Supreme court rejects Child Online Protection Act

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
Published: January 21, 2009

The Supreme Court said yesterday it won't consider reviving a federal law intended to protect children from explicit material on the Internet.

The Child Online Protection Act was passed in 1998 but never took effect because lower federal courts struck it down as unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union fought the law, arguing it would "criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet."

The law would "reduce adults to hearing and seeing only speech that the government considers suitable for children," asserted Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU's legal director.

The law would have barred Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet.

A federal appeals court has ruled that filtering technologies and other parental control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online.

Rita Schineis, an East Yaphank mother of a 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son, said that parents are responsible for protecting children from Internet content they deem harmful.

"I have to agree that parents need to be more diligent in watching what their kids are doing," she said. "I'm a big believer in keeping the kids busy with dance, karate and not using the TV, video games and the computer as babysitters."

Protecting children as they surf the Internet is crucial, said Angela DeLessio, assistant principal at Plainview-Old Bethpage Middle School, but such a law "sounds impossible to monitor."

Leaving it to the government to decide what's proper is unconstitutional, said Eric M. Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University. "This was an act that was born dead," he said. "The whole idea was that if you couldn't tell the difference, err on the side of suppression."

Acknowledging that most material on the Internet deserves First Amendment protection, the executive director of the Stony Brook group Parents for Megan's Law said free speech was not intended to exploit children.

"The government has a responsibility to protect our most vulnerable, and I am very disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision," said Laura Ahearn. "I am confident that federal lawmakers will act swiftly to enact laws to protect children from pornographers who place profit above child safety."

This story was supplemented by an Associated Press report.

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
Posted Sunday, January 25, 2009

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