After ten years of the anti-porn law that was under the Child Online Protection Act, stopping minors from viewing harmful content over the internet, silently died off in the Supreme Court after Congress overwhelmingly approved the law ten years ago.
"For over a decade the government has been trying to thwart freedom of speech on the Internet, and for years the courts have been finding the attempts unconstitutional," said Chris Hansen, star of To Catch a Predator on Dateline MSNBC.
To help strengthen the case to keep the law alive, the Justice Department subpoenaed major Internet service providers in 2006. Companies like AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp, Cox Communications Inc, EarthLink Inc, Verizon Communications and more, to use data as part of the defence of the law.
Countries like China have taken the fight against online pornography to the full blunt of the law by shutting down web sites. Recently, China has banned pornography in its country, making it illegal to host pornographic content on servers.
The law was eventually commented on by U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. who ruled that software filters would help enforce the law better than the law would. Talks about implementing software filters into ISP's, was never fully implemented. Talks about enforcing the law would only push pornographers operations offshore away from U.S. authorities who would be unable to combat the issue.
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