FC: Obnoxious sex sites should be illegal, COPA commission says

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39302,00.html

   Porn Panel: Nix 'Mouse-Trapping'
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

   3:00 a.m. Oct. 6, 2000 PDT
   WASHINGTON -- A U.S. government porn commission wants federal
   regulation of obnoxious sex sites.

   On Thursday, the Commission on Child Online Protection unanimously
   endorsed a largely hands-off approach to the Internet, while saying
   that practices such as mislabeling adult sites as innocuous should be
   against the law.

   The report says that federal agencies should "consider greater
   enforcement and possibly rulemaking to discourage deceptive or unfair
   practices to entice children to view obscene materials, including the
   practices of 'mouse trapping' and deceptive meta-tagging."

   The civil servants at the Federal Trade Commission, which has
   authority over fraudulent and deceptive practices, would likely be the
   ones responsible for policing online porn. Mouse-trapping refers to
   what happens when a sex site makes it difficult to close all the ad
   windows on the screen.

   A representative of a civil liberties group said he would support that
   kind of crackdown on annoying adult sites.

   "It may not pass the ACLU test, but I'll go along with it," said Jerry
   Berman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

   That consensus comes after eight meetings, testimony from 93
   witnesses, and anguished debate over the nuances of kid-protection
   technologies.

   The final report does not recommend additional criminal laws or a .xxx
   or .sex top-level domain. Instead, it calls for more "public
   education" and "responsible adult empowerment."

   "There was not one point through this entire process that I thought
   anything less than this commission would succeed," said Don Telage of
   Network Solutions and chairman of the commission. "We checked our guns
   at the door and came together in order for achieving a greater good."

   [...]




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