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A decision related to the Child Online Protection Act will have ramifications for the online gambling industry and its attempts to have the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act repealed. The news for online gamers and operators is positive, however.
A federal appeals court agreed Tuesday with a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.
The law, which has not taken effect, would bar people from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet. The act was passed the year after the Supreme Court ruled that another law intended to protect children from explicit material online - the Communications Decency Act - was unconstitutional in the landmark case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.
In its ruling Tuesday, the federal appeals court concluded that the Child Online Protection Act also violates the First Amendment because filtering technologies and other parental control tools offer a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online. The court also ruled that the law is unconstitutionally overly broad and vague.
John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group that filed briefs arguing against the law, said the measure would effectively force all websites to provide family-friendly content only - because there is no practical way of locking out children from sites that are inappropriate for them but lawful for adults.
Joe Brennan Jr. of iMEGA.org clarified the importance of this decision to the online gambling sector. His organization is currently fighting in a 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to have the online gambling prohibition repealed.
"As I mentioned in the past, one consideration in filing our suit was the US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals' rulings (there have now been three) on the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA," iMEGA.org Founder, Joe Brennan, Jr. told Gambling911.com Thursday. "The parallel issues between COPA and UIGEA are many, an another reason why we feel very good about going to Philadelphia with our suit."
"So, we are very pleased with the news today that the 3rd Circuit affirmed that COPA violates the First Amendment (which we argue UIGEA does), and holding that filtering and parental controls are more effective than blanket prohibitions on select Internet content."
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher CCostigan@CostiganMedia.com
Originally published July 24, 2008 6:50 pm EST
