Eugene Volokh in today’s Wall Street Journal, on yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling stating that banning pornography on the Internet is unconstitutional:

Yet any effectiveness comparison should ask whether the Act is necessary to provide extra shielding, i.e. whether Act-plus-filters would be more effective than filters alone. And the Act probably would provide extra shielding when a 13-year-old, say, visits a friend whose parents didn’t properly install a filter. So the decision is logically unsatisfying; but in practice, even a contrary decision wouldn’t have much helped shield children, as offshore porn would remain available. Only a government-mandated nationwide electronic firewall can prevent that, a solution most Americans wouldn’t endorse. All parents can do is to filter their home computers — and recognize that, whatever the law, determined teens will probably be able to find porn on a prurient buddy’s PC.

Exactly. And with respect to the radio, the best filter is for parents to turn it off. If the government is not allowed to fine domestic Internet pornographers any more, then why should they be fining Howard Stern? If I were Stern, I would sue the FCC immediately for redress of all previously paid fines, citing this court decision, stating that the same logic as applied to the radio would indicate the fines against him were unconstitutional as well.

Read Volokh.

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