Federal judge tosses Pa. child porn-blocking law
By Joann Loviglio
The Associated Press

September 10, 2004, 1:56 PM EDT

PHILADELPHIA | -- A federal judge on Friday threw out a Pennsylvania law requiring Internet service providers to block access to child porn Web sites, saying the technology causes a "massive suppression" of constitutionally protected speech.

Enacted in 2002, the law gave Pennsylvania's attorney general the power to order companies like America Online to block customers rom viewing Web sites that had been identified by the state as containing illegal content.

U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois ruled that the law could not be enforced without also blocking protected speech.

"There is little evidence that the Act has reduced the production of child pornography or the child sexual abuse associated with its creation. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that implementation of the Act has resulted in massive suppression of speech protected by the First Amendment," DuBois wrote.

John Shellenberger, a senior deputy attorney general who argued the case before DuBois, said Friday that he needed time to examine the 110-page document before commenting on the judge's ruling.

"My only comment today is that we have to study the opinion and see what it says and decide how to deal with it," he said.

Lawyers for the state have said the technology exists for ISPs to block selectively, and said the state's hands should not be tied simply because Internet access companies were reluctant to upgrade their systems.

No one challenged the state's right to stop the distribution of child porn, but attorneys for the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania argued that the technology used to filter out those Web sites was clumsy and had unintended consequences.

Over two years, the groups said, ISPs trying to obey blocking orders were forced to cut access to at least 1.5 million legal Web sites that had nothing to do with child pornography, but were part of the same Internet cluster, known as an IP address, as theoffending site.

The state had argued that ISPs were making business decisions by choosing to go the cheaper and easier route when they blocked thousands of sites rather than buy or develop more refined blocking systems.

A costly piece of blocking hardware, called a proxy, can shut down individual sites. However, experts said that such technology comes at a price that would force small ISPs out of business, and large ones like AOL to spend tens of millions of dollars -- all for a weapon effective only until the peddlers of online kiddie porn change tactics.
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

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