The Supreme Court's May 19 7-2 decision upholding a five-year prison term for a purveyor of online child pornography was seen by many as having more advantages than drawbacks.

One drawback is it could be seen by some as having the potential for eroding First Amendment free-speech rights, but those interviewed by Catholic News Service felt the main advantage of the decision is it creates the potential for more prosecutions of Internet child porn.

In its decision the court said a broad 2002 federal law that punishes individuals who sell child pornography or those who seek it does not violate free-speech rights. The decision came in the case of a Florida man serving five years for possessing child porn who appealed an additional five-year sentence on a charge of pandering in child porn.

"On the whole, I think it's a very good decision," said Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media. "It certainly remedies a significant part of the problems (with) the Free Speech Coalition case in 2002 in fighting child pornography."

Peters was referring to a 2002 Supreme Court case that threw out parts of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, saying the restrictions imposed by that law were too broad, especially for works that had legitimate artistic value.

"If these films, or hundreds of others of lesser note that explore those subjects, contain a single graphic depiction of sexual activity within the statutory definition, the possessor of the film would be subject to severe punishment without inquiry into the work's redeeming value," the Supreme Court majority said six years ago.

Congress sought to remedy those issues with the PROTECT Act, an acronym for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today.

There was no guarantee that with its May 19 decision the court would rule Congress got it right this time. In the 1990s, to counter an earlier Supreme Court decision that did not restrict pornography, Congress had passed the Communications Decency Act in an attempt to reduce the amount of indecency available to minors. But it too failed after a court challenge.

But the 7-2 majority upheld the part of the PROTECT Act that criminalizes "pandering" in real or purported child pornography using online means or via regular mail, saying it is not unconstitutionally vague.

The Florida man who challenged the law's constitutionality told an undercover FBI agent online that he had photos of his own 4-year-old daughter engaged in sex. When agents raided his home, they uncovered other child pornography.

"If you make an offer to provide child pornography in a way that reasonably causes someone to believe that what you have is the real stuff, that is a crime in itself," said Charles Kennedy, who is on the adjunct faculty at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

"Possessing virtual child pornography and making an offer (to either sell or distribute it) --- that becomes a crime," Kennedy said in an interview with CNS. "That recriminalizes something that the court said six years ago was not unlawful. I think the majority of the court has the better argument" in 2008.

According to Diane Geraghty, director of the Child Law Center at Jesuit-run Loyola University in Chicago, "Our social and legal system's recognition of not only the widespread vulnerability of children to sexual exploitation but also its consequence is really a function of the last 30 years."

"It wasn't until (then) that we understood either of those things," she told CNS. Before that "we thought it was just the occasional monstrous stranger who engaged in that kind of behavior," she said.

Asked if she thought the Supreme Court ruling would deter the spread of child porn, Midge L. Wilson, a psychology professor at Vincentian-run DePaul University in Chicago who has long studied pornography's exploitation of women, said with a sigh: "Oh, probably not."

"It's kind of like the drug wars," she continued. "Where there's demand, the distribution will follow one way or another. But one way to stop it helps a little."

"The Internet is a mixed blessing in many areas," Geraghty said. "In my view the detriment has outweighed the positive in the sense that it has expanded the scope and availability of opportunity to those who would take advantage of children. It has really globalized exploitation of children.

"Someone sitting in his bedroom in Bangkok (Thailand) has access to something that's being filmed in southern Germany that's going to be potentially distributed worldwide," she said.

Mary Leary, an associate professor of law at Catholic University, said she did not see the Supreme Court's decision in the Florida case as "too restrictive at all" in terms of free speech.

"The ability of law enforcement to respond to the boundless imagination of these offenders can never be measured," she said, but the ruling will help police and law enforcement prosecute them.

The online porn world is populated by clueless people, added Kennedy. "Every '13-year-old girl' looking to meet older men on the Web is an FBI agent. You'd think they'd (perpetrators) know that by now. But somehow they keep coming back."

---CNS