From the Daily Herald: The Child Online Protection Act -- COPA -- has just struck out for the third time in a federal appeals court. The U.S. Justice Department should take that as an omen and drop the case.
Statutes are probably not the best way to solve this problem anyway in the age of the international Internet.
At issue is how to protect children without undermining free speech (including sexual speech) for adults. Last week a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, struck down COPA, which originally passed a decade ago. The law aimed to prohibit unrestricted Internet posting of any material deemed "harmful to minors."
Judges pointed out that the bill is overly broad, threatening to restrict the online use by children and adults of a vast range of legal and appropriate materials. Second, they said, measures designed to curb obscene material must use the least restrictive method.
We have argued against pornography numerous times on this page, but we recognize the difficulty in forging workable legislation. The best answer has always seemed to be the encouragement of Internet filtering by parents.
With filtering, individual choice is preserved while keeping government off the thin ice of speech restrictions.
Filtering technology has now advanced to the point that there should be little trouble in achieving the right result for the home for anybody who wants to control Internet content.
Because of legal challenges, COPA has never been put into effect. The Supreme Court has heard it twice. Justices never ruled definitively; both times they upheld injunctions blocking the law, and a majority have expressed serious doubts about the measure's constitutionality.
Yet, despite the recent Third Circuit ruling against the measure, the Justice Department is considering appealing again to the Supreme Court. That means that a law first blocked in court during the Clinton administration likely would be argued yet again during an Obama or McCain administration.
Persistence is one thing, pure obstinacy another. The feds should let this well intentioned but poorly constructed measure fade away.
Technology has come a long way, and it's time for parents to take the problem fully into their own hands.
