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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.
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.
Since when do we see ads popping up saying "Hey kiddies! Come look at naked ladies!"
They may not see popups but they may see porn-spam to web based e-mail used only in libraries. Not to mention results in search engines, and clever traps used to lure kids into chat rooms and porn sites.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
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'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.