The Supreme Court has ended a decade-long campaign to restrict Web content by refusing to hear the government’s appeal of lower-court rulings that declared the Child Online Protective Act unconstitutional.
First passed in 1998, COPA restricted access by minors to any material considered harmful, including content related to sexual identity and pornography. The law was never enforced because of challenges by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the law violated the First and Fifth amendments.
Three major studies, including one entitled Youth, Pornography, and the Internet by the National Academy of Science, described COPA as broad and vague and recommended software and parental controls as the best way to protect children from sexually explicit content.
Former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh chaired a commission that determined the global nature of the Internet, criminal laws, and other regulations of content are ineffective, and education and parental empowerment with filtering are more effective than criminal law.
Still, the Bush administration sought to prove that although there are innovative ways to help parents restrict material through parental controls, those efforts did not provide a national solution to the problem.
“At the end of the day, the way the Internet works it is extremely difficult to impose a top-down law that does not have overconsequences or unintended consequences,” said John Morris, director of Internet standards at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The center and the ACLU applauded the court’s decision. “This particular bill and case is over — finally — after a little more than 10 years of wasteful litigation from our perspective,” Morris said.
While the court’s action ends this law, there’s not anything stopping the new Obama administration from seeking another one.
“It is certainly possible that there will be people on Capitol Hill who will want to…