Child Online Protection Act

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009.

The law was part of a series of efforts by US lawmakers legislating over Internet pornography. Parts of the earlier and much broader Communications Decency Act had been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997 (Reno v. ACLU); COPA was a direct response to that decision, narrowing the range of material covered. COPA only limits commercial speech and only affects providers based within the United States.

COPA required all commercial distributors of "material harmful to minors" to restrict their sites from access by minors. "Material harmful to minors" was defined as material that by "contemporary community standards" was judged to appeal to the "prurient interest" and that showed sexual acts or nudity (including female breasts). This is a much broader standard than obscenity.

The federal government was enjoined from enforcing COPA by a court order in 1998. In 1998, the United States enacted the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) to restrict access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. In 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the injunction and struck down the law, ruling that it was too broad in using "community standards" as part of the definition of harmful materials. In May 2002, the Supreme Court reviewed this ruling, found the given reason insufficient and returned the case to the Circuit Court; the law remained blocked. On March 6, 2003, the 3rd Circuit Court again struck down the law as unconstitutional, this time finding that it would hinder protected speech among adults. The government again sought review in the Supreme Court.

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