Justices hear U.S. plea to toughen Net porn law

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday about Internet pornography, one of the thorniest issues at the intersection of technology and First Amendment rights.

Neither side got a free ride from the justices in the discussion of the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would make it illegal for commercial Web sites to make material available to children 16 and under that is not necessarily obscene but is considered "harmful to minors."

Just minutes into his argument, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson was interrupted by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who asked why the government was fighting for new laws when it was not enforcing the old ones. "There are very few prosecutions, and there's all kinds of stuff out there," she said. "What's going on?"

Olson said the Bush administration was stepping up its prosecution of pornography cases in the online and offline world and had issued 21 indictments in the past two years.

Regulation of Internet pornography is urgently needed, Olson insisted, because "it's causing irreparable injury to our most important resource — our children." The materials are "as available to children as a television remote," he said, and turn up when youngsters make the most innocuous searches.

He argued that the world of online pornography was exploding and said that typing the words "free porn" on a search engine produced 6,230,000 sites. "I did this this weekend," he said. When asked whether all of the sites could be considered obscene, he said, "I didn't have enough time to go through all of those sites," drawing laughs from justices and spectators.

At another point, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wanted specific examples of Web sites that adults should be able to view, but which could run afoul of the law's prohibitions.

He had read a brief arguing that the law was unconstitutional, he said, and "I couldn't find one that did fit it."

Ann Beeson, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, cited examples that included "lesbian and gay pleasure" and "the pleasure of sex outdoors," and the works of a sex columnist, Susie Bright.