US Supreme Court upholds child porn law

by Rachel Nixon | May 19, 2008 at 02:09 pm | 246 views | 4 comments

The US Supreme Court has upheld legislatioin from 2003 that bans the promotion of child pornography.

In a victory for the Bush administration, the high court bya 7-2 vote rejected the argument that one part of the lawillegally infringed on free-speech or other rights guaranteedby the U.S. Constitution.

The justices overturned a ruling by a U.S. appeals courtthat struck down the provision on the grounds the governmentcannot suppress lawful free speech.

Opponents of the law argued it sweeps too broadly and couldbe applied to popular award-winning movies like "Lolita,""Traffic," "American Beauty" and "Titanic" that depictadolescent sex. The government replied that those movies arenot child pornography and would not be targeted by the law.

The provision bars the advertising, promoting, presenting,distributing or soliciting of material in a way intended tocause others to believe it contains illegal child pornography.Violators face a sentence of at least five years in prison.

The ruling involved a Florida man, Michael Williams, whowas arrested in 2004 after he traded messages in an Internetchat room with an undercover federal agent posing as a woman.

Williams offered to trade photos of children with the agentand then posted seven images of minors in sexually explicitconduct. Agents then searched his home and found more childpornography pictures on his computer.

Williams was convicted of one count of promoting and onecount of possessing child pornography. The Supreme Court rulingdealt only with his conviction for promoting childpornography.

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everchanging

at 15:47 on May 19th, 2008

good stuff:

Rachel Nixon, Protecting the children is important and I am glad they uphold the earlier ruling. I do not understand the issue of infringement of free speech though and how these two issues are have any relationship with each other. Can anyone explain for me, thxs?

eastvanray

at 17:30 on May 19th, 2008

good stuff:

Rachel Nixon, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I am a huge defender of free speech but a bigger defender of keeping children safe. The Internet exchange was "speech". The sick pedaphile "spoke" to the undercover officer through the chat application. Normally that "speech" would be protected like any conversation between 2 people would be. The twist was that this speech was promoting child pornography. And speech promoting child porn is not protected....thank God!