Feb 29, 2000 | Q
COPA is under a legal challenge right now. (When it was passed, it was sardonically referred to as “Son of CDA” or “CDA II”.) It’s going to fail court test on constitutional grounds, just like CDA did, and for exactly the same reason: it chills constitutionally protected speech between adults, which the courts have unambiguously stated is an unacceptable price to pay to protect children. (That was why CDA failed.)
Yeah, but remember, there were sections of the CDA that were not overturned on appeal, and the likelihood of the sections that limit the information that you can gather on minors being overturned are pretty remote, since they aren’t involved in the whole constitutionally-protected-speech-between-adults issue. So it’s something that needs to be fleshed out with Manila; Manila is, by its very nature, a discussion board and membership-based system, and that’s the sort of thing that COPA applies to.
/j
• Posted by: Jason Levine on Feb 29, 2000, 8:28 PM