Author Of SAFE Act Insists He Didn't Mean For It To Cover WiFi... But Won't Promise Any Changes
from the well-that-helps dept
Yesterday we posted on the no-discussion-necessary rapid approval of the SAFE Act, and highlighted some of the more questionable problems in the bill. While the post was pretty clear about why we (and others) believed it covered WiFi (the broadly worded language in the bill, which we had in the post), we've been getting some emails from folks who say that we twisted the legislation out of context. It probably doesn't help that whoever submitted our post to Digg (and got it Dugg onto the front page) did so in a misleading way, making it sound like our post said something it did not. However, with so much interest in this bill, it's worth digging a little deeper. The bill's author quickly responded to the charges by saying that it wasn't intended to cover open WiFi networks, but the bill itself doesn't make that clear -- and the courts tend to go by the text of the law, rather than intent (intent can be helpful, but it's much less important). The author of the original article has a clarifying conversation with the author of the bill, asking him if he'll change the text to make it clear that open WiFi is not covered -- and he gets no promises. Instead, in typical "protect the children" fashion, the guy just goes on about what an awful problem this is. The thing is, no one is denying that child pornography is a terrible thing. What we're worried about is incredibly broadly worded bills that were clearly written and approved in a hurry with little oversight, and which do not appear to take into account the unintended consequences of what they're putting into law.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: congress, protect the children, safe act, wifi
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Save us all from these
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Safe Act
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Internet is not a Big Truck
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Safe Act
It's already a crime to fail to report what you know about, and you're already allowed to choose ignorance and wait for someone to tell you what you're hosting, which especially benefits big places like say imageshack, who can't feasibly go over every image, but do have a reporting system.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Election-year grandstanding
That's what this is. No more, no less. I'll bet that the utterly clueless moron behind this bill can't even quote statistics on the incident of child pornography online, can't describe its economic, criminal or social aspects, and wouldn't grasp how trivially easy it is to modify photographs (and video) at the bit level to slip them past any detection method. The purpose of this bill is NOT to "protect the chillllllllddrrrrrrrun"; it's to get this dirtbag re-elected. And that, in turn, is why it's being rushed through just in time to be an early Christmas present for its author.
Oh, let me anticipate the you're-soft-on-kiddie-porn retort. No, exactly the opposite. But I'd prefer to see real, effective, substantive action taken that directly addresses the problem rather than a farce like this.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
YAWSTOTCA (Yet Another Won't Someone Think of the
We'll see how long it takes for the Supreme Court to overturn this latest attempt at legislating thought crime for people too stupid to know the difference between text, art and illegal acts...
[ link to this | view in thread ]