ently offensive speech. Thus, the Court leaves open the possibility that it may still tolerate a higher level of censorship for the Net than it has for print. Looked at this way, Reno v. ACLU may say nothing more than that the vague CDA fails where a more sniper-like approach may prevail. Many people view this as a precedent-setting event. ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser hailed the ruling as an unprecedented breakthrough in the fight to determine the future of free speech into the next century. Everyone knew the CDA was unconstitutional, but Congress passed the law and the President signed it, Glasser said. Todays historic decision affirms what we knew all along: cyberspace must be free. Reno v. ACLU has indeed served as an example for many cases concerning the Internet in keeping cyberspace free. One such case occurred in 1998 and the offending law was so similar to CDA that one attorney said, Whether you call it the Communications Decency Act or the Congress Doesnt Understand the Internet Act, it is still unconstitutional and it still reduces the Internet to what is fit for a six-year-old. The law was the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which makes it a federal crime to knowingly communicate for commercial purposes material considered harmful to minor. Another law that was shut down in Mainstream Loudoun v. Board of Trustees of the Loudoun County Library in 1998. This law censored library computers and the librarys website of all material deemed wrong for a minor. Both of these cases used Reno v. ACLU as a precedent, and both of the cases stopped laws that prohibited speech on the Internet.The high courts decision came just three days after federal district judges in New York and Georgia struck down Internet censorship laws in those states. The New York case, American Library Assoc. v. Pataki, dealt with a law almost identical to the federal CDA. Judge Loretta A. Preska ruled that the law violated the Commerce...
