Child Online Protection Act (COPA) shot down again
Posted by Jacque on July 23rd, 2008
Originally passed by Congress and signed into law in 1998, COPA was supposed to protect children from “harmful” Internet content. The wording of the law was very broad and would have required website operators to implement a number of measures to enforce “contemporary community standards,” reports Ars Technica. According to the ACLU blog, it would have even barred adults from seeing material that was not appropriate for a child and would have affected, among other things, the online availability of sexual health information.
The law has been struck down again and again and never enforced in its 10 years of existence. For instance, in 2007, the District Court ruled it unconstitutional. It found that COPA violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, ruling that “COPA prohibits much more speech than is necessary to further Congress’ compelling interest.” The government appealed once again, bringing us to yesterday’s development.
“In a unanimous decision, the court ruled (PDF) that COPA was ‘not narrowly tailored’ enough to serve the government’s goal of protecting children from content on the Internet, it was not the least restrictive means available, and was substantially overbroad.
The government now has the same decision to make as it has many times in the past: whether to appeal to the Supreme Court (again), or let it die. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see the case appealed one last time.” Enough already!