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

Can they keep logs?

[aridhol]

If so, keep logs of those sites that are blocked. Log the reasons for blocking (pornographic, political, etc). When it is seen what non-pornographic content is being blocked, let everybody know. Publish a list of the top-ten blocked informational sites.

Make sure everybody knows what is being blocked. Talk to the media. Once there is a enough support, try to get the law repealed.

Note that I am Canadian, and I have no idea what goes into repealing laws in the USA. It may be that, because it has already been to the supreme court, it's too late to repeal. But challenge it anyway. Knowing the way laws work, someone can probably write a counter-law that will override it, and attach it as a rider to another bill.

Re:Can they keep logs?

[Zirnike]

"Log the reasons for blocking (pornographic, political, etc)."

Nice idea, but haven't people been DMCAed for trying that? It's essentially trying to 'pry' into the 'trade secrets' that are the block lists. Which is why the SC threw out this idea the last time it came to them, I think...

Anyone know what the differance in the two cases was? I'm almost positive this contradicts something else they've said.

"Can you please turn off the filters?"

[sulli]

Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, in separate opinions, said the government's interest in protecting young library users from inappropriate material outweighs the burden on library users having to ask staff to disconnect filters.

I'm for civil liberties as much as the next guy, and I agree that filters generally suck, but how hard is it really for an adult to ask another adult to turn off the filters? They are known to block all sorts of legit sites, so it's not as if you're really asking to look at pr0n.

The folks who get screwed here are the teenagers, but unfortunately that seems to be the way of the world these days. But what would youth be without breaking a few laws? If everything were legal, what would be the fun of being underage?

Re:"Can you please turn off the filters?"

[aliens]

So it's up the librarian to determine what should and should not be filtered if a teen asks them?

If I wanted to visit a site that gave alternate views on history for a paper (like I once did back in the day. A paper on the Black Panthers, I used a museum of African American history in baltimore. They painted a rather different picture of the Panthers than what you'll read about.) would the librarian unblock it?

filter, sure... but is effectiveness regulated?

[RevDobbs]

Unless the effectiveness of the filter is legislated, I suppose all one would have to do is redirect sex.com, porn.com, and some obvious pr0n sites to a warning page and you'll have met the letter of the law without accidentally blocking National Geographic. Or artistic movies about gay cowboys eating pudding.

Let us attack the root cause

[jmorris42]

I'm a sysadmin at a public library. I have been following these fights for a few years and see only one solution. Kill SLC.

Eliminate the Schools and Libraries Corp and the tax that supports it and the problem goes away. These eternal attempts at control by the FedGov are only possible by the indirect method of tying it to Federal Money. The actual number of dollars our library gets that can be traced directly to SLC is small enough we would just tell them to shove it, but when we looked into it we found it intermingled throughout the state and other misc funding to the point we would lose a buttload of money. Kill SLC.

THE SLC MUST BE DESTROYED.

Interesting what they censor...

[Scalli0n]

It's interesting to see what they censor. I went to FCPS schools in fairfax virginia, they censor out www.beretta.com but also pro-gun sites. Even more interesting is that they will not censor out gun control sites; it's deciding what kids see. I don't know how else I was effected, but an extreme (very!) pole of this could be whether or not maybe cnn.com were blocked as opposed to msn.com or any other news site.

just interesting.