Regulating Obscenity and Indecency on the Internet
...ious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” This is asking if the material is lacking ability to relate to appropriate literature, political standards, and rules used by those who work in a discipline. There are a few other laws that have tried to help maintain broadcasting indecency. There was a rule that the Federal Trade Commissions set in the 1970s and 1980s, that broadcasting had time restraints on when they could air indecent programs. For example only at 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. broadcasters were aloud to air the indecent programs. Putting this time restraint to such late hours had the parents of children at ease because most children are sleeping between those hours. There have been attempts to try and remove all indecent programs from the broadcasting system, but it has simply violated the First Amendment. Now when we compare internet regulations to broadcast regulations they differ quite noticeably. As we both know it’s extremely easy for anyone, specifically any child, to come across or intentionally go a sexually explicit website. We also know that it would be illegal for any minor to reach sexually explicit material in a store. The reason why they can visit these websites that contain the sexually explicit material is because the internet has no way of stopping them. There is no one there to check for proof of age. It’s the responsibility of the person who is viewing these sites, to maintain responsible choices of which sites to access and not access. The people who construct these explicit sites aren’t distributing or broadcasting their explicit material. If parents of children have doubts in their children, they can purchase software that monitors their access to certain internet sites. For example, “Net Nanny” or “Cyber Patrol.” Many people feel that the internet still should be treated as broadcasting is, having regulations, making reference that clicking an internet site isn’t any different than clicking a television channel. A couple of examples that are for pro-regulatory for internet access are the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act. The CDA is part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that but a ban on sexually explicit and indecent material on the internet. As activist saw this, they sued saying that it violated the First Amendment; Freedom of Speech, so the courts were in favor of the activist and said the CDA was unconstitutional. The COPA (Child Online Protection Act) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton creating harsh criminal penalties for any internet sites that distributed material that was “harmful to minors.” Again, the activist rebelled against this law and the courts were in favor again with the activist, however this time the case was appealed by the U.S. Supreme Courts. One of the main problems with COPA was it based its standards off of a community, which were the appropriate standards of determining which material was explicit. The internet is a worldwide form of communication, each having a different community. How do they come to terms in which community is right to set the standards? For example, “In the fall of 1998, law enforcement agencies in the United States and 13 European countries simultaneously raided the homes of nearly 200 alleged members of an Internet child pornography ring.” After reading and comparing regulations for both ...