On Monday, closing arguments in a case challenging the 8-years-old-but-never-enforced Children’s Online Protection Act illustrated how radically differently the U.S. government and free speech proponents view the law.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Christopher Hansen, representing a coalition of mainstream Web publishers and artists that includes Salon and Nerve, maintained COPA is vague regarding what may be considered “harmful to children.” Additionally, he said COPA specifically targets sites using the “http” protocol, and it fails to address sites located outside the United States.
Government lawyer Joel McElvain, however, maintained that any sexually explicit material could be considered harmful to children, while colleague Tamara Ulrich challenged the notion that COPA singles out “http” sites—a matter of particular concern for the government, because the ACLU used a similar argument to convince a court to overturn an earlier law targeting chat rooms and email.
Perhaps of the most pressing interest to adult producers, government lawyers contended that the plaintiffs would not be affected by COPA, which they said was aimed at “commercial porn” rather sites like those operated by the plaintiffs.
Although Hansen argued in favor of filters intended to block adult content, government lawyers said that, even with filters in place, a surprisingly large amount of “inappropriate” content slips through. In addition, parents should not be expected to monitor their children’s Web surfing habits constantly.
The case got under way four weeks ago, when the plaintiffs challenged COPA on the basis that it restricts their right to post legitimate material and unfairly exposes them to potential criminal prosecution because of its confusing language and its failure to recognize the evolution of technology. Their biggest beef with the law is that it requires adults to use a credit card number in order to access content that might be considered “harmful to children,” thus limiting their sites’ ability to gain new members.
Noting that fewer than 30 cases in the past six years have been prosecuted under existing obscenity laws, Hansen challenged the advisability of adding further restrictive legislation to the government’s prosecutorial arsenal.
U.S. District Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. gave both sides until Dec. 7 to submit final briefs.
