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Supreme Court to Hear CIPA Case
Posted by
michael
on Tue Nov 12, 2002 03:22 PM
from the justice-is-nearsighted dept.
from the justice-is-nearsighted dept.
Ruger writes "The Supreme Court of the United States will "decide if public libraries can be forced to install software blocking sexually explicit Web sites," according to this article from the Associated Press. US lawmakers have passed three laws to 'protect' children from Internet pornography, but the Court struck down the first and blocked the second from taking effect. 'A three-judge federal panel ruled the Children's Internet Protection Act violates the First Amendment because the filtering programs also block sites on politics, health, science and other non-pornographic topics.'" Our previous story on this ongoing case will bring you up to speed on the issues.
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They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
They are now down to "we must protect the children". Will the court buy it? Hopefully not. Legislation should NOT be used to do the work of respobsible parents.
As an adult, I should have unfettered access. A child's protection is not sufficient cause to violate MY 1st amendment rights. It is the parent's responsibility to filter for the child, not society's.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:3, Interesting)
Parents have little enough time - forcing them to spend what they have watching what their kids see at a place that should be a safe haven is going to discourage discovery and learning on the behalf of the kids.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked at a library, and except for specifically designed children's programs, it's not someplace you should just drop your kid off anymore than you'd just drop them off at the mall without supervision.
Furthermore, the library is not just for your child. It's for the community as a whole. And as such it should serve the community as a whole. No, I don't want someone to be surfing for porn from the library, but I do want someone to be able to do research on breast or testicular cancer while at a public library. Currently the two are mutually exclusive - there is no way to block only the porn sites.
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
However, they are not your babysitting service. Children should not be "dropped off" and left to fend for themselves until they are old enough to deal responsibly with the rules therein;
- keep quiet and do not disturb others
- keep away from the homeless people wandering through the bathrooms (here they do at least)
- realize there is material for everybody there, with different points of view
- know how to check out and return books in an undamaged state
Watching books and managing the library is the responsability of the librarians, not watching the children of irresponsible parents who like to "drop them off" there.
Parent
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that it's my duty to filter what my child sees. However the one place that should be a safe place to drop the kid off is the library.
What the hell? Your second sentence is completely at odds with your first one! First you accept responsiblity for filtering the data your child gets. Then you follow that up with a claim that you should be able to shirk your responsibilities by dropping the little tyke off at the library.
Do we really want to discourage children spending time at a place where they can learn?
There is so much wrong with that sentence ... where to start. No one is talking about discouraging children from going to the library. Hell, if kids think they can look at nude pictures, they'll probably beg to go to the library. So the problem isn't on their end, it's with you. You're choosing to discourage them because of your personal beliefs. Second, they will be learning at the library it's just that you're afraid of them having access to material that you don't like. It sounds kind of funny but when a child sees some dirty picture, they are learning that such material exists. Filters or no filters, they will continue to learn at the library.
Parents have little enough time - forcing them to spend what they have watching what their kids see at a place that should be a safe haven is going to discourage discovery and learning on the behalf of the kids.
Hey, the library is not a babysitting service. You're going to have to make a choice here. What's more important: monitoring what your children see or your free time. Don't give us this "safe haven" crap. A library is full of information. If you don't want you kids to have access to certain kinds of information, then be prepared to take the responsibility yourself.
GMD
Parent
Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
My local library is paid for with my municipal tax dollars, and managed by my city government. So, under what principle does the Federal Government have any say in how my local library manages its business?
If I think my library should be using censorware, I can walk on down to city hall at the next town meeting, and bring it up. If I don't like the censorware my library is using, I can do the same. Or, for that matter, I can volunteer to work at the library myself. If someone in D.C. doesn't like the policy my community has chosen, tough beans. It's our library, not theirs.
But for longer than I've been alive, the Federal government has been taking more and more decisions away from local governments.
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
No federal law is preventing them from carrying any magazine they like.
This federal law is mandating they restrict content from the web wheather they like it or not.
There is a serious difference between the two.
Parent
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
I can stil understand peoples' arguements against such legislation, but in this context do not see it as a free-speach issue, just a funding issue. The libraries do not have the right to demand new computers at any cost.
Parent
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
See Mandatory Seatbelt laws or the 21 Year old drinking age, or the 55 MPH speed limit (later changed to 65, later junked).
And it's not about browsing porn (I'll bet dollars to donuts anybody who was browsing hardcore porn on a library computer would quickly find his access to said computer cut off), it's about being forced to install software that arbitrarily removes the access for *ADULTS* to web pages based on metrics which are completely out of control of the local librarian, and for that matter generally inaccurate.
Parent
You can send your paycheck to the following... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but that's just not the way it works. My wife works for the local city library and people are constantly looking at hard core porn there. Their solution? Bury the moniters in the desk so that only the person using the workstation can see the screen.
Libraries don't want to know what you are looking at. Most don't even keep any records of who uses them anymore. What they don't know they can't be compelled to tell the FBI under the Patriot Act.
School libraries might have different policies, but municipal public libraries, for the most part, are not interested in knowing what you do on their internet terminals.
Parent
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that it's a free speech issue thinly disguised as a funding issue. Does anyone remember when the Federal Gov't made the drinking age into a 'Funding Issue'? It said that it would only give highway money to states which had a drinking age of 21. Now all 50 states have a drinking age of 21 now, and have for decades, even though every state has the 'right' to determine its own drinking age. Funding is the government's traditional tool for overriding the states' rights and other constitutional guarantees, until and unless the supreme court comes along and whacks its nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Until the libraries have the ability to exist without this money, and many don't, it is effectively a law requiring filtering software.
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
Add in the fact that most filtering programs these days would not only filter out "Jugs the Magazine", but also "Jugs the water carrying vessels", and it gets worse.
Filter on the word "Breast" and you filter out Breast Cancer, or the Bible for that matter (it's in there, frequently).
Trusting businesses to maintain "Black hole" lists doesn't work either, because it either becomes government supported censorship (who's paying for the filters...right...your taxes), or it becomes an easy way for political adgendas to be advanced (See the ACLU site blocked because they defend the Free Speech rights of the unpopular).
The Government shouldn't be in the business of telling me what I can see. Libraries are a function of the Government. Therefore Libraries shouldn't be in the business of telling me what I can see...Q.E.D.
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
huge difference
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
Because not subscribing to Jugs doesn't also block National Geographic.
The problem with this law and similiar laws is that without a doubt legitimately protected first amendment protected speech is filtered. That is government censorship.
In fact, your post, which is political speech and fully protected by constitutional law, is censored by the government. The word "jugs" with "porno" would probably be enough to get you filtered.
Parent
I think it's more along the lines of (Score:3, Insightful)
So the upshot will be that many libraries will have to cancel internet access altogether if forced to comply.
Now if the law included a nationwide site license for the nanny software & money to libraries for set up & support, then it would be a simpler decision between do we support porn in the library or not.
However, the decision the USSC is facing is more along the lines of do we allow libraries to provide internet access or not.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Informative)
If there was a filter out there that ONLY blocked pornography, then it would be a different story.
But there isn't one. Requiring a library to install a filter that also blocks information on medical issues, religious minorities, sexuality issues, and discussions of problems with filters is clearly wrong.
Let's make this clear - NOBODY is in favor of adding pornography to the libraries. The people challenging this law just feel that all the non-pornography that has to be blocked in the process because of the poor state of filtering is reason not to allow the law.
Parent
Define pornograpy first. (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, i have no problem with them adding pornography to the libraries, because I am unwilling to draw that line for someone else.
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
No it wouldn't.
The problem with all these arguments is that they miss the point of the First Amendment, which protects any speech, not just speech that national moral standards deem worthwhile.
People don't like to talk about this openly, but the fact is that most of us like porn, at least in some form. Admittedly, the vast majority of porn has no redeeming social value, but that's not enough to make it against national law. The only reason the laws are as strict as they are is that a rich, highly vocal minority are imposing their religious moral standards upon the rest of the country--standards which are technically unconstitutional because they violate the doctrine of separation of church and state.
Diverting federal funds because of religious issues, while not technically making it against the law for libraries to allow unfettered internet access, is still mingling church and state.
Of course, there's the other side:
Would I myself walk into a library, sit down at a computer, and bring up a porn site? Absolutely not. It's rude and inconsiderate to other patrons, and any library ought to have a rule against it. But here's the clincher: It's the libaray's business what rules they decide to make and how they decide to enforce them, not the federal government's.
I ask Congress something they've been asked many times before, and will likely be asked many times again: What part of shall make no law don't you understand?
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:3, Funny)
you know what? schools and libraries dont carry "Jugs" magazine, so why should they allow porno to be displayed on the machines?
When I was in college, the reason the college library didn't have Playboy was because they tended to get stolen, it had nothing to do with content. Maybe this is true for some public libraries, too.
The Library of Congress might (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
guess what? most filtering agents would now ban this slashdot page.
filters just don't work that well. I've seen a few spam blockers, but I wouldn't bet my life on them.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
I can not speak for him, but I share his opinion and have raised a quite sucessful child. He heven spells better than me
As a responsible parent, I gave him rules, even for the web, monitored his activity and disciplined him accordingly. Taking my parenting responsibilities seriously, I wanted to keep the "village" out of my decisions for his upbringing as much as possible.
In my opinion, the people that need a "nanny state" are the ones that raise little vandal brats, then run back to the government asking for even more nannying to obfuscate their own lack of attentiveness, shirking even more of their own responsibility.
Parent
Re:They will keep trying (Score:3, Interesting)
I have 4 children, and they each have Internet access.
OF course its using a squid proxy server, nat'ed and IPfiltered to block all ports. I have a deny list and an approved list of URLS they can goto. They also use a kid protected email client (web based) that filters out addresses, phone numbers and some key words.
When the kids are about 12 or so, Ill start to loosen the restrictions. I have v-chip on my tvs, and restrict some channels on thier profiles, and block anything above PG. (I had to block MSNBC also, it was for thier own good.)
I really dont want them seeing goatse.cx pics, but they see and hear enough from school as it is. We spend most of our time de-programming them from DARE and other Political Correctness garbage. I want too homeschool them, but both me and my wife work.
Oh yea, reason for having 4 kids, Your own lan party anytime you want. (-;
Hm... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's only one question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will the librarian turn off the controls at the legitimate request of an adult or child. If so, there's no debate and no abridgement of free access.
Otherwise, I see absolutely no harm in having tools that slow down teenagers from leaving goatse.cx sitting on library computers as a "joke" that my 5 year old daughter has to walk through.
Re:There's only one question... (Score:5, Interesting)
I see absolutely no harm in having tools that slow down teenagers from leaving goatse.cx sitting on library computers as a "joke" that my 5 year old daughter has to walk through.
How about a compromise solution? I'm sure anyone who is all for unfiltered access can certainly agree that there is content that is completely inappropriate for a child to view under any circumstances. So... how about setting up separate banks of computers in the library instead? One could be completely unfiltered, and accessible only to adults, and the other could be in the children's section, with filtered access, and hopefully a requirement that parents actively supervise their children's web-surfing.
Parent
Re:There's only one question... (Score:5, Insightful)
a requirement that parents actively supervise their children's web-surfing
If libraries used this rule uniformly, there would no need to censor anything at all, parents could decide for themselves what they want their children to see, and libraries would not have to stretch their already woefully tiny budgets in order to pay for twice the number of computers and filtering software for half of them.
By the way, in no way am I suggesting that even this should be codified. If certain parents don't agree with what the library is doing (whether refusing to filter or requiring that a parent attend a child at the Web machines), perhaps such parents should take care to ensure that their child just stays home where everything is safe and they can spend time reading the Bible and the constitutional handgun magazines instead of the dangerous material at the public library...
Parent
Re:There's only one question... (Score:3, Funny)
Wheres the money for training, set up, licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you haven't noticed, but most libraries are overworked and underfunded as it is.
Requiring them to purchase & maintain new software will likely lead to many canceling Internet Access altogether.
As far as your five year old, isn't she a little young to be wandering around the library by herself?
Re:There's only one question... (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as "goatse", have all of the computers face the librarian's desk. It won't take too long for the site to be changed... If you are worried about your daughter not seeing these things, or hearing these things, then don't take her to the shopping mall on a Saturday night. Want to know how many times I heard the "F" word last time? Is it offensive to me, yes. Do they have the right to say it, yes...
And I do have a 6-year old son. I teach him right and wrong, and I try to be with him in situations where this may come up. Whether or not I'm with him, if he asks questions, I try to be honest with him while still telling him what is wrong with it.
Re:There's only one question... (Score:5, Informative)
To which I would add two more reasons why that is an issue:
One other problem with the act that has been noted by many groups including the federal government is that the CIPA imposes the same standards on Teenagers as it does on your five-year old. While on the surface that seems (legally) reasonable it falls down in the face of teenagers doing school reports on breast cancer, etc. The rules for Teenagers really should be different. If I have to do a report on HIV in Health class it makes no sense for me to be banned from seeing the materials. Moreover, how are teenagers supposed to learn to deal with this stuff if they never see it until they turn 18?
I agree with you that children need to be protected from harmful materials online, just as they need to be protected from harmful people on the street, and from playing with handguns. However I beleive that the federally mandated systems in the CIPA and others will do more harm than good for the reasons above and because no software can make the kinds of appropriate decisions that parents can.
You might also see the American Library Association's page [ala.org] on the issue and the report of the COPA committee (a congressional task force) here [copacommission.org]. Note I do not necessarily agree with all of what they say however.
Parent
Take action now!! (Score:4, Informative)
Censoring porn vs. Censoring everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know of any existing software that doesn't try to block you from going a million other places, too. Sites on homosexuality. Sites on alternative religions. It seems like most of the filters have been put together by people who are less interested in protecting children than promoting an agenda.
The opposition to this would probably be far less if there were some kind of guarantee that legitimate informaiton was not going to be blocked along with all the so-called 'smut'. I have nothing against telling people they can't browse porn from a public library... but I do have something against the government telling public libraries that they can't let kids find out about Wicca or gay rights or whatever they might want to really learn about, just because the filter says it's bad.
Re:Censoring porn vs. Censoring everything. (Score:5, Informative)
Primarily because there is no accepted and defined line of "what is sexually explicit?". Nudity? Well...what about the statue of David, or the roof of the Sistine chapel?
Sexual activity? What's sexual activity?
Penetration? OKay...fine, but then you have to allow in all of the BDSM "Tie em up and beat em, but don't fuck em" films.
"Purient Interest"? OKay...what's that? The best that the Supreme Court has come up with is "I know it if I see it"...I don't think they've developed the computer that can see and process yet.
See the problem?
Parent
Re:Censoring porn vs. Censoring everything. (Score:3, Insightful)
This cannot be done, because "sexually explicit" is too vague a concept to write a software spec around. It means different things to different people, and computers tolerate exactly zero ambiguity in their programs. Also, definitions of the phrase which rely on other vague terms like "lewd", "lascivious", and "vulgar" also suffer the same problem. It works fine for lawyers, but computers just don't get it. Ergo, you'll never see a successful filter.
make it easy and make it work (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, getting all the pr0nmeisters to change their domain registrations, etc. voluntarily would be hard (or would it?) , but this is just something that I've thought of in a few minutes.
Of course, when my child starts to use the 'net more (she's only 2, but already mousing around my Gnome desktop on my Slackware box), I don't intend to rely on software to keep track of where she goes on the 'net and what she does - that is my job as a responsible parent.
Nope. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:make it easy and make it work (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with that is - who decides what is porn and what's not in a global
Remember - this is a top-level domain that's meant to encompass all "porn" - who decides what makes the cut?
And for legit sites not interested in the ghetto? (Score:3, Insightful)
And pr0nmeisters would never volunteer for it because it would be restraint of trade.
So, what DO we do? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just a question of parenting and observation of your child's activities anymore; adult content isn't something you have to go looking for anymore. It lands in my inbox every day, thanks to spammers. Must I forbid my children from using the computer at all? That's not a good solution either.
I, for one, would rather see them focusing efforts on keeping the adult sites from using "push" marketing tactics and pass enforcable laws against the spammers.
beware any cause... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to be a convenient way to suppretitiously legislate morality-based attacks on personal liberty.
parents are getting lazier by the day (Score:5, Insightful)
when my child is on the internet I monitor what she surfs. why should this be different at the library. maybe the issue is parents want to "send their children" instead of taking a part in it.
We need to focus on raising our children not finding others to do it. Porn stopping software stops all sorts of things other then porn. and who is who to tell me what is acceptable and what is not? I'll raise my kid thank you very much. and in doing so I want her to have access to as much information as she needs to fullfill her life. the focus should not be on what our kids see but how we teach them to deal with it. This is the real world people. there are uncomfortable situations everywhere. I don't believe we should stick goat sex up on a wide screen or anything like that. but let me be responcible for my own child.
porn abounds (Score:3, Informative)
John Dvorak actually published an article today regarding this sam subject. One good quote is The porn purveyors have taken my freedom to choose away from me. Push technology now pushes porn at me whether I like it or not.
he goes on, but you can read the entire article here [pcmag.com]
I agree that this is way out of control.
Filter, what filter? (Score:4, Informative)
I wouldn't be supprised if other filters have the same problem.
The sentence I have problems with... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but libraries are also not required not to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines. I have been to a few libraries that have subscriptions to Playboy and erotica on the shelves. Hell, my college library had the last 15 years of Playboy archived on microfilm. If libraries are going to use filters (which I oppose), it should be decided on the local level. The Federal goverment doesn't ban pornographic or erotic books from being in libraries so why should it be allowed to mandate what can be accessed via the Internet from their facilities.
Anyone remember "Adult" library cards? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Why aren't we doing adult library cards any more? In the past, there was a "general-purpose" section of the library that had most anything a child would find enriching, and then there was the "adult" section, which held content arbitrarily determined to be unfit for the general-purpose section. Parents could get their child either a child library card or an adult library card, at their discretion.
Good thing #1: Parents can either choose not to parent their kids, and let them be restricted in their content to whatever the library has determined isn't suitable for them. If they don't care enough about their kids in this respect, then they shouldn't care where the lines are being drawn and nobody is hurt (except maybe the kids, but that's a parenting issue, not a censoring issue); or parents can trust their children and/or supervise them, and let them go through the adult section with an adult card.
Good thing #2: The decisions about what to keep away from the child section of the library is a local decision. My local library (maybe even with my input) determines what might not be suitable for the child library cards. What might be unacceptable to one community might be OK with another. We do not have a federal mandate stating what is appropriate for our local communities. That is the way it should be.
2) Now, extend this to Internet access. IE, for example, already has a "standards-compliant" filtering system built into it. It relies on the PICS tags in the web page content to identify the types of potentially questionable content that are on the page. Browser settings then determine how far into each "questionable area" you want to be allowed to go. The browser will then prohibit you from going any further. If a site has no rating, the browser can even prevent you from viewing it.
This pushes the onus of labeling onto the content authors, who generally have little incentive to lie (except to cause mischief).
This should neatly catch 99% or better of the questionable Internet content, all evaluated to your tastes with no false blocking. Adults would browse in the "adult" section of the library. If set up right, parents could even tweak the content settings for their children to better match the types of things they want to be blocked.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could even put this information on the library cards, and have software automatically reconfigure the browser depending on who's using it.
Why hasn't this approach (segregating adult and child sections, using content-side labeling) been considered more widely? Am I missing some flaw?
Re:Double standard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Double standard? (Score:3, Informative)