Groups Challenge Anti-Porn Tactics on Web

September 10, 2003 5:30 AM

Two civil liberties groups sued Pennsylvania's attorney general, saying Attorney General Mike Fisher has created a "system of secret censorship" that goes unchecked by state courts. You can read The Law, a Release from The CDT, a News Story, or the CDT Page for more, or maybe use the Tattle Tale form to report Child Pornography (only for PA residents). According to the lawsuit, the only way most Internet providers can block access to a particular Web site is to block its server computer, which may be shared with unrelated Web sites - preventing subscribers from viewing any of those sites (it's a Vhosts thing). And since such blocks can apply to all of a provider's subscribers, not just Pennsylvanians covered by the law, this law has been seen as troublesome since day 1.
posted by Blake (2 comments total)

Here's a question.

I phone up some hosting company, and tell them that some server has child porn on it. Seeing as viewing it at all is a serious offence, how do they verify this? Is there a legal procedure here?

Surely there must be, otherwise they'd have to just always take people's word for it...

I saw child porn on microsoft.com! And fox news!

See?
posted by thedude256 at 5:58 AM on September 10, 2003

I saw child porn on microsoft.com!

You were porbably think of groups.msn.com
posted by signal at 7:23 AM on September 10, 2003