COPA Defeated
The ACLU has won another battle against censorship. The Children’s Online Protection Act sought to make the entire internet safe for little children by restricting online speech that is “harmful to children”. All adult-themed material is by definition harmful to children.
Thankfully the court struck down the law and told parents to protect their own kids instead of gearing up the full force of law and bureaucracy to make sure nobody sees any penises. Love that ACLU.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
At least they aimed for a stupid and Orwellianly named law, this time. “Let’s imprison people if they don’t work hard enough at stopping other folk from doing something bad. Yay!”
Now, if only they’d get their heads out of their backsides on the parts of the Constitution they don’t like and “hate crimes” legislation instead of trying to protecting actual pedophiles, and I might stop hating their guts.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
What gattsuru said. Their idealism is praiseworthy but their devotion to abstractions in contravention of all common sense is not.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
If bad precedent is made from bad cases, we’ll lose the good ones too. Lots of the precedent cited in defeating COPA involved past cases brought by the ACLU on behalf of people I don’t much care for. Like it or not, law is abstract.
And *everybody* deserves a lawyer, no matter how horrible a criminal you are. I will admit that I have expended effort in defending pedophiles in criminal matters. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t do it for long, but I believed in the mission.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
You don’t make a lot of precedent when crappy cases are left at the bottom rung, either, nor does a lot of precedent apply toward normal cases. Nor do I particularly like the precedent set when they applaud making certain classes more equal than others.
But, then again, I am not a defense Lawyer (just because I’m soulless doesn’t mean I’m evil), so I pretty obviously don’t have what it takes to suggest someone’s innocent even when I know the opposite to be the case.
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I have to applaud the ACLU on this one, because COPA is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
I concur with Hugger that everyone is entitled to competent counsel, and I have a high degree of respect for the criminal defense bar.
Make no mistake, it is they who police our rights under the Fourth Amendment, and I like seeing them bust law enforcement personnel who violate those rights.
My problem with the ACLU is the selectiveness that it exercises in picking and choosing which liberties it will defend and which ones it will leave twisting in the wind.
I recently confronted one if its national spokespersons (his name escapes me, but he is pretty ubiquitous on the TV circuit) about the ACLU’s failure to embrace a vigorous defense of the 2A.
I caught him completely off guard, and he responded by saying that the ACLU let the NRA safeguard our 2A liberties.
I then asked him whether the ACLU concurred with the NRA’s interpretation of the 2A and its application to gun control laws.
He responded that he thought the 2A was a valid consideration (a small concession for an organization which endeavors to preserve our Constitutional liberties), but that there were public safety issues so some type of registration may be necessary.
I asked him whether the 1A would permit the registration of persons wishing to exercise their rights under it and also as to his (and the ACLU’s) interpretation of “shall not be infringed”.
He said “Good point” and we left matters at that since he had to make a quick exit for the airport.
He was at the function I was attending primarily to defend the right for solemnizing gay marriage and was fairly ignorant (and I don’t mean that in a pejorative manner) of the 2A.
He was a nice guy, and I hope to spar with him again.
March 23rd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I never understand the people who slam the ACLU for defending some rights but not others. They’re an org with a focus on certain issues. I know a few ACLU and NYCLU members (and employees) who care about the second amendment (I’m one). It’s just not the thing the org is focused on, and going after those cases would dilute the mission and might divide their membership.
March 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
[…] The ACLU has won another battle against censorship […]
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Why?
Well, for starters, the whole mission statement is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Not “to defend and preserve the half of the the first amendment rights we like”, not “guaranteed to every racist, pedophile, terrorist, or communist we can stumble across”. False advertising just isn’t that helpful.
Secondly, yes, I’ll admit it might dilute the mission. I don’t see it doing so nearly as much as, say, standing up for NAMBLA.
Finally, since it is just an organization, I’m going to hold back my money and approval until they spend more time preventing crap like Kelo than protecting their ex-directors from porno prosecution, more time protecting my right to say something meaningful even as a student than protecting a spammers right to fill my mailbox with sludge.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:46 pm
“I never understand the people who slam the ACLU for defending some rights but not others. They’re an org with a focus on certain issues.”
Funny, I though they were focused on American civil liberties.
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Come on, this law was worse than useless.
Sites hosted in other countries were immune from the requirements.
And “harmful to children” by “community standards” is vague enough that you could attack just about anything.
Parents need to be responsible for their kids.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Mission statements are *always* broader than the actual work of a nonprofit. I work for a non-profit, and one of the things I do is create non-profits. I’ve founded a number of non-profits, grown non-profits into viable orgs, and serve on the board of several right now. One universal truth about such entities is that there is *always* more work than you can do. Every non-profit has priorities within its mission, and that means stuff that falls within your mission will get neglected, even disfavored, as you prioritize and pursue stuff you care about. It’s just the way it goes.
March 24th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Wrong. The ACLU doesn’t just not-focus on the Second Amendment, it actively lobbies against it. Just because they’re right on this particular case doesn’t mean they are right in general. Stopped clocks, etc.
March 24th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I don’t think being exactly wrong is the same as lobbying against : I’m unaware of any situation where the national ACLU gave money to politicos specifically to oppose gun rights or backed a law or legal case to further limit gun rights. I will admit given its tendency to lean left, there’s likely little distinction, here, but we should remain accurate: it’s more apathy than opposition.
Brutal, your arguments are pretty common-place fallacies. It doesn’t matter how many other orgs can’t stop themselves from lying on a mission statement, it matters what the ACLU does. Your viewpoint makes it worse, and the ACLU goes from simply being incorrect or apathetic to openly and willfully lying.
March 25th, 2007 at 2:52 am
Like I said, mission statements are aspirational. Limited resources and the preferences and interests of the actual people running and supporting an org will determine how much of the mission is pursued, but a non-profit’s activities will never run to the full breadth of the mission statement. To expect it to do so is to live in a fantasy land.
March 25th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
So, it’s okay to have a mission statement that invokes things you don’t actually aspire to, and worry might “dilute the mission” or “divide the membership”?
That’s somehow supposed to make me like the place’s false advertising more?
March 25th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Oh please. Did you follow my link? It’s not an example of apathy or benign neglect of the Second Amendment; it’s an openly hostile position.
March 25th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Yes, I followed the link — I actually clicked several times to make sure I hadn’t gotten confused.
I’m not denying that the ACLU is exactly wrong on the position, that they are openly hostile to any reasonable understanding of the Second Amendment, and that they probably do horrible things to kittens, as well. On the other hand, I haven’t found any examples of them actively paying for court cases against gun rights, providing national support against gun rights, or specifically supported a candidate because he or she was
an assholetrying to limit gun rights. There’s a difference between being exactly wrong and largely keeping your mouth shut, as opposed to actively lobbying.March 25th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
I’m not going to get into the semantics of what does or doesn’t constitute “lobbying.” In my book, going on the record in support of a court decision upholding a total ban on handguns goes far beyond “being exactly wrong and largely keeping [one’s] mouth shut” and into “providing national support against gun rights.” If you think endorsing a judicial nullification of the Second Amendment is no big deal, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.