Cite as: 535 U. S. 564 (2002)
Stevens, J., dissenting
statute, we should be mindful of Justice Frankfurter's admonition not to "burn the house to roast the pig," Butler, 352 U. S., at 383.
COPA not only restricts speech that is made available to the general public, it also covers a medium in which speech cannot be segregated to avoid communities where it is likely to be considered harmful to minors. The Internet presents a unique forum for communication because information, once posted, is accessible everywhere on the network at once. The speaker cannot control access based on the location of the listener, nor can it choose the pathways through which its speech is transmitted. By approving the use of community standards in this context, Justice Thomas endorses a construction of COPA that has "the intolerable consequence of denying some sections of the country access to material, there deemed acceptable, which in others might be considered offensive to prevailing community standards of decency." Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, 370 U. S. 478, 488 (1962).
If the material were forwarded through the mails, as in Hamling, or over the telephone, as in Sable, the sender could avoid destinations with the most restrictive standards. Indeed, in Sable, we upheld the application of community standards to a nationwide medium because the speaker was "free to tailor its messages . . . to the communities it chooses to serve," by either "hir[ing] operators to determine the source of the calls . . . [or] arrang[ing] for the screening and blocking of out-of-area calls." 492 U. S., at 125 (emphasis added). Our conclusion that it was permissible for the speaker to bear the ultimate burden of compliance, id., at 126, assumed that such compliance was at least possible without requiring the speaker to choose another medium or to limit its speech to what all would find acceptable. Given the
ACLU I, 521 U. S. 844, 854 (1997), " 'the receipt of information on the Internet requires a series of affirmative steps more deliberate and directed than merely turning a dial' "—or scanning a magazine rack.
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