Net Porn Law: Help for Kids, Pain for Business

Rick Groman has spent almost four years creating a profitable Web site for West Stock, his 22-year-old stock photography service. But all of his efforts may come to nothing: A new federal antismut law could put his and thousands of other mainstream Web businesses out of business. At least, that's the contention.

Like many sites that include some controversial material, West Stock is not in the pornography business. The company licenses 40,000 stock photos to graphics professionals. But because West Stock's inventory contains some photographs of scantily clad women that could be viewed as "harmful to minors," the site may need an expensive, time-consuming overhaul to restrict access to these pictures.

The law in question is the Child Online Protection Act, which was passed at the close of the last congressional session in October. COPA, also referred to as the Communications Decency Act II, has a noble aim: to shield minors from sexually explicit content on the Web by requiring commercial sites to limit access to such material to individuals who are 18 years of age or older. Business owners who fail to comply with the new law can be fined as much as $50,000 a day and receive a jail term of up to six months. Groman is one of 30 plaintiffs in a challenge to the new law that's been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups.