The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling (PDF) that found the federal Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was overbroad and a violation of the first and fifth amendment to the U.S. constitution. The case was brought by the ACLU on behalf of writers, health educators, and artists, and is being hailed by citizens rights’ groups and anti-censorship advocates as a significant victory…but at the same time, it’s leaving legislators and many other groups concerned with childrens’ welfare scratching their heads about how to protect children from inappropriate online material.
The appeals court agreed with the lower court that COPAs wording was overly broad and its standards so loosely defined that, in effect, any online content not suitable for viewing by a four year-old child would have to be tucked away behind some form of age-verification barrier.
COPA was initially passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1998, with the intent of protecting minors from potentially harmful material on the Internet, including (but not limited to) adult Web sites. The law was hit by legal challenges as soon as it was enacted, and in ten years has never been enforced. Challenges to COPA have wound through the legal system for years, bubbling up to the Supreme Court in 2002 and 2004; in the latter case the Supreme Court blocked enforcement of COPA and sent the case back down to District Court for further consideration. In 2007 the court issued a permanent injunction on enforcing the law, noting the law “effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive.”
The federal government must now decide whether it wants to appeal (again) to the Supreme Court in hopes a more-conservative panel might let COPA finally become an enforceable law. In the meantime, legislators and child protection advocates are pondering future possible legislation which might meet the goals of COPA without violating constitutional principles; in the meantime, parental controls and filtering technology are available to help adults screen and block material that may be available to children.
