By the slimmest of margins (5-4), the Supreme Court sent the rancid Child On-line Protection Act (COPA) back to a lower court, and continued the injunction against it.
This is a victory, but not a huge one; the lower court can still decide that the law is fine as written, and back to the Supremes we go . . . And we cannot guarantee a good result, then.
Why is this such a problem? Why would anyone not want to protect children? (After years doing this, anytime someone talks about protecting children, I immediately get extremely suspicious.) Because it is not the function of the government to create a world in which parents do not need to exercise their discretion about their children‘s behavior. Besides being sops to an ultra-conservative base, the only function these laws have is to create the illusion (never the reality) that children can surf the web with no parental intervention.
The web being international also does create a small problem for the enforcement of such a law. Of course, all of those Russian porn sites will be sure to comply with a US law, even though ignoring it will give them a competitive advantage.
posted 09:47