Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (11581)	5/1/2002 7:22:14 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 21057

Ashcroft Pushes for Legislation to Ban Virtual Child Pornography By DAVID STOUT nytimes.com WASHINGTON, May 1 — Attacking a recent Supreme Court decision as "a dangerous window of opportunity for child abusers," Attorney General John Ashcroft pushed today for new legislation that would ban computer-simulated pornography and withstand judicial scrutiny. "Tragically, this decision of the court to reverse Congress's prohibition of virtual child pornography has left law enforcement at an extreme disadvantage in the campaign against all child pornography," Mr. Ashcroft said. Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, appeared with Mr. Ashcroft and said he hoped the new legislation would pass Supreme Court muster. "Pedophiles do not have a First Amendment right to gawk over exploited children, real or virtual," Mr. Foley said. On April 16, the Supreme Court struck down part of the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act. The section that was voided imposed heavy penalties on those who made or possessed images that merely looked like child pornography, including pictures of adults purporting to be minors and computer-created images. The court has previously held that laws creating stricter legal categories for child pornography were constitutional, on the grounds that such material was "intrinsically related" to sexual abuse of children. But "virtual pornography," by comparison, "records no crime and creates no victims by its production," the court declared on April 16. Some lawyers said the ruling upheld First Amendment principles while keeping in place prohibitions against the actual use and abuse of children in making smut. But Mr. Ashcroft and a number of lawmakers denounced the decision, promising to come up with no legislative wording and enforcement procedures to surmount the obstacles they said the court erected. "In a world in which virtual images are increasingly indistinguishable from reality, prosecutors are now forced to prove that sexually explicit images involving children were, in fact, produced through the abuse of children, an extremely difficult task in today's worldwide Internet child pornography market," Mr. Ashcroft complained today. "In this thriving market for child pornography, the Supreme Court's legalization of computer-generated child pornography has created a dangerous window of opportunity for child abusers to escape prosecution," he said. The new law, introduced in the House on Monday, contains more detailed references to computers and the Internet and is meant to be more precise than the version that ran afoul of the justices. In one sense, the back-and-forth between lawmakers and the courts reflects the dizzying pace of technological change and the law's difficulty in keeping up with it. The text of the new bill, H.R. 4623, can be read on the Internet at thomas.loc.gov. The Supreme Court decision of April 16 in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition can be read on the court's web site: www.supremecourtus.gov. The lawmakers who embraced Mr. Ashcroft's position seemed impatient with legal nuances. "The court's ruling was a huge disappointment to everyone working to protect children," Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, said today. "The child advocates all over the country know that the consequences of this activity caused irreparable damage to children. Congress's clear intent was to ban any depiction or image of children in sexual situations."

To: TimF who wrote (11581)	5/1/2002 7:23:11 PM
From: Poet	Respond to of 21057

Thanks, Tim. I'm about to serve dinner, will reply in the a.m.

To: TimF who wrote (11581)	5/1/2002 9:57:25 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

The much-vaunted trade-and-cap approach has a serious flaw: the risk of air pollution is not only a factor of the total pollution released nationwide. Excessive emissions from a single point source of pollution or a cluster of sources can seriously endanger the health of people living nearby. I don't think people should be deprived of breathable air because they live near a pollution source that has accumulated a store of emissions "credit". That's not to say the approach has no virtue, but absolute caps on point source emissions have to be part of the picture.