Court: COPA Injunction Stands

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 upheld a lower court's injunction blocking the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which would fine commercial web site operators if they did not require an age verification (such as a credit card) to look at sites deemed "harmful to minors." The law was passed in 1998, after the court had rejected the Communications Decency Act (CDA), but was never enforced. In contrast to the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was upheld last year, COPA puts the burden on web site operators rather than those accessing the web.

The court's 5-4 decision does not invalidate COPA but sends it back to a lower court for a trial. The Freedom To Read Foundation, sibling to the American Library Association, had filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs and praised the decision.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion noted that speech must be "restricted no further than is necessary to accomplish Congress's goal," and he cited software filters as a less restrictive alternative. He noted that a filter "can prevent minors from seeing all pornography, not just pornography posted to the web from America" and that a witness estimated that 40% of harmful-to-minors content comes from overseas.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer focused on the inadequacies regarding voluntary use of filtering software. Citing evidence used in the CIPA case, he noted that filtering is faulty. Even if 40% of pornographic materials comes from abroad, he wrote, "the Act would make a difference in respect to 60% of the Internet's commercial pornography."