Cyberporn Essay - California and Lewd Matter to a Minor Over the Internet :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

California and Lewd Matter to a Minor everywhere the Internet   On August 3, 2000, the California administration of Appeals for the First appellate District, Division Five, affirmed the conviction of defendant on two counts of attempting to mobilise or show up lewd matter to a minor via the Internet.(People) This judge explores the development of this verdict.   The Court rejected defendants trading Clause and First Amendment challenges to Cal. Pen. law 288.2(b) which makes it a crime for every mortal who, with knowledge that a individual is a minor, knowingly distributes, sends, causes to be direct, exhibits, or offers to distribute or exhibit by electronic mail, the Internet ..., to a minor with the disembodied spirit of arousing, large-hearted to, or gratifying the lust or passions or sexual desires of that soulfulness or of a minor, and with the intent, or for the purpose of seducing a minor, is guilty of a public offense and shall be punished by imprisonm ent in the state prison or in a county jail. A person convicted of a second and any subsequent conviction for a colza of this section is guilty of a felony.(Ibid)   Pursuant to an undercover investigation on the Internet, defendant initiated two instant messages with a detective posing as a 14 year old male child. During the electronic conversations, defendant sent photographs, made an offer to engage in specific sexual acts and invited the boy to meet him at his house. The Court held Section 288.2(b) did not violate the Commerce Clause because no legitimate commerce would be burdened by penalizing the transmission of harmful sexual material to known minors in order to seduce them.(Ibid)   Rejecting defendants argument that the statute subjects Internet users to inconsistent linguistic rules, the Appeals Court distinguished the instant statute from the law challenged in American Libraries Assn. v. Pataki, 969 F. Supp. clx (S.D.N.Y. 1997).(American)   The Pataki Court held the New York statute violated the Commerce Clause because The genius of the Internet, like that of rail and highway traffic, requires a cohesive matter scheme of regulation so that users are reasonably able to determine their obligations. Absent national regulations, according to Pataki, Internet users would be subject to inconsistent local statutes regulate the content of their communications.   The California Appeals Court found determinative the knowledge and intent elements missing from the New York statute, but present in Section 288.