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Trial Begins Over Library Censorship
Justen writes: "CBS has a story on the Philadelphia trial over the Children's Internet Protection Act, signed by President Clinton in 2000. This is the first challenge to come to trial, challenging the act which aimed to censor pornography and other "inappropriate" websites in libraries and other government-subsidized public Internet access-points. The big shocker? The challenge has the support of a large number (3,000) of libraries, librarians, and library patrons."
I agree. While the standard for "obscene" has been hammered out (though still a hot potato), "harmful to minors" could mean anything.
Anyway, bottom line -- this is Yet Another Totally Unconstitutional Load of Bull-Plop that even the lizards on the current Supreme Court will probably strike down.
Is the right to access speech protected by the 1st? I know the right to produce speech is, but I'm uncertain of the other. It's a no-brainer that I can produce objectionable material, but as a consumer, do I have a right to access it at the public library? Not that I agree with the law, mind you. However, I'm not sure it'll be a slam dunk to get it struck down.
Method of processing duck feet
Seen from the Europen side of the Atlantic this is the old story of American women societies dominating the countries official morale since the wild west. A French prime minister for example would never be considered uncapable of doing politics just because he had a girl friend after office hours. Everybody would just say "Gee, he's still a man of power, our prime minister, isn't he?".
The porno sites would not be there, if nobody would ever click on their links. Where are these clicks coming from, from dirty ol' men overseas only? And the interest in pornography would not be that great, if normal sex life was accepted and more freely available.
Double morale, politicians fear the influence of the old womens societies and that's it. On the surface - while underneath Big Brother is watching you. The result will be less money for organisations who really need it - public libraries. My god! Who has ever though about viewing porno sites in a public library? Must be pretty twisted brains who think that an imminent thread the government should be concerned with.
Carrying guns is OK, but dicks - my god!
* 2002-03-25 16:30:16 First Challenge to CIPA (yro,censorship) (rejected)
From the NY Times article:
"The coalition of plaintiffs includes the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and Jeffrey L. Pollock, a Republican Congressional candidate who favored mandatory filtering until he discovered that his own campaign's Web site was blocked by one of the most popular filtering programs."
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
No, libraries would have .kids-only PCs in the children's book section. Parents could also sign permission if they felt their kids were ready to use the unrestricted PCs.
It would be up to the .kids domain registrar. The important thing is: Congress, parents groups, civil liberties groups could go off and fight all they wanted about the AUP for .kids, while leaving the rest of the Net alone. Does that help?
Look, the issue is not going to go away. People want their kids to have free access to the Net, so they can grow up to be well-paid information workers instead of low-paid foodservice workers. But they also don't want six-year olds to be exposed to pr0n, molesters, or serial killer fan sites. IMHO, these are legitimate goals, and the best way to satisfy them without censoring the entire Net is to create kid-safe part of the Net that is appropriate to censor.
>;k