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Domain name tricksters may land in jail
March 26, 2003
The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Thursday on a proposal that would criminalize using misleading domain names to lure unsuspecting people to sex sites.
Under the proposal, a last-minute amendment to an unrelated child abduction bill, people who knowingly use an innocent-sounding domain name to drive traffic to a sexually explicit Web site could be fined and imprisoned for two to four years. An example of an innocuous-sounding domain name with pornographic content is WhiteHouse.com, which is not sponsored by the Bush administration.
A second amendment that is scheduled for a floor vote at the same time renews Congress' campaign to outlaw "morphed" or virtual child pornography. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court slapped down Congress' first attempt to ban nude images of computer-generated minors and underage teens, saying the 1996 law violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression.
The current proposal would ban the creation or possession of "a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image" that is "indistinguishable" from a real minor.
The House Rules committee late Tuesday adopted a procedure that permits both amendments, and six others, to be considered during debate over an unrelated bill to create an "Amber Alert" notification network for child kidnapping cases. The Amber Alert bill encountered modest opposition when House Judiciary chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., decided to turn it into a broader proposal addressing criminal penalties, sex tourism and wiretapping.
More details at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-994201.html
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