Well, it was certainly gratifying to be given this pass, this get-out-of-jail-free card, from Olson -- a lawyer who has come in for his share of criticism in Salon over the years. (Indeed, his Tuesday argument lived up to our description of him in 2001 as, among other things, "A lawyer who makes ironclad assertions that later turn out to be false and misleading." At one point he told the court that "Susie Bright writes for Salon Magazine, by the way," and incorrectly asserted that "in order to get her columns, you have to register." Now, for reasons having nothing to do with COPA, Bright's columns are no longer available from our archives. But we continue to publish sex-related content, and none of it requires that you register to view it.)

Alas, any sense of security we might take from Olson's magnanimity fades once we review the wording of COPA itself. If you commercially publish sexually explicit content intended for adult reading online -- even if, like us at Salon, you do not consider yourself a pornographer -- the law sure sounds like it covers you. Of course you could rely on the word of the solicitor general of the United States.

But what if he changes his mind? Earlier government filings on COPA offered considerably different views of the material the ACLU gathered for its case -- which, in addition to Salon's sex columns, included images presented as part of sex information sites and descriptions of gay and lesbian sexual pleasure. The government's case cites only relatively hardcore porn images, but as Beeson pointed out, COPA covers text as well as images.

How are we supposed to determine the difference between the "worst stuff" and the stuff that Olson thinks is OK? Web sites don't wear trench coats. And -- as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor asked Olson -- why can't the government, if it's truly interested in cracking down on the "worst" commercial porn, simply use existing obscenity statutes? Why do we have to carve out a fuzzy new "harmful to minors" zone exclusively for the Web, and turn the federal government's powerful legal guns at any publisher unlucky enough to wander into it?

The sad truth is that COPA, if enforced (it has been on judicial hold since early 1999), would accomplish precious few of its aims. Vast quantities of Web porn would continue to be made available to minors in the U.S. from servers located abroad, beyond the reach of Olson's prosecutors. The law covers only the Web, not other online channels -- including e-mail spam, one of the most potentially upsetting means by which some pornographers get their goods in front of the wrong eyes. In the meantime, nearly all of the larger, more established U.S.-based porn publishers already use the COPA-mandated "adult check"-style credit-card screens.

That means that, if the Supreme Court decides to agree with Olson and uphold COPA, you won't see a whole lot of prosecutions of actual commercial pornographers. Who does that leave? Publishers like Salon, who sometimes provide material intended for adults that is not pornographic, by most community standards of 2004, but that parents might not want their children to view. Such parents, of course, have a whole range of alternatives today for keeping Salon's sex articles away from their kids. Filter technology isn't perfect, but it does a pretty good job of screening out dirty words and fleshly images.

Meanwhile, requiring site visitors to prove they're adults by whipping out their credit cards before viewing potentially controversial material is a sure recipe for an unconstitutional "chilling effect" on speech that is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment: Since we can't be sure what material the law really covers, we can either risk jail or self-censor. Most businesses will choose the latter. And the Web will take a big step toward the blandness and conformity that pervade so many other media today.

Will the Supreme Court let that happen (a decision is likely by June)? Predicting the court's leanings based on oral debate is a fool's game. The looks of the judges on Tuesday -- from the silent Clarence Thomas, head in his hands; to the whimsically rocking Antonin Scalia; to the quite possibly slumbering David Souter -- revealed little. O'Connor's suggestion that the Justice Department might express its concern for the welfare of children simply by enforcing existing laws, and Justice Anthony Kennedy's declaration that COPA was "very sweeping," offered some hope that the Supreme Court -- which passed up its first chance to put a stake through COPA's heart -- may finally put this law out of its misery.

In the meantime, anyone publishing material on the Web that might run afoul of the feds can rest easy. Olson assures us that we can ignore what COPA says and trust prosecutors' good sense. After all, can't we count on John Ashcroft's Justice Department to do the right thing?

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