Today the Supreme Court declared the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA) unconsitiutional and sent it back to the lower courts to give the chance for the feds to reargue the case since technologies have chanced in the five years since the law was originally passed.
In this MSNBC.com article Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo is quoted as saying “Our society has reached a broad consensus that child obscenity is harmful to our youngest generation and must be stopped.”
Excuse me but just what is “child obscenity.” There is “child porn” and there is “obscenity”. Child porn is legaly defined as obscene. So just what the heck is “child obscenity”?
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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