Several mainstream websites have filed suit against the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which the sites’ owners argue restricts their right to post legitimate material and unfairly exposes them to potential criminal prosecution.
Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Salon.com, Nerve.com, and other plaintiffs showed up in court Monday morning to fight for their right to publish websites without requiring adults to use an access code or credit card number before viewing content that some might classify as “harmful to children.”
Arguing that the law is faulty and already has been surpassed by technology, the ACLU claims that filters are far more effective in limiting access to adult sites and notes that the law cannot block effectively adult content that is posted overseas. ACLU attorney Chris Hansen commented in his opening statement that the government “will argue that parents are too stupid to use filters. It’s an insulting argument, and it’s wrong.”
Government attorney Eric Beane, however, insisted that the filters do not seem to be working, adding that “evidence will show that a shocking amount of pornography slips through to children.”
The potential impact of the case on the adult industry was being felt by many Monday afternoon.
“The significance of this litigation is potentially profound,” Free Speech Coalition Chairman Jeffrey Douglas told AVNOnline.com. “The impact on the adult entertainment industry with a bad ruling will be [monumental]. That is, it will cost money; it will harm the infrastructure of the industry.
“The real problem is not so much that it’ll be difficult for the industry to adapt, but because of the principal behind the law,” Douglas added. “It has been the tradition in American First Amendment jurisprudence that we don’t limit speech to that which is suitable for children or some other vulnerable audience. COPA says that rather than putting the burden on families to determine what it is that their children should see—as we do with every other form of communication—instead we have to limit communication to only that which is suitable for children, unless you restrict it by means of something like a credit card. That, of course, means that if you are an adult and want to see speech that you’re constitutionally protected to see and you happen to have a bad credit rating, you are barred from communicating. It’s bad law; it’s unconstitutional; it’s out of date.”
Adding that “the mechanism [the government] is using to [protect children from pornography] is about as ineffective as they say filters are,” Douglas pointed to the Bush administration’s track record regarding free speech issues. “Consistent with an administration that calls itself conservative but is anything but, we’re having government stand in the place of families to determine what it is that people should be seeing and reading nominally for the protection of minors,” he noted.
“Supposedly, we trust the market in this country, so let the market take care of this,” Douglas continued. “Any government solution is going to be years out of date before it goes into effect.”
The law was signed into effect by then-President Bill Clinton and carries with it a $50,000 fine and six-month prison term. It has yet to be enforced.
