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.

Comments

Take action now!!

[updog]

You can go here and take action against this now!

Re:They will keep trying

[Saige]

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.

Re:There's only one question...

[Irvu]

Actually that provision exists in the CIPA. The Justices noted it but still considered the law a problem because

1. although the librarians were required to turn it off they may not want to.
2. this would force everyone to get clearence from a librarian and basically announce to the world at large what they are looking at before they do so, opening them up to censure.
3. Many systems block sites "invisibly" or in ways that will prevent legitimate adults from ever knowing that they exist and thus being unable to ask for the provision to be turned off.

To which I would add two more reasons why that is an issue:

1. If it can be turned off all the time, it can be accidentally left off, hacked or spoofed thus making the system even less effective in the face of determined teenagers.
2. In the face of recent USA Patriot rulings on librarians being forced to divulge recently secret information this is one more thing that librarians can be forced to log and then divulge.

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.

Wrong

[Keebler71]

This debate is very misunderstood. This is not a federal law forcing libraries to restrict porn web content. It simply denies federal funding to libraries who are content with letting children browse porn using monies given to libraries for computer upgrades from federal tax dollars. This just requires that if these libraries want the computer money, they have to place safeguards.

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.

Filter, what filter?

[Kizzle]

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.