Ding Dong, COPA Is Dead
from the dead,-dead,-dead dept
The federal government has been trying to pass a law to "protect the children" online for ages. First there was the CDA, the Communications Decency Act, which was struck down as unconstitutional. Then, there was COPA -- the Child Online Protection Act. It tried to be more narrow... but was still a very questionable law, with rather vague wording. It bounced around the courts for years, including hitting the Supreme Court twice -- which sent it back to lower courts both times. Last summer, the appeals court knocked it down again, and today the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal... meaning that COPA is about as dead as can be. This is definitely a big win for free speech online.But, of course, just as COPA followed the CDA, have no fear that politicians looking for headlines and photo ops about how they "protect the children" are working hard on new legislation -- such as DOPA -- the Deleting Online Predators Act -- and will continue to push the boundaries of what sort of speech is allowed online. All this really does is waste taxpayer money on unconstitutional attempts to restrict free speech. And, for what? Recent studies have shown time and time again that the threat to children online is relatively small compared to the hype -- and the best response is educating children, rather than restricting speech for all. Somehow, though, I doubt politicians will recognize that any time soon -- especially when lobbyists for companies that sell filtering tools keep beating down their doors with stories of the horrors of online content.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: appeals court, cda, copa, dopa, first amendment, free speech, supreme court
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Idiota
Denizens
I
O
Terrorists
Act
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Idiota
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Morans
Until then.....PARENTS....keep your ****ing kids off the net if you're so worried.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hoooooooray!!!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RE: Ding Dong, COPA Is Dead
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Good
Glad to hear it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unfortunately in the
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Protect the children!
Why haven't the RIAA proposed a law yet to ban all competition in their marked, and set up a mandatory tax to cover executives cocaine usage? You know, "for the children".
Hehe, "DOPA -- the Deleting Online Predators Act" sounds like a sentence made up by a soccer-mom who just finished reading a Computer-lingo-for-dummies book.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Porn? Harmful? No, it's not.
Why? Because they're gonna find out about porn eventually they might as well start young. And hey unless they're being FORCED to do something... there is no "harm" of any kind.
"EGAD! I did NOT want to see that" *click* and window closes or they can press the backspace button to if they want.
See, that wasn't so hard.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]