US Efforts To Shut Down Illegal Sites May Infringe Civil Liberties

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

21 February 2003

Pennsylvania's attempts to force ISPs to block access to Internet pornography sites is running up against opposition from civil liberties groups who say that the law can unintentionally interfere with legitimate surfing.

The state's Legislature passed a law last year permitting the blocks and imposing first-offense fines of up to $5,000 on companies that don't comply. Pennsylvania's Attorney-General, Mike Fisher, says that his officers have already forced Internet providers to block subscribers from at least 423 web sites around the world.

However, lawyers from the Center for Democracy and Technology, which focuses on Internet freedoms, compare the blocking technique to disrupting mail delivery to an entire apartment complex because of one tenant's illegal actions. They would prefer prosecution of the publishers of obscene materials. "It's sort of this weird world where we're not prosecuting the people producing child pornography," said the Center's Associate Director Alan Davidson.

Among ISPs, only WorldCom has disputed the state's blocking order. WorldCom's lawyers say they abhor child pornography but claim that the filters they are obliged to instal would prevent all their subscribers in North America from visiting thousands of Web sites "completely unrelated in content and ownership" to the pornographic material.

Technology experts point out that many forms of hosting, including co-hosting and virtual hosting, result in a number of sites sharing a given IP address; and if that address is banned then all the sites it hosts are banned with it, possibly contravening freedom of expression laws.

The Pennsylvania Attorney-General's office says that in such cases, they contact the web-hosting company concerned and order them to pinpoint and shut down the illegal pornographic sites.

Recommended