CNET: Far-reaching censorship law challenged

A Philadelphia judge heard arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and another nonprofit group against the Pennsylvania anti child porn law that has forced many Internet service providers to ban large swathes of the Internet. The law allows the state to send, in secret, lists of Internet addresses that it requires to be made unavailable to state residents. Since ISPs are generally national companies, this effectively removes them from the Internet entirely. Worse, more than a million innocent sites have been banned alongside the others, as the mechanism for banning sites is fairly indiscriminate.

Legal experts have long expected the law to be challenged. For its part, the counsel for Pennsylvania argued that the case should be thrown out because the state never intended to ban innocent sites.