Nitke Case Reaction / Commentary Round-Up
I need to be careful what I write about the case. So here's a collection of comments of interest (note, sigh, tedious disclaimer: inclusion of a comment below does not necessarily indicate my endorsement of the statement, as a matter of fact or law).
Eric Goldman:
"In any case, given the Supreme Court precedent on this topic, it's not
surprising the plaintiffs lost their challenge to the law, but what a
way to lose! The court acknowledges that the named plaintiffs had
proper standing to challenge the law because of their activities might
be legitimately chilled. Yet, the court nevertheless rejects the
challenge because the plaintiffs were unable to show substantial
overbreadth, which the court wanted evidenced by:
* the total amount of speech implicated by the CDA
* the amount of protected speech inhibited by the CDA
* is there a reason that the online differing-standards issue is worse
than faced by traditional pornographers?
This is entirely circular. It's the lack of reliable information about what will be considered obscene (and where) that creates the plaintiff's dilemma in the first place. ..."
Alan Wexelblat:
"I can't fathom the kind of metric I would use to measure a "total
amount" of chilled speech. How many people are intimidated into
silence? Number of images not photographed? Size of Web sites never
built? Megabytes of p0rn downloaded in secret? Someone help me out here."
Seth David Schoen:
"... the court ruled for the defendant (the United States) on the
narrow ground that the plaintiffs had not met their burden of proof by
submitting sufficient evidence"
Rik Lambers:
"I haven't
read the judgment myself, so let me just give some background on the
community standards, which have haunted (regulation of) internet
speech for almost a decade."
