For the third time, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), echoing Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr.'s view that the law is "impermissibly overbroad and vague." A modified version of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which sought to censor the Internet and was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, COPA is designed to ban "material that is harmful to minors" posted "for commercial purposes."
 
"In sum, COPA cannot withstand a strict scrutiny, vagueness, or overbreadth analysis and thus is unconstitutional," said Judge Greenburg.

The American Civil Liberties Union took on the suit for a number of commercial businesses to sue the government over COPA’s vague wording. When the issue came to court in 2007, Judge Reed stated that COPA infringes on the First and Fifth Amendments because the law “is not narrowly tailored,” with the defendant failing to demonstrate “that COPA is the least restrictive and most effective alternative” in monitoring Internet decency. 

“For years the government has been trying to thwart freedom of speech on the Internet, and for years the courts have been finding the attempts unconstitutional,” said Chris Hansen, senior staff attorney for ACLU.

For the court, COPA seems to be a futile attempt to regulate Internet activities because filtering software has evolved to prevent children from viewing sexually explicit sites. Filtering products, coupled with parental discipline, are proving to be a useful method of restricting children from inappropriate content, yet still keeping the doors of free speech open.

“Throughout the history of legal challenges to COPA, we have argued that the most effective way to protect children online, and the means least restrictive of free expression, is to give families the resources to control what their children see and do online,” said John Morris, General Counsel of Center for Democracy and Technology.