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 Once there is a enough support, try to get the law repealed.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.

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.