Congress passed a law this week aimed at protecting kids from stumbling onto porn through misspelled domain names, searches, and "misleading" hyperlinks. Be sure everything is clearly labeled or you could be fined or imprisoned!

Story here.

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What makes them think they will be able to enforce this.

While Congress may call it a LAW, it is mearly a statement of intent until it survives Litigation in our Courts! What a wast of taxpayer funding.

I don't believe it is wasteful spending. Have you ever typed in a domain incorrectly and been sent somewhere you didn't want go? I have.

Have you ever tried to go to a children's site with your children looking over your shoulder and someone took a common site and common mispelling to display unwelcome material. I have.

This is not about free speech. Just as I can't jokingly, yell "Fire" in a crowded setting, I shouldn't be able to have domains and links that only purpose is to deceive people into getting something they didn't ask for.

If you want people to come see your "stuff" or see other people's "stuff", be honest about it. What is so difficult in that? And it is because people have decided to be deceitful that Congress had to act.

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This may be a good idea, but instead of the government trying to parent the kids, isn't the issue of identity theft a bigger and more urgent problem?
I see nothing in this article about fraudulent devients & crooks that mask domains when sending out hords of emails claiming to be banks. Adults fall for this scam every day, entering usernames, passwords & other sensitive data. Why not focus on abolishing these slimes?

Misleading links are integral to phishing and pharming schemes as well, so I'd like to see this expanded to include ALL links and domain names!

The controversy regarding porn isn't at issue here. Freedom of speech does not cover forcing or tricking people into hearing what you have to say or seeing what you have to show them. Certainly parents have the right to try to protect their children, but what about the adult who doesn't want to receive porn email or be tricked into visiting a porn website? If I'm interested in porn I can seek it out. If I'm not, I should be able to easily avoid it.

Then there are all the illegal uses for misleading links and domains. Frankly, I can't think of a single reason why it would be all right to use misleading links and domains. To me, this one is a no brainer and I'm shocked that Congress has actually managed to DO something useful!

This law can be enforced if anyone actually bothers to try to enforce it. The question is, will anyone bother?

The internet is young and the law requires updates in order to give the prosecuting power the tools to do something about criminal activities online.

If I understand it correctly all it says is that you can't link to adult sites saying it is something else. Seems to me that that has nothing to do with free speech.

These things never are a waste of taxpayer funding. Without laws we would still be living in the stone age. But of course, there are quite a lot of flintstones out there.. :)

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While I agree that this decietful method of luring people to porn websites is unacceptable, I believe that enforcement of such a statute will be nearly impossible. This is particularly true of offshore web sites that are not subject to US law. How do you enforce this thing anyway. It could take years for litigation to prove what constitutes an illegal hyperlink and those who use them are crafty enough to find other ways to accomplish the same thing.

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The intent is valiant but the legislation was obviously created by morons who don't know how the Internet is used by real people.

Restricting domain names is a restraint of trade and is a poor method of control. If there is ever a successful trial that relies on this inane law, it won't be long before all businesses are pigeonholed into specific domain name formats. The law is overly broad. A site named "body.com" could be applied to any number of industries, not just porn, and is not in itself deceptive. This law gives the puritanical, political nutcases a means to file more frivolous lawsuits, as if we don't have enough of those already.

I'm not supporting deceptive trade practices; quite the contrary. It's the way they tried to implement this law that is more objectionable than the material they are trying to prevent access to. Don't blame websites for taking advantage of users' inability to use a keyboard; that's putting blame in the wrong place.

This was a badly planned bad law that will have unintended consequences. Hopefully it will never survive the first court case.

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Ed

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If that is the only thing this prevents, I am happy.

You know, as soon as I read this article, that was the first thing I thought of as a counter-argument. I have to say, though, that the alternative is to never have legislation on anything in this new global marketplace. Maybe it's appropriate to have legislation such as this just to have a standard for our own culture to conduct itself under, or to take a stand internationally. And even if it brings only one violator to justice, wouldn't that be worth it?

I think there are times when doing nothing really is better than doing something in a poorly executed manner, but I don't think this is that instance.

I know for a fact that porn could easily be controlled just by simply using .xxx as an extension on domain names that way anything that has to do with the adult industry is defined and if parents what to block adult sites they can restrict access to .xxx. what is the industry waiting for. this is such an easy fix..

the government is wasting time passing laws for illegal click throughs. it doesn't cover misleading advertising click throughs etc.

I know for a fact that porn could easily be controlled just by simply using .xxx as an extension on domain names that way anything that has to do with the adult industry is defined and if parents what to block adult sites they can restrict access to .xxx. what is the industry waiting for. this is such an easy fix..

the government is wasting time passing laws for illegal click throughs. it doesn't cover misleading advertising click throughs etc.[google][yahoo][wiki][/wiki][/yahoo][/google]

This is like the recent anti-gambling law they just passed. Not really enforceable, just more political bantering.

Then they select one big ginnie pig to make an example of and everyone making money on gambling is supposed to quit, LOL.

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I think you are looking at it backwards. Having a site called "body.com" that points to health products will not be affected by this law (IMO). However, having a site called "luckycharms.com" that points to photos of Irish genitalia is what this law is designed to prevent.

Also, I would have a hard time believing that this law has been written just so that an enforcement body can go around hunting down people to throw in jail, simply because they put up a vacation photo of their girlfriend in a bikini on their blog site called "ilovecandy.com". Rather, it is a tool for them to use so that when they find someone doing something shady, they have the means to prosecute and punish.

Blame in the wrong place? It's exactly the right place. You aren't going to throw users in jail because they are stupid (although some would argue that you should). The Web site is the one being deceptive. There are thousands of laws that deal with this principle - full disclosure on sales of houses and vehicles, truth in advertising, advertised pricing guarantees, warranty obligation, etc. Laws in these areas are all designed to protect the consumer from deceptive practice, especially if it is beyond their control ("Caveat Emptor" notwithstanding - I'm talking about when the user has already done due diligence and cannot reasonably discover the nature of a deception).

I think you've gone a bit too far into the deep end of the cynicism pool.

On-side to protect the kids but it's obvious that down the road it will end up going farther than it's first intention. Some kids can't be protected no matter what the legislators do.

This is long overdue. If the Internet were self-policing this wouldn't be necessary. Some search sites have made a token effort to trash misleading links, but there is only so much they can afford to do.

To their credit, Google does successfully segregate naturists from naturalists, even when the exhibitionists among the nudists insist upon using the wrong word.

Yes, a lot of money is going to be wasted on litigation. IMHO, all litigation - as it is currently practiced - is a waste of money, and when some attorney tries to argue that exhibitionistic porn sites have the right to dishonestly lure innocents to view their porn, it will simply be one parasite defending another parasite.

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This is a typical congressional non-solution to a very real problem. This will do NOTHING to get rid of the swarm of online pedophiles that we, the American public, are worried about when we hear the phrase "online sexual predators". I don't see anything remotely valiant or well-meaning about it. Congress isn't composed of idiots. Congress is composed of people that think WE'RE idiots. They know damn well that this law won't do anything, but now they get to campaign on their stand against online predators and best of all it won't cost them a dime.

If we are serious about addressing the problem of online predators how about this:

300 cops, with 50 of them on line 24 hours a day 7 days a week. These guys spend 2 hours a day "training". They watch MTV and play Tony Hawk. They can talk about Yu-Gi-Oh and WOW with any 12 year old out there. 300 cops on line looking for and exterminating vermin in cooperation with local law enforcement agencies. I can gurantee you that that cooperation would not only be forthcoming, but EAGERLY forthcoming. We'd see a 10 fold drop in online predation in a month. These sick bastards would be falling all over each under tring to get back under the rock they crawled out of.

300 cops, assuming 50k a year in salary and another 10k in benefits, with 20 supervisers and techs making an average of say 70k. Say another million for office space and computers. Total cost just over 4 million bucks. Sound like a lot of money?

4 Tomohawk missiles.

What this law tells me is that my kids aren't worth 4 tomohawk missles. That congress thinks I'm dumb enough to fall for their Mr. Feel Good Link Law is just adding insult to injury.

It just makes me sick.

Does this law apply to everybody, or is it just the US?

Does the US government know what www stands for? It isn't USAww for a good reason.

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Every kid I know is going to LOVE this law. Now they'll know which links to click.

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First, "misspelled" is not 'mis-typed'. Mistyping can still bring up porn.

Lastly, being more clear with URL makes it easier for curious minds to find that which we too often stumble across anyway.

The intent is honorable, but the US doesn't own the Internet and try as they might, can not control URL's in other countries (yet).

It is sad how just a few years ago politicians, corporations, and religious leaders thought he Internet was a passing fad, then tout it as the 'second coming' and then, try to control that which is world-wide.

As CNN reported a few days ago, the majority of kiddie-porn sites are on servers in the U.S. The americans, with the help of the UN can't find Bin Laden - how do they expect to control the 'Net with a few words on paper?