US judge blocks COPA online porn law

Stephen Withers
Friday, 23 March 2007 03:11

Your IT - Home IT

A US federal judge has struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act that made it a crime for commercial web site operators to allow children to access material considered "harmful" by "contemporary community standards".
Judge Lowell Reed Jr said "a more effective and less restrictive alternative is readily available" in the form of software based filters, despite arguments from government lawyers that they were ineffective because most parents do not make use of such tools.

"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection," the judge ruled.

Back in 2004, the US Supreme Court upheld a temporary injunction against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) on the grounds it was likely to be struck down. Judge Reed's verdict vindicates that position.

COPA required US-based sites offering 'adult' material to obtain proof of age such as a credit card number, on pain of fines up to $US50,000 and six months jail.

The law was challenged by a number of web sites with the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is not the first time attempts to restrict online pornography have been rejected by the courts. A 1996 law was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997.