Spliffdaddy--
Yeah, we wouldn't want to aggressively prosecute child pornographers.
Man, are you a dumbass. You just could not be bothered to actually read the first thing about what this is about, could you?
COPA has nothing to do with child pornography. It was intended to keep children from seeing legal pornography online. That is, it "protects" children by not letting them see things, rather than from being exploited.
Basically, COPA made it a federal crime to post pornography (no matter how soft) on the Internet, if you did so as part of your business. Unless you used credit cards as a means of age verification, or magical technologies that don't exist, but which are referenced in the statute.
When evaluating a First Amendment case, where the government is trying to restrict speech based on the content of that speech (in this case the content being Playboy, or whatever), the government is only allowed to do it if, among other things, there is no less restrictive way of accomplishing its policy (in this case, protecting children). Also, the restriction has to be effective at accomplishing the policy; ineffective laws that harm civil liberties are unjustifiable.
The Supreme Court found that COPA was not the least restrictive means available for keeping children from seeing porn, and that since a lot of the porn business is overseas, that it would not be effective. Therefore, COPA is not constitutional.
When the government can come up with a system that actually works and poses the least harm to adults (who can look at pornography all they like), they're welcome to try again. In fact, COPA was the second attempt at something like this. It was better than the CDA, which was the earlier try, but still not good enough.
What would the liberals do with all their spare time?
Well, we might not make **** up, like you're doing.
Idiot.
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