The Child Pornography Prevention Act Of 1996

11. Reno v ACLU (501)- the supreme court upheld the lower court’s ruling in June 1997 by unamimously deciding a broad affirmation of free speech rights in cyberspace, arguing that the Internet was more analogous (analogous means comparable) to print media than to television, and thus even indecent material on the internet was entitled to First Amendment protection.

Conferring to activist author, Susan Jacoby's essay “A First Amendment Junkie," the First Amendment should be centered on complete construal solely. All through her essay she conveys numerous cases that people have brought up as exemptions to the Amendment, but she states that they are just a ordinary misdirection. Child Porn is a status quo that several discuss should be an exception to the Amendment. However, rendering to Jacoby, Child Porn and the First Amendment are not associated. Child Porn is just an abuse of power that one has bequeathed upon themselves and it should be punished by law, but not as disobeying the First Amendment. Throughout Susan Jacoby's essay, she makes it very

Another important Supreme Court case that examined the reasonable limits on freedom of expression is R v. Whatcott. The Whatcott ruling also challenged the jurisdictional issues of free speech. William Whatcott, a Christian activist who advocated strongly against homosexuality and same sex marriage. Whatcott distributed several flyers in Saskatchewan that discussed political, social and moral issues. Many of these flyers heavily denouncing homosexuality using strong offensive language denouncing homosexuality. The public distribution of these anti homosexual flyers put Whatcott under a great amount of scrutiny by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission found that Whatcott violated section 14 of the human rights code which states no one shall publish or distribute material that promotes hatred of any group of people. Whatcott’s activities were ruled as hate speech against homosexuals and was ordered to pay compensation to his complainants. After this case was appealed several times it was eventually heard by the Supreme Court. The question and arguments of the R v. Whatcott decision was whether human rights tribunals should be allowed restrict freedom of expression under Charter framework. (Schutten and Haigh:3-5) However, there was a golden opportunity that was missed to define the jurisdiction between political expression and hate speech. The Supreme Court could have looked at past precedent cases and Supreme Court doctrines, but

Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. Roth ran a business in New York by selling books, photos, and magazines. Roth was charged with 4 counts for sending inappropriate circulars and an inappropriate book. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Roth’s appeal. Alberts was prosecuted for the sale of lewd books, and for writing inappropriate advertisements within the books. Albert’s conviction was upheld by a lower court. The Court must decide if indecent material is protected by the freedom of speech and press in the First Amendment. All ideas, even the most foolish, controversial, and intolerable, are protected by free speech. The only exception is when they interfere in more important safeties. However, indecency has been demonstrated to have no redeeming

A sexual offence is a form of assault. The offences cover a wide variety of behaviour ranging from sexual touching, offences against children, domestic violence, penetration to the most severe which is rape.

To begin with, there are three types of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment: obscenity, libel, and slander. Obscenity is "anything which depraves or corrupts minds open to immoral influence" (Freedom of Speech, 2003). Despite the fact that the definition of obscenity has changed throughout the years, Congress, in general, has reached a consensus in determining that obscenity covers anything that is directed towards or involves youths, including child pornography. For example, in 1949, the Supreme Court upheld, in Rosenberg v. Board of Education of City of New York, that the Board of Education did not have the right to ban schools from carrying books such as Oliver Twist and The

For an instance, we can see one of the case of civil liberties, “Ashcroft Vs American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).” Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) to keep minors from getting to erotic entertainment on the web. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and online distributers sued in government court to counteract implementation of the

Craig then objected to the motion basing it on the confrontation clause but then the trial court rejected her, in which then the trial court allowed children to testify under statute, then Craig was convicted of all counts. Maryland court of last resort reversed and remanded for a new trial by rejecting Craig’s contention, but concluding that the 6th amendment’s confrontation clause guarantees face-to-face confrontation. For the statute to be invoked in the first place the defendant must have had a face-to-face with it’s accusers, and also that the state’s showing of expert testimony was insufficient in order to comply with regulations required in Coy v Iowa (1988), which was a similar case to this one but the main difference was that there was a curtain to conceal the child victim instead of a one-way closed circuit camera, therefore the defendant’s constitutional rights were violated by not being provided that right. The case was then taken by Craig to the U.S. Supreme court. The constitutional question the U.S. Supreme court is addressing was whether the one-way closed-circuit testimony of a child witness who is alleged to be a victim of child abuse violates the confrontation clause of the sixth amendment. Since the court determined that closed-circuit questioning met the fundamental purposes of the clause, (which in general are the right to personally examine the witness

MARYVILLE, MO – The case of Comstock v United States was argument today before the highest court in the land. The case asks whether the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act passed by Congress is within their enumerated powers outlined in the Constitution. Also, the court will determine if the Walsh Act violated Graydon Earl Comstock's right to due process and protection against double jeopardy when it was used to justify detaining him past the length of his prison sentence.

Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, (1978), case started when father complained to the Federal Communications Commission that his son heard a broadcast “Seven Dirty Words” of comedian George Carlin’s. In the opinion of the Court, Stevens wrote that it is compelling state interest to protect children from indecent material, and regulate unwanted speech. Therefore, the Court gave FCC an authority to determine which material is indecent, and forbid broadcasts during hours children might be watching or listening, if

For this weeks’ discussion post I chose the Supreme Court case of Pope v. Illinois (1987). This case has several values that make it significant in the field of obscenity and the First Amendment. Referring back to Miller v. California and how it set the standard for identifying obscene material not protected by the First Amendment, some portions are a bit more obscure than others. Take the third or “value” prong of the three part test to determine “whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Prior to this case it was unclear how to exactly assess whether a work lacked serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, but when two attendants at adult bookstores were charged with obscenity under Illinois law by selling certain magazines to undercover police, they moved to dismiss on grounds that the then-current version of the Illinois obscenity statute violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The judge in both trials instructed the jury that in

“This legislation grew out of the fact that by 1998 roughly ten million American children had access to the Internet, and at the same time, studies indicated that children were unable to understand the potential effect of revealing their personal information online and parent failed to monitor their children’s use of the Internet.” (Koby)

According to the1973 case of Miller v. California, material is obscene if all three of the following conditions are met:

In recent years, pornography has established itself as perhaps the most controversial topic arising out of the use of the Internet. The easy availability of this type of sexually explicit material has caused a panic among government officials, family groups, religious groups and law enforcement bodies and this panic has been perpetuated in the media.

Culture is said to be the way of life of people. It is difficult to divorce man from his culture as it defines him. Girl child marriage is one of the cultures of the Hausa people of Nigeria. Researches have shown that most Hausa women are married before they are in their early twenties. This culture has been frowned at by most Nigerians because it robs the girl child the opportunity to choose who she would have really loved to marry as she does not have the mental ability to make such a decision at a tender age. Also, the health challenges that the girls are prone to is also another reason for the call of the abolishment of such way of life. The child act of 2003 protects the Nigerian girl child against being forced into an early marriage; it states that a girl under the age of 18 cannot be contracted into marriage. It is no wonder that the recent proposed girl child marriage bill act by some senators brought about mixed reactions from Nigerians. Many of these reactions out-rightly condemned not only the propositions but also those that proposed the law. This work seeks to analyse how the blackberry messenger has been used to convince Nigerians to kick against what most called ‘child slavery act '.