"With respect to the issue of content-labeling, Judge Benson held that website operators are not liable under Section 1233 for posting content that may be deemed harmful to minors, as long as the words or images can be detected by commercially-available software. Put another way, under the ruling, websites do not have to monitor and rate their content and label it.
Moreover, under Judge Benson’s order, no one can be prosecuted for posting content that is constitutionally protected for adults on generally accessible websites, nor is anyone required by law to label such content. In addition, Judge Benson’s order expressly forbids any prosecution under the Utah law from occurring, except when someone sends inappropriate images or language directly to a child through email, text, or instant messaging.
“This declaratory judgment makes clear that adult-to-adult communications on the Internet, and through other electronic means, cannot be restricted simply because minors also access the Internet and other electronic communications,” said David Horowitz, the Executive Director of Media Coalition, an organization that represents the trade associations of booksellers, publishers, graphic novels and comic books, and librarians.
Judge Benson’s ruling stands for the proposition that Utah’s law was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment insofar as the statutes required website operators to tag words or images that might be considered harmful to minors. Judge Benson also ruled that Utah must pay the legal fees of the organizations that successfully challenged the law."
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