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U.S. SUPREME COURT DENIES JUSTICE DEPARTMENT APPEAL IN ONLINE WEBMASTER CASE
By: Keith Witchka, Staff Writer - 02-04-09 - 12:00 a.m. PDT
Email Keith Witchka at Keith@JRLChartsonline.com
The wind seems to be shifting in favor of the Adult Online retailers and webmasters. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that a federal law designed t keep pornography away from children violated constituional rights under free-speech.
Supreme Court rejected arguments presented by the Justice Department in defending the law and handed the Justice Department lost in this issue.
Specifically, the law in question requireds that all Adult content website operators must utilize credit cards or adult access code software and/or personal identifiation codes to prevent minors from accessing Adult Content websites.
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If the law would have stood, webmasters who violated this law would have been subject to fines of as much as $ 50,000.00 a day and up to six months in jail.
The law dates back to its adoption in 1998 after the Supreme Court struck down on free-speech grounds another law called the "Communications Decency Act".
The law has never been enforced due to the fact that all lower courts that have had this type of case before it, would repeatedly rule that the law was unconstitutional.
The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after a U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia declared the law unconstitutional for being overly broad and too vague. In other words, not specific enough!
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The U.S. Appeals Court ruled "The law violates free-speech guarantees under the Constitution's First Amendment because filtering technologies and other parental control tools offer a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online".
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When the law was originally passed, it was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, booksellers, online magazine publishers and hundreds of others businesses who would be penalized by this law. ACLU lawyers stated in their brief "the law criminalizes a large amount of valuable online speech that adults are entitled to communicate and receive".
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According to the government's experts on the case,, the law could have criminalized as many as 700 million webpages and as many as 50,000 webmasters nationwide.
On January 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Justice Department's appeal without any comment, allowing the appeals court ruling to stand. This is a great day for the Gay and Heterosexual Adult Industries.
