The US Supreme Court has blocked a law meant to shield Web-surfing children from dirty pictures and online come-ons, ruling that the law would also cramp the free-speech rights of adults to see and buy what they want on the Internet.
Technology such as filtering software may better protect children from unsavory material than such laws, the court said in a 5 to 4 ruling on Tuesday.
"Filters are less restrictive" and thus pose less risk of muzzling free speech, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. "They impose selective restrictions on speech at the receiving end, not universal restrictions at the source."
Numerous software companies market products that parents can install on a home computer to sift out objectionable material. Filtering software tries to block Web sites based on preferences set by the user.
The 1998 law, signed by then president Bill Clinton and backed by the current Bush administration, would require adults to use access codes or other ways of registering before they could see objectionable material online, and it would punish violators with fines up to US$50,000 or jail time.
The law has been on hold during the court challenge brought by artists, bookstores, an online sex therapist, a gynecological information site and others. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued the law could make criminals out of anyone who offered racy or explicit material to adults.
Ashcroft v. ACLU was the last of nearly 80 cases decided in a busy court term that ended on Tuesday. The year's marquee cases involving presidential power to deal with terror suspects were announced on Monday, and for the most part represented a setback for the Bush administration.
In Tuesday's pornography ruling, the court majority said that the federal judge who initially blocked the Child Online Protection Act six years ago rightly found that the law was probably unconstitutional.
"There is a potential for extraordinary harm and a serious chill upon protected speech" if the law takes effect, Kennedy wrote. He was joined by justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas.
In dissent, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer said the law should be upheld.
The high court tossed the case back to lower courts in Philadelphia, but the next step was not immediately clear. If the government chooses to defend the law, a trial could provide fresher information than was available to the Supreme Court, Kennedy said.
"The factual record does not reflect current technological reality -- a serious flaw in any case involving the Internet," he wrote.
Material that is indecent but not obscene is protected by the Constitution's First Amendment. Adults may see or purchase it, but children may not. That is a rule difficult to enforce in the world of the Internet.
Most Web sites, chat rooms and other Internet venues are available to adults and minors alike.
Congress has tried repeatedly to find a way to shield youngsters from the Web's dark side without running afoul of the First Amendment.
The justices unanimously struck down the first version of a child-protection law passed in 1996, just as the Internet was becoming a common means of communication, research and entertainment.
Congress responded by passing the 1998 law, saying it was tailored to go after pornographers or others who place material deemed harmful to minors within their easy reach.
Although free-speech advocates had hoped the court would strike down the law outright, they said they were pleased with Tuesday's ruling.
"The status quo is still with us," ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson said. "The court made it safe for artists, sex educators and Web publishers to communicate with adults without risking jail time."
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo denounced the ruling.
"Our society has reached a broad consensus that child obscenity is harmful to our youngest generation and must be stopped," Corallo said.
"Congress has repeatedly attempted to address this serious need and the court yet again opposed these commonsense measures to protect America's children," he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited