Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is challenging the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The law requires commercial websites to restrict "material that is harmful to minors" based on "community standards." The Court must decide if using these local standards to regulate the global internet violates the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

This case could determine if a website owner can be prosecuted for content that is legal in one city but offensive in another. It affects anyone who publishes commercial content on the World Wide Web. If the law is upheld, businesses might have to follow the rules of the most conservative communities in the country to avoid legal trouble.

This is the government's second major attempt to regulate online pornography after a previous law was struck down. Congress designed COPA to be more specific by focusing only on commercial sites and the World Wide Web. It highlights the ongoing struggle to apply traditional local laws to a borderless digital world.

No substantive justice or advocate reactions are available yet.

The Court is weighing whether local "community standards" can be used to police speech on the global internet.

The next major milestone is oral argument or another scheduling move from the Court. Currently, the law is not being enforced because a lower court issued a preliminary injunction (a temporary order to stop the law) while the legal challenge proceeds.

The challenge focuses on the use of "contemporary community standards" to define what material is harmful. Critics argue this standard is too vague for a medium like the internet that has no geographic boundaries.

The law targets "material that is harmful to minors" displayed for commercial purposes on the World Wide Web. It requires jurors to use community standards to decide if the material appeals to an unhealthy interest.

The ACLU argues that the law is overbroad, meaning it restricts too much legal speech in its attempt to protect children. They claim that applying local standards to the entire web forces speakers to follow the most restrictive rules.

Critics argue that if a website is offensive in a very conservative or "puritan" village, it could become a crime to post it anywhere on the web. This would allow the most restrictive local standards to dictate what the entire country can see online.

COPA was written to fix problems the Court found in the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It is more limited because it only covers commercial websites and specific types of content that are harmful to children.