[dinoparty]

So you would have no objection to a state censoring internet porn?

By the way, if internet porn, accessible anywhere, replete with advertisements, etc. isn't interstate commerce, I don't know what is.

[flashbunny]

"By the way, if internet porn, accessible anywhere, replete with advertisements, etc. isn't interstate commerce, I don't know what is."

That's becoming obvious.

[steve-b]

isn't interstate commerce, I don't know what is

Someone with your cast of mind could find interstate commerce in the fluctuations of a pulsar.

[Arthalion]

Truth be told, the state can't filter it anyway. While the constitutional issues with COPPA were numerous, the biggest problem with it is that it's a feel good law that will accomplish little. The vast majority of porn sites are NOT American, they're run out of Europe and Russia where relaxed sexual attitudes and younger ages of consent makes finding models easier. COPPA would have required American porn companies to restrict access to porn, but only a minority of sites would have been affected. Even its effect on the operation of American owned sites is debatable, since many would simply relocate to offshore servers or sell their sites to foreign competitors. Since the Internet doesn't recognize national boundaries, these changes wouldn't even be noticed by the webs users.

Unless we want to emulate the Chinese by separating from the Internet, and creating a government run network that can only access "approved" foreign sites, enforcing regulations on the Internet is akin to herding cats. Case in point, the Can-Spam act. Technically, pornographic spam is already illegal in the United States, and yet we're bombarded with it anyway. Why? Because the marketers simply offshored their spamming services to get around the laws. American law doesn't apply to a spammer in the Bahamas or Russia, and an email from Manila arrives just as fast as an email from Boston.