Supreme Court gets second chance to study online porn law

WASHINGTON (AP) --The Bush administration has appealed
to the Supreme Court to reinstate a law that punishes
Web site operators who expose children to dirty
pictures and other inappropriate material.

The court has already sided with the government once
this year in its war against online smut, ruling that
Congress can require public libraries that receive
federal funding to equip computers with
anti-pornography filters (Full story).

In an appeal filed Monday, Solicitor General Theodore
Olson said the filter technology alone is not enough.
Children are unprotected from the harmful effects of
the enormous amount of pornography on the World Wide
Web, he told justices.

The broader law at issue now requires that operators
of commercial Internet sites use credit cards or some
form of adults-only screening system to ensure
children cannot see material deemed harmful to them.
Operators could face fines and jail time for not
complying.

Critics contend the law violates the rights of adults
to see or buy what they want on the Internet.

Olson said the main target was commercial
pornographers who use sexually explicit teasers to
lure customers.

A Philadelphia-based appeals court has twice ruled
that the 1998 law, known as the Child Online
Protection Act, unconstitutionally restricts speech.
The law has been on hold since it was challenged by
the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of
artists, book stores and others who put information on
the Web.

The Supreme Court has reviewed the law once. The
justices were splintered in a 2002 ruling that sent
the case back to the court in Philadelphia for more
consideration of the First Amendment implications
(Full story).

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor who
specializes in Internet law, said Tuesday that the
high court will likely struggle again with what to do.
From the governments view, it cant hurt to appeal
because its essentially a roulette wheel, he said.

Zittrain predicted that the government will have a
tougher time than it did persuading the high court to
uphold the library filter law. The government argued
in its filing that the cases are similar.

ACLU associate legal director Ann Beeson said the laws
are very different because the 1998 statute involves
criminal penalties for people who exercise free speech
rights.

I would have thought the Justice Department would have
better things to do with its time than to defend what
is clearly an unconstitutional law, she said.



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