Here is a fantastic summation of the Google subpoena. In short, the government is once again trying to pass a law with vague terms in the name of protecting our children.
The Child Online Protection Act makes it a crime for a commercial Web site to post material that some jurors might find “harmful” if a minor stumbled across it.
The problem comes in deciding just what is harmful.
even portions of a “collection of Renaissance artwork” could be viewed as harmful to minors if a prosecutor was sufficiently zealous.
So, people that believe in abstinance teaching may find medical information about the male and female bodies offense while people trying to teach their children about sex may find that same information very important.
We should not be creating laws to make up for bad parenting! Parents should be talking to their children. The Internet is a reflection of the real world and while we can keep our children from seeing adult magazines and movies in our own houses that does not prevent them from going to a friend’s house, cracking open a beer, sitting down with a Playboy magazine (since it makes you go blind, nice of them to publish in Braille), and watching a hardcore sex dvd. Only through talking to our children and teaching them can we give them the tools to make the right choices and police themselves.
If we let our government become too involved in dictating morals to the people, the generation that grows up under such government will know nothing different and when that generation steps up to run our country they will see no problem in further limiting rights and civil liberties in the name of “protecting the people” and it will dominoe us right out of democracy!
see also: White House: DOJ Request for Google Data Is ‘Narrow’ “You know… “Narrow†like a wedge is narrow on one end.”