The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit today upheld a ban on the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), ruling once again that it was unconstitutional, overbroad, and vague. The American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged COPA on behalf of a coalition of writers, artists and health educators, hailed the ruling as a victory for free speech.

"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 with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. "The government has no more right to censor the Internet than it does books and magazines."

COPA was originally passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1998 and was meant to protect children from "harmful" content on the Internet. Unfortunately for proponents of the law, its wording was very broad and would have required website operators to implement a number of measures to enforce "contemporary community standards." According to the ACLU blog, it would have even barred adults from seeing material that was not appropriate for a child and would have affected, among other things, the online availability of sexual health information.

Opponents of the law sued to block enforcement almost immediately, and in the ten years since the law was passed, it has never been enforced. Instead, it worked its way through the system for years. In 2002, the Supreme Court instructed a Circuit Court to reconsider its ruling preventing the law's enforcement. The Supreme Court blocked enforcement of COPA in 2004, again sending the law back down to the District Court for further study.

In 2007, the District Court struck down the law yet again, ruling it unconstitutional and issuing a permanent injunction against its enforcement. The court found that COPA violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, ruling that "COPA prohibits much more speech than is necessary to further Congress' compelling interest." Not one to take failure lying down, the government appealed the decision, bringing us to where we are today.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled (PDF) that COPA was "not narrowly tailored" enough to serve the government's goal of protecting children from content on the Internet, it was was not the least restrictive means available, and was substantially overbroad. The government now has the same decision to make as it has many times in the past: whether to appeal to the Supreme Court (again), or let it die. It wouldn't be a huge surprise to see the case appealed one last time. "Hopefully [the government] will conclude that 10 years of litigation is enough," notes the ACLU. We agree.