Slashdot Mirror
Appeals Court Upholds COPA Decision
sconeu writes: "Wired News is reporting that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The government's next move is to either appeal to the Supremes or ask for a full trial (IANAL - I don't understand why the radically different options)." The full decision is available on PACER. The appellate court was only affirming the temporary injunction against enforcement of the law that was issued earlier by the district court, there hasn't been a full trial of the law yet. Here's the ACLU press release.
The internet was never intended for kids.
In the beginning of the net it was almost
exclussively accessible by adults, and there
was always talk about sex.
Nobody ever claimed - "here is the internet, it's
a free babysitter." Protecting children from the
net is easy: don't give them access.
You need a babysitter? Hire a babysitter!
The ruling today was on a ACLU request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the application of the law while waiting for it to undergo review. They won an earlier, lower court ruling for an injuction, which is what was appealed. The government now has the option of trying to appeal the preliminary injuction further or to stop fighting it and go to the full trial that would shut down COPA completely.
It's pretty clear that a preliminary injunction has to be granted in this case; the ACLU has a pretty damn strong case, and they can show a real risk of harm if the COPA is enforced. That means that an appeal to the Supreme Court on the injunction is unlikely to get anywhere, which is why Wired is reporting that the government is leaning toward going to a full trial. After all, the sooner the appeals are over, the sooner the case can be brought to a conclusion.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Where I am from (*.au*) we have no right to freedom of speech in our constitution. This is in a country most people would have called free until recently. I am sure you have heard what our gouvernment has done. Our politicians try and tell us that freedom of speech is implied in our constitution. This only seems to apply when it suits them and fundamentalist pressure groups.
Although the censorship laws introduced here have been largely ineffective so far they are still there and may be enforced with greater effort in the future. A scary situation for sure.
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember
I cannot help but conclude that these laws are passed, and then defended, solely to please loud-mouthed, small-minded (Hello, Jodi!), and deep-pocketed constituencies (who likewise know they're bad laws, but are merely trying to have something to tell the little old ladies who send them their social security money every month). It seems it's all a collossal con game, a waste of taxpayer money, and the only people being fooled by it are some inbred trailer-park goobers somewhere in the Deep South. (Hello again, Jodi!)
Apologies, Sincere, 1 Each, if this has been posted multiple times. I kept getting 'unknown error'.
Based on your text, you seem to think the Constitution is a list of suggestions, not the foundation of our country.
Good parenting is not something that can be legislated into existance, and laws already exist that come down _hard_ on the real predators out there. This act merely takes more rights away from adults and does little to protect children. It's like outlawing guns, the only people who won't own guns are people who follow laws. Of course, the criminals will hold onto their guns, and the end result will be that the criminals have been empowered. These types of poorly thought out laws are foolish, and only fools are deceived by them.
Creating more laws isn't the answer, better education of both parents and children is.
I simply think that this is a good thing, because mainly I believe I'm the exception, not the rule.
..". A big part of this is the media portrayal of things, only a small percentage of the population is actually doing the evil things you see on t.v., but people think it happens more than it does because that's all they see on the news. The other part of this is that people react with fear and hostility to whatever they don't understand, and the age/culture gap contributes to a lack of understanding. I see this general effect happening with issues regarding the net more often now, i.e. there will be a story somewhere about how fbi agents arrested the vice president of some large corporation in a sting where the fbi agent was pretending to be a 14 year old girl, and then I'll go get on a train and hear people talking (or read an editorial in a newspaper) about how the net is so dangerous. It's positively annoying.
Practically -everyone- believes that they're the exception, and not the rule. (or that 'their kids' are the exception, and not the rule). I remember being 15, and having elderly people tell me "you're such a nice boy, you never see nice kids anymore, they're always running around robbing places
anyway, anytime you think you're the exception, and not the rule, it's time for a good long review of the matter at hand, imho.
Code or be coded.
> I'm not going to get into the whole gun debate thing.
Ok, thanks for sharing.
> It really doesn't take rights away from the general adult population,
> it enables the law enforcement community to come down much harder on
> the bad guys.
This is the same logic used to justify 'Zero Tolerance' laws, and those have turned into huge examples of mis-use of law. The more powers you give law enforcement, the more they will be abused. It's not paranoid rambling, it's a truth of life.
A decade ago, various law enforcement agencies were given almost cart blanche abillity to tap phone lines of suspected drug dealers. They were also given incredibly powers to confiscate money and possessions from people merely SUSPECTED of drug dealing, but they never had to prove a thing.
The end result, thousands of innocents have their phones tapped, the whole judge-approval for taps has become a joke, and thousands of people have possessions and money confiscated at gunpoint by police officers and never get any of it back, even when there is no evidence of drug dealing at all.
When these draconian measures were implemented, the people objecting were branded paranoid and condescendingly told by people like you that 'the only people that will be affected by these laws are law breakers. They will just let the police come down harder on lawbreakers, not you and I. And why object to phone taps? If you're not doing anything illegal, what do you have to hide?'
Sound familiar?
The US, despite our vaunted claims to freedom, is being systematically dissected and legislated into a religious police state. The same thing happened in Iran 20-30 years ago, and it's happening here too. COPA is just part of the process, and you're blind if you don't see it.