A federal judge has ruled that the Child Online Protection Act, enacted in 1998 though never actually enforced due to a string of legal battles, breaches the First and Fifth Amendment rights and is thus deemed unconstitutional.

The law sought to criminalise almost all sexually explicit material on the internet, imposing large fines and jail terms on anyone who created or disseminated pornographic material over the internet. The law was aimed at protecting children from internet pornography, which is easier to access than traditional media methods such as magazines or video.

The federal judge is not the first to have looked over the 1998 law, and it went as far as the Supreme Court, though they didn't pass final judgement on the law at the time. This permanent injunction against the law now sets the stage for the Supreme Court to finally strike it off of the statute books.