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.

Comments

Decision wrong in slashdot post

[abcxyz]

The Washington Post article indicates that the decision was 6-3, not 5-4. Maybey they had a typo and corrected it later.

Decisions on non slashdotted site

[Dan Berlin]

Plurality opinion here.
Dissents are here and here.
Concurrences are here and here.

Re:Can they keep logs?

[demaria]

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).

Not an absolute problem

[thdexter]

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.

Re:How do you know you're filtered?

[aborchers]

A huge problem with the law is that filters which don't tell you they're filtering are OK

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.

American Library Association's opinion

[madape]

Read the ALA's opinion...

addendum

[KludgeGrrl]

Yes, it was indeed librarians who opposed the law here's the link...

From the inside

[99bottles]

I'm the IT Manager of a fairly large public library, and I've seen every aspect of the filter battle. For several years we've offered an optional filter, which the user has the ability to turn on or off for their browsing. We only block two "categories" of content: sexually explicit and extreme/obscene

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.

Net Blocking Report from EFF and OPG is out

[pberry]

The report is out, has tons of data about blocked sites. Here is the executive summary:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Online Policy Group (OPG) have cooperated to study and analyze the accessibility on the web of information related to state-mandated curriculum topics within public schools that operate Internet blocking software. This study measures the extent to which blocking software impedes the educational process by restricting access to web pages relevant to the required curriculum.

The abstract is online in HTML as well. The whole PDF is 10.6MB.

Re:Can they keep logs?

[utmecheng]

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!!

Re:Can they keep logs?

[tha_mink]

It should be pointed out that part of the law states that the filters can be switched off for people who request such.

side-stepping the US Constitution

[dh003i]

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.