Babies and bathwater

A federal court has overturned Pennsylvania’s child internet pr0n law, arguing that the state ordering ISPs to block IP addresses — regardless of whether or not others are on that same IP address who are not peddling such filth — is unconstitutional.

Based on the evidence presented by the parties at trial, the Court concludes that, with the current state of technology, the Act cannot be implemented without excessive blocking of innocent speech in violation of the First Amendment. In addition, the procedures provided by the Act are insufficient to justify the prior restraint of material protected by the First Amendment and, given the current design of the Internet, the Act is unconstitutional under the dormant Commerce Clause because of its affect on interstate commerce.

The elimination of child pornography is an important goal and those responsible for the creation or distribution of child pornography should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. To that end, all of the ISPs involved in the case have given defendant their complete cooperation. Notwithstanding this effort, there is little evidence that the Act has reduced the production of child pornography or the child sexual abuse associated with its creation. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that implementation of the Act has resulted in massive suppression of speech protected by the First Amendment. For these reasons, and the other reasons set forth in the Memorandum, the Court is ineluctably led to conclude the Act is unconstitutional.

Part of the “suppression of speech” has not only been the blocking of websites that happen to be on the same IP address (or URL) as child pr0n sites, but the “Informal Notice” process the state used did not require any court order in conjunction with blocking sites. Nor was there any subsequent review of sites (or IP addresses) in the future to see if they still needed blocking. And, of course, national ISPs were ending up having to block sites to customers in all states based on the direction of officials in one state.

Interesting decision to read, and a good one to have had handed down.