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US Supreme Court Upholds CIPA
TheMatt writes "The US Supreme Court today has upheld CIPA, the law that required public schools and libraries to put internet filters on computers or lose federal funding. Quote: 'The court in a 5-4 decision ruled that the Children's Internet Protection Act does not violate the First Amendment, but that filters sometimes, do block informational Web sites.'"
The decision will be posted on the US Supreme Court website later today. The case is United States v. American Library Association, 02-361. We had covered this story before.
The Washington Post article indicates that the decision was 6-3, not 5-4. Maybey they had a typo and corrected it later.
Plurality opinion here.
Dissents are here and here.
Concurrences are here and here.
The Supreme Court said the existing law was legal. That does not nullify the ability to repeal. All you need to is pass another law saying "That other law is now overridden" or something to that effect. Heck, we did it with our constitution before (see prohibition).
The SCOTUS did say that having a librarian temporarily disable the filter is acceptable (and that's why the case was decided this way, in part; it isn't an undue burden, if a legit site is blocked it can be bypassed, and it will prevent a majority of porno or whatever.) Take a look over at SCOTUSblog, there's more information there.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
I would expect that in most cases you will be able to rely on the librarians to tell you when filters are enabled. The American Library Association has already denounced the decision and, unlike the PATRIOT act, I don't believe CIPA puts librarians under a gag order with respect to disclosing the existence of filters.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Read the ALA's opinion...
If it is a useful site use the override function and unblock it. YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE THE DEFAULT BLOCK LIST! And anyone who does, is going to be getting pr0n and not getting all the available "useful sites". All the filters have a bias, some political, some religious, doesn't matter. Figure out the bias and correct for it.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Yes, it was indeed librarians who opposed the law here's the link...
We actually turn down about $50K of funding due to CIPA, but in the past 3 years I can count on one hand the number of complaints we've had about the filter. We run it from a proxy server and there's no quick trick for someone to circumvent it.
The suggestion of publishing the logs of what gets filtered. Bad idea! You wouldn't believe what people will surf for. We process about 2GB of patron Inet traffic a day, and have between 100-500 blocks on average. Nearly all of them very legitimate.
I hate big brother dangling the carrot as much as the next guy, but blameing the filter isn't the right approach.
The report is out, has tons of data about blocked sites. Here is the executive summary:
The abstract is online in HTML as well. The whole PDF is 10.6MB.
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
Well, CBS/Viacom has theil spin machine on full-tilt, so your arguement isn't going to hold water...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/16/evening
About a week ago I downloaded the video, and saw the "people [who] are looking at pornographic material right next to the librarians", which consisted of a 1/10th-of-a-second shot that showed a woman (with face blurred out, so no guess where she was actually looking) standing behind a man at a computer, with the screen contents blurred out (so it could just as well be the Mona Lisa onscreen)... I though it was extremely suspicious when I first watched it. I think it would be great if there was actually an independant news network left that might investigate these very suspicious claims. It seems all too convient.
Additionally, later in the story, they actually contradict themselves anyhow. First they claim librarians are complicit about pornography, then they tell you it was actually the librarians that filed suit against the library to get internet filters installed... I don't know what else to say. Everything about this story seemed very suspicious, but there's not really anything that I could do about it.
Anyhow, I just wanted to point out that your arguement would probably be struck down with stories such as this, even if their facts seem tenuous at best.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think that this is an excellent idea, but the fundamental problem with all of this is that libraries are not well-funded. This is why the law is an issue at all, since the law threatens that the library will lose it's federal funding if it doesn't comply.
/. community could volunteer some of their time at their own local library, offering to help configure the machines in such a way to ease their burden while still complying with CIPA. I am sure that libraries everywhere would welcome the offer of a little free computer consulting.
Consequently, it is safe to assume (particularly for small, suburban or rural libraries) that they do not have the resources or technical expertise to implement this in a way that guarantees that a local christian conservative activist doesn't come along and call for the library to lose it's funding because Johnny knows more about computers than the librarian and managed to glipmse a couple of nipples before being chased off.
Perhaps the
The court doesn't overturn itself all the time. Actually it hardly ever does. It only redefines, limits the scope and applies other rulings in other ways. If the court actually overturned a lot of decisions (from the supreme court, not lower courts) you'd see a very very different outcome in many situations. The court is first and foremost concerned with previous rullings and their authority to act!!
but where is internet access a right?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It should be pointed out that part of the law states that the filters can be switched off for people who request such.
You'll have that sometimes...
The issue here is that Congress has side-stepped the Constituion. They've legislated through the back-door what they can't through the front.
They have no put a ban on such sites, nor told schools that they have to block such sites. They've said that if the schools don't do this, they won't give them Federal funding. They do the same thing with taxes. You couldn't pass a law criminalizing smoking, but you can tax it to high heaven. This is why Libertarians want states to be in no way dependent on Federal gov't funding.
So, the question here is, is it ok for the government to side-step the intent of the US Constituion. The USSC's answer is hardly affirmative, with a 5-4 decision. Such a weak decision is susceptible to being over-turned. The answer to it, of course, depends on whether you are a strict constructionalist or a loose constructionalist.
Quite frankly, I think that the government shouldn't be able to regulate through the back door what it can't through the front; that mandate should be written into the US Constitution.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I guess all the justices thought about was "wow, these filters must just block porn, so its OK, because porn isn't a free speech issue" while ignoring the fact that the filters fail at that task.
RTA, it wasn't the fact that the justices thought the the filters worked perfectly but the fact that any library patron that was over 18 could go and ask the librarian to turn off the filter.
I'm sure that this will be a little embarassing if you're actually looking for porn but not if a legit site is being blocked.
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb