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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.
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 Once there is a enough support, try to get the law repealed.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.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
The Washington Post article indicates that the decision was 6-3, not 5-4. Maybey they had a typo and corrected it later.
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?
sulli
RTFJ.
A huge problem with the law is that filters which don't tell you they're filtering are OK: if you're using a reasonably clever Google-filter, for example, you may never know that information has been filtered.
Additionally, many methods of filtering infringe the copyrights of the original authors, or may if the MPAA lawsuit against the DVD bowdlerizers succeeds.
Funny that we may have to hope for the MPAA to make filtering harder.
-- Brian T. Sniffen
Plurality opinion here.
Dissents are here and here.
Concurrences are here and here.
Does anyone know if there are any requirements as far as software, or if certain vendors are "certified" as being good enough?
This argument has been around for a long time, and I don't think it's a bad idea to require a filter, I just think there needs to be a better filter out there before this should be legally enforced...
Something clever...
By the CIPA!
sulli
RTFJ.
And buy shares in anybody producing internet filters - they've just gotten the Golden Ticket!
First they've got a huge market that must, by law, use their product. Second, that product is painfully inadequate to perform the job it's asked to - hence a nice long development-release-fix cycle that should go on for years, fully funded via government mandate.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
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.
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.
Provided teachers have block/unblock per site capabilities, what is the problem. I understand that some sites get blocked that aren't pornographic, but so what. School is for education, and so during school/study hours having game sites blocked also is appropriate.
But that is just my opionion, I could be wrong...
Wait a tic, aren't low scores on tests a problem.
I say block everything, and have the teacher unblock the relevant sites automagically by time/date. Programming a lesson plan into the blocker/unblocker sounds like a good plan to me.
And preventing pedophiles from downloading porn at the library is a good plan too.
Most libraries already have procedures for logging on and can therefore check age/parental permissions per "account" What is the big deal.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
There are all kinds of legitimate uses that are being stopped though this software because it is far from perfect. I can only hope that the Supreme Court doesn't continue with this apparent precedent for saving a few at the expense of many others. After all, how long of a jump is it from this to, say, imprisoning anyone who could be a terrorist, based on demographics? Sure, a lot of innocent folks would be robbed of their rights, but, hey, we've stopped a couple of terrorists from causing trouble. Things are better, right?
kids should be beating off at home in their bedrooms, not in the library.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Everyone gets screwed here. All the Supreme COurt has demonstrated is that none of them has actually used an internet computer at a public library.
Do you really want to have to ask the librarians every time you look for information on breast cancer? Or even worse... you're looking up Penis cancer. Lo and behold, you'll have to walk up to a librarian and say "Excuse me... could you unblock Penis cancer, you commie swine?"
Working in a library, I'm certain this will happen. The worst part is no so much the filtering, but what it does to a poor library's ability to control their own agenda: you want computers, bow down to the morality of whatever company makes your filtering software of choice.
Just what we ALWAYS wanted... private companies determining the morality of the public.
The article now says 6-3 ruling. I presume WP changed the numbers, and the poster isn't to blame.
Anyway, the lawyer for the libraries should have engineered some text in his arguments that would guarantee that case to be blocked by the filters. That could help prove a point, if only after the fact.
At least it would make the court look like the out-of-touch, technically inept folks they are.
One positive note, something I didn't know, the Yahoo article states that library patrons can request that the filter be disabled.
As for needing to hide the eyes of our children, have the justices not seen television lately? Do they not have their own hotmail email accounts? Kids left alone with TV or internet will inevitably get material we don't want them to get. They're much more likely to get it from a source while at home than while at a library. How many kids nowdays spend time in a library?!
.sigs are for post^Hers.
How about just setting up a "kids section," With filters on those computers?
:/
The computer lab should be "policed" by the librarians anyways. Wandering around, leaning over people shoulders. Making sure thomas q pervert isnt masturbating in the library. If he is, call the cops and have him dragged off.
I mean, its one thing to look at breast cancer treatment sites and another to look at big-tittied-lassies.com Wouldnt just seperating the sections be a perfectly fine solution? The kids could just ask the librarians for help if they reach a blocked site.
Normally I would rage against something like this. But if you read the article, the supreme court's decision was based on the fact that librarians can shut off the blocker on request. As long as they dont ask "why?" it should be okay.
Still.. It makes it difficult for people to do research on private topics
I am conflicted.
no
Read the ALA's opinion...
Is it really such a BAD thing to put filters on a library computer accessible by kids? I hate them as much as the next guy, but doesn't a publicly funded institution have a responsibility to protect children from offensive and degrading material? Perhaps they should just have filters on the computers in the kids section and leave the others clean.
besides there is better filter tech out there now.
my Prof. just finished some research that rather than filter on the content of the page, filters on the construction of the page.
you have to teach it what a certain type of page looks like. a porn site looks diffrent than a news, medical, sports, entertainment, etc. site.
you can also have it take into account as many features as you deam nessisary.
this tech I think will reduce the number of false positives and false negatives by a very significant amount, IMHO.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Yes, it was indeed librarians who opposed the law here's the link...
It seems to me, that all these problems and objections could be avoided if someone just made a program that would only block the _binary_ data from black-listed sites. That means you'd still be able to see text and HTML, but no images, no file downloads, etc...
I'm sure this would satisfy FAR more people than the current system of all-or-nothing.
Additionally, I don't see why the libraries don't just all band together and make their own filtering solution, rather than giving a blank check to companies? They could maintain absolute control, and decide wether blocking site XYZ is limiting someone's right to free speech.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I agree they should block Pr0n in schools. (I mean, what's the point anyway; kids fapping under the desks (not that I haven't seen that)) Personal e-mail, perhaps. Kids supposed to be doing research or in computer / programming class waste time on that stuff instead of paying attention. Either it should be policed better by teachers or perhaps in fact blocked. Entertainment (video trailers, games, etc) the same thing.
But political sites and "hate sites" I honestly don't think should fall under this same policy. At my place of employment, much like school's filtered i-net, Rush's streaming conservative talk show is blocked. But NPR isn't. You can't read the drudge report (in the high school I graduated from two years ago) but you can read the NYT. Something's wrong when political and "hate" reasons (IE anti-gay... I mean, that's a political choice! that's like blocking atheist sites (which they do!) but not blocking catholics-r-us.com (wonder if that exists)) are chosen by the blocking company as to which are acceptable and which aren't. And that's where blocking sites no longer protects but censors. Only blocks certain opinions. What if (I don't) I feel that pro gay sites are as if not more offensive than anti-gay sites?
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
This point has been made before but I feel the need to re-iterate....
.
:-)
The children of today are what are going to lead the world tommorow. Makes sense. They shouldn't be prohibited from seeing all sorts of diverse stuff including the negative.
It's like inbreeding. If you don't have enough diversity you end up getting weird illnesses and the species dies off. Same thing. If we all think the same way and band counter-thoughts we're doomed
Imagine in the future if the history of slavery becomes too "upsetting" and is band. etc... etc...
Glad I'm a canadian, proud and free
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Anyways after reading THIS I have lost all faith in the supreme court to actually even know what the constitution is. What is it with these people, do they not realize that the constitution is the framework for our contry and not a spare roll of toliet paper.
The constitution is for freedom and those freedoms should be expressed in all parts of the government especially our centers of education. I'm tired of these conservative views being implemented on me. You don't want your children downloading porn, how about you try being a parent and stop relying on everyone else to do it for you.
I want something to restore my faith in the system, I really do.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
probably off topic.
I was doing some work for a private religious school that had software of the CIPA type installed on their server, and it was preventing the students (grade schoolers) from doing their research.
The topic at hand was something on their favourite sports team. The CIPA type software had a default not to allow access to such things.
I looked into the config files, and modified the defaults to allow sports-type web pages to be accessed.
I decided to test this (with all the kiddies watching no less) by going to www.nfl.com
Lo and behold it worked, with the front page of the NFL talking about the suspension, and jail time, of a star player for drug use, rape and murder of his pregnant girlfriend....
perhaps those filters are in place for a reason?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I would only agree with this if the unfiltered machines are in a closed area. And even then, there should be some filters. no-one should be exposed to this at the library.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
The problem isn't so much that it's a violation of civil rights (when a person is in public, they have a civic responsibility to behave in a certain manner anyways), as much as it's a problem that computers just aren't smart enough yet to be able to really tell the difference between, for example, a porn site and an article on breeding cats for profit. This isn't because of bad filters, it's because computers are too dumb to do any thinking on their own.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Congress passes laws. The Supreme Court of the United States ensures that the laws passed by Congress are constitutional.
Congress can vote (with a simple majority) to strike the law, at any time, without any oversight from the SCOTUS. So -- the law isn't set in stone, and certainly doesn't require a constitutional ammendment to change.
If congress votes to change the law (not remove it entirely), and if an American challenges the revised law on constitutional grounds, and if the SCOTUS agrees to hear the new case, then hte opinion of SCOTUS will reign again.
The SCOTUS only determines if current laws passed by congress are constitutional. They do not write law. Their decisions on law are binary, and they cannot reword laws so that they adhere to the constitution. They merely stamp the law "UNCONSTITUTIONAL" and send it back to Congress. Once stamped, the law is null and void.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
While I find the blocking software providers a secretive and sleazy bunch and the blocklist rather suspect, I'm not sure that this law will be all that bad.
The terminals I've seen at libraries require a card or login anyway. Since the law is aimed at kids, just issue adult/minor cards or IDs that are, by default, unrestricted or restricted. (I think that parents must sign for kids library cards anyway - minors can't sign legal documents promising to return the books - so determining who is a minor is just part of the process anyway.)
Since adult logins are never blocked there should be no issue of embarassment over requesting removal of the filter. If a kid "needs" unfiltered access he can bring his parent to log in. It's sort of like an R rated movie.
Sure, IDs or cards can be lost or stolen but they can also be deactivated. It seems that this would fulfill the requirement of the law in a nearly transparent way (of course I haven't read the actual law in detail so I could be wrong).
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
This law only keeps unapproved information out of the hands of poor kids, who probably won't need it and can't be trusted to use it responsibly.
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.
Democrat delenda est
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.
My main objection is with the companies producing the stupid-assed filters and closed/encrypted blocked sites lists. Is it feasible to think that there could be an open source blocking software? Who would maintain the list of blocked sites? Whose moral standards would such a list enforce? How would categorization be done such that, for example, you could allow non-explicit sexual content (ie, educational and health sites), and not explicit content?
In other words, is there a way to make this work somewhat well, now that the law passed the Supreme Court test?
Ahh, the sweet sweet smell of innocence protected.
Kudos to those who support censorship and who are policed by fear and shame. It makes me so proud!
Thank you for trying so very hard to clamp your hands over the eyes, ears, and mouths of our tender youth... it's a good thing that saying that something is bad stifles curiousity!
It's so caring to uphold the belief that children should be led blindfolded into the world and only exposed to the reality of the people around them in bite-sized pieces... it's easier on the digestion!
I for one am thankful that the Supreme Court has my future children's vigin minds on the top of their priority list.
Time to check that banned book list, too! Banning, burning... whatever. Maybe the Nazi's weren't crazy after all!
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
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?
oh, come on. who seriously thinks it's a big deal to have a filter on computers in schools?
they have every right to provide no internet access at all if they want, so why can't they limit access if they're good enough to provide it?
It's all going according to
Of course, it couldn't be one password for everything. I wonder if they could manage to have a password per site. When the dialog comes up, the user is given a number to give to the librarian, and they can in turn look up the password for that site. (and see what the site is if they so choose).
There may be holes in this idea, but it seems to me that they could be worked out. The idea behind filtering is a good one, but the facts are that it doesn't work that well.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
And will be promtly filtered out by most schools.
Can't have the kiddes reading about the Supremes with out some filtering and "contextual" information being provided/(force fed) to them. They might actualy start to think on thier own... ooooh, the evil that would ensue...
Personally, I'd prefer that open source be mandated (say, squid and squidGuard), but I'd rather they be used on their merrits.
All this law does is keep these nanny software vendors alive and kicking. I'm sure they're laughing all the way to the bank.
Ideally, these filters wouldn't be required anyway. Welcome to the Nany State.
Method of processing duck feet
The library doesn't have pornography on its shelves, though they do have some moderately racy material. After all, sex scenes are in just about everything these days. Filtering is probably a good thing, since one expects one's children to go to the library and not have access to pornography. Yes, there are false positives, and the library should be sending the examples in to the makers of the filtering software who are, in the end, only human.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Would it be okay for a library to use a filter designed by an open source development team? To survive under this crazy fascist new paradigm, it stands to reason that the only effective solution is for libraries to adopt the use of open-source filters with open-source block lists. Would any developers care to take on this project?
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
If you buy this logic, Renquist is just a two-bit terrorist with the wonderous decoration of a black robe. Makes the Critical Legal Studies folks seem more right every day.
Children must understand what happens when they break the rules! If you deny them this freedom, then they will instead grow up seeking ways not to break the rules, but to change them altogether and perhaps even to overthrow the system.
I'm not paranoid or anything, it's just that I was once one of those kids, and luckily I was smart enough to find ways to change the rules without working behind the backs of the supposed authorities. Those with fewer opportunities and poorer guides, however, need to be shown the difference between right and wrong -- not shielded from wrong.
Shielding them from the atrocities of life, no matter how light they may be, only makes them incapable of handling it when they inevitably confront it at some later time.
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.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Well, on one hand, it's the fed's money, so they can pretty much do what they want with it. It's pretty lame to make that money conditional based on these filters, but when someone is giving you free money, you're pretty much in their house.
On the other hand, libraries should be allowed to deal with such things in their own way. I volunteered at a public libary for awhile, and their policy was to cruise by the terminals to shoulder surf the users. If we saw pornography, we were to turn off the monitor and inform them that surfing pr0n was not allowed and if they continued they would have to get off the computer. If they raised a stink all we had to do was point to the police station right out the window.
-R
As a Webmaster for a library, I found that the Internet filters, and security programs installed are possibly the least effective programs I have used. If one wishes to find 'filth' then they are only a minor inconvenience. If one wishes to find legitimate information that has not yet been sterilized, then they are a firm roadblock, as there are many sources of filth, but precious few of real information. Fortunately, the library at which I work has filters installed on only two of it's computers, and these are clearly labeled. I think this solution is a very sane answer, as if a parent wishes to have their child protected, they can put them at the filtered computer, however, adults still have full access to the web. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
I remember writing my high school senior research paper. My topic was affirmative action. The www.hornyteens.com web site sure was a big help. I don't think I could have finished the paper without it!!! Down with censorship!!!
You are assuming that these libraries and schools will be using comercial filtering software. That's the wrong way to go about it.
The law is extraordinarly lax in what it requires the institutions to install (IANAL but I have read most of CIPA.) It basically sais you must have filtering software that blocks stuff. Not all stuff, not some percentage of stuff, it just has to block stuff. SquidGuard and derivitives like Dans' Guardian are great options for these institutions. They are open, not just in the source but in the blocklists. They offer full control over the block lists, they are plain text so you can read them, edit them etc. There are places that serve out updated block lists that you can auto-update from. You have the ability to put in local files that override what comes from these servers (explicit allows and denys). It's really great and FREE in both sences of the word which is important for things like Schools and Libraries.
Comercial filters are wrong for Schools and Libraries. They absolutely shouldn't use them and it should probably be illegal for them to use anything where the block list isn't examineable. How do you know if they are filtering ideas that it is illegal to filter unless you can see what they are filtering?
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
The fact is, Libraries are a bastion of "I'm okay, you're okay" philosophy. They don't give a rats ass if your kid views porn and in many cases support their "right" to do so. Notice in all the objections I've heard, never do they seem to offer a solution to kids surfing porn in the library. Guess what, until you offer a good solution you're stuck with filters. As the father of a teen and pre-teen, I don't want my kids looking at Ron Jeremy on a libraries PC. If surfing porn at the library is okay, then why aren't they fighting the right to stock Hustler? Because they know they couldn't win. There is a sick element out their who think kids having sex is a good thing. Hey, I was a teen and I know at some point they're going to start but the library, where my tax dollars go, should NOT be it. >
This is why people have parents. If you need to do a research paper on a filtered topic, then your parent can go to the library with you and tell the librarian it's okay for you to have free reign. At that point, if you get access to pr0n, it's your parents fault not the librarians.
I didn't realize that CIPA provided a means for adults to unlock the filters. That being the case I don't have that much of a problem with it anymore. This law seems to give authority to the parents until the child becomes an adult and that's very reasonable.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
...is thus: RTFD (read the fucking decision).
For you and anybody else who feels like holding a First Amendment Rights parade in front of the front steps of the Supreme Court, quit preaching from the pulpit about your FA rights. They don't exist in this case.
The Supreme Court made a good decision. Maybe I can explain it to you in a way that won't make your head hurt.
Libraries are federally funded.
That means, plain and simple, that the government has every right to say, "You can have this money, if..." They Supremem Court has made it crystal clear that the government can stipulate almost anything when it comes to funding. From the court's decision:
Within broad limits, when the Government appropriates public funds to establish a program it is entitled to define the limits of that program. Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173,
194 (1991)...The Government [was] not denying a benefit to anyone, but [was] instead simply insisting that public funds be spent for the purposes for which they were authorized. Ibid
And here's the best part about it all: They aren't preventing Public Libraries from providing unfiltered content. Hell, any library has the right to have pornography on its shelf...hell, they could sponsor a midnight orgy session if they wanted to...but the government wouldn't pay for it. And since money's so important for funding, don't expect it to happen (unless Hugh Heffner decides to open his own public library).
From the decision:
CIPA does not penalize libraries that choose not to install such software, or deny them the right to provide their patrons with unfiltered Internet access. Rather, CIPA simply reflects
Congress decision not to subsidize their doing so... [A] legislature's decision not to subsidize the exercise of a fundamental right does not infringe the right.
So QUIT COMPLAINING! Your First Amendment rights are not being taken away. The First Amendment stops the government from limiting YOUR freedom of speech, not THE GOVERNMENT's freedom of speech ("Government entities do not have First Amendment rights...The First Amendment protects the press from governmental interference; it confers no analogous protection on the government.") Feel free to log into your own internet and look at whatever the hell you want. Feel free to walk down to your privately-owned bookstore and purchase either the latest Harry Potter or some S&M erotica novel. Just understand that the government has chosen not to PROVIDE you everything that you have the right to do.
And will somebody PLEASE stop calling posts like this parent post insightful!?!
but where is internet access a right?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I get a laugh out of people complaining that their rights are being violated because they can't go to a public library and look at pornography. Are you insane?
A library is a public place. There are also public indecency laws. These are the same laws that prevent you from walking down the sidewalk with your penis hanging out of your pants, or waving your private parts at bus-fulls of old ladies and puppy dogs.
So why should you be allowed to expose pornography (which, by and large, is a VISUAL medium - yes there is written pornography, but you can't look over somebody's sholder and immediately tell they're reading smut quite as easily as you can look over somebody shoulder and see a double-fist-penetration scene.) to those who do not want to see it?
"Turn the computer the other way!"
Horse shit, and you know it. It's still a public venue. It amazes me that people will go to such lengths to support things like being able to go to a library and get their jollies on a computer. Nobody is making pornography ILLEGAL, they're making it more difficult to view in a public place.
Think of it as an open container law for porn. Can you crack open a beer, walk down the street with it? In a few places, sure, but by and large this is a law thats in place to prevent things like drunk driving. You can drink beer in a bar or in your house, sure. So go home if you want to yank your franklin, keep it out of the library.
thanks, chances are I'm getting modded down for making sense.
I have _real_ issues with my tax money being used to puchase and utilize software that is designed to block citizens from accessing content. While this alone I might be able to stomach under very strict and specific circumstances, when you add into the mix that the lists of sites that citizens are not only restricted from the view of citizens, but it is also a _federal_crime_ for a citizen to surreptitiously attempt to glean what sites this blocking software is restricting from view.
This country was founded on the ideals of freedom and individual worth. I find it extremely distasteful that the very tools of law that were designed to help us all become all we could ever want to become are now being used to to tie about our necks the stone of faschism.
RFC2119
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
- People with rare illnesses: pre-internet you'd be lucky if your doctor recognized the symptoms of the illness. You'd have to move from doctor to doctor, so that months or years went by before you'd find a doctor who recognized what you had. You'd almost never meet anyone else with the disease, so you'd have to recreate your 'library of information' yourself. Now you can quickly search for information centers and support groups, and you can narrow down possible causes of symptoms much faster than before.
- People with illnesses in general: before, unless you were near a research library you'd not be able to find out much about your illness on your own. Now you can quickly get access to medical journals (Medline) or to other people with the same illness to get advice or support.
- People who need to comparison shop: pre-internet, other than Consumers Report (and similar) you were on your own.
- People who want to warn about a business or practice: pre-internet it was difficult to share warnings. Even if you told your local BBB, what happened if the problem business left town / state?
The reduced asymmetry of information brought about by the internet is a qualitative improvement to people's lives.I'm sure that someone else must have noted this by now, but one of the greatest things about our system coupled with one of its worst problems for dealing with technological innovation is that the Supreme Court is our "Court of Last Appeal."
In the real world, Once the Supreme Court has ruled, a change in the law requires considerable political pressure and motion through a federal appelate court system that the administrations of the last two decades have stacked with appointees who were often picked more for their ideological reliability than for their objective jurisprudential acumen. That is, more for how likely it is believed that they would rule 'against' on cases involving issues disliked by conservatives; issues like affirmative action, privacy, worker-safety or reproductive issues.
Having travelled through that minefield, the Supreme Court would then have to collectively acknowledge that there was some new issue at stake for the Court to examine and then finally, the decision would have to overcome the ideological-stacking of the court by previous conservative administrations. Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas have often worked to generate some truly hideous law IMHO, and their finding the 'protection of children,' of greater weight than publicly-available access to information from sources paid for by the tax-payer is not surprising.
In the final analysis, a successful review of the matter would all come down to a question of how small the issue was as a hotspot in an ideologically polarized judicial branch where a partnership between wealth, religion and the desire for social inertia in the face of social change have worked together to produce a court capable of making, um, uh... counterintuitive rulings on important issues.
All things considered, don't hold your breath and hope the border to Canada stays open for as long as possible.
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"Yeah. It smells, too..."
>Why not voluntarilly move to a .xxx tld?
.kids TLD. Not exactly a smashing success. I would fully disagree with moving anything with nakedness to a .xxx TLD. The question of "what is porn" would be simply be too much for everyone to handle and some hamfisted legislation would make sure anything involving any show of skin short of wearing a burka would be in that domain. Sorry, but once .xxx is created it will be abused by the censorship contingent in the US.
This has been done with the
>we can't afford to hire 'extra' Librarians to monitor what's going on
You don't have to. An occasional walk-by to see what's going on is all it takes. We don't need a technological solution to a social problem. Once someone lose privledges to use the internet because of using those computers to view obvious porno sites then the chilling affect would more or less help control human behavoir.
Look at how well "be quiet in the library" signs work. Most simply obey the sign at face value, knowing they could be kicked out for disobeying it. Once people become loud the librarian asks them to quiet down. We don't need decibal meters and special laws to take care of this. The same can be applied to the internet.
I'd much rather have someone be able to sneak in a little porno than make the internet unusable for everyone else. SCOTUS can learn a lot from saying, "It is better than 100 guilty men go free than for one innocent man to goto prison."
Also, I'm highly skeptical of the constitutionality of "pulling federal funding" as extortion on the part of the federal government. This is clearly, in my opinion, a check against local government that is not in the constition.
Regardless, this is a big win for the pro-censorship organizations (big religion), the big federal government people, the anti-local government people (why cant we vote on this on a state by state basis AND get federal funds), etc. SCOTUS could have simply said that this greatly threatens first amendment protections and thrown the whole thing out. Its very telling that they didn't.
The CCPA Law of 2003: As the US Congress is 100% federally funded, all congressional computers must have a protective filter installed. That filter shall be identical to the filters used on adults' computers at a randomly selected, federal-funds-receiving US library. All requests to lift the filter or unblock sites must be forwarded to a librarian at the selected library, and if delays occur because that librarian is already overworked due to budget cutbacks, Congress shall just have to wait. All requests to lift the filter or unblock sites shall be a matter of public record.
(Of course one could say that Congress is different because CIPA is all about protecting the children, but... 1. Shouldn't we care almost as much about Congress as we do about children? Now that we've got children protected, why not Congress next? 2. Doesn't Congress want to show that it won't force laws on other adults that it isn't willing to take for itself as well? 3. What about Take Your Child To Work Day? Do we want the innocent children of Congresspeople (or their staff) to be Harmed?
(*)Pre-recorded phone spam is bad except for political messages, OSHA rules apply to everyone but Congress, Labor rules apply...FOIA rules apply...