A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online from The Center For Democracy and Technology
A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online
from
The Center For Democracy and Technology
(1) Supreme Court to Consider Net Content Controls; CDT Files Brief
(2) COPA, However Well Intentioned, Restricts Legal Speech Online
(3) Education and User Control, Not Legislation, Key to Protecting Children
CDT is urging the Supreme Court to rule unconstitutional a federal law that would place limits on legal Internet speech. Joined by a broad coalition of organizations representing Internet companies, publishers and others, CDT filed on January 15 a "friend-of-the-court" brief challenging the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).
COPA, adopted in 1998 but blocked from taking effect by lower courts, would make it a crime for anyone, by means of the World Wide Web, to make any communication for commercial purposes that is "harmful to minors" unless the person has used technological means to prevent access by minors (such as requiring a credit card). COPA would impose criminal and civil penalties of up to $50,000 per day for violations. "Harmful to minors" is a legal category that includes a wide range of social commentary and health information that is legal for adults to view.
The range of organizations signing the brief reflects the broad concern with COPA's implications for the Internet and free expression. Those signing the brief included high-tech trade associations such as the Information Technology Association of America and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, content industry groups such as the Association of American Publishers and the Recording Industry Association of America, news media organizations such as the Newspaper Association of America and the Society for Professional Journalists, and the Freedom to Read Foundation of the American Library Association, a longtime advocate of the Internet as a medium for free expression and access to information.
The case is Ashcroft v. ACLU. Oral argument is scheduled for March 2, 2004. The Court's decision is likely to be issued in late May or June of this year.
The coalition brief is at http://www.cdt.org/speech/copa/20040115amicus.pdf.
COPA is another Congressional law passed in the name of protecting children that would "burn the house to roast the pig," to quote the Supreme Court's landmark 1997 decision on Internet free speech. The CDT brief argues that:
This is COPA's second trip to the Supreme Court. In May 2002, the Supreme Court found fault with the reasoning of a Court of Appeals that had ruled the law unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court left in place an injunction against the law.
On reconsideration, in March 2003, the appellate court again ruled against the law, finding numerous constitutional problems with it. In a detailed decision, the appeals court determined that COPA would force Web publishers to block a wide range of legal material and was not the least restrictive means of protecting children online. The Justice Department appealed, bringing the case back to the Supreme Court.
More on COPA: http://www.cdt.org/speech/copa/
Throughout the course of the challenge to COPA, CDT has argued that the most effective way to protect children online, and the means least restrictive of free expression, is by putting resources at the disposal of families and teachers that allow them to control what children see and do online. This approach enables the protection of children while respecting the diverse sensibilities of American families. CDT has worked with a wide cross-section of the Internet and public interest communities to compile parental tips, filtering tools and other online safety resources at the educational site http://www.getnetwise.org.
This emphasis on education and user control was confirmed by two major, independent studies commissioned by Congress: the COPA Commission, a study mandated by the COPA law itself, and a report of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences. Both studies concluded after exhaustive research that legislation will not solve the problem of children's access to objectionable content via the Internet, but rather that technologies like filtering software in the hands of parents and teachers and educational efforts offer the most effective means of protecting children online.
The NRC study, "Youth Pornography, and the Internet" (2002), is online at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309082749/html.
The 2000 report of the COPA Commission can be found at http://www.copacommission.org/report/