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Summary:
Preventing children from encountering unsuitable material, such as pornography,
as they use the Internet is a major congressional concern. Several laws have been
passed, including the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA), the 1998 Child
Online Protection Act (COPA), and the 2000 Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA).
Federal courts ruled, in turn, that certain sections of CDA, COPA and CIPA were
unconstitutional. All the decisions were appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme
Court upheld the lower court decision on CDA in 1997. It has heard COPA twice, in
2002 and 2004, and each time remanded the case to a lower court; an injunction against
the law's enforcement remains in place. The Supreme Court upheld CIPA on June 23,
2003. Congress also passed the "Dot Kids" Act (P.L. 107-317), which creates a kid
friendly space on the Internet, and the "Amber Alert" Act (P.L. 108-21) which, inter
alia, prohibits the use of misleading domain names to deceive a minor into viewing
material that is harmful to minors. Congress is currently considering legislation (H.R.
2883) related to pornography on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, and to expand the scope
of the Amber Alert Act to include meta tags (H.R. 4305).
