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Computing News | Internet Child User 'Protection' Law Struck Down
Posted by: Tweaker
Date added: 08:00 Friday, 23rd March 2007 GMT
Source: Beta News
A controversial 1998 law that set a minimum federal penalty of $50,000 in fines and six months' imprisonment for anyone providing minors with access to "harmful" material via the Internet, was soundly struck down this morning in US District Court in Philadelphia. Judge Lowell Reed, Jr., affirmed in his decision today that Web filtering programs may do a better job of protecting minors from objectionable content than federal regulations.
"[The government's"> own study shows that all but the worst performing filters are far more effective than COPA would be at protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web," wrote Judge Reed in his decision this morning.
The judge's ruling may bring to a close the ACLU v. Gonzales case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union last October, challenging the federal government's assertion in the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 that it's the responsibility of Internet access providers to block any material that could conceivably harm a youngster. While proponents of COPA generally referred to it as an anti-pornography law, pornography per se was only one qualifier for material that could be deemed "harmful." Another was any kind of content that "the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest."
US Code may not adequately define "the average person," legal scholars have argued. But the third qualifier was perhaps the most vague, referring in very broad strokes to content that was just plain bad, or that "taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
At one time, enforcement of COPA was ordered suspended, in a preliminary injunction emerging from the ACLU Pennsylvania case. An appeals court upheld the injunction, but then the US Supreme Court overturned it, remanding the case back to the district level for further review.
More on this report here.
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