Slashdot Mirror
CIPA Trial Comes to a Close
Cossie writes "As the latest major case on library/internet censorship comes to a close, CNET News has an article up summarizing the court battle over the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act). It's a decent summary of the case, including several quotes by judges commenting on the case." See our story from when the suit was filed describing the issues at stake.
The problem- Private Emails were illegal too under the act.
It was a crime to use offensive words in email, including political email.
The law might have gotten further if it was not too fascist.
But the US passed a workaround by joining the hate-speech laws the EU adopted and used a TREATY to enjoin the usa citizens... now extraditable to EU for Nazi Speech or White Pride Speech!
A Treaty overrides Constitution evidently.
Thus the locale law becomes moot.
So slashdot doesn't like the US Gov't to have supreme control over the internet to censor it. Slashdot wants the people, themselves, to do censoring if necessary, where everyone has their own choice.
To change the wording around:
The slashdot population doesn't like the slashdot editors to have supreme control over slashdot to censor it. Slashdot population wants themselves to have control (like the FAQ says), where each person has their own system (not editors with unlimited mod points).
Posting anonymously, cause michael will have a hayday with this one...
I'm sorry? Since when do we see ads popping up saying "Hey kiddies! Come look at naked ladies!"
It just doesn't make sense to me
Randal Graves says: I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class... Especially since I rule.
From Atty. Rupa Bhattacharyya's arguments in court: "Even if you assume that libraries have a right to provide unfettered access to the Internet, they don't have a right to do so with a federal subsidy," she added. "The crux of this matter is whether or not Congress has the power to decide how to use its money."
And she's right, but probably not the way she thinks. The answer to her question is that Congress cannot use its powers in a manner that violates the Constitution--including the First Amendment.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Our local library put the internet terminals in the middle of the library where anyone could see what you were looking at. Should this be considered a violation of free speech because even a minority of the local populace could intimidate you into not visiting sites you would otherwise want to. Should the library be forced to provide rooms for internet access where you could browse in private?
Ahhh yess, the obligatory sigh oh, did you say sig?
So this law is deeply flawed and should be thrown out. It appears that is the sentiment here and I would have to agree.
But, would anyone else agree that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed somehow? Should kids (or adults for that matter) be able to view whatever the hell they want on a public PC in a public library? I would love to hear some of the big brains here suggest alternative solutions.
Sadly, all that I can think of is good old fashioned human supervision.
Trying to protect children from pornography on the net is futile, for two reasons.
First, it's stupid to target the net when you can get more/better porno in cable. Even mainstream channels like Cinemax are now offering softcore, and nobody is talking about banning it. And, yes, I'm pretty sure more kids have access to cable TV than to internet.
Two, there isn't that much porn out there. Yes, there are plenty of teasers, but it's REALLY hard these days to get to actual porn wothout paying for it. Porn sites are businesses, and kids don't get in without paying (and paying is pretty hard for a kid).
So, I say all these people need to chill out a bit. Try to be a good parent, and get used to the idea that your kid WILL actually see some porn, somewhere, somehow. I did. You probably did too. Did it cause us any harm? Of course not.
"We were so busy trying to give our children all the things we never had, we forgot to give them all the things we did have".- Someone, I don't remember who. But he was right.
I think a much better solution than this legislation is for libraries to not allow children access to the internet at all without parental supervision. It should be the parents' responsibility to decide what is and isn't appropriate for their child to see, not the libraries' or the federal government's. Stop blaming the libraries, asking for impossible legislation, etc., and take the time to supervise your children.
Libraries could still provide computers for use by unsupervised children that are not connected to the internet, or that are firewalled to only provide limited set of services such as e-mail.
-- jason
who is the guy that is in the slashdot censor icon?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
"There is no constitutional right to immediate, anonymous access to speech, for free, in a public library," Justice Department Attorney Rupa Bhattacharyya said...
As wiser /. readers than I have pointed out recently, something doesn't need to be in the Constitution to make it a right. The Constitution explicitly says that the Bill of Rights is an incomplete list, and that any and all rights and powers not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution are reserved for the jurisdiction of the States.
Note how it begins, "All legislative powers herein granted..." That means anything not explicitly mentioned is not granted to the federal government. Again, those wiser than myself also cite the 9th and 10th Amendments:
Article [IX.]
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Article [X.]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Therefore, our Constitutional rights, by construction, include rights not named in the Constitution. :-)
I've become involved in setting up a media center in the library of an elementary school. The school has internet access but does not provide said access to the student population. There is some desire, however, to allow access to specific sites that the teachers feel complement topics being presented in the classroom.
What I have proposed is to block *ALL* general access to the internet except for those site that the teachers have added to an Access Control List. These lists may be dynamically updated and may be limited to very specific durations.
The idea is that the students will not have unfettered access to the internet. They will only be *shown* content that the teacher feels is relevant to what is being taught.
While this approach may not be appropriate for a public library we feel that it is for a public school setting. We feel that it sidesteps the issue of the 1st amendment because we are not limiting the general publics access. Furthermore the school has no obligation to provide students access to the internet. In fact the access is being provided to the teachers.
The WIPO treaty overrides usa constitution free speech.
As you know Champagne is a WIPO restricted word (trademark)
And now many cheeses are becoming trademarks under WIPO law.
The problem?
many words (such as Tobasco) are large geographical land masses or had earlier meanings.
If you owned Champagne.com WIPO treaty allows it to be stolen from you and given to france.
USA joined the WIPO treaty of 1996.
Americans can lose their domains with no recourse if a european is angry.
same thing could happen if you had a site called GermansAreStillNazis.com or FrenchPeopleStink.com and a phoney dispute by a foreigner was created to shut you up.
American courts have no jusridiction anymore over treaty on internet.
There are many internet treaties proposed in play... speech, cybercrime, anonymity, copyright, dmca reverse engineering, hanti-hate-speech, money laundering (banking in gold notes), etc.
All these treaties take away our rights.
It's strange, this should be so straighforward - and it isn't. IMO, the judges may have missed the point. Or, maybe I did. I dunno.
I have about 50 boxes in this company. We own them; we decide, without question, what will and will not happen on each. No user has the right to do anything but what we intend... after all, they're our boxes, not the user's.
I don't see libraries as being any different. If they wish to provide a box for people to use, the library is well within it's scope of authority to attach any TOS it wants. Period. After all, the library owns the box, it's THEIRS. "The Arbitrary Public" has about as much authority over the use of these boxes as they do a police car. God help the idiot who thinks he's entitled to drive one of those somewhere, he'd get a Darwin award for sure, and noone would disagree.
I have real difficulty arguing otherwise... I have a couple machines at home, and they are MINE. Not my wife's, not my kids, not some jerk walking in off the street, and NOT the property of some anonymous, arbitrary vendor. I am a strong defender of curtilage regarding my boxes; they are mine, they exist to suit my purposes exclusively, and only I will dictate what they do. What some people call UCE, I'm the type of guy who calls it a packet stream that results in an unwanted impact on the state of my systems; in other words, it's theft of service and intrusion. Meanwhile, all of these "3rd party rights" do nothing but dilute my scope of authority over those boxes.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Wait, whose money? Perhaps I have the wrong idea about government, but every other quote I've seen like this one at least calls it the taxpayer's money. Or maybe I've had my head in the sand for a while.