Law Commons^™

'Scrubbing' The Inbox: A Constitutional Alternative To Child Protection Registries, David Logan Pool

David Logan Pool

After the judicial demise of the Communications Decency Act and Child Online Protection Act and the continued impotency of CAN-SPAM to curb unsolicited commercial email, children remain vulnerable to harmful, indecent content via their inbox. In a recent attempt to curtail such exposure, several States have created Child Protection Registries. In essence, the laws allow children to register their email addresses with the state. The state laws impose significant criminal and civil penalties on senders of indecent material who send such emails to registered minors. Because the States retain the list of protected emails, senders of potentially indecent emails must, …