Well another great supreme court decision handed down here. This definately was very relevant to our industry - here's some points on the decision:

+ U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday barred enforcement of a 1998 federal law [ COPA ]designed to keep Internet pornography away from minors because it likely violates constitutional free-speech rights. COPA has never been invoked in prosecutions.

+ The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy means the Justice Department will continue to be barred from bringing any criminal cases under the Child Online Protection Act.

+ The decision was 5 - 4 --- Kennedy writing the majority opinion. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer dissented.

+ Good point made in the majority opinion: The plurality opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, suggested that a trial may show that filtering software was a more-effective way of preventing children from seeing inappropriate material than relying on criminal laws that can't reach overseas. A "filter can prevent minors from seeing all pornography, not just pornography posted to the Web from America," Kennedy wrote.

* Minority dissenting opinion: A dissent written by Justice Stephen Breyer said that COPA "imposes a burden on protected speech that is no more than modest" and should be upheld as constitutional. COPA "does not censor the material it covers," Breyer wrote. "Rather, it requires providers of the 'harmful to minors' material to restrict minors' access to it by verifying age. They can do so by inserting screens that verify age using a credit card, adult personal identification number, or other similar technology. In this way, the act requires creation of an Internet screen that minors, but not adults, will find difficult to bypass."

+ Congress has now struck out twice in passing a federal law regarding Internet porn. --- COPA represents Congress' second attempt to restrict sexually explicit material on the Internet. The Supreme Court in 1997 rejected the Communications Decency Act, which covered "indecent" or "patently offensive" material, as unconstitutional.

-Steve