Eye On CameraWare -- community

Another victory for smut on the Internet! Or, is it a victory for freedom of speech?
A court has struck down, for the second time, a law that makes it harder for kids to find harmful material on the Net. The Pennsylvania court said COPA (Child Online Protection Act, which was passed in 1998) should not be enforced. This Third Circuit Court of Appeals court said COPA infringes on adults' First Amendment rights. It improperly restricts access to a substantial amount of free speech that is lawful for adults to engage in.
You can read the decision here: http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/recentop/week/991324.pdf
The government wants to keep kids out of adult websites by requiring a credit card or 'adult access code.' This seems like a good idea on the surface, but this court saw some real problems with the law. The Circuit court said COPA would restrict access for adults in five ways.

The five ways COPA restricts access:

Adults without credit cards would not be able to access the sites.
It would require all interactive speech to be behind some sort of 'verification screen,' even though the speech would not be considered harmful to minors.
It would deter adults from using free speech websites because of the extra cost involved, loss of privacy, or by causing a stigma to be associated with the subject matter.
It would allow hostile users to drive up the cost to speakers.
It imposes financial burdens on speakers that will cause them to self-censor rather than incur those burdens.

What is COPA? COPA stands for Children Online Protection Act. It was signed into law in 1998, during the Clinton administration. COPA wants to keep harmful material away from children on the Internet. COPA tries to do this by requiring webmasters to call for adults to prove they are over the age of 18 before viewing the content on the website. Basically, it puts the burden on webmasters and the adult Internet users, rather than on parents, to protect children.
This is the second time this court has put an injunction against COPA. In fact, the courts have battled the government for several years over children and the Internet. COPA is the stepchild of CDA (Communications Decency Act), which was part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. CDA tried to protect children online by making it a crime to transmit indecent material to minors. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down CDA in 1997. In response, the government came up with COPA, and it was signed into law during the Clinton administration. The law tried to make it a crime to put porn on the Internet where children can find it.
There were a bunch of people who didn't like COPA. In August of 1999, Web publishers and cyber-rights groups got together and filed all the necessary legal paperwork to stop COPA from being enforced.
You can read their point of view here: http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/appellee_brief.html
On June 22, 2000 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found COPA was unconstitutional. You can read that decision here:
http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/3d_cir_opinion.html
In short, the decision says obscenity cannot easily be defined, but you know it when you see it. What might be deemed perfectly fine for one person might be really offensive to another, therefore the law must always define obscenity according to the most naïve person's sense of decency. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals said, "Because of the peculiar geography-free nature of cyberspace, [COPA's] community standards test would essentially require every Web communication to abide by the most restrictive community's standards." In other words, the Internet could only have adult content that would not be offensive to a child who stumbled onto it.
In February of 2001, the Department of Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Circuit Court's decision, and they did. http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2000/2pet/7pet/2000-1293.pet.aa.html
The Supreme Court then told the Circuit Court to re-think their arguments and decide again. The Circuit Court did, and on March 6, 2003, stood by their decision to block enforcement of COPA. Depending on which way the media slants the story, this may mean good news for smut peddlers, or it may be a welcomed victory in protecting American's right to free speech.