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 Once there is a enough support, try to get the law repealed.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

[KludgeGrrl]

What is upsetting is that there has already been serious opposition to this law from librarians themselves -- who have argued that the filters block too many useful sites (and I imagine that they have indeed produced lists in support of their claims).

It would be intersting to know who has been pushing for the ruling. Was it "concerned citizens" or companies that make filtering programmes?

Re:Can they keep logs?

[Qzukk]

The supreme court overturns its decisions all the time. This is why anti-abortion people try to get them to hear another roe vs. wade type case all the time, to see if they'll overturn that decision.

How do you know you're filtered?

[Dunedain]

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.

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.

Decisions on non slashdotted site

[Dan Berlin]

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

Go call your broker

[TopShelf]

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.

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.

i fully agree

[flacco]

kids should be beating off at home in their bedrooms, not in the library.

Kids section

[bludstone]

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.

American Library Association's opinion

[madape]

Read the ALA's opinion...

My run-in with this-

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

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?

Automatic Unblock

[linuxwrangler]

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).

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.

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.

Open source solution?

[PincheGab]

I agree in the spirit of the law (protect children), mainly because I am close to being a father myself, and what I can handle on the web a child certainly cannot. I think unrestricted access to the internet can be a dangerous thing for children, specially if unsupervised.

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?