net use all the time. It's about literature and art that some people don't like. It's about discussing abortion methods, whether you think it's murder or the most important method for preserving women's rights, and, yes, that means lots of pro-life sites are violating the law, especially if they're raising funds or providing abortions.

And the CDA is also about selective enforcement. Will the censors bother you for selling the Bible on-line, a book of honest history which describes really indecent things done by kings and soldiers and murderers over the years, and uses language that was perfectly legal in King James's day? Not likely - but they can. Will they bother www.playboy.com? Probably. Will they bother you for posting Michaelangelo's painting of Adam from the Sistine Chapel? Probably not, even though he's naked. But they can. Will they bother you for posting a picture of your four-year-old kid naked that you did for photography class? Maybe. Are these examples any different under the law? No. Are they different under President Pat Buchanan and his Supreme Court vs. President Ann Richards and her courts? Very.

Material banned by the Child Online Protection Act