COPA Found Unconstitutional

By Stephanie Jordan
in

The Supreme Court Wednesday dealt the final blow to the government’s 10-year campaign to place onerous restrictions on Internet content. The Court declined to hear the government’s appeal of lower court rulings that declared the Child Online Protective Act (COPA) as unconstitutional. COPA, passed in 1998, has never been enforced due to immediate court challenges on First Amendment grounds. "The Court’s decision ends the government’s Quixotic and wasteful 10-year effort to impose an unconstitutional censorship standard on Internet content," comments Leslie Harris, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).

According to CDT, since COPA passed there have been at least three major commissions or studies that have concluded that education and voluntary technology tools are the most effective way to protect kids online. Adds John Morris, CDT’s general counsel, “In the years since COPA was adopted, the Internet has undergone a complete transformation. This illustrates the futility of using static laws to attempt to control a rapidly changing environment.” CDT was active in fighting COPA, including filing friend-of-the-court briefs opposing the law and supporting its long-held stance that parental empowerment technologies are the least restrictive means of protecting children from harmful content on the Internet.

Published January 22, 2009