Supreme Court to Hear CIPA Case 418
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.
the outcome (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nope. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They will keep trying (Score:1, Interesting)
It's just sex, people. Why are you incapable of dealing with it rationally? Oh, I forgot - some fairy in the sky hates humans having sex outside of wedlock - my bad...
Re:They will keep trying (Score:2, Interesting)
The legal stipulation for regulating strip clubs is based upon "community values". You're right, the library is for the community. So maybe we should stop the federal government from deciding what goes in my local library and have a public vote on the issue.
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. (-;
Is everone in America really that perved? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is one thing though that I dont understand about our society? Maybe someone can give me some insight? Why is sex and nudity looked down upon, while violence is generally ignored. Dont get me wrong, I love both of them equally, well more the former than the latter. Its just a little confusing. Take BMX XXX for example. Sony opted to cover all of the nipples, to censor the game. Yet in grand theft Auto Vice City, I can dig a chainsaw into a cops chest, and dance in the resulting pool of blood. Shouldnt there be a balance?
Wouldnt the images of http://www.rotten.com be more disturbing to a child than seeing some playful lesbians?
Try phrasing this differently (Score:2, Interesting)
If nothing else, tell them to require that the software developers list all sites blocked by their software, to ensure that the software is actually doing its job. "After all, if the sites are actually blocked, its not like some little boy will use the list to see things he shouldn't" you can say.
Tell your congressperson that there needs to be a process to review sites that are incorrectly blocked and remove them from the list in a timely manner, with penalties for failing to do so. As well as adding sites that were forgotton.
Finally tell your congressperson that if any software vendor refuses these requirements, they don't have the public's best interests in mind, and if the congressperson votes for a measure without these requirements, neither does he/she.
Personally, I don't think censorship is right. If you let your children on the internet without supervision, you should be responsible for whatever psychiatric bills result.
Here's an idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
We already separate children's books from adult books, why not the computers as well?
Blocking the 'other stuff' is not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
The largest problem I see with the internet in libraries is the popup traps so many web pages use now. If i accidently turn up a pr0n site through my browsing will I be able to correct my mistake by clicking on the X before no one notices, or will my screen be filled with so many popups that the librarian will have to assist me?
Popup blockers would be a much better service to have installed on the library computers. Filterware is just technology that doesn't work.
Legislated morality for all !!! (Score:2, Interesting)
YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEARCH ON "XXX" ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS (library cardholders name), WHAT WITH THE LIBRARIAN LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER AND ALL?
Yes embarassment, it works. So here we have a filter that serves as a warning to children, but does not limit content. It keeps honest people honest, and it should be noted that nothing will make dishonest people honest.
It should be noted that if all library computers were kept in open view of the librarian this wouldn't be much problem.
No complaining about anonymity on public systems either. If you want privacy, do it in your own home.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:2, Interesting)
What I find interesting/horrifying/scary-- and much more problematic than this case-- is the situation in my local library, where librarians themselves (usually the people who do their best to protest censorship) are asking for some sort of "protection" against explicit imagery on the grounds that it creates a hostile work environment. So if the Right don't get you, the Left will.
More info on Minneapolis libraries and smut [citypages.com]. I find it truly incredible that seeing some pictures on a screen across the room is considered suffering and that such so-called victims require monetary compensation that is more than twice their likely annual take-home pay. I wonder if these folks are compensated for damages if they read any of the filth one can often find in a public library (like Anne Rice novels, the average Harlequin romance, horror novels, the Holy Bible, etc)... heck, just a couple of weeks ago I checked out some Neon Genesis Evangelion graphic novels from the teen section of this library and it had illustrated depictions of unclothed minors in it!
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:There's only one question... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a good guess, but you're mistaken. You can "automate" the human judgement process though neural nets, like AOL does. [slashdot.org] There are tricks to this that I can't reveal, but the basic jist of it is to let human beings train the 'net and then let the 'net go to town. You can get very good results with this method, which is, by the way, patented.
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.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Now for the sake of arguement, let's assume that web-surfing porn is indeed an expression of free speech. How is this "right" being violated if you can not perform it in a public library? You are still allowed to access your porn,... just not in a library. How is this different from say, banning smoking or shouting "fire" in a movie theater? You still have the "right" to do those things, there are however specific places that you may not.
Bottom line - I don't think this is an end-around of the Constitution. Just a means to limit the government's direct involvement in an act that many consider lewd without restricting access at large.
Waste of Money (Score:2, Interesting)