BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhuanet) -- A U.S. federal judge
has overturned the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a 1998 law designed by
former President Clinton to control Internet pornography and keep children
from inappropriate material on the Internet, media reported Friday.
In the decision overturning COPA, Judge Lowell Reed
Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia wrote that although he
sympathized with the goal of restricting minors from seeing pornography, other
means that were less restrictive of free speech, like software filters, were
available to block such content.
A preliminary injunction was granted in February 1999
and upheld by the Supreme Court in February 2004.
Following the Supreme Court's decision, the case was
sent back to Reed for fact finding to determine, among other things, whether
Internet filtering technologies and other measures were more effective and less
restrictive than COPA.
Reed acknowledged that Congress "apparently intended"
COPA to apply to commercial photographers. But he ruled that the actual wording
of the law is broad enough that mainstream publishers could "fear prosecution."
Enacted on Oct. 21, 1998, COPA provided for criminal
and civil penalties against Web sites that failed to take adequate measures to
prevent minors from accessing sexually explicit material. Under the law, sites
with such content were required to verify the age of those accessing the
material, via credit cards for instance, or some other proof of age. Site
operators that failed to take such precautions were subject to fines of up to
50,000 U.S. dollars and jail terms of up to six months.
COPA represents Congress' second attempt to restrict
sexually explicit material on the Internet. The Supreme Court in 1997 rejected
the Communications Decency Act, which targeted "indecent" or "patently
offensive" material, as unconstitutional.
(Agencies)
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