U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel has issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Massachusetts Chapter 74 of the Acts of 2010, which went into effect earlier this year. The law makes anyone who operates a Website or Listserv that contains nudity or sexually explicit material (that could be construed as “harmful to minors”) subject to fines of up to $10,000, up to five years in prison, or both.
The judge issued the injunction because the law does not require that the material was purposefully sent to a person the sender knew to be a minor.
“Given the breadth of the definition of what is harmful to minors,” lead plaintiff counsel Michael Bemberger said, “all of which is not obscene and which adults have a constitutional right to receive, the injunction was necessary to ensure that all Internet communications were not reduced to the level of what is appropriate for children.”
Plaintiffs in the case include the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the ACLU, Harvard Book Store, the
