The child online Protection Act, a law originally past in 1998 is finally done.

The Supreme Court today declined to hear the appeal of the case.

Shortly after the law was passed in 1998, a federal judge in Philadelphia issued an injunction against the statute on free speech grounds and the law has never taken effect.

The Supreme Court today by declined to review the Philadelphia ruling, effectively making it permanent.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ruled last July that the law violated the First Amendment because filtering technologies and other tools offered less restrictive ways to shield children.

The law would have made it illegal for the operator of a commercial Web site to make sexually explicit material deemed harmful to minors available to those under 17. Violators would have faced fines of up to $50,000 per offense and six months in jail. A site that carried such material but gated it off from children through credit cards or other age-verifying measures would have had a defense under the statute.