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Supreme Court to Hear CIPA Case
Ruger writes "The Supreme Court of the United States will "decide if public libraries can be forced to install software blocking sexually explicit Web sites," according to this article from the Associated Press. US lawmakers have passed three laws to 'protect' children from Internet pornography, but the Court struck down the first and blocked the second from taking effect. 'A three-judge federal panel ruled the Children's Internet Protection Act violates the First Amendment because the filtering programs also block sites on politics, health, science and other non-pornographic topics.'" Our previous story on this ongoing case will bring you up to speed on the issues.
You can go here and take action against this now!
When a Library chooses not to carry "Jugs" magazine, it doesn't mean they are forced to also leave out, say, books on breast cancer, magazines dealing with health issues that include sexual health, and such.
If there was a filter out there that ONLY blocked pornography, then it would be a different story.
But there isn't one. Requiring a library to install a filter that also blocks information on medical issues, religious minorities, sexuality issues, and discussions of problems with filters is clearly wrong.
Let's make this clear - NOBODY is in favor of adding pornography to the libraries. The people challenging this law just feel that all the non-pornography that has to be blocked in the process because of the poor state of filtering is reason not to allow the law.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
This is not about the right to look at porn. The proponants of this law and filtering in general want you to believe that. However, that is not what this is about. Filters do not just filter porn, they filter unpopular speech, the very speech that needs the most protections from censorship.
To which I would add two more reasons why that is an issue:
One other problem with the act that has been noted by many groups including the federal government is that the CIPA imposes the same standards on Teenagers as it does on your five-year old. While on the surface that seems (legally) reasonable it falls down in the face of teenagers doing school reports on breast cancer, etc. The rules for Teenagers really should be different. If I have to do a report on HIV in Health class it makes no sense for me to be banned from seeing the materials. Moreover, how are teenagers supposed to learn to deal with this stuff if they never see it until they turn 18?
I agree with you that children need to be protected from harmful materials online, just as they need to be protected from harmful people on the street, and from playing with handguns. However I beleive that the federally mandated systems in the CIPA and others will do more harm than good for the reasons above and because no software can make the kinds of appropriate decisions that parents can.
You might also see the American Library Association's page on the issue and the report of the COPA committee (a congressional task force) here. Note I do not necessarily agree with all of what they say however.
This is a bizarre problem in the US. Why is there so much porn spam?
John Dvorak actually published an article today regarding this sam subject. One good quote is The porn purveyors have taken my freedom to choose away from me. Push technology now pushes porn at me whether I like it or not.
he goes on, but you can read the entire article here
I agree that this is way out of control.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I can stil understand peoples' arguements against such legislation, but in this context do not see it as a free-speach issue, just a funding issue. The libraries do not have the right to demand new computers at any cost.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
My school and this tech school I go to both have Cyber Patrol installed on the proxy and they are extremely easy to bypass. If a site is blocked just remove the www, or use nslookup to go directly to the ip address. This works most of the time. The filter only blocks one way to the site.
I wouldn't be supprised if other filters have the same problem.
Hacker Media
"The Bush administration argued libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers."
The key phrases here are not required and shouldn't have to. Following this logic, libraries are not required to not have pornographic magazines and therefore shouldn't have to deny access to pornography on their computers.
Why legislate when communities and libraries are perfectly capable of handling this without violating the First Amendment on their own? How? Here's a few suggestions:
"We must protect the children!" Please. I'm tired of your children and your inability and unwillingness to watch them determining how I can lead my life.
You know, there would be a lot less of this niggling and policy crap (and rights being trampled, etc.) if some smart people mandated the creation of the .xxx domain extension. Easy to identify, easy to filter, easy to block. I guess it's not so easy to enforce. How could you enforce companies to use the new domain extension and abandon their old one by law with many countries having different pornography laws? Credit card companies could be mandated to refuse to pay for porn access from companies outside of this .xxx domain. You're a .com smutt dealer? Sorry, you're not getting paid!
Well anyways, David Coursey once talked about this idea (though most likely not his original idea) being one of the more simple approaches to tackle the censorship of Internet porn.
Something to think about methinks!
Here's a list of the sites that were blocked by default that I had to unblock manually:
Some of these sites involve themselves in gay/lesbian issues (particulary in regards to the other BSA the Boy Scouts of America), and may have been incorrectly blocked by keywords for "gay" or more likely "lesbian", but I've scoured the index page source for places like "Access Atlanta" and couldn't find anything that could be construed as remotely offensive, even in a substring.
People who back such laws as this and oppose the recent ruling concerning the "under God" portion of the "Pledge of Allegience" are at odds with America's diverse morality and (non)spirituality. To include a reference to God in the Pledge begs the question "Which God?" or "Whose?". Likewise when legislating morality the question becomes "Whose morals?".
Because nearly every commercial filtering system is protected by "trade secrets" it becomes impossible to expect and answer to the above questions, and illegal to discover them on your own.
Are expected to purchase software that controls our childrens access to information without knowing what it's really doing? Absolutely, and if this law is upheld it'd be illegal to choose otherwise.
Don't entirely know what it blocks and doesn't. Don't know why. Blocking software companies won't tell us. Illegal to find out. Illegal to not install. Likely illegal to circumvent.
Orwellian. Yep.
As an aside:
"Protecting children" is a convenient way to get government to move, and it's a red herring. No American politician is going to come out and say "I'm anti-children" or "I think children should look at porn and the taxpayers should foot the bill.". Evoking "protecting children" is just a carrot (or whip if you'd rather) for people who have an agenda to wave in front of legislators.
"Protecting children" also sells tires, and Volvos, and antibacterial soap, and milk, and private schools, and cell phones, and guns...
-dameron
Just thought you'd all like to know that "cipa" is Polish for "cunt".
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