Leaked drafts of the Stop Online Exploitation of Our Children Act read like a speech squasher’s gift list. The bill requires the government to create a list containing the e-mail addresses of known sex offenders — probably compiled from various state databases of sex offenders. All online publishers, including bloggers and blog aggregators like LiveJournal, will be forced to police everything posted on their sites, searching for e-mails from this list. If they find a match, publishers must delete the accounts associated with the offending e-mail address — as well as anything the owner has published on the site. Failure to do so will result in steep fines. Fines will also be imposed if publishers fail to report behavior that might involve child porn or obscene behavior.
Read The Stop Online Expression Act from Alternet’s Annalee Newitz. Also from Alternet: Questionable Conviction of Connecticut Teacher in Pop-up Porn Case. Previously from WNM: Web censorship injunction up for review and Are we our (blog) brother’s keeper?
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