A group of US online publishers and a lobby group is taking the Government to court to challenge an eight-year-old law which it says amounts to censorship of the internet. The challenge is to the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which became law in 1998.
Designed to protect children from viewing pornographic and harmful content on the internet, the law imposes restrictions on what can be seen on the internet.
Allowing the possibility of children seeing material which could be “harmful to minors” is a criminal act under the law and can by punished by six-month prison terms and $50,000 fines.
The law has never been used and its constitutionality has been questioned by courts in the US. The current case is being taken by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and will be heard by Judge Lowell Reed at the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania.
