Judge Blocks Internet Content Restrictions

In a victory for civil liberties groups and online activists, a federal judge in Philadelphia issued a temporary restraining order Thursday that bars the government from enforcing a new law designed to protect minors from indecent material on the Internet.

Thursday’s ruling prohibits the Justice Department from enforcing the recently passed Child Online Protection Act, which was scheduled to go into effect today and would have imposed sweeping new restrictions on any commercial site that distributes content that might be considered harmful to minors.

The issue is one of the thorniest in cyberspace, which has placed a previously unfathomable array of content--from the noble to the lewd--within reach of every household with a modem and a mouse.

Civil liberties groups filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of the act last month, and in issuing Thursday’s ruling, Judge Lowell A. Reed determined that the plaintiffs had “shown a likelihood of success on the merits of at least some of their claims.”

The ruling marks the second time in three years that a major congressional attempt to regulate content in cyberspace has been derailed in a Philadelphia courtroom.

Ann Beeson, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who has played a leading role in the case, said the ruling is a significant victory, even though the order is set to expire after just 10 days.

“The judge had to find that we were likely to succeed,” said Beeson, who added that the plaintiffs will next seek a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the law indefinitely. She said the ruling spares “literally millions of speakers on the Net who would have had to immediately begin removing material from their Web sites.”

Justice Department attorneys who defended the law in court were not available for comment. A department spokesman said officials would first have to carefully review the ruling, as well as further explanatory remarks expected to be issued by Reed today.

The ruling was likely to disappoint conservative groups, including Enough is Enough and the Family Research Council, which have pushed hard for Congress to pass laws that would protect children from pornography and other harmful material widely available on the Internet.

The Child Online Protection Act has been controversial from inception through its passage as part of a broader spending bill last month. In essence, it would have required commercial sites to verify the ages of users before making indecent material available to them, or face criminal and civil penalties up to $50,000 per day.

In targeting the “commercial” distribution of indecent material, Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) and other authors of the law sought to tailor it carefully enough to avoid the fate of the Communications Decency Act. That law also was blocked by a federal court in Philadelphia before it was struck down altogether by the Supreme Court in 1997 largely because it was deemed too blunt an instrument.

Opponents of the Child Online Protection Act dubbed it CDA II, and predicted it too would be overturned because they say it relies on too vague a definition of indecent material and unduly restricts adults’ access to legitimate content and services on the Net.

Supporters of the suit range from Condomania, an online catalog of prophylactics, to the influential Internet Content Coalition, which includes such powerful media companies as Time Inc., Warner Bros. and CBS New Media.

David Talbot, editor of the popular online magazine Salon, testified on behalf of the plaintiffs, saying that at least three columns on his site, including one by feminist critic Camille Paglia, often broach topics that might run afoul of the new law.

Talbot also said that the number of visitors to his site, currently about 700,000 per month, would plummet if the so-called Webzine forced users to furnish credit card numbers and other information before allowing them to access content.

Cyber-libertarians acknowledge that protecting children is an increasingly important goal. But they argue that such protections should be handled not by the government but by parents.

* MIXED ON MICROSOFT

Government witness calls the firm a monopoly but says it’s competitive. C3