The Bush administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer sat at his home computer over the weekend and tried a little experiment he says illustrates the need for a law protecting children from online smut.
Type in the words, “free porn” on an Internet search engine, and you get a list of more than 6 million Web sites, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The justices were taking their third crack at the difficult question of how to protect Web-surfing children from smut that adults can legally see and buy.
The justices struck down the first version of a child-protection law passed in 1996, during the Clinton administration and refused to sign off on a replacement law passed two years later. That law has never taken effect, and is now before the justices for a second time after the court sent it back to lower courts for review.
Free pornography is easy to find online, placed as a hook to lure paying customers, the Bush administration and its backers argue. Minors can find that free material as easily as adults, although it would be illegal for a store owner to sell them a paper copy of a magazine that shows the same images.
Many porn sites try to limit access to adults, with varying success.
The 1998 Child Online Protection Act would make it a crime for commercial Web sites to knowingly place material that is “harmful to minors” within their unrestricted reach.
If approved, the act could mean six months in jail and $50,000 in fines for first-time violators and additional fines for repeat offenders. It is on hold pending court challenges.
The American Civil Liberties Union claims the law violates the 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech.
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Compiled from RedEye news services and edited by Patrick Olsen (polsen@tribune.com) and Victoria Rodriguez (vrodriguez@tribune.com)
