Web censorship law may come out of hibernation
In 1998, the U.S. Congress enacted a sweeping Web censorship law that nearly everyone promptly forgot about.
Why? The explanation is simple: The American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a lawsuit to block the U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judge granted an injunction barring prosecutors from enforcing the law. That injunction has been in place ever since.
But now that could change. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr. in Philadelphia will hear closing arguments in the Child Online Protection Act case, and a ruling is expected by early 2007.
It's unlikely that Reed will lift the injunction, but it is possible. The case has already gone up to the U.S. Supreme Court once, at which point the justices asked Reed to evaluate whether the effectiveness of blocking software had changed in the last few years--a crucial question on which much of the case hinges. (That's because the ACLU argues filterware is a less restrictive means than a Net-censorship law.)
If Reed sides with the Bush administration, mainstream Web publishers will have plenty to worry about.
COPA makes it a federal crime to knowingly post Web pages that have sexually explicit material that's "harmful to minors." Violators could be fined up to $50,000 and imprisoned for up to six months.
That affects far more than just porn producers--even news organizations publishing articles and videos that could be deemed "harmful to minors" might be in trouble.
Plaintiffs in the ACLU's forgotten lawsuit include the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Salon.com, bookstores and a now-mostly-defunct group called the Internet Content Coalition. (Members of the ICC include News.com publisher CNET Networks, MSNBC, Sony Online, The New York Times and Time, Inc.)
There's no guarantee that judges will strike down laws like this one (or even keep them on ice indefinitely). Just last week, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a state version of COPA that restricted e-mail that could be deemed "harmful to minors." Web publishers, take note.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
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