News: Supreme Court cracks down on Web porn
In a minor setback for civil liberties groups challenging a law that cracks down on Internet smut, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Child Online Protection Act may not be overly broad.

On Monday, justices voted 8-1 to send the case back for reconsideration by the lower court that struck down the law. However, the high court did not lift an injunction preventing enforcement of the law, meaning the government's hands are still tied when it comes to blocking content deemed harmful to minors.

COPA passed in 1998 and made it illegal to sell sexually explicit material via the Web if minors could see it. Since then, the measure has been bogged down in the courts amid challenges it was overly broad and violated the First Amendment by preventing adults from accessing certain Web content.

The court said COPA's use of "community standards" to determine harmful material did not make the law overly broad, as the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia had determined in a previous ruling. However, it did not address other challenges to the law, including charges that COPA is vague and does not use the least restrictive measure possible to protect children from porn.

Instead, the high court ordered the 3rd Circuit to consider those issues, meaning legal battles surrounding COPA are far from over.

"Whether COPA is constitutional was left to be decided another day on other grounds," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California.
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