PHILADELPHIA -- A Pennsylvania law requiring Internet service providers to stop customers from viewing Web sites containing child pornography has been a failure and should be declared unconstitutional, a lawyer for a civil liberties group argued Wednesday.
But a prosecutor defended the law, saying that asking companies like America Online and Verizon to block access to illegal Web content is reasonable and technologically possible.
A federal judge has been considering evidence and taking testimony since January in the challenge to a 2002 law giving the state's attorney general the power to order ISPs to block access to child porn. No immediate decision is expected.
Legislators were ill-informed about how the Internet worked when they crafted the anti-porn law, argued John Morris, a lawyer for the Washington-D.C.-based Center for Technology & Democracy.
Much like the phone company can't control what people fax over phone lines, ISPs can't control content on the Web, and efforts to use sophisticated filters to stop people from seeing illicit sites have proven problematic.
In two years, Morris said, ISPs trying to comply with orders to block 411 Web sites have been forced to temporarily sever access to at least 1.5 million legal Web pages with no connection to child porn. About 500,000 of those sites remain off-limits to customers of certain ISPs, he said.
Morris called the law "well-intentioned, but fundamentally flawed."
John Shellenberger, a senior deputy attorney general, contended that the ISPs primarily made business decisions when they blocked thousands of sites rather than buy or develop more refined blocking systems.
Experts have said the technology exists, but that ISPs don't have it or can't afford it. Many also question how long it would be effective against the ever-changing tactics of those posting kiddie porn on the Internet.
Shellenberger urged the judge to preserve the Pennsylvania law, saying it's especially needed because other legislative attempts to stop the flood of "vile material" over the Internet have failed.
For instance, the Supreme Court struck down the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which made it a crime to put sexually explicit material online where children could find it. The court said the law violated free-speech rights.
