The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
in the
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by
minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of
litigation led to a permanent
injunction against the law in 2009.
The law was part of a series of efforts by US lawmakers legislating over
Internet pornography. Parts of the earlier and much broader
Communications Decency Act had been struck down as
unconstitutional
Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...
by the
Supreme Court in 1997 (''
Reno v. ACLU
''Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union'', 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendme ...
''); COPA was a direct response to that decision, narrowing the range of material covered. COPA only limits commercial speech and only affects providers based within the United States.
COPA required all commercial distributors of "material harmful to minors" to restrict their sites from access by minors. "Material harmful to minors" was defined as material that by "contemporary community standards" was judged to appeal to the "prurient interest" and that showed
sexual acts
Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g., masturbation) t ...
or
nudity (including
female breasts). This is a much broader standard than
obscenity.
Litigation history
On February 1, 1999, Judge
Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (in case citations, E.D. Pa.) is one of the original 13 federal judiciary districts created by the Judiciary Act of 1789. It originally sat in Independence Hall in Phil ...
granted a preliminary injunction blocking COPA enforcement. In 1999, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (in case citations, 3d Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts for the following districts:
* District of Delaware
* District of New Jersey
* East ...
upheld the injunction and struck down the law, ruling that it was too broad in using "community standards" as part of the definition of harmful materials.
In May 2002, the Supreme Court reviewed this ruling in ''
Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union
''Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union'', 535 U.S. 564 (2002), followed by 542 U.S. 656 (2004), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional as a violation of the ...
'' (2002), and found the given reason insufficient and returned the case to the Circuit Court. The law remained blocked there. On March 6, 2003, the 3rd Circuit Court again struck down the law as unconstitutional, this time finding that it would hinder protected speech among adults. The government again sought review in the Supreme Court.
On June 29, 2004, in ''
Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union
''Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union'', 535 U.S. 564 (2002), followed by 542 U.S. 656 (2004), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional as a violation of the ...
'' (2004), the Supreme Court upheld the injunction on enforcement, ruling that the law was likely to be unconstitutional. Notably, the court mentioned that "filtering’s superiority to COPA is confirmed by the explicit findings of the
Commission on Child Online Protection, which Congress created to evaluate the relative merits of different means of restricting minors' ability to gain access to harmful materials on the internet." The court also wrote that it was five years since the district court had considered the effectiveness of filtering software and that two less-restrictive laws had been passed since COPA. One law prohibits misleading domain names, and the other prohibits creating a child-safe
.kids
The Domain Name System of the Internet consists of a set of top-level domains that constitute the root domain of the hierarchical name space and database. In the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to expand the initial set of six generi ...
domain. Given the rapid pace of internet development, government officials thought these two laws might be sufficient to restrict access by minors to specific material.
Further proceedings
The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the district court for a trial, which began on October 25, 2006. In preparation for that trial, the Department of Justice issued subpoenas to various search engines to obtain Web addresses and records of searches as one part of a study undertaken by a witness in support of the law. The search engines turned over the requested information, except for
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, which challenged the subpoenas. The court limited the subpoena to a sample of URLs in Google's database, but declined to enforce the request for searches conducted by users; Google then complied.
On March 22, 2007, Judge Reed once again struck down COPA, finding the law facially in violation of the
First
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
and
Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution. In addition to the plaintiffs ACLU et al., several witnesses testified in defense of first amendment rights on the Internet, including the director of the Erotic Authors Association,
Marilyn Jaye Lewis
Marilyn Jaye Lewis (born July 22, 1960 in Columbus, Ohio) is an American writer and editor of novels, short stories, memoirs, screenplays and teleplays. Lewis grew up in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960s. Lewis began writing during her preteen yea ...
. Reed issued an order permanently enjoining the government from enforcing COPA, commenting that "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection." The government again appealed, and the case was heard before the Third Circuit.
On July 22, 2008, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 2007 decision.
On January 21, 2009, the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
refused to hear appeals of the lower court decision, effectively shutting down the law.
See also
*
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at ().
The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. juri ...
*
Child Protection Registry Acts A child protection registry or do not contact registry is an electronic database established by statute, to which a parent or guardian may add an "electronic contact point" that is used by or accessible to a child. The statute prohibits certain comm ...
*
Communications Decency Act
*
Help:Sexual content
*
Internet pornography
*
List of legal topics
:'' The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to law:''
Law ('' article link'') is the set of rules and principles (laws) by which a society is governed, through enforcement by governmental authorities. Law is also t ...
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases
This page serves as an index of lists of United States Supreme Court cases. The United States Supreme Court is the highest federal court of the United States.
By Chief Justice
Court historians and other legal scholars consider each Chief J ...
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 542
This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 542 of the ''United States Reports
The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, ...
Notes
External links
COPA Commission*
05-718/ Child Online Protection Act, Truth in Domain Names Act, Federal TradeMark Dilution Act and U.S. Supreme Court Case 05-718br>
Cybertelecom :: COPA
__NOTOC__
United States federal communications legislation
United States federal computing legislation
United States pornography law
Internet law in the United States
Child safety
Internet censorship in the United States