ISPs Not Liable for Failing to Block Pornography, Rules Court
September 13, 2004
A Pennsylvania law which imposed liability on ISPs for blocking access to child pornography was struck down by the U.S. District Court last week. The law created criminal penalties for ISPs that failed to censor child pornography on sites they hosted, but in practice, the law resulted in wider suppression of legal sites. According to this
Washington Post story, more than 1 million legitimate sites were blocked because of 400 offending ones. The court declared the law unconstitutional (and cited a
this paper by Berkman Professor
Jonathan Zittrain in the decision). Read the
full decision and more about the
Center for Democracy and Technology's challenge to the law.