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MarketingVOX: Web publishers who rely on free speech as their constitutional right should be keeping watch on an unfolding federal court case at the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania as the Justice Department seeks to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA).
The Act required commercial Websites to collect a credit card number or other proof of age before allowing internet users to view material deemed "harmful to minors." COPA was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, ruling it also would cramp the free speech rights of adults to see and buy what they want on the internet. The court said technology such as filtering software may work better than such laws.
Research presented during the current trial suggests they were right. A study of random websites, conducted by Philip B. Stark, a statistics professor at University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the strictest filter tested, AOL's Mature Teen, blocked 91 percent of the sexually explicit sites in indexes maintained by Google and Microsoft's MSN. Filters with less restrictive settings blocked at least 40 percent of sexually explicit sites.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the law on behalf of a broad range of web publishers, said the study supports its argument that filters work well. "Filters are more than 90 percent effective, according to Stark," ACLU attorney Chris Hansen said this week during a break in the trial. "Also, with filters, it's up to the parents how to use it, whereas COPA requires a one-solution-fits-all (approach)."
Stark also examined a random sample of search-engine queries. He estimated that 1.7 percent of search results at Time Warner's AOL, MSN and Yahoo are sexually explicit and 1.1 percent of sites cataloged at Google and MSN fall in that category. Those numbers attracted headlines ("Study finds Web isn't teeming with sex", "Government study: Internet 1 percent porn") but changed few opinions.
The search-engine analysis itself ignited widespread public debate last year after Google objected to a subpoena it had received to turn over billions of Web site addresses and two months of search queries to government attorneys. Google argued in federal court that the request would put both the private queries of Google users and the Mountain View giant's trade secrets at risk. A federal judge subsequently ordered Google to turn over 50,000 random copies of Web pages from its index, but did not require Google to produce search-engine queries.
The COPA lawsuit is already eight years old but the issues at stake are timeless: freedom of speech versus protection of the innocents. Whatever the outcome of this particular legal adventure, the arguments will continue to echo.
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