Sen. McCain proposes "child protection" law that may turn webmasters into content police

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(NaturalNews) Technology news site CNET reports it obtained legislation proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would require web sites to either report users who post illegal images or videos, or pay fines up to $300,000.

"Technology has contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some believe, desire for child pornography," McCain said while addressing the Senate on Wednesday. The protection of children on the internet is a hot-button issue in Washington right now, but the increasingly broad definitions of child pornography mean that compliance with McCain's legislation would be problematic for small web sites and individuals.

Under the proposal, web sites would have to report illegal images or videos to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which would then forward them to the appropriate authorities. Such requirements already exist, but McCain's proposal also targets individual bloggers whose web sites offer discussion areas; all message boards; all chat rooms; all social networking sites; all email services; all instant messenger services; internet content hosting services; domain name sellers; all video or image sharing services; and any site that requires membership for use, paid or not.

Electronic Fronteir Foundation attorney Kevin Bankston said that the regulations might present a slippery slope.

"Once you start creating categories of industries that must report suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?" he said.

However, Kate Dean of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association supported the proposal, saying the current procedures for reporting illegal images were unclear, and her members appreciated McCain rewriting them.

The reporting procedures are not the only contentious part of the legislation, however, as it also proposes to create a federal registry of "any e-mail address, instant-message address, or other similar Internet identifier" belonging to convicted sex offenders, who would face 10 years in prison if they failed to supply such identifiers. It further requires social networking sites to take "effective measures" to remove any pages "associated" with any sex offender. However, the term "social networking site" has not been defined, and could go beyond MySpace.com and its many clones to sites like Slashdot.com, Amazon.com and any site that offers public profiles of its users.

However, Bankston said that online sexual solicitation of minors has dropped in the last five years, according to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children figures, despite the surge in popularity for social networking sites.

"This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts," he said.

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