Ashcroft V. American Civil Liberties Union - History

History

In 1996 Congress created the Communications Decency Act, (CDA) as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The CDA prohibited the use of the internet to purposely send indecent material to those under 18 years of age. The CDA was found unconstitutional in the decision of Reno v. ACLU, because in the CDA the internet was held to the same standards as broadcast media. The court held that because the internet is less “invasive” than broadcast media, the same rules could not apply to the two entities. Despite this ruling, however, the court agreed that the government does have a responsibility to protect minors from obscene/indecent internet content. Congress's second attempt to answer to this was the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998. COPA made it illegal for any commercial sources to allow minors access to “harmful” content, drawing on language from the landmark Miller v. California case to better define the term "obscenity."

Opponents of COPA argued that child pornography is already illegal, and COPA would not be effective because it would waste too much time going after individual sites within the US which could simply set up shop overseas if shut down. It was also argued that COPA would infringe upon rights of adults to receive non-pornographic/harmful messages, and that COPA was not the least invasive or most efficient way to protect children from harmful online content.