U.S. Court Rules Internet Porn Law Unconstitutional

A U.S. federal court has ruled that a 1998 law enacted to protect children from viewing pornography web sites is too restrictive and violates free speech rights.

While the law's aim of restricting minors from seeing pornography is good, there are other ways, such as software filters, to block inappropriate materials that do not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects free speech, Judge Lowell Reed of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia wrote in his ruling. Check out Reuters' story on the ruling.

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) made it a crime for anyone to provide minors access to "harmful material" over the Internet. Violators could be fined up to $50,000 and sent to jail for up to six months. The law was never really enforced after President Bill Clinton signed it because it was immediately challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Reuters story notes that government attorneys argued during the month-long trial that Internet filters were ineffective since most parents don't use them. Er, isn't that the fault or discretion, depending on how you look at it, of the parents? 

As a mom, of course I don't want my kids being confronted by pornographic images in their web searches. But making every effort they are not is my responsibility, not the government's. Free speech is the heart of our country's democratic soul. We whittle away at it at our own peril. There are many things I don't want my kids to see or hear right now, but restricting free speech is not the way to shield them.   

I know jarring images have popped up unexpectedly on many home computers. But my kids, ages 14, 12, and 10, tell me they have never seen any pornographic images while surfing the web. In a follow-up post, I'll take another look at the filters available to parents to help block pornographic and other inappropriate content on the web.

It's true that parents only have control over the computers in our homes, and our kids are can avail themselves of the Internet in all kinds of places, on all kinds of devices. But as the Center for Democracy & Technology argued, the COPA would not effectively prevent children from seeing inappropriate material that originates outside the United States in email or chat rooms. It is, after all, the world wide web. There is no perfect fix, and a law threatening free speech is as imperfect as it gets.

Agree or disagree? Sound off below.