Of sex and free speech

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) in the US also shows how limited the vision of some lawmakers is

Of sex and free speech

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) in the US also shows how limited the vision of some lawmakers is

This is good because it is the final defeat in this particular court case for the US Department of Justice, which has been arguing for over a decade that we need laws to target sexually explicit Web sites.

Some may argue and say that protecting children from pornography is something that is critical, but it is important to realise that, end of the day, in a democracy, there is nothing like free speech.

Draconian law

It may also be additionally pointed out that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was harsh right from the beginning.

It says that anybody who "includes any material that is harmful to minors shall be fined not more than $50,000, imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both" and goes on to add that "each day of violation shall constitute a separate violation." In other words, if you have content that the government finds objectionable for three days, who knows, for all you know, you may be fined $150,000 and imprisoned for 18 months.

Also, in a democracy, it is important to note that the privileges of the government need to be restricted for the good of the people. As ACLU staff attorney Chris Hansen said in a statement this week after the recent US SC ruling, the government should not decide what people can see and do on the Internet and that such personal decisions should be taken by individuals and by parents in the case of minors.

Silly loopholes

The COPA law also shows how limited the vision of some lawmakers is. When it was crafted in 1998, it talked of material that is made available on the WWWu2014in fact, the law mentions "by means of the World Wide Web" several times which may be construed to mean that using the general Internet may not be an offence. So, you mean that using Web mail may make you a culprit, but delivering smut to somebody's offline mailbox is not because the latter uses the Net but not the Web?

Thankfully, the US SC ruling means that parents can police their wards. Let's keep the government out of stuff like sex. After all, they do tax us to death, don't they?

Blockheaded blockers

On the face of it, if you want to block out certain sites, all you need is a firewall that blocks sites containing offensive terms like sex.

But sometimes it can have some silly effects as I found out when I wrote my first book in 2001.

Before I proceed, here's a tip if you ever want to write a book, make sure that it doesn't have the words 'sex' anywhere in the title.

My book is called 'Sherlock Holmes: Solutions from the Sussex Downs' and when I mentioned this on my personal site, many firewalls blocked this page. As a result, many of my friends in companies couldn't visit my site.

The solution? I decided to embed this text in an image to confound the dumb and overzealous blockers

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