Supreme Court to Hear CIPA Case

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.

While

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with the sentiment it is good to see US judges making good judgements. I am from Sweden and our judges came to similar conslusions a few yeas ago; however, apparently that liberality has been abused lately so we are to see new legislations.

Take action now!!

[updog]

You can go here [eff.org] and take action against this now!

Re:They will keep trying

[Saige]

When a Library chooses not to carry "Jugs" magazine, it doesn't mean they are forced to also leave out, say, books on breast cancer, magazines dealing with health issues that include sexual health, and such.

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.

Re:Censoring porn vs. Censoring everything.

[Gorm the DBA]

"What I don't understand is why the government hasn't undertaken to write some software that really will just filter out things that are sexually explicit"

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?

Re:Double standard?

[Trekologer]

This is not about the right to look at porn. The proponants of this law and filtering in general want you to believe that. However, that is not what this is about. Filters do not just filter porn, they filter unpopular speech, the very speech that needs the most protections from censorship.

Re:There's only one question...

[Irvu]

Actually that provision exists in the CIPA. The Justices noted it but still considered the law a problem because

1. although the librarians were required to turn it off they may not want to.
2. this would force everyone to get clearence from a librarian and basically announce to the world at large what they are looking at before they do so, opening them up to censure.
3. Many systems block sites "invisibly" or in ways that will prevent legitimate adults from ever knowing that they exist and thus being unable to ask for the provision to be turned off.

To which I would add two more reasons why that is an issue:

1. If it can be turned off all the time, it can be accidentally left off, hacked or spoofed thus making the system even less effective in the face of determined teenagers.
2. In the face of recent USA Patriot rulings on librarians being forced to divulge recently secret information this is one more thing that librarians can be forced to log and then divulge.

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.

porn abounds

[z_gringo]

This is a bizarre problem in the US. Why is there so much porn spam?

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.

Re:Jurisdiction

[DeepRedux]

If your library is fully funded by your municipal tax dollars then the law does not apply. It only "requires public libraries receiving federal technology funds to install filters on their computers or risk losing aid."

Wrong

[Keebler71]

This debate is very misunderstood. This is not a federal law forcing libraries to restrict porn web content. It simply denies federal funding to libraries who are content with letting children browse porn using monies given to libraries for computer upgrades from federal tax dollars. This just requires that if these libraries want the computer money, they have to place safeguards.

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.

Filter, what filter?

[Kizzle]

My school and this tech school I go to both have Cyber Patrol installed on the proxy and they are extremely easy to bypass. If a site is blocked just remove the www, or use nslookup to go directly to the ip address. This works most of the time. The filter only blocks one way to the site.
I wouldn't be supprised if other filters have the same problem.

Anyone read the article?

[WeirdKid]

Am I the only one who read the article? The bill was signed by Clinton, not Bush -- not that it even matters. However, the Bush administration argument for the filters seems to be more of an argument against them.

"The Bush administration argued libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers."

The key phrases here are not required and shouldn't have to. Following this logic, libraries are not required to not have pornographic magazines and therefore shouldn't have to deny access to pornography on their computers.

Why legislate when communities and libraries are perfectly capable of handling this without violating the First Amendment on their own? How? Here's a few suggestions:

• don't do anything
• tell parents to keep their kids in the kiddie section if they're worried about it
• Move the computers to the far corner, out of sight (this will handle the goatse prankers)
• have a separate bank of computers with kiddie filters for those who choose to use them

"We must protect the children!" Please. I'm tired of your children and your inability and unwillingness to watch them determining how I can lead my life.

Whatever happened the .XXX domain idea?

[CokoBWare]

You know, there would be a lot less of this niggling and policy crap (and rights being trampled, etc.) if some smart people mandated the creation of the .xxx domain extension. Easy to identify, easy to filter, easy to block. I guess it's not so easy to enforce. How could you enforce companies to use the new domain extension and abandon their old one by law with many countries having different pornography laws? Credit card companies could be mandated to refuse to pay for porn access from companies outside of this .xxx domain. You're a .com smutt dealer? Sorry, you're not getting paid!

Well anyways, David Coursey once talked about this idea [zdnet.com] (though most likely not his original idea) being one of the more simple approaches to tackle the censorship of Internet porn.

Something to think about methinks!

Re:Wrong

[nyseal]

You're right....the federal government is not making this mandatory; nor did they make the 21 year old drinking age mandatory for every state. They simply stated that if you don't change your state law we will deny you federal funds for your highways (which is an economic burden that NO governor would endorse). I realize that highway funds and internet connections are two different subjects; but are they? If the federal government can dictate there authority over the states using economic means, then what's the use in a local or state government? Oh what the hell; who needs highways anyway....you're right.

Re:Wrong

[aeschenkarnos]

Denying funding for not doing X is exactly the same as mandating the non-doing of X, only worse, because the denial of funding is much harder to get reviewed, not least because people like Keebler71 think "it's only a funding issue, you can do without funding". Libraries can do without funding like you can do without air. Cutting off your access to air (when I control your sole source of air) unless you do what I want has the same effect, only worse, than ordering you to do what I want. It's an end-run around the processes for reviewing my orders.

I don't know whether this is a "stupidity hole" in libertarianism or Republican ideology, maybe both: neither ideology really understands the concept of dependence, especially inter-dependence. You are not an individual atom, wholly responsible to and for yourself. Everything you do creates obligations to and from you to others.

Trade secrets, censorship, and schools.

[dameron]

I'm the system admin for a k-12 school of 800 students, about 400 computers and a dozen servers. We have filtering software (which I won't mention or advertise here) on our gateway that purports to block access to pornographic web sites. We are able to enter exception urls into the filter to allow access to specific sites, and have needed to make use of this in quite a few instances.

Here's a list of the sites that were blocked by default that I had to unblock manually:

• Florida Gulf Coast University www.fgcu.edu [fgcu.edu]
• NoodleTools.com www.noodletools.com [noodletools.com] (I can understand this one a little, though in this case "noodle" means "brain")
• Access Atlanta www.accessatlanta.com [accessatlanta.com]
• Inclusive Scouting www.inclusivescouting.com [inclusivescouting.com]
• Yale University's Law Web www.yale.edu/lawweb [yale.edu]
• Scentiments.com www.scentiments.com [scentiments.com]
• Pasadena Public Library LibraryTeens LibraryTeens [pasaddena.ca.us]
• Pepperdine's Graduate school faculty pages gsep.pepperdine.edu [pepperdine.edu]
• Scouting for all www.scoutingforall.com [scoutingforall.com]

Some of these sites involve themselves in gay/lesbian issues (particulary in regards to the other BSA the Boy Scouts of America), and may have been incorrectly blocked by keywords for "gay" or more likely "lesbian", but I've scoured the index page source for places like "Access Atlanta" and couldn't find anything that could be construed as remotely offensive, even in a substring.

People who back such laws as this and oppose the recent ruling concerning the "under God" portion of the "Pledge of Allegience" are at odds with America's diverse morality and (non)spirituality. To include a reference to God in the Pledge begs the question "Which God?" or "Whose?". Likewise when legislating morality the question becomes "Whose morals?".

Because nearly every commercial filtering system is protected by "trade secrets" it becomes impossible to expect and answer to the above questions, and illegal to discover them on your own.

Are expected to purchase software that controls our childrens access to information without knowing what it's really doing? Absolutely, and if this law is upheld it'd be illegal to choose otherwise.

Don't entirely know what it blocks and doesn't. Don't know why. Blocking software companies won't tell us. Illegal to find out. Illegal to not install. Likely illegal to circumvent.

Orwellian. Yep.

As an aside:

"Protecting children" is a convenient way to get government to move, and it's a red herring. No American politician is going to come out and say "I'm anti-children" or "I think children should look at porn and the taxpayers should foot the bill.". Evoking "protecting children" is just a carrot (or whip if you'd rather) for people who have an agenda to wave in front of legislators.

"Protecting children" also sells tires, and Volvos, and antibacterial soap, and milk, and private schools, and cell phones, and guns...

-dameron

assert(CIPA == CUNT)

[ssorc]

Just thought you'd all like to know that "cipa" is Polish for "cunt".