User:Bethdee/sandbox

On July 28, 2011, the United States House Judiciary Commitee passed the Procecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. The bill passed by a vote of 19-10. Opponents of the bill are concerned over the broad access to information. Several online sources state that the bill is dead, but a Congressional Budget Office report on the costs of enacting the bill was released on October 12, 2011. The bill is due to be presented in the House of Representatives.

History
On May 25, 2011 the bill was introduced by Representative Lamar Smith of Texas and co-sponsored by 25 other Representatives of the House. On July 28, 2011 the bill was passed by the House Judiciary Committee.

Cost
On October 12, 2011 a report on the financial impact of the bill was released. This report stated that the cost to the government would be minimal and that there would be over $200 million in costs for the private companies providing internet services. Costs would include servers for storage of the user data.

Purpose
The purpose of the bill is to protect children by giving law enforcement more access to information in order to track down and capture those who produce and/or distribute child pornography.

Scope
This bill would introduce tougher sentencing for offenders and would make it a crime to financially facilitate the sale, distribution and purchase of child pornography. The bill also makes Internet Service Providers (ISPs) responsible for keeping records of all customers' internet usage for twelve months for use in investigations of child pornography and child exploitation.

Controversy
Some critics have suggested that this Bill was a sneaky way to bring in legislation to track internet usage. Some suggest that with the extended powers of the Patriot Act, information collected could be broadly used and Civil Liberties could be compromised. Representative Zoe Lofgren, (D-Calif.) one of the most vocal opponents of the bill, presented an amendment to rename the Bill the "Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act."

Supporters of the Bill as well as some of the opponents support the changes in sentencing for offenders. Some supporters also say that because the offenders are able to change their Dynamic IP addresses, they need to be able to capture all internet activity in order to track offenders after an offense has occurred.