The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

in the

United States of America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...

, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of

litigation A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. ...

led to a permanent

injunction An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order compelling a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable rem ...

against the law in 2009. The law was part of a series of efforts by US lawmakers legislating over

Internet pornography Internet pornography or online pornography is any pornography that is accessible over the Internet; primarily via websites, FTP connections, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups. The greater accessibility of the World Wide Web from t ...

. Parts of the earlier and much broader

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case '' Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously stru ...

had been struck down as

unconstitutional In constitutional law, constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applic ...

by the

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

in 1997 ('' Reno v. ACLU''); COPA was a direct response to that decision, narrowing the range of material covered. COPA only limits commercial speech and only affects providers based within the United States. COPA required all commercial distributors of "material harmful to minors" to restrict their sites from access by minors. "Material harmful to minors" was defined as material that by "contemporary community standards" was judged to appeal to the "prurient interest" and that showed

sexual acts Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g., masturbation) t ...

nudity Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair, living in hospitable climates, and not ...

(including female breasts). This is a much broader standard than

obscenity An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin , , "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral ...

Litigation history

On February 1, 1999, Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted a preliminary injunction blocking COPA enforcement. In 1999, the

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (in case citations, 3d Cir.) is a United States federal court, federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the United States district court, district courts for the following United Sta ...

upheld the injunction and struck down the law, ruling that it was too broad in using "community standards" as part of the definition of harmful materials. In May 2002, the Supreme Court reviewed this ruling in '' Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union'' (2002), and found the given reason insufficient and returned the case to the Circuit Court. The law remained blocked there. On March 6, 2003, the 3rd Circuit Court again struck down the law as unconstitutional, this time finding that it would hinder protected speech among adults. The government again sought review in the Supreme Court. On June 29, 2004, in '' Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union'' (2004), the Supreme Court upheld the injunction on enforcement, ruling that the law was likely to be unconstitutional. Notably, the court mentioned that "filtering’s superiority to COPA is confirmed by the explicit findings of the Commission on Child Online Protection, which Congress created to evaluate the relative merits of different means of restricting minors' ability to gain access to harmful materials on the internet." The court also wrote that it was five years since the district court had considered the effectiveness of filtering software and that two less-restrictive laws had been passed since COPA. One law prohibits misleading domain names, and the other prohibits creating a child-safe .kids domain. Given the rapid pace of internet development, government officials thought these two laws might be sufficient to restrict access by minors to specific material.

Further proceedings

The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the district court for a trial, which began on October 25, 2006. In preparation for that trial, the Department of Justice issued subpoenas to various search engines to obtain Web addresses and records of searches as one part of a study undertaken by a witness in support of the law. The search engines turned over the requested information, except for

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, which challenged the subpoenas. The court limited the subpoena to a sample of URLs in Google's database, but declined to enforce the request for searches conducted by users; Google then complied. On March 22, 2007, Judge Reed once again struck down COPA, finding the law facially in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In addition to the plaintiffs ACLU et al., several witnesses testified in defense of First Amendment rights on the Internet, including the director of the Erotic Authors Association, Marilyn Jaye Lewis. Reed issued an order permanently enjoining the government from enforcing COPA, commenting that "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 government again appealed, and the case was heard before the Third Circuit. On July 22, 2008, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 2007 decision. On January 21, 2009, the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

refused to hear appeals of the lower court decision, effectively shutting down the law.

Notes

External links

COPA Commission
* Child Online Protection Act, Truth in Domain Names Act, Federal TradeMark Dilution Act and U.S. Supreme Court Case 05-718br>Cybertelecom :: COPA
__NOTOC__ {{Federal Communications Commission United States federal communications legislation United States federal computing legislation United States pornography law Internet law in the United States Child safety Internet censorship in the United States Child online safety laws

Litigation history

Further proceedings

See also

Notes

External links