Senate approves Net porn restrictions
Declan McCullagh Former Senior Writer
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a complicated child safety bill that also would ban computer-generated child pornography and sexually explicit Internet sites with misleading addresses. With the Senate's 98-0 vote, the measure now goes to President George W. Bush for his expected signature.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 400 to 25 to approve the 118-page bill, which was the product of a compromise between House and Senate negotiators. The final version of the legislation bans erotic, computer-generated images that are "indistinguishable from" real children or teenagers and says that anyone who tries to lure an underage person to a sexually explicit site that is "harmful to minors" faces up to four years in prison.