Liberal Education Today

A United states federal court struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The judge ruled that the law violated First Amendment Constitutional guarantees of free speech.

In the ruling, the judge said parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech.

"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection," wrote Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr., who presided over a four-week trial last fall.

Proponents of the law defended it on the grounds of helping parents protect children:

...government lawyers attacked software filters as burdensome and less effective, even though they have previously defended their use in public schools and libraries.

"It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government's addressing the problem at its source," a government attorney, Peter D. Keisler, argued in a post-trial brief.