Supreme Court Rules on Challenge to COPA

Publiux writes: "LawMeme is reporting today that the Supreme Court upheld portions of the Child Online Protection Act because using community standards to determine what could be harmful to minors was not overly broad and thus not unconstitutional. Before you stop spreading your 'sexually explicit material' online, a lower court still has to determine if the law is unconstitutional for other reasons." Snibor Eoj submits this link to coverage at Yahoo! as well. Other readers link to AP coverage running at NandoTimes and the decision itself (PDF).

Comments

Tricky call...

[rhadamanthus]

I think that the judge's here (regardless of you personal opinion on censorship) are facing a rather tough challenge. The majority of people do NOT support child-porn, no matter what the circumstance (thankfully). However, it is not really within the realm of judges, IMO, to decide what constitutes offensive material.

The crux of the problem lies in just how much "censorship" they should support, while at the same time retaining some amount of control over what is morally acceptable. If they censor too much, they set a dangerous precedent which future generations of pro-censorship "moralists" may use as a weapon. If they don't support it at all, you leave some portions of the populace (children, in this case) defenseless against a heinous and perturbing crime. Worse, because of its ambiguous nature, any substance akin to child-porn is under fire. Not only must the judges weigh in the protection of children and censorship issues, they must ensure that no solution is too extreme.

My point? This is a tough call, so one should not rant to vigourously against the judges. I am anti-censorship but also anti-childporn...where does the line get drawn?
----------rhad