It was a ruling that pleased free speech advocates and ticked off porn legislation activists.

A California judge has dismissed a felony charge against a former teacher charged with trying to seduce a teenage boy over the Internet, adding one more argument to the debate swirling over riminalizing porn on the Net. On Monday, Contra Costa Superior Court Judge John Minney declared unconstitutional a Penal Code section that makes it illegal to send sexual material over the Net if the sender knows the recipient is a minor, according to articles in the Contra Costa Times and the Recorder. Many free speech advocates were pleased about the ruling and its implications for continued freedom of speech on the Net. But advocates of federal anti-porn laws said that free speech advocates are simply missing the point by allowing criminals to get off in the name of the First Amendment. Edwin Wheelock, a former middle school teacher, was charged with one count of sending harmful material over the Net with intention to seduce a minor. Wheelock was arrested in April after being caught allegedly attempting to seduce a 14-year-old boy by chatting online and sending explicit photos to a police officer posing as a minor. But Judge Minney dismissed the charge, saying that the state law violated the free speech and due process provisions of the First and 14th Amendments. "The First Amendment guarantees us the right to speak and impart information to other people," Pierce said. "Porn is very vaguely defined. What constitutes pornography, you may not think is pornography. (Wheelock) is going to have to be tried under some other law. The state needs to craft another law that isn_t so vague." The dismissal is the latest in a series of Net porn cases that have been thrown out because a judge ruled that federal laws governing sexual material and minors on the Net were unconstitutional.