Court Says Anti-Smut Law Illegal Censorship6/23/2000; 8:23:12 AM 'A federal anti-smut law violates Internet free-speech rights, an appeals court ruled on Thursday.... "To avoid liability under COPA, affected Web publishers would either need to severely censor their publications or implement an age or credit card verification system whereby any material that might be deemed harmful by the most puritan of communities in any state is shielded behind such a verification system," a three-judge panel wrote in its decision.'The anti-smut law in question is the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), another good-natured attempt to make the Internet safe for children. Unfortunately, it does indeed require that the internet be utterly safe for children by absolutely everyone's standards, including "the most puritan of communities", which kind of leaves even this site in danger of being in violation.It would also put a strong burden on smaller sites, as only the larger ones have the resources to pay for a age-verification service. I'm glad to see it shut down. Perhaps before we worry about making cyberspace 100% safe at all times, we could worry about making the real world 100% safe at all times. (What, that's impossible you say? What a coincidence, I was just about to say something similar...)