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Pornography Cases in the Courts 5/28/2003 See adjoining interview with CWA Chief Counsel Jan LaRue--one of the world's leading opponents of child pornography--and the sidebar on the 'Miller Test' used to identify porn, in this issue of Culture & Family Report.
Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA): Passed by Congress in 2000, this law requires public schools and public libraries that accept federal funds for Internet access to use filtering technology to block access to obscenity, child pornography, and material harmful to minors (when a minor is using the computer).
The American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of several libraries and others, filed suit in federal district court in Philadelphia against the library provision. The court ruled the law is unconstitutional and can’t be enforced in public libraries.
Status: The Supreme Court will issue its ruling by the end of June of this year.
Child Online Protection Act: Congress passed this law, called the electronic brown-paper wrap for the Internet, in 1998. It requires commercial Web sites to collect a credit card number or other proof of age before permitting Internet users to view material deemed harmful to minors, thereby keeping pornography out of the eyes and hands of minors. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, significantly, that community standards do apply on the Internet.
Status: The court returned the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to examine other First Amendment issues. The court again held the law unconstitutional.
Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996: This law amended the federal child pornography statute. It made illegal computer-generated images that appear to be children engaged in sexual conduct and “pseudo-child” porn, which depicts young-looking adults as minors and is pandered as child pornography.
Status: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down this law in April 2002.
Last month, President Bush signed The Protect Act into law, which attempts to address the Supreme Court ruling. It includes a section criminalizing computer-generated child pornography but it also provides an affirmative defense that requires the defendant to be acquitted if he proves that it was created without using a real child. Such a defense defeats the purpose of having the law in the first place. Such material shouldn't exist at all because it has the same effect on pedophiles, and children don’t know the difference.
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