20 Years for Disguising Porn/Harmful Sites As Child-friendly: Senate Legislation

LifeSiteNews ^ | 7/25/06 | Gudrun Schultz

[wagglebee]

 WASHINGTON, D.C., July 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Luring children to websites containing sexual content by using child-friendly words may soon be a felony, under new legislation approved by the U.S. Senate Thursday, reported CNET News.com.

The Child Protection and Safety Act would see fines and imprisonment for up to 20 years handed to anyone convicted of deliberately misleading children to view potentially harmful web pages.

“Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years,” the legislation declares.

“This bill will protect children and save countless lives by dramatically improving our efforts against sex offenders and violent criminals,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, after the vote. “Too many parents are devastated by an innocent child exploited and harmed by predators lurking in our communities.”

Webmasters, however, would have to clearly indicate an “intent to deceive” visitors who access the site before they would be subjected to charges under the legislation, a requirement that would leave the application of the law open to extensive judicial interpretation.

The legislation would also tighten laws relating to child pornography, sex offender registration and child exploitation.

The Senate approved the bill by a voice vote. The House, which voted to approve an earlier version of the bill, is expected to clear the revised version next week and send the legislation to President Bush for his signature. The president endorsed the legislation Friday, saying it would provide “law enforcement officials with the tools they need to track those who prey upon children”.

See “Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006”:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/adam.walsh.child.protection....

[wagglebee]

I think 20 years should be the minimum.

[wagglebee]

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DISCUSSION ABOUT:

20 Years for Disguising Porn/Harmful Sites As Child-friendly: Senate Legislation

This is wonderful news!

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[Frapster]

oh geez - people do this? why? sorry - i know better than to ask.

[RicocheT]

The House and Senate can pass bill after bill of feel good legislation, but can't find time to confirm the federal judges President Bush has named. The President is also remiss as there are federal vacancies for which he has not put forward names.

If a proper balance of conservative judges is not put in, the 8 years of Bush and Repub. majorities will have been unwisely spent. These feel good laws will soon be overruled by the usual liberal federal judges sitting or who will be sitting.

[proxy_user]

They don't want them to see 'material harmful to minors'.

You know, like the raunchy zots we have here.

[Old Professer]

More feel-good bull-crap posturing disguised to look like legislation; soon, there will be no such thing as free speech, each word and phrase will have its price.

[TrailofTears]

We definitely need this, and then also the judges that will back it up. If we dont get the right judges it is no better than passing toilet paper and signing it. It will be overthrown and every petty tyrant of a judge sitting on the bench will laugh it out of court.


What is the hold up on Judges? Why can't our guys kick butt and get it done? it is amazing to see them sit with their heads up their hineys and do nothing.

[billybudd]

What an idiotic proposal. How the hell do you determine "intent" to deceive? Google's PageRank algorithm is so convoluted, it takes all kinds of subtlety to even try to bump your rank. That means lots of false negatives, but more importantly false positives. PageRank changes from day to day - and they're going to craft a law based on the wording of the website!? What a bunch of BS.

[absolootezer0]

do sites still use the, "if you're under 18 click here".. that re-directs to disney.com? would that fall into this same category?

[Betty Jane]

My daughter went to cartoonnetwork.com one time but she misspelled it. The misspelled name was one letter off and it was raunchy. That website name was purposely set to get kids there.

[American Soldier]

“Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years,”

OK -- Now can somebody just tell me the provision of the Constitution that grants the federal government the power to regulate such behavior? Maybe it's in there and I just can't find it...

[MichiganConservative]

Does anyone have any examples of these sites? Really, what are they claiming these sites to be? What good would it be to put up a porn site, even one with advertisements and have the keywords be "Spongebob" or "Pokemon"? Seems like you'd get enough hits with keywords like "hot teens".

And are these kids exploring the porn links? How old are these kids? Are they going to pay sites? What are they paying with to access content if they are pay sites? Children generally don't have credit cards.

[JamesP81]

Now if they would only imprison actual child rapists for 20 years or more, we'd actually have something going here...

[AMHN]

Now a law that requires all porn sites to be xxx. instead of www. would be useful.

That way any site beginning with xxx. could require greater restrictions.

[mysterio]

And this is the nose under the tent to censor the internet. That's their true goal.

[MichiganConservative]

Or maybe it was purposely set up to get the teens, 20-somethings, and 30 somethings that like Adult Swim.

You remind me of a time I was teaching a web development class. My boss was observing me that day. One of my students was doing a presentation for the class. She had a web browser displaying from the overhead as she typed in a URL. She misspelled it, and a porn site came up. She got rather flustered because she just showed some porn to the class, and could barely hear me telling her she misspelled the URL. It was amusing.

If I remember correctly, the "site" was just an ad. I'm not sure why you'd target kids without credit cards with these things.

[wagglebee]

It deals with commerce, Congress is fully empowered to regulate it.

[MichiganConservative]

"Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years,”

Who decides what's harmful to minors? Maybe Hillary Clinton would consider FreeRepublic or WorldNetDaily harmful to minors. Those sites could leave a poor impression of Bill Clinton's presidency in the poor chirrrrun's minds and that could harm them.

[Responsibility2nd]

My liberal friends - were I to have any - would disagree.

"This is censorship" They would cry.

"Like TV, if you don't like it.... Don't watch it."

[wagglebee]

So, would they be okay for cigarette and alcohol ads being shown during children's shows?