ACLU Victorious in Defense of Online Free Speech

A federal district court on Thursday ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union’s longstanding challenge to an Internet censorship law.  Although the law was enacted in 1998, courts immediately forbade the government from enforcing it because it suppressed a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech. In ACLU v Gonzales, the ACLU sued on behalf of its members, including San Francisco’s own Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights Bookstore, which maintains a Web site.

At issue was the ACLU’s challenge to the "Child Online Protection Act" (COPA), which would impose draconian criminal sanctions for online material acknowledged as valuable for adults but deemed "harmful to minors."  In rejecting COPA’s approach, which would restrict the access of both adults and children alike, the court said that filtering software allows parents to protect their children without limiting the constitutional rights of adults.

San Francisco’s poet laureate, Ferlinghetti was represented by the ACLU of Northern California in his 1950s obscenity trial for selling copies of the poem “Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg.