Censoreware Critics….rejoice

dcstone says:

Gonzales can propose, but the courts dispose ….

As McCullah noted in his article, mandatory government ratings systems for speech seldom survive court scrutiny. Eight states have tried to use violence ratings on video games to restrict minors’ access to video games, and in every instance, the federal courts have struck down those laws on First Amendment grounds. Similarly, when local governments tried to use MPAA ratings as a means of barring minors from seeing certain movies, courts quickly struck down the laws as unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment when those laws were challenged.

It’s also worthwhile to examine the fate of the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA), similar legislation proposing fines and jail time for commercial publishers of sexually explicit content who do not use age verification methods to prevent minors accessing the explicit content. In its opinion, the Supreme Court noted that

“[f]ilters are less restrictive than COPA. They impose selective restrictions on speech at the receiving end, not universal restrictions at the source. Under a filtering regime, adults without children may gain access to speech they have a right to see without having to identify themselves or provide their credit card information. Even adults with children may obtain access to the same speech on the same terms simply by turning off the filter on their home computers. Above all, promoting the use of filters does not condemn as criminal any category of speech, and so the potential chilling effect is eliminated, or at least much diminished. All of these things are true, moreover, regardless of how broadly or narrowly the definitions in COPA are construed…..COPA presumes that parents lack the ability, not the will, to monitor what their children see. By enacting programs to promote use of filtering software, Congress could give parents that ability without subjecting protected speech to severe penalties.

The closest precedent on the general point is our decision in Playboy Entertainment Group. Playboy Entertainment Group, like this case, involved a content-based restriction designed to protect minors from viewing harmful materials [on cable television]. The choice was between a blanket speech restriction and a more specific technological solution that was available to parents who chose to implement it. 529 U.S., at 825. Absent a showing that the proposed less restrictive alternative would not be as effective, we concluded, the more restrictive option preferred by Congress could not survive strict scrutiny. Id., at 826 (reversing because “[t]he record is silent as to the comparative effectiveness of the two alternatives”). In the instant case, too, the Government has failed to show, at this point, that the proposed less restrictive alternative will be less effective. The reasoning of Playboy Entertainment Group, and the holdings and force of our precedents require us to affirm the preliminary injunction. To do otherwise would be to do less than the First Amendment commands. “The starch in our constitutional standards cannot be sacrificed to accommodate the enforcement choices of the Government.” Id., at 830 (Thomas, J., concurring).”

Or, to sum up, it falls to the parents to do the job of parenting. The government cannot act in such a way so as to reduce adults to reading only what is fit for children.

Reno v. ACLU (1997) conveyed full First Amendment protections to the Internet. It’s not a broadcast medium. It has an on-off switch. That it may be in ubiquitous use doesn’t change those facts.