From: Karin Zilla (karinz@certifiedemployment.com)
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 10:38:15 PDT
Message-ID: <3EF9DE07.631C4DD6@certifiedemployment.com> Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 10:38:15 -0700 From: Karin Zilla <karinz@certifiedemployment.com> Subject: NYTimes article
Sorry, see below:
Internet Filters and Free Speech
June 25, 2003
The Supreme Court dealt a blow to free expression and put
librarians in a serious bind this week by upholding a law
requiring libraries to use filters on all computers with
Internet access. The law's goal, preventing children from
accessing pornography, is perfectly legitimate. But the
court's ruling will also deny adults the ability to see a
substantial amount of information online. Libraries have a
duty to minimize the decision's impact on freedom of
expression. They should also consider bringing another
challenge to the law.
The Children's Internet Protection Act takes a hard-line
approach to preventing children from seeing sexually
explicit material online. To get federal aid, a crucial
source of funding, libraries must install filters on every
terminal with Internet access. They cannot maintain
adults-only terminals without filters, or rely on
alternative methods, such as monitoring by librarians, to
keep children from looking at inappropriate Web sites.
The Internet filters in which Congress - and now the
Supreme Court - places such faith are notoriously
unreliable. As many as 15 percent of blocked Web sites have
no sexual content. They include, according to groups
challenging the law, the Knights of Columbus Council Web
site and the home page for Donna Rice Hughes's book on
protecting children online.
The Supreme Court decided that this unreliability is not a
serious problem, since librarians can simply disable
filters at the request of adult users. But libraries insist
that will be difficult, if not impossible. They say their
filtering software is generally installed at the building
or system level, not on individual terminals, so there is
no easy way to turn it off for individual users.
Libraries now face a challenge. Some have said they would
give up federal funds rather than comply with the law, but
many cannot afford to do so. If they do install filters,
they should use their clout as consumers to press the
software industry to develop better ones and to state
clearly what criteria are used to make blocking decisions.
And they should see if filters can be created that can be
turned off at the terminal level.
Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, whose votes
were necessary to uphold the law, assumed libraries would
be readily able to disable filters and ensure that adult
users' access to online material would not be excessively
curtailed. If that turns out not to be true, Justice
Kennedy said, critics can bring a new challenge based on
that real-world experience. Librarians should do their best
to prevent the law from interfering with free expression,
but they should also be ready to go back to court if it
does.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/opinion/25WED2.html?ex=1057558196&ei=1&en=aa482e8033ea0fe4
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