The Supreme Court has let stand a lower court’s ruling that the Child Online Protection Act is unconstitutional. This act was passed hastily in 1998 after the display provisions of the Communications Decency Act were overturned. On p. 248 of Blown to Bits we rather prematurely declared COPA dead after the lower court ruling, but the government appealed to the Supreme Court. In refusing to take up the case, the Supreme Court finally killed COPA. The main problem is that COPA required age verification, effectively requiring adults to register in order to see content they have every right to see.

Unrelated bonus post: Barak Obama re-took the oath of office in the White House today, thus eliminating any risk of a challenge to his legitimacy on the basis that he never said the words that Article II of the Constitution says he must.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 10:56 pm and is filed under The role of government—laws and regulations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.