Injunction issued against COPA
The Child Online Protection Act has been struck down by U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed:
Sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other Web sites backed by the American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the law on grounds it would have a chilling effect on speech. Joan Walsh, Salon.com’s editor in chief, said the law could have allowed any of the 93 U.S. attorneys to prosecute the site over photos of naked prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
“The burden would have been on us to prove that they weren’t” harmful to minors, Walsh said Thursday.
In his ruling, Reed warned that “perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection.”
Well, the law wasn’t enforced as it was, but the judge is absolutely right in his opinion.
H/T: Reason: Hit & Run
