Quote - Any chance of having the original post reposted in English for those of us who don't understand legal jargon (gibberish)?

Let me give this translation a crack - a good writing exercise if nothing else. I am going to boil each paragraph down to the core human readable facts. Keep in mind this my attempt at a translation - not what I believe to be true in all parts!!! Thier decision not mine!!!

PG1

The Child Pornography Prevention act (CPPA) is basically wanting to outlaw anything that appears to be child porn wheter it involves a child in making it or not. It also wants to specifically prevent people from faking child porn with non-child actors. An adult entertainment union(of sorts) filed a lawsuit because they felt the law was overbroad and vague - it did not define what it was making illegal well enough. The government won a lower court decision on this but on appeal lost due to the fact that the court of appeals agreed that the law was not clear and could be possibly used to make illegal things not really meant to be addressed by the new law that are currently legal - things (visual media) that are not legally meeting the definiton of obscene and do not envolve a real child in other words. It also reinforces that any porn envolving real children is illegal wheter or not it is determined to be legally obscene or not.

PG2
In a nutshell the Supreme Court says the appeals court was correct and deems the CPPA offically too broad and illegal as it was presented to them.

PG3
Basically there is no reason to overturn past legal decisions (precedent) and/or restrict freedom of speech as stated in the First Amendment.

PG4

The CPPA makes it to where the government does not have to prove that a thing, in it's whole form, is actually legally obscene in order to ban/prosecute it. The CPAA applies to things without any consideration to the redeeming value of the the thing or community standards - anything inferring any underage sex would be illegal. It gives the example the CPAA could make owning a movie that deals with or has scene involving underage sex illegal (sex between two teenagers for example) and you could be serving some hard time for just owning it even though underage sex is part of the reality we live in daily. Furthermore one such scene that is offensive by itself does not make an entire work legally obscene. The last sentence is a tough one to grok - I beleive that they state that the CPAA does not define "lacks the required link" what is obscene about what it makes a thing illegal "it's prohibitions" and that the the thing in question is deemed illegal wheter or not it is actually offensive to the community (the average folks in america) and/or are not obscene under the standing legal definition of what obscene is.

Whew...

PG5
Basically this tells of the case where child porn and its sale became illegal and relates that the reason behind that ruling was that child porn was a form of child sexual abuse and the sale for profit of it encouraged people to abuse children to make money. The CPAA makes things that have nothing to do with the sexual abuse of children illegal. The ruling that made child porn illegal did not deal with the content but with how the content is made, did not rule that all depictions had no value and that nonobscene and nonchild abusing content was protected under the First Amendment. In fact the original ruling literally encouraged the substitution of virtual or adult alternatives in work of such nature. The supreme court also states here that the availability of simulated child porn as a subsititute can not be proven to increase child abuse and hence is not illegal. (kinda like video games and violence here)

PG6
The CPPA says that simulated child porn might somehow be used to seduce children (i dont understand that myself) but current laws state that speech(read things) that are determined suitable for adults can not be made illegal outright just to keep it from kids. Again the court states that speech (read things) can not be made illegal because the might incite an unlawful act - at least without defining proof. The government argues that the since real porn is illegal the virtual must be as well - the court says this is illogical because few porn companies would risk hurting a child if they could use a virtual one. Furthermore even if this was applied to try to get rid of the market for child porn it can not be justified because the production of such content does not break any laws. I am not exactly sure what the statement about the First Amendment being turned upside down implies but they do say that the difficulty for law enforcement (I am guessing) in determining what is virtual and what is not does not factor in this. Current law states that the government cant ban a thing if a substantial amount of it is legal by definiton. First Amendment issues aside the CPPA is illegal because it makes even things that can be proven as virtual (and thus not the product of child abuse) illegal. The CPPA does not protect the average person who might have a virtually created image.(which is not child abuse by the courts ruling)

PG7

Creating the impression of child porn with what is actually not child porn can not be called illegal. The thing in question must be sexually explicit. This part is human readable - "Even if a film contains no sexually explicit scenes involving minors, it could be treated as child pornography if the title and trailers convey the impression that such scenes will be found in the movie. The determination turns on how the speech is presented, not on what is depicted."

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Vocab lesson time...
Main Entry: pan·der·ing
Function: noun
1 : the act or crime of recruiting prostitutes or of arranging a situation for another to practice prostitution —compare PIMP
2 : the act or crime of selling or distributing visual or print media (as magazines) designed to appeal to the recipient's sexual interest

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I think this part is saying that in cases where this material like other erotic material is used somehow in connection of the commercialization of sex (pandering) courts should consider the material when determining what is legally obscene. (just cause it is virtual does not mean it is not porn). The court says that the CPPA makes anyone who has touched the stuff in question guilty even if they had nothing to with producing it. (think a store that unknowningly sells something illegal facing the same punishment as the people who made it - I think..)  When a movie is labeled to look like child porn but obviously isnt (probably the school girl thing here I imagine) the CPAA makes the person who has it a criminal even though that person had no intent of viewing child porn. In the end the first ammendment (which is primary in the concern of the court in this issue) requires the government to be more precise than the CPPA - hence the CPPA is unconstitutional.

 

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstien