In a ruling the American Civil Liberties Union is calling a clear victory for free speech, a federal court on Tuesday once again upheld a ban on a law that would criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Web.

The ACLU challenged the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) as unconstitutional on behalf of a broad coalition of writers, artists and health educators who use the Web to communicate constitutionally protected speech.

“For years, the government has been trying to thwart freedom of speech on the World Wide Web, and for years the courts have been finding the attempts unconstitutional,” said Chris Hansen, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The government has no more right to censor the Web than it does books and magazines.”

The History of COPA

Previously, a federal district court and a federal appeals court found that the online censorship law violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court upheld that decision, effectively banning enforcement of the law in June 2004, sending the case back to the district court to determine whether there had been any changes in technology that would affect the constitutionality of the statute.

Specifically, the court looked for technological changes, such as whether commercially available blocking software was still as effective as the banned law might be in blocking material deemed “harmful to minors.” In March 2007, a district judge once again struck down COPA; the government again appealed, and on Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the ban.

The ACLU’s clients in the case include Salon Media Group, which runs the online magazine Salon.com; the Sexual Health Network, which operates sexualhealth.com; and Aaron Peckham, who owns UrbanDictionary.com. COPA would have imposed harsh criminal sanctions, including penalties of up to $50,000 per day and up to six months…

Original post by Top Tech News