I was amazed recently to find a Wall Street Journal editorial agreeing with me — in this case, suggesting that it might be time for the government to give up its ill-fated defense of the Child Online Protection Act, which the ACLU has been fighting for nearly eight years now (Salon is one of a group of publishers that are plaintiffs represented by the ACLU).
I was surprised, really, because in the past the Journal has, let’s just say, been less than sympathetic to the cause. This editorial from 2004, for instance, viewed the online free speech argument as an object of contempt (“Larry Flynt…pretending he’s Thomas Paine”). What upset the Journal there was the prospect that the Supreme Court might end up more protective of adults’ right to free expression online, even on sexual topics, than of the rights of wealthy people to contribute unlimited sums to political campaigns.
That should have tipped me off to what might have swung the Journal over to the ACLU’s side in the COPA matter. It turns out that the Journal’s indifference to the Right to Free Speech is outweighed by its horror at the prospect of government interference with the Right to Do Business.
Specifically, when the government’s effort to save COPA spilled over into what the Journal rightly called a “fishing expedition” into Google’s log files, sparking a headline frenzy, the paper’s editorialists had enough: “If commandeering such data from private companies against their will is what it takes to defend the law,” the Journal wrote, “maybe defending it isn’t worth the effort.”
Indeed. Welcome to the team, WSJers! Next, can we interest you in some ACLU membership cards?
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