Want to see the infamous Pamela Anderson Lee honeymoon video? At least one Web site is offering it free of charge, according to a witness in the U.S. COPA hearing.
That was perhaps the only surprise during testimony in the Child Online Protection Act hearing. During the hearing, U.S. Air Force Special Agent Damon Hecker showed how easy it was to get free access to pornographic materials on the Web. Besides the Pamela Anderson Lee video, other sites offered a plethora of still images and video of couples engaged in various types of sexual activities, he said.
"I'm sure you remember the famous Pamela Anderson honeymoon video. I was able to view 11 seconds worth of that video," Hecker said, describing the sexual act portrayed in that section of the video.
U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. asked "You didn't have to register at all, or enter a credit card number?" To which Hecker responded "No. I went right to the video."
It was one of the few times Reed commented on testimony, which largely consisted of lists of porn sites that offered unfettered access to pornography.
Filling a CD-ROM
Hecker, who was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice to gather evidence on pornographic Web sites for the COPA hearing, was testifying on the fourth day of the hearing to decide whether to extend a ban on enforcing COPA. During his testimony, Hecker rattled off a list of sites whose names couldn't be published in a newspaper or repeated on network television. Over four days in November, Hecker found enough free sexually-explicit images and text on the Web to fill a CD-ROM, which was presented as evidence.
Under cross-examination by American Civil Liberties Union attorney Christopher Hansen, Hecker acknowledged that all the Web pages he included in his CD-ROM report, with the exception of one page that contained a billing form, were blocked by the filtering software programs SurfWatch and CyberPatrol.
Not a surprise
While most Netizens, and indeed most fairly tech-savvy consumers, wouldn't be shocked to learn that many porn sites offer the free teaser images Hecker cited, the issue is still key to the government's case. COPA, signed into law by President Clinton in October, would force such sites to determine users' ages before delivering such content to them.
The plaintiffs, led by the ACLU, contend the law is so overly broad that it would make many sites fence off some content even from adult users to avoid prosecution. But the government hopes to convince the judge that sites can comply with COPA without either going broke or compromising their First Amendment rights.
Reed is the same judge who signed a temporary injunction against the law's enforcement in November. If the ACLU and the 17 other plaintiffs lose this round on extending the ban, the law will go into effect Feb. 1. If they win, an appeal is likely, and the issue could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Traffic trasher
The ACLU's witnesses, including owners of mom-and-pop Web businesses and officials from big Internet names such as technology news site CNet, have cited fears that making users hand over credit card numbers to access their sites would cause traffic to plummet.
The government's witnesses, by contrast, have attempted to build the case that fencing off content that meets the "harmful to minors" legal standard isn't so hard after all -- and that there's plenty of such content to go around.
The government is to conclude its case Tuesday with testimony from PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Brian Blonder, who will speak to the financial impact of COPA compliance. Final arguments will begin later Tuesday and could stretch on into Wednesday.
