Politics and Law

If you believe its sponsors, a new Illinois law will keep sex offenders from recruiting children on the Internet.

"If the predator is supposed to be a registered sex offender, they should keep their Internet distance as well as their physical distance," said sponsor Bill Brady, a Republican state senator, according to the Chicago Tribune. "The object is to protect innocent individuals on the Internet from sex offenders."

If that were its effect, this would be a laudable piece of legislation. But in reality, the state law is written so broadly, it would effectively prohibit registered sex offenders from using the Internet.

It says "social-networking Web sites" are off limits, and defines those as "an Internet Web site containing profile Web pages of the members of the Web site that include the names or nicknames of such members," or photographs, or any other personal information. Offenders must "refrain from accessing or using" such Web sites.

Unfortunately, the Illinois state legislature didn't seem to recognize that many popular Web sites--perhaps even the majority of the large ones--fall into those categories.

Google.com features user profiles, including name, photos and personal information. So do Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, geek site Slashdot.org, and aggregator site Digg.com.

Sites like Hulu.com, Netflix, and Pandora do, too, as do TV.com, MP3.com, and CNET.com. This overly broad scope makes the law vulnerable to a First Amendment challenge. (Those last three are our sister sites and are owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive.)

(It is surely coincidence that Bill Brady is a candidate for governor of Illinois, whose campaign biography says: "He fought for and passed legislation to protect children from sexual predators.")

Now, perhaps Brady's intent truly was to ban sex offenders from the Internet, although if that's true you wouldn't know it from the former developer and real estate agent public statements on the topic. Nor was it probably apparent to his colleagues in the state capitol, where the legislation was unanimously approved by both chambers--or to Gov. Pat Quinn, who signed it into law this week.

Like it or not, using Google, Yahoo, TV.com, and so on is part of modern life, and it's reasonable to hope that even sex offenders could be reintegrated into society rather than cordoned off from it and therefore more likely to relapse. One Justice Department release says that 5.3 percent of male sex offenders were rearrested within three years after their release from state prison.

Brady's legislation also does not distinguish between violent criminals who have served prison time for rape--and adults who are registered sex offenders because of youthful hijinks.

The Economist published two stories on this topic last week. One, called "America's Unjust Sex Laws," says: "Janet Allison was found guilty of being 'party to the crime of child molestation' because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms. Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender."

A second article tells the story of Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old high school student in Georgia, who preformed oral sex on a boy in her class. "Her classmate was three weeks shy of his 16th birthday. That made Ms. Whitaker a criminal. She was arrested and charged with sodomy, which in Georgia can refer to oral sex. She met her court-appointed lawyer five minutes before the hearing. He told her to plead guilty. She did not really understand what was going on, so she did as she was told," the magazine reported.

No wonder a Human Rights Watch report recommends a rethinking of U.S. laws in this area.

It would be one thing if Illinois' new law said "sex offenders shall not use the Internet to harm or seduce a minor," or language to that effect. Unfortunately, the man who would be governor of that state seems to be more interested in taking credit for enacting a law rather than ensuring the right law is enacted.

CNET Blog Network member Larry Magid has also weighed in on this case.

If you're planning to apply for a job with the city of Bozeman, Mont., be prepared to hand over much more than your references and resume.

The Rocky Mountain city instructs all job applicants to divulge their user names and passwords for "any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."

"Before we offer people employment in a public trust position, we have a responsibility to do a thorough background check," Chuck Winn, Bozeman's assistant city manager, said in an interview on Thursday. "This is just a component of a thorough background check."

"Shame on us if there was information out there available about a person who applied for a job who was a child molester or had some sort of information out there on the Internet that kind of showed those propensities and we didn't look for it, we didn't ask, and we hired that person," Winn said. "In many ways we would have let the public down."

After local news reports highlighted the requirement on Wednesday, a firestorm of sorts has erupted online: irate e-mail messages have jammed mailboxes in City Hall, snarky Twitter.com comments have poked fun at a place once awarded the sobriquet of "All-America City," and a poll indicates 98 percent of respondents believe the city's policy amounts to an "invasion of privacy."

In addition to the usual requests for a home address and Social Security number, Bozeman's one-page background check form asks for the account information for "current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships." It assures applicants that any information received "is confidential."

Winn said applicants are not required to divulge their social networking log-ins, but warned that there could be repercussions if they lie. "If you say 'I have no driving violation,' and then we run your driving record and it turns out you do, and through further questioning we find out you've been deceitful about it, than that would be cause (for firing)," he said. "That tells us a lot about that particular person. They lied to us and were deceitful."

Under the policy, which the city says has been in place for a few years, a police officer logs into and reviews the social-networking sites of people applying for public safety (that is, police and fire) jobs. For other jobs, the city's human resources department will perform the investigation.

An attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco, questioned Bozeman's decision to ask for user names and passwords.

"I think its indefensibly invasive and likely illegal as a violation of the First Amendment rights of job applicants," said EFF attorney Kevin Bankston. "Essentially, they're conditioning your application for employment on your waiving your First Amendment rights...and risking the security of your information by requiring you to share your password with them.. Where does it stop? How about a photocopy of your diary?"

One potential privacy concern is that accounts for Facebook and Google, among other sites, are used for more than just displaying photos, videos, and messages. They're also used for e-mail, meaning that a Bozeman investigator could review years of personal messages.

"I don't think the government can condition your application for employment on your giving up your First Amendment rights and your Fourth Amendment rights," Bankston said.

Another possible hitch: Some social-networking sites flatly prohibit disclosure of passwords, so a job seeker who complied with Bozeman's request could lose his account. Facebook's terms of service, for instance, say: "You will not share your password (or) let anyone else access your account."

Bozeman's Winn said the city does not want to be the "taste police" and is focused on looking for evidence of illegal activity. "They can log in themselves," he said. "If not, they can show us what's on their face page. 'Yes, I have a face page but I don't want to show it to you.' That's a fine answer. We'll use other resources out there to do a through background check. We owe it to the public."

CNET News' Elinor Mills contributed to this report.

The state of Minnesota has handed Internet providers a 7-page blacklist (PDF) of gambling Web sites that they're supposed to prevent customers from accessing, a move that raises First Amendment and technical concerns.

"We are putting site operators and Minnesota online gamblers on notice and in advance," said John Willems, a Minnesota Department of Public Safety official, in a statement. Companies that received the list of off-limits Web sites--which was made public on Thursday--include AT&T, Comcast, Qwest, and Sprint/Nextel.

The Department of Public Safety's letters to the Internet providers say that "gambling is illegal within Minnesota" and claim that a federal law "requires upon notice by a law enforcement agency that you do not allow your systems to be used for the transmission of gambling information."

Federal law says that a "common carrier" must "discontinue or refuse, the leasing, furnishing, or maintaining" of any service if it's being used to transmit gambling-related information. (The U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Communications Commission, however, have suggested that neither cable providers nor DSL providers are "common carriers.")

Joe Brennan of the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association in Washington, D.C. said on Thursday evening that his group just found out about the blacklist and is consulting with First Amendment attorneys to evaluate its options.

Minnesota's move echoes what happened in Pennsylvania about six years ago. The Keystone State enacted a law permitting the state attorney general to deliver orders to Internet providers telling them to block possibly illegal Web sites.

But a federal judge in Philadelphia struck down the law in 2004 on First Amendment grounds, saying: "There is little evidence that the act has reduced the production of child pornography or the child sexual abuse associated with its creation. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that implementation of the Act has resulted in massive suppression of speech protected by the First Amendment."

One reason the law failed to survive the court challenge was because of the way the modern Web is designed. Because many Web sites can share one Internet Protocol (IP) address, blocking the IP address makes the entire list of sites inaccessible. (An expert report prepared for the trial says that out of over 20 million .com, .net, and .org domains, over two-thirds of the sites shared an IP address with at least 50 other Web sites. In many cases, Web sites shared an IP address with thousands of other sites.)

Minnesota's efforts may suffer from the same overbreadth problem. Its blacklist includes GetMinted.com, a gambling site with an IP address listed of 194.36.21.124.

Sharing that IP address is another site called Cashcade--a domain devoted not to a virtual casino, but to a parent company's corporate site, with a product list and hyperlinks to a gambling news Web site that it owns.

The Supreme Court on Monday said it is refusing to consider reinstating the Commonwealth of Virginia's junk e-mail law.

The court's inaction upholds an earlier ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court that Virginia's Computer Crimes Act violates First Amendment rights. The broad law prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails, including those containing political, religious, or other speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Virginia State Attorney General Bill Mims, according to other reports, is planning to draft a new antispam law in the next General Assembly session to address constitutional concerns.

The Virginia Supreme Court's September ruling overturned the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, the first person to be convicted of a felony under the state law. In 2005, Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in prison for sending more than 10 million junk e-mails a day.

Considered one of the most prolific spammers ever, Jaynes, according to prosecutors, made up to $24 million by selling fake goods and services via spam. He is currently serving 42 months in federal prison on an unrelated fraud conviction.

Web sites involved in defamation suits are not required to immediately hand over the identities of readers who leave anonymous comments, a Maryland court has ruled, laying out guidelines for future suits involving online anonymity.

The Maryland Court of Appeals on Friday overturned (PDF) an earlier ruling that would have forced Independent Newspapers, which runs the online forum NewsZap.com, to turn over the names of three unknown Internet posters who posted negative remarks regarding the cleanliness of a Dunkin' Donuts in Centreville, Maryland. The owner of the Dunkin' Donuts, Zebulon J. Brodie, claimed the anonymous posters defamed his store.

The appeals court decided Brodie was not entitled to learn the identities of the posters because in his complaint he misidentified the forum participants responsible for the critical comments.

The court used its ruling to set for trial courts a "standard that should be applied to balance the First Amendment right to anonymous speech on the Internet with the opportunity on the part of the object of that speech to seek judicial redress for alleged defamation."

In a defamation case involving anonymous speakers, the ruling said, courts should first require the plaintiff to try to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena. That notification could come in the form of a message posted to the online forum in question, and the posters must be given sufficient time to respond.

The plaintiff must then hand over the exact statements in question, so the court can decide whether the comments are obviously defamatory. Finally, the ruling says, the court must weigh the anonymous poster's right to free speech against the strength of the defamation case and the necessity of disclosing the poster's identity.

Police Blotter is a regular CNET News report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: A self-described girl lover with no criminal record is ordered to cease posting images of young girls on a Web site, even if the photographs were taken in public places.

When: California appeals court rules on January 15, 2009.

Outcome: Restraining order stays intact.

What happened, according to court documents and other sources:
Jack McClellan enjoys the dubious distinction of being the Internet's most famous pedophile. The self-described connoisseur of prepubescent girls promoted his Web site as the "premier site of the girl-love revolution" and claimed it was both therapy for himself and an encouragement for other girl-lovers to exit the closet. It has been featured in The New York Times and on NPR, CNN, and CBS News.

His now-defunct Stegl.info rated public events and locations, including swimming pools and fast-food restaurants, based on how likely they are to feature girls between 3 and 11 years old. An October 2007 version of McClellan's site captured by Archive.org awards the Oregon State Fair five hearts and concludes it "provided many hours of GL fun and merits my highest rating." GL stands for girl-lover.

McClelland, who is approximately 46 years old, has never been charged with or convicted of a sex-related crime, and denies ever having sex with a minor. He once told Fox News that "if it was legal and if it was a completely consensual thing, I could see myself taking it all the way to a sexual" level. But generally people can't be jailed for what they might do if given the right opportunity and if the law were different.

What makes this case relevant to Police Blotter is that McClellan would regularly photograph fully clothed girls at public events and post the images on his Web site. His locations of choice included areas such as parks, roller skating rinks, bowling alleys, ice rinks, dance recitals, and shopping centers.

UCLA campus police expelled him after they noticed a camera-toting McClellan near a child development center, according to a 2007 article in The New York Times. A CBS News story from around the same time said McClellan was living out of his Ford Escort near Los Angeles while updating his Web site. The story also noted him stating that he opposes sexual aggression: "I don't think any child should be touched sexually or nonsexually against their will."

Eventually, some parents in the southern California town of Santa Clarita claimed that their daughters started to stay away from public events for fear of being photographed. The parents sued, asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction preventing McClellan from posting not just the images of their daughters on his Web site--but any photographs of minors at all.

A trial judge granted a permanent injunction without hearing testimony from witnesses. The injunction said McClellan must stay more than 10 yards away from any place where children congregate. It also prevented him from, in the words of one court, "recording or publishing any image of any minor child without the parent or guardian's written consent." The order applies anywhere in California.

That language is quite broad, and McClellan argued that it violated his free speech rights under the First Amendment and the California Constitution. He would be barred, for instance, from publishing an archived public domain image of a teenage girl who might now be elderly or deceased. More to the point, perhaps, there is no widely recognized icky-pedophile exception to the First Amendment.

McClellan seems to have represented himself during some portions of the proceedings, arguing that the injunction unreasonably targeted his political speech, but he neglected to pursue some of the arguments a media attorney would probably have raised.

Eugene Volokh, who teaches First Amendment law at UCLA, wrote about the restraining order when it was issued. His conclusion: "You can't restrict people's movement, and their ability to take photographs in public places (even of children, something that is routinely done by the media and others and that is presumptively protected by the First Amendment), simply because of their ideology and expressed sexual desire, even when one understandably worries that at some point this ideology plus desire will turn into actual molestation. The premise of our legal system is that restraints...can only be instituted after some showing of concrete evidence that someone has committed or is planning to commit a crime."

A three-judge panel California's Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 3, disagreed. The judges unanimously affirmed the restraining order and permanent injunction, saying they "protected the rights of children." The panel also ordered McClellan to pay the parents' legal fees.

As for McClellan, it's unclear where he is now; an October 2007 post on another Web site apparently devoted to so-called girl love said he had moved to Portland and liked the "overall vibe here better than L.A. and Seattle." Meanwhile, his legacy in California includes not only this month's appellate ruling but also a law that he can claim credit for inspiring. Bill AB 534, which became law in September, says it is a crime to publish a photograph of a child "with the intent that another person imminently use the information to commit a crime against a child."

Excerpts from the opinion of California's California's Court of Appeal, Second District:
Publications, even if true, may constitute an invasion of privacy if they are presented in a lurid or indecent manner. Even if photographs are accurate and taken in public places, there can be a cause of action for invasion of privacy when they are exploitative...

For example, in Gill v. Curtis Publishing Co., a happily married couple was photographed in an affectionate pose when they were at their place of business. A magazine used the photograph in an article on different types of love as an example of mere sexual attraction. The California Supreme Court examined the context in which the article was used. The Court held that even though the couple had been in a public place when the photograph was taken, the plaintiffs had stated a cause of action because the use of the photograph could be actionable as an invasion of privacy...

McClellan states that his activities are not illegal. For example, he states that attending public events is not illegal, publishing photographs is permissible, and engaging in public advocacy for those attracted to prepubescent girls is legal. McClellan misses the point.

McClellan is not prohibited from espousing his controversial views. Rather, he is prohibited from his continuing course of conduct to harass, attack, assault, stalk, and keep under surveillance minor children, as to do so places the children in danger and is threatening to them. McClellan is not prohibited from attending public events, but rather only prohibited from being within 10 yards of any place where children congregate. He is prohibited from tracking young girls by obtaining their addresses or locations so he can post their photographs on his website and he is precluded from recording or publishing any image of any minor child without the parent or guardian's written consent. The prohibited activities are offensive to persons of ordinary sensibilities and threatening. The photographs he posts are not part of a discussion of newsworthy events...

He also presents the children in a false light because the photographs portray the children as being available to pedophiles. The voyeur and stalking nature of McClellan's activities, and his attendance at functions where children congregate, in conjunction with his use of photographs of small children is offensive, frightening, menancing, and not protected by McClellan's free speech or assembly rights. Although McClellan states that he is being punished for his thoughts and the hostile reaction to them, he ignores the response to the victims of his actions who fear for their safety.

Further, the protective order did not preclude McClellan from associating with other persons who share his beliefs or with other pedophiles. He is not prevented from discussing his beliefs with others or expressing those beliefs...The restraining order and judgment of permanent injunction are affirmed.

Caption: ACLU attorney Ann Beeson speaks to reporters after Supreme Court oral arguments on Web porn law in this 2001 file photograph.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh)

The U.S. Department of Justice has been trying since 1998 to convince courts that a federal antiporn law targeting sexually explicit Web sites was constitutional.

No longer. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected prosecutors' last-ditch defense of the Child Online Protection Act, meaning that the law will not be enforced.

COPA was enacted during the anti-Internet porn scares of the late 1990s, in part as a narrower answer to a previous Net censorship law that also met its demise in the courts. Any commercial Web site operator that posts "material that is harmful to minors" faces six months in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the law in Philadelphia, saying the prohibition was so broad and vague that even traditional publishers could face fines and imprisonment. Plaintiffs included Salon.com, which occasionally publishes racy material, the California-based lesbian-gay A Different Light Bookstore, PlanetOut, and a now-defunct coalition that included CNET Networks (publisher of CNET News), The New York Times Co., and Reuters. (A CNET executive testified against the law in January 1999.)

"It is not the role of the government to decide what people can see and do on the Internet," ACLU staff attorney Chris Hansen said in a statement on Wednesday. "Those are personal decisions that should be made by individuals and their families."

As a side note, it was the Justice Department's ongoing defense of COPA in 2006 that led to its subpoena to Google asking for a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's popular search engine and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google over a one-week period.

Since the initial proceedings, the case has bounced around the court system without reaching a resolution. During that time, the Supreme Court handed down two preliminary rulings, once in 2002 and again in 2004.

The first time, it sent the case back to an appeals court with instructions to broaden its legal analysis beyond the law's interaction with community standards; the second time, it wanted a review of whether "technological developments" have affected the law's constitutionality.

The Supreme Court's 2004 ruling against the Justice Department and in favor of the ACLU commanded a narrow 5-4 majority, with justices Stephen Breyer, William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor, and (separately) Antonin Scalia dissenting.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, upheld a temporary injunction barring prosecutors from enforcing COPA.

It was Breyer's dissent that had some free-speech advocates worried. It said COPA places "minor burdens on some protected material--burdens that adults wishing to view the material may overcome at modest cost. At the same time, it significantly helps to achieve a compelling congressional goal, protecting children from exposure to commercial pornography. There is no serious, practically available 'less restrictive' way similarly to further this compelling interest. Hence the Act is constitutional." Scalia went even further.

But the court didn't seem to want to revisit COPA a third time. Wednesday's ruling was a mere refusal to even hear the case, issued without explanation.

Even among antiporn groups, support for COPA waned as the years progressed, and federal prosecutors focused on obscenity and child pornography.

Another reason for the erosion of support may be that because the law was written so long ago, it's surprisingly limited. It applies only to material delivered "by means of the World Wide Web"--meaning that it doesn't cover peer-to-peer file sharing, the Usenet newsgroups that alarm New York's attorney general, games like Virtual Hottie 2, those naughty things happening in Second Life, videos watched via a third-party iPhone application, or streaming porn viewed through the VideoLAN Client, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player desktop applications.

A federal appeals court has struck down, on First Amendment grounds, a long-standing requirement forcing people who produce "sexually explicit" images to keep detailed records about their operations.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday (click for PDF) that the "2257" record-keeping requirements--which bedeviled the adult industry because they apply even to Web sites that "reproduce" sexually explicit material--are overly broad and violate Americans' free-speech rights.

Tuesday's ruling is a remarkable win for adult publishers, not just because of the weighty nature of the regulations but also because the lawsuit has been going on for so long. The case was originally filed in September 1995, and this is likely going to be the last word unless the U.S. Supreme Court gets involved.

Although the Justice Department tried to downplay the impact of the record-keeping rules, the court reasonably noted that the regulations apply even to couples taking erotic photos for their own private use. Uploading them to the Web is regulated as well, of course.

"This reach is extremely broad, and the most commonsense limitation, for which the statute and regulations provide some support, would be to limit the statute's reach to photographs taken for a commercial purpose, that is, photographs taken for the purpose of sale," the 6th Circuit said. But, the judges added, "the plain text and definitions of the terms used admit...no commercial limitation on who will be considered producers."

Translation: an adult couple taking a single erotic photo of themselves with a digital camera in their own bedroom is required to (a) inspect their own government-issued photo identification; (b) ascertain that they're at least 18 years old; (c) photocopy their own IDs; (d) photocopy the erotic image; (e) file this information in physical form; (g) display the date and a street address "prominently" in their files; (g) open these files to agents of the Justice Department without advance notice.

If they don't take each of those steps, both members of the couple, according to the law, are subject to a federal felony--up to five years in prison, as well as fines. Yes, all of you CNET News.com readers who have, uh, creatively experimented with digital cameras are unindicted felons too. So are all those stars of celebrity sex tapes.

Unconstitutional? Probably. Idiotic? Certainly.

Fortunately, the 6th Circuit recognized this, and concluded: "The government has drawn a similarly over-inclusive line here by including all sexually explicit photographs, whether created for commercial purposes" or otherwise. (The lawsuit was filed by a swingers' magazine called Connection that allowed couples to send in explicit photographs of themselves.)

There are two more points worth noting:

Misleading justification: Under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Justice Department has claimed that this law, known as 2257 because of its location in the U.S. Code, is necessary to protect children. But even possessing child pornography is a separate crime, still on the books, with criminal penalties severe enough to induce paranoia in the adult industry. A better explanation for why this law exists is that Congress is trying to put law-abiding porn producers out of business by weighing them down with more and more regulations--backed with mandatory prison time for non-compliance.

Everyone's a felon: When nearly everyone's a felon, staying out of jail depends on whether a prosecutor likes you or not. You can guess where political dissidents or people protesting wars end up. Besides 2257 and the obvious example of drug laws, the U.S. Congress has slowly created a a dizzying number of federal felonies, including sharing copyrighted music with a friend or family member (a crime) and fibbing to your brother-in-law over the phone that you really do intend to pay back a loan immediately (a crime). Whether you know it or not, you're probably already an unindicted federal felon too.

It's no surprise that politicians are rarely conversant with the limits on their legislating found in the U.S. Constitution. But it is worth noting when federal judges have actually read the First Amendment and strike down a law accordingly.

That brings us to Ohio's constitutionally impaired legislature, which enacted two laws that were touted as ways to protect children on the Internet but in reality would become a new censorship regime.

An Ohio federal judge on Monday struck down (see PDF) the state's combined "harmful to minors" law on the grounds that it ran afoul of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.

2709.31(A) of the law generally says "no person" shall "disseminate" or offer to disseminate to a "juvenile" any material that is "harmful to juveniles." Ohio's House Bill 490 amended it by defining electronic dissemination as having "reason to believe that the person receiving the information is a juvenile."

You can see where this is going. Let's say that one-sixth of the Internet's users are minors. That means that for almost any Web site, assuming the audience is representative, the operator has reason to believe that something like one-sixth of them are under 18 years old. (There's another section that tries to limit that requirement's sweep, but in practice it wouldn't amount to much.)

Fortunately, U.S. District Judge Walker Herbert Rice realized this. Rice said the definition of "harmful to juveniles" does not by itself violate the First Amendment and that it does not violate the Commerce Clause.

But he ruled that, in practice, applying that definition to the Internet is overly broad. In particular, he said, sexually explicit conversations in adults-only chat rooms (where a minor sneaks in) could be prosecuted. It would "act as a ban to that segment of speech between adults which is protected by the First Amendment."

This is consistent with other judges' rulings on "harmful to minors" or "harmful to juveniles" Internet statutes. The 2nd Circuit overturned Vermont's; the 10th Circuit overturned New Mexico's. In this case, Judge Rice granted a permanent injunction. He had, by the way, already granted an injunction in the case based on the earlier version of the law, but the proceedings essentially restarted after the law was changed around four years ago.

The plaintiffs include the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and the Association of American Publishers, and it was brought by their trade association called the Media Coalition.

If the appeals court upholds this ruling, the Media Coalition may be able to get attorneys' fees--which amounted to a requested $488,601 in a similar Internet censorship suit in Virginia. And that's not even counting proceedings before an appeals court, which has already happened (briefly) in the Ohio case but didn't in Virginia.

The problem is that when Ohio politicians enact unconstitutional laws, and subsequently lose in court, taxpayers end up footing the bill. It would be a far more just system if politicians were held personally responsible for paying their fair share of a half-million dollar fine for their constitutional ignorance. I'm sure Ohio politicos would have no objection--right?