First the federal government tried (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to keep children safe from pornography on the Internet. Now New Jersey is stepping up to the plate to keep children safe from online gossip. The kids clearly aren’t safe from pornography [see "Sexting and the Single Girl," March 30], but Trenton is convinced that it can and should make sure they can’t read scurrilous comments about themselves or their friends on social networking Web sites such as Facebook or MySpace.
The Legislature is trying to do this by expanding the law of defamation and by making Web site operators liable for what users write there. The first effort is merely ill-advised; the second is pre-empted by federal law and hence unconstitutional.
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