The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Demographics and the Medicalization of Human Existence by Eternity Road, and Tabula Rasa by Michael Yon.  Here is a link to the full results of the vote. Here…

(Darn! Second again!!) And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Demographics and the Medicalization of Human Existence by Eternity Road, and Tabula Rasa by Michael Yon.  All members, please be sure …

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Demographics and the Medicalizatio…

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…

Your question was, “what do you think is the “speech” in pornography?”

There is little to no speech in porn, that’s why it can be constitutional to ban it. This law, however, while it intended to focus on porn, swept up non-porn into its coverage.

Take a look at this site, for example. Look to the right and left of the page. See those ads? That puts this site within the definition of a commercial site for purposes of the legislation. Now pretend for a second that the argument here got heated and obscenities were exchanged. That could qualify under the law as “harmful to minors.” Then this website would have to have an credit-card-based age-verification process or face criminal prosecution. (Ironically, there’s a safe haven for forums where there is no selection of posts, but gribbit’s declaration that he can edit, manipulate or alter posts puts him outside that safe haven.)

Why do you think that in order to get rid of porn, we should incarcerate adults who engage in frank discussions? Especially when there are alternatives out there that might not infringe on constitutional discussions?

Is it really your belief that Congressional statute trump the Constitution? (What about when Democrats are in control?)

it was about restricting minors from access because of the deleterious effects of pornography on children.

As the court noted on page 62 (”There has never been any question that the interest espoused by Congress, as related to this court by defendant of “protecting minors from exposure to sexually explicit material on the World Wide Web” is a compelling interest.”), that point is undisputed. Good intentions are not enough, though.

The law was not vague

The requirements of the law are very specific, but the application of it are not.

Page 59-60: “As this court has found previously and today, and as the Third Circuit observed, there is nothing in the language of COPA which limits its reach to commercial pornographers. COPA clearly covers far more speakers on the Web than those who might be defined as commercial pornographers; and (2) defendant contends and, thus, admits that the plaintiffs are not commercial pornographers.”

Page 62: “Because COPA suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive, under the strict scrutiny standard, COPA may only be upheld as constitutional if defendant meets his burden of proving that COPA is narrowly tailored to the compelling interest that COPA was enacted to serve and there are no less restrictive alternatives that would be at least as effective in achieving that interest.”

Page 62: “Due to the broad definitions and provisions of COPA, COPA prohibits much more speech than is necessary to further Congress’ compelling interest. For example, as discussed above in Conclusions of Law 3 and 4, the definitions of “commercial purposes” and “engaged in the business” apply to an inordinate
amount of Internet speech and certainly cover more than just commercial pornographers, contrary
to the claim of defendant. Moreover, as discussed below in Conclusions of Law 42 and 49, the
fact that COPA applies to speech that is obscene as to all minors from newborns to age sixteen,
and not just to speech that is obscene as to older minors, also renders COPA over-inclusive. See ACLU, 322 F.3d at 253-254 (noting that the term “minor” in COPA applies to “an infant, a fiveyear
old, or a person just shy of age seventeen”).”

Bottom line: COPA tried to fix the problem with a battleaxe. The court said, “Try again, using a scalpel this time.”

DICK
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

CADE
Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled
o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:
but I say, ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since. How now! who’s there?

I think there is some merit to that idea…