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[21 May 2008] - The United States supreme court this week upheld a federal ban on promoting child pornography, rejecting a lower court's finding that the law was overbroad and could punish people who use the internet to describe innocent photographs or sell legitimate films that portray adolescents engaged in sex. In a 7-2 ruling, the court brushed aside concerns that the 2003 Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools (Protect) Act could apply to mainstream movies that depict adolescent sex, classic literature or innocent e-mails that describe pictures of grandchildren. The statute does not require that an offender actually possess child pornography, but criminalises promotion and advertisement of child pornography, for example an internet post describing child pornography available for trade or sale. It replaced a previous ban on child pornography that the supreme court had found was an unconstitutionally overbroad restriction on the freedom of speech. Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said the act wouldn't cover film purveyors like Amazon.com or people describing innocent photos of children in a bath or in bed. The court found that the language of the statute requires that the offender believe him or herself to be offering child pornography, and the offender must intend that the listener believe the material to be child pornography. "We think it implausible that a reputable distributor of Hollywood movies, such as Amazon.com, believes that one of these films contains actual children engaging in actual or simulated sex on camera," Scalia wrote. The court rejected arguments that the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment to the US Constitution protect "offers to provide or requests to obtain" child pornography. Justice David Souter wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They were troubled that the act could conceivably be used to punish someone for promoting images that didn't in fact portray children, so long as the person believed them to. The case began in 2004, when Michael Williams publicised in an internet chat room seven photographs of actual children engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Williams pled guilty to violation of the act and was sentenced to two concurrent five-year prison sentences. He appealed the decision, and the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit reversed one of the convictions, holding the statute was overbroad and impermissibly vague. Further information pdf: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/19/usa