Closing the COPA

After over a decade of legal battles, the Clinton-era Child Online Protection Act is finally dead. The COPA Commission charged by Congress with identifying "technological or other methods that will help reduce access by minors to material that is harmful to minors on the Internet" has been dormant since the start of the millennium, when it issued its report urging voluntary best practices for Internet-based industries rather than mandating access to adult content only by credit card as the legislation's original architects had intended. Many considered this a victory for free speech and privacy advocates. The Electronic Privacy Information Center summarizes how the Supreme Court's refusal to revisit the Internet censorship case of ACLU v. Mukasey led to the COPA law being struck down for good.