Following a ten-year court battle, on 22 July the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2007 lower court decision that the Child Online Protection Act is unconstitutional. The legislation would have forced websites featuring adult material to verify site users’ ages, but was ruled to be ‘substantially overbroad’ in its definition and in violation of the First Amendment. It was also ruled that the Act was not the most effective way to keep children from visiting adult websites; filtering or other methods adopted by parents were said to be more effective.

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