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Trial Opens Today in Long-Term Fight Over Government’s Attempt to Censor the Internet
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PHILADELPHIA -- The American
Civil Liberties Union today presented opening arguments in federal district
court in its longstanding challenge to an Internet censorship law, ACLU v.
Gonzales. The censorship law was signed by President Clinton in 1998 and has
never been enforced.
"The right to free speech is one of the core values of
this country," said ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Chris Hansen, who is lead counsel
on the case. "Congress does not have the right to censor information on the
Internet. Americans have the right to participate in the global conversation
that happens online every moment of every day."
At issue is the ACLU’s
challenge to the "Child Online Protection Act" (COPA), which would impose
draconian criminal sanctions, with penalties of up to $50,000 per day and up to
six months imprisonment, for online material acknowledged as valuable for adults
but judged "harmful to minors."
In a trial that is expected to last four
weeks, the ACLU will present evidence from a broad range of Internet speakers
including online magazines, an online dictionary, rap artists, painters and
video artists, providers of safer sex information and writers. Attorneys will
argue that the censorship law directly violates the First Amendment rights of
the ACLU’s plaintiffs, their members and tens of millions of other speakers to
communicate protected expression on the Internet.
Previously, a federal
district court in Philadelphia and a federal appeals court found the online
censorship law unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court upheld the ban on
enforcement of the law in June 2004. The Justices, however, also asked the
Philadelphia court to determine whether there had been any changes in technology
that would affect the constitutionality of the statute, such as whether
commercially available blocking software was still as effective as the banned
law in blocking material deemed "harmful to minors."
The ACLU said that the
law will not provide effective protection for parents who are concerned about
their children having access to some materials. For example, the law cannot be
enforced on the more than 50 percent of speech posted overseas, and it does not
apply to non-commercial sites or to instant messaging, peer-to-peer file
sharing, chat rooms or e-mail.
"Technology is forever evolving, as are the
tools people use to communicate. Internet content filtering has evolved since
1999," Hansen added. "Unlike COPA, it can be used by parents who are concerned
to block overseas sites, peer-to-peer speech, instant messages, and other forms
of speech. While not perfect, it protects children more effectively than COPA
would. It can also be tailored to the age of the child and the values of the
parent"
COPA represents Congress' second attempt to impose severe criminal
and civil sanctions on the display of protected, non-obscene speech on the
Internet. A first attempt, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, was declared
unconstitutional by all nine justice of the Supreme Court in Reno v. ACLU.
"This case is about speech. It is not the role of the government to decide
what people can see and use on the Internet. Those are personal decision that
should be made by individuals and their families," Hansen said.
The legal
team in the case includes Hansen, Aden Fine, Ben Wizner and Catherine Crump of
the national ACLU and attorneys with the law firm Latham and Watkins, which has
been working with the ACLU on Internet censorship battles since 1998.
The
case will be heard by Senior Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr. The docket number is
2:98-CV-05591-LR.
The trial will be held at the United States District Court
House for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, located at 601 Market Street in
Philadelphia, PA.
More information, including a full list of plaintiffs,
legal documents and the history of Congress’ attempts to censor the Internet, is
available online at: www.aclu.org/onlinefreespeech