IP Democracy: Closing Arguments in COPA Case

Remember the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA)? This is the 1998 law that would impose jail time and fines on web site owners who failed to ask for verification of the visitors’ ages if the government deemed the sites in question to be “harmful to children,” although the goal of the law is to block underage users from visiting p*rn sites.

COPA was never enforced following federal district and appeals court rulings that found it to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court allowed an injunction against the law’s enforcement to stand pending a trial in Pennsylvania.

Along the way, the Bush Administration’s Justice Department created a privacy panic when it subpoenaed Internet companies for users’ personal search records as it attempted to build its case that the law is needed. Google got a gold star for fighting off the DOJ’s more intrusive demands and now the trial has ended.

Closing arguments took place yesterday, with the law’s opponents saying that COPA is so broad that it will make illegal informative web sites that have nothing to do with p*rn. The ACLU, one of the plaintiffs in the case, along with an impressive list of newspaper and magazine companies, argued that a whole lot of speech would get suppressed along with content that is arguably harmful to children.

Administration attorneys argued that the law would only punish purveyors of commercial p*rn and leave scientific, cultural and art-based content untouched.

Judge Lowell Reed of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is expected to hand down his decision in Spring 2007.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 21, 2006 10:25 AM to IP Democracy