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

Re:A Good Thing

[DarkZero]

This isn't about kiddie porn. It's about run-of-the-mill porn, featuring adults, which could possibly be VIEWED by children on the internet.

For those of you too lazy or ignorant...

[rebelcool]

...to read the articles, here's the gist:

Supreme Court rules that using a law using 'community standards' does not mean its automatically unconstitutional.

That's it. They then sent the case back to the lower court to try unconstitutionality on other merits.

This was a very limited ruling, and the government is still barred from enforcing the law.

This isn't much of a news story...

Send 'em back to school

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Send them back to school.. because they are obviously unable to read:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

So where do we find this "community"...

[Godeke]

It's interesting to see how poorly understood the Internet is to the justices. The terminology is the same as if they were using "local community standards" to determine if a strip club should be allowed. That works when you are talking about a place with physical presence, but are we now going to apply the "local community standards" of some enclave of rich religious puritans to every internet user? I'm a member of a church who's "community standards" would reject most PG-13 movies (and in fact has specially edited versions of popular movies made to prevent the members from fleeing to R rated movies and "corrupting" themselves).

Let's hope that subjecting those who did not agree to a strict "community standard" themselves to the harshest that can be found turns this around...

Re:not very troubling?

[kfg]

The single largest problem with your argument is that the constitution itself * explicitly * states that rights are *not* granted but are presumed.

In fact, this is the single fundamental point at the center of all American law and politics and if you don't understand that you understand nothing of our legal society.

What's more, the constitution is document that not only reserves *all* rights to the people but exists almost entirely to define the *restrictions* on the action of the government, *not* the people!

KFG

Why it's a slippery slope

[b.foster]

Readers of the Congressional Register will recognize the following future threats to free speech and free commerce online, which had been held up in committee until the Supreme Court ruled on the COPA:

• H.R. 4239, which makes it a felony to distribute any kind of sexually explicit material to a user who does not register with a government-sanctioned age verification service (like AdultCheck).
• H.R. 4551, which outlaws the creation and distribution of "electronic burglary devices" such as system cracking scripts and port scanners.
• H.R. 4608, which taxes all sales of goods over the internet that originate overseas.
• H.R. 4277, which requires all ISPs to keep 6 months of records of all user activity and give law enforcement access to the records without a court order.

The list goes on. Naturally most of these will never become law, but statistically at least a few are likely to pass and make the internet that much more repressive. It's high time to vote Libertarian and try to preserve the few remaining liberties we actually have in this country.

Chilling effect

[markwelch]

It was disappointing that the Court did not rule on what "community" can be used to measure the community standards.

In particular, we know that there have been strategic efforts to prosecute purveyors of "adult" materials in the "least tolerant" communities.

Since it is technically impossible to know what community a web visitor is in (thanks to AOL and other proxy servers), the end result is simple: nobody can offer ANY "adult" materials to anyone in the world, unless those materials are acceptable under the community standards of the most conservative community in the United States.

The real goal, of course, is not to prosecute violations of this law -- it is to create a system that strongly deters creation or distribution of ANY adult content online. By imposing an impossible standard to prevent access by minors, the law effectively closes off access to everyone.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the current minimum costs associated with starting an adult business, even ignoring the cost of legal advice and any costs associated with harassment by local law enforcement. I suspect the costs are quite high, especially for a firm producing original content. The bottom line, in my view, is that our government is imposing the moral views of a few to strongly discourage and often prevent access to adult materials wanted by the majority.

Re:First Amendment

[Stonehand]

If you actually read the law, you'll notice that it uses a Miller-style test for determining "harmful to minors", which requires that a work "taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors".

Hence, picture of the nude Statue of David -- fine. Print of Venus de Milo: fine. Bestiality pictures on basketballs inside a fishtank: hmmm, no.