A key case on kids and Web porn

This "contemporary community standards" requirement in the law is at the center of the Supreme Court case. The justices must decide if the use of community standards to regulate adult websites that are available worldwide violates the free-speech rights of website operators.

In striking down COPA, the Third Circuit ruled that such reliance on community standards would allow the most conservative communities in America to dictate the level of censorship authorized by the law. That standard would apply equally to websites accessed in communities whose adults might not consider the material "indecent" or harmful to minors.

In defending the law, the Bush administration's solicitor general, Theodore Olson, says commercial pornographers on the Web already place most of their material behind age verification screens. He says the effect of the law would be to require the pornographers to place their "teasers," images meant to lure new users into their sites, behind age-verification screens as well.

"At most, COPA's reliance on community standards imposes a modest burden on adult access to pornographic material," Mr. Olson writes in his brief to the court, "and that modest burden is outweighed by the government's compelling interest in shielding minors from material that is harmful to them."

Ann Beeson, who is arguing the case against COPA for the ACLU, counters that website operators have no way of determining the characteristics of their patrons - whether by age or geographic location.

"Because Web speakers are without any means to limit access to their sites based on the geographic location of particular users," Ms. Beeson writes in her brief to the court, "they must conform to the standards of the most conservative community or risk criminal prosecution when their speech is accessed in those communities."

More is at stake over the "community standards" issue than simply the future of COPA. The same community-standards test applies to the general obscenity law for adult material on the Web, legal analysts say.

"If the justices accept the Third Circuit's view that you can't use community standards, then the present Internet obscenity law goes down the drain," says Paul McGeady of Morality in Media Inc. in New York.

Mr. McGeady says the community-standard requirement is not geographically based. Rather, he says, it is based on a consensus of average adults about what they consider to be harmful to minors.

McGeady says when a jury in a car-accident case is asked to determine the negligence of the parties, they are instructed to base their verdict on what a reasonable person would decide. The same would apply in Internet pornography cases. "It is similar to 'I know it when I see it,' " he says.

Opponents of the law say parents can protect children by monitoring their children's Internet viewing habits and using filtering software that blocks access to specified sites.

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