Pennsylvania Won't Identify Blocked Sites
from the you-can't-handle-the-truth! dept
Pennsylvania’s attorney general has taken a page from the Australian Internet Censors Handbook and told civil liberties groups and the associated press that he
won’t give out Pennsylvania’s official list of pornography sites that must be blocked because they don’t want to help promote those sites. At the same time, they point out that distributing the list would be illegal itself. In other words, only people working for the attorney general’s office are pure enough in their hearts to view this stuff and not come away corrupted? I have nothing against trying to stomp out child pornography – and, in fact think it’s important – but rulings like this mean there’s simply no oversight on the matter. It’s impossible for anyone to check to make sure innocent sites aren’t being blocked as well. In fact, the specific claim is that Pennsylvania is forcing IP addresses to be banned – which is a huge problem for virtual hosts that have multiple websites on the same IP address. Completely innocent sites may get blocked just because they happen to use the same hosting company as a pornographer.