Bad Internet Laws Proposed
Attorney General Gonzales is attempting to ressurect a stupid law from the Bill Clinton administration that would place an unfair burden on free speech by demanding that website operators, like me, place some type of code on webpages that might contain explicit material.
Um.. Isnt that what Internet Filtering Software is for? If this law passes, wouldn’t that put those companies out of business?
From CNET here:
Web site operators posting sexually explicit information must place official government warning labels on their pages or risk being imprisoned for up to five years, the Bush administration proposed Thursday.
A mandatory rating system will “prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at an event in Alexandria, Va.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proposes making government warning labels mandatory on sites containing sexually explicit information.
Site operators face 5 years in prison for violating rating system intended “prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet.”
The Bush administration’s proposal would require commercial Web sites to place “marks and notices” to be devised by the Federal Trade Commission on each sexually explicit page. The definition of sexually explicit broadly covers depictions of everything from sexual intercourse and masturbation to “sadistic abuse” and close-ups of fully clothed genital regions.
“I hope that Congress will take up this legislation promptly,” said Gonzales, who gave a speech about child exploitation and the Internet to the federally funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The proposed law is called the Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006.
A second new crime would threaten with imprisonment Web site operators who mislead visitors about sex with deceptive “words or digital images” in their source code–for instance, a site that might pop up in searches for Barbie dolls or Teletubbies but actually features sexually explicit photographs.
A third new crime appears to require that commercial Web sites not post sexually explicit material on their home page if it can be seen “absent any further actions by the viewer.”
A critic of the proposal said that its requirements amount to an unreasonable imposition on Americans’ rights to free expression. In particular, a mandatory rating system backed by criminal penalties is “antithetical to the First Amendment,” said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.
I hate the ACLU for many of their unamerican stances. But I agree with them on this. When has a fully clothed genital region ever been determined to be pornographic? And if I want to post things about stupid whores that do stupid things, would that be sexually explicit? Probably. By displaying a federal logo, I would be limiting my own free speech because search filters will be able to squelch me. This is not cool.
I keep my own pages to a PG-13 rating, and the government should not have to open up a new division within the Federal Trade Commission to police the internet. Any proposed laws in this direction will fail in Congress. What a stupid idea.
