Here we go again:
The Bush administration has appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate a law that punishes Web site operators who expose children to dirty pictures and other inappropriate material.
The court has already sided with the government once this year in its war against online smut, ruling that Congress can require public libraries that receive federal funding to equip computers with anti-pornography filters.
In an appeal filed Monday, Solicitor General Theodore Olson said the filter technology alone is not enough. Children are "unprotected from the harmful effects of the enormous amount of pornography on the World Wide Web," he told justices. . . .
[C]ritics contend the law violates the rights of adults to see or buy what they want on the Internet.
Olson said the main target was commercial pornographers who use sexually explicit "teasers" to lure customers.
I'm all for protecting children from porn, but I'll make two points: First, I highly doubt that concerns about child protection actually drive Ashcroft's most recent assault on free speech; and second, isn't it a better idea to have parents take responsibility for what their children do, rather than have John Ashcroft move in and regulate it for them?
I occasionally -- though still quite rarely -- receive unsolicited "spam" email that displays graphic porn on my screen before I can delete it. I would have no problem prosecuting the people who perpetrate that. But most "reputable" porn sites make you be affirmatively proactive before you can actually see anything "dirty."
Anyway, the article I quoted from above is here from the AP.