New Internet Porn Law
Well, there's another ridiculous porn bill that's passing through Congress: The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act (SAFE) (see its full statement). Of course, it has the guise of "protecting the children", but in reality serves to monitor internet users' activity and restrict legitimate use of the web for pornographic and other purposes. It was proposed by passed through the House without receiving a hearing, was never voted on in committee and was not put up for public review. The vote passed 409 to 2.
The law requires all ISPs (including anyone providing a public wifi network, such as cafés and libraries) to report and forward to a central agency (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)) any image which came through or was hosted on their system which meets the Federal definition of child pornography. ISPs that fail to report such images would themselves be subject to stiff penalties of $150,000 per image per day, up from the current $50,000. The penalty would jump to $300,000, double the current rate, for subsequent cases. The SAFE Act would also make the use of the Internet in the violation of child pornography laws an “aggravating” factor requiring an additional 10 years in prison.
The entire law gets me worked up in its invasion of privacy and unrealistic expectations on ISPs and internet users. Senator McCain, one of the sponsors of the bill, issued a statement saying the SAFE act will “enhance the current system for Internet service providers to report child pornography on their systems, making the failure to report child pornography a federal crime.” Of course, this assumes that ISPs actually "see" the child pornography but ignore it. In reality, this law is going to force ISPs to do more monitoring than they already do. It's akin to punishing each worker of a post office for not realizing a letter they handled had a pornographic image in it, so now each worker will have to open the letter and peek inside.
Two aspects of the law get me fuming:
1. The definition of child pornography in the bill specifically includes "images of apparent child pornography" (Page 4 of the law). In other words, drawings and cartoons of children, if they could be considered inappropriate, even if the children don’t actually exist in real life. If child pornography laws are intending to protect children from being exploited, then what are the doing protecting non-existent children? This clause in the law is a dangerous restriction on free speech, for the simple fact that it's subject to the government's definition of "child pornography". There are two immediate concerns: a) artistic expression gets censored when it comes to pictures featuring children, b) remember "child" legally means anyone under 18, so X-rated drawings of young people that could be interpreted by the government to possibly depict someone under 18 can land the owner in prison.
2. (page 10 of the law) Lack of accountability. Not only do they fail to have a clause protecting against false positives, but there is a specific clause protecting members of the NCMEC from being brought into court for a civil suit. So someone accused for having an image of "child pornography" cannot even call upon the person(s) who deemed the photo to be "child pornography" to justify their labelling. It seems that a person accused under this law has an unfair disadvantage when trying to defend himself.
This law is now heading to the Senate for a vote. If you want action, I encourage you to contact your senator.
The law requires all ISPs (including anyone providing a public wifi network, such as cafés and libraries) to report and forward to a central agency (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)) any image which came through or was hosted on their system which meets the Federal definition of child pornography. ISPs that fail to report such images would themselves be subject to stiff penalties of $150,000 per image per day, up from the current $50,000. The penalty would jump to $300,000, double the current rate, for subsequent cases. The SAFE Act would also make the use of the Internet in the violation of child pornography laws an “aggravating” factor requiring an additional 10 years in prison.
The entire law gets me worked up in its invasion of privacy and unrealistic expectations on ISPs and internet users. Senator McCain, one of the sponsors of the bill, issued a statement saying the SAFE act will “enhance the current system for Internet service providers to report child pornography on their systems, making the failure to report child pornography a federal crime.” Of course, this assumes that ISPs actually "see" the child pornography but ignore it. In reality, this law is going to force ISPs to do more monitoring than they already do. It's akin to punishing each worker of a post office for not realizing a letter they handled had a pornographic image in it, so now each worker will have to open the letter and peek inside.
Two aspects of the law get me fuming:
1. The definition of child pornography in the bill specifically includes "images of apparent child pornography" (Page 4 of the law). In other words, drawings and cartoons of children, if they could be considered inappropriate, even if the children don’t actually exist in real life. If child pornography laws are intending to protect children from being exploited, then what are the doing protecting non-existent children? This clause in the law is a dangerous restriction on free speech, for the simple fact that it's subject to the government's definition of "child pornography". There are two immediate concerns: a) artistic expression gets censored when it comes to pictures featuring children, b) remember "child" legally means anyone under 18, so X-rated drawings of young people that could be interpreted by the government to possibly depict someone under 18 can land the owner in prison.
2. (page 10 of the law) Lack of accountability. Not only do they fail to have a clause protecting against false positives, but there is a specific clause protecting members of the NCMEC from being brought into court for a civil suit. So someone accused for having an image of "child pornography" cannot even call upon the person(s) who deemed the photo to be "child pornography" to justify their labelling. It seems that a person accused under this law has an unfair disadvantage when trying to defend himself.
This law is now heading to the Senate for a vote. If you want action, I encourage you to contact your senator.