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[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Porn commissioners want more Net-prosecutions, convictions
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] (Fwd) FC: Porn commissioners want more Net-prosecutions, convictions
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 11:50:41 +0200
- Comment: This message comes from the debate mailing list.
- Organization: NONE
- Sender: owner-debate@fitug.de
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 21:01:56 -0400
To: politech@politechbot.com
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: Porn commissioners want more Net-prosecutions, convictions
Send reply to: declan@well.com
[Or at least some of them do. --Declan]
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38901,00.html
COPA: Peddle Smut, Go to Jail
by Declan McCullagh
3:00 a.m. Sep. 20, 2000 PDT
WASHINGTON -- Porn peddlers should be prosecuted, say members of a
federal smut commission.
Conservative members of the Commission on Child Online Protection
suggested during a meeting Tuesday that the government should
shield Junior from dirty pictures by imprisoning owners of
"obscene" websites.
"I think the deterrent effect is key here," said Commissioner
Donna Rice Hughes. "One of the main reasons we are seeing so much
activity in the area (of online pornography) is because they're
not getting prosecuted."
Hughes, a former Gary Hart gal pal turned anti-porn advocate and
author, said that "one well-placed prosecution could send the
message to the providers of this material that it's not
acceptable."
But it's not quite that simple: A federal appeals court in June
blocked prosecutors from filing cases under a new anti-erotica law
-- ironically, the same one that created the commission. The law
makes displaying "harmful to minors" materials online a crime.
That leaves existing federal obscenity laws as the Justice
Department's remaining lock-up-the-miscreants option.
"Prosecution in a well-defined way is a good idea," said Michael
Horowitz, chief of staff to the Justice Department's assistant
attorney general for the criminal division and a commission
member. "But it can't be in a splash-bang-wild,
whatever-you're-going-to-hit method."
Anti-porn activists in the past have lobbied the Justice
Department to file more Net-obscenity cases, saying that the
relatively few federal lawsuits that have been brought demonstrate
that the Clinton administration is neglecting children online.
The most recent variation of U.S. obscenity law grew out of the
1973 Miller v. California Supreme Court case, which upheld a law
banning the distribution of material that is arousing but "lacks
serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." But
obscenity laws date back much further, to prosecutions in England
in the early 1700s, and were derived from religious prohibitions
against blasphemy.
Critics say obscenity laws violate free speech rights guaranteed
by the First Amendment.
Edward de Grazia, one of the founders of Yeshiva University's
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, outlines in Girls Lean Back
Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius how
obscenity prosecutions imperiled James Joyce's Ulysses, Lenny
Bruce's monologues, and 2 Live Crew's lyrics.
[...]
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