COPA stands for Child Online Protection Act. It was passed sometime during the last Administration. About a month before COPA was scheduled to go into effect a Washington, DC district court issued a preliminary injunction that barred the Government from enforcing the act. The Supreme Court voted 8-1 to vacate and remand the outstanding issues to the circuit court. Justice Thomas wrote the opinion of the majority, and I must say that as I was reading his opinion from time to time a smile crept over my face. I just thought it funny that Justice Thomas wrote the opinion. Remember the Senate hearings regarding his nomination to the top bench? Pubic hair in a coke can was a vision that I just couldn’t shake.
It was a 54-page read which included opinions from other Justices including the lone dissenting opinion from Justice Stevens. To read the opinions for yourself go to the official Supreme Court site: http://www.supremecourtus.gov. All of the Justices appear on the face of it to have issues with the case, and it looks like it will be another couple of years when and if a resolution will be reached.
I believe that Justice Stevens made several good points and his opinion begins on page 44. He states, “Given the undisputed fact that a provider who posts material on the Internet cannot prevent it from entering any geographic community…a law that criminalizes a particular communication in just a handful of destinations effectively prohibits transmission of that message to all of the 176.5 million Americans that have access to the Internet…” Justice Stevens also reminds us of Justice Frankfurter’s warning not to “burn the house to roast the pig”.
I don’t know about you but watching our judicial process at work makes me wet.
The phone is ringing. Later.