[RTC List] COPA Is Dead - I Am Happy - Is That Wrong?

[John Abela]

Hey Everybody.

So, on January 21, 2009, the United States Supreme Court rejected appeals
made by the White house (and parental organizations around the country) and
have now clearly stated that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) {1} law
will remain illegal to implement in the United States of America. {2}

I, for one, am rather happy about this.

Yes, I realize that COPA was intended to protect children from online
pornography.

Yes, I realize COPA was designed to help keep minors away from "material
harmful to minors".

Neither of those things I have a problem with.

While I will let the argument be argued elsewhere about who's job it is to
"protect our children" (parents or the government or both) I cannot stop and
think of just how much of a serious PITA the whole COPA situation has been.

As an online website developer, as a SaaS developer, as a guy who just
enjoys having a blog {3} that "might" contain a bit of material that some
overly protective parent might consider "harmful" to her little boy, COPA
has been one of the most screwed up laws out there to try to deal with.

I am sick and tired of registering at websites and having to put my age in.
"Yes, I'm over 13 years old"... "Yes, I was born before 1996"... Yes, yes
yes yes yes already!!

In the sector of business that I am in, I own the largest blog service
provider website {4} dedicated to the given sector. Last year alone it
generated nearly 18-million page views and thousands of new members. It is a
highly human-monitored website where every bit of content is reviewed (from
blogs, to photographs, to videos, to shoutouts, to wall comments, to
bulletins, to you know it and it gets reviewed).

So "why" might you ask am I happy and glad to see COPA die a quick death -
especially considering the levels of review my large website already
employs?

Simple: Because I want more members!

I want to see those kids under the age of 14 to be able to join the website
- legally, without lying about their age, and without their parents having
to fax us some retarded form via fax (a requirement of COPA).

There are millions of kids online who are under the age of 14, who are
viable and potential members of my website - and millions of other websites
out there that have had to deal with COPA for far too long.

COPA did two thing very well:

(1) It forced a massive loss of potential customers to honest and legit
online websites that cater not to pornography, but to all human beings of
any age.

(2) It forced our children to lie about their age in order to join a
perfectly clean and safe website. {5}


So am I happy?  Hell yes.

Is that wrong of me? I am not really sure if I care anymore.

John B. Abela


For your reading pleasures:

{1}
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090121-ten-years-of-futility-copa-finally-truly-dead.html
{2} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act
{3} http://abela.me/
{4} http://www.christianblog.com/
{5}
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012718&source=rss_topic84
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