An update on porn and libraries.
washingtonpost.com
Justice Dept. Seeks High Court Review in 'Net Filtering Case
By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, June 20, 2002; 5:07 PM
In a case that tests the limits of constitutional free speech rights on the Internet, the Bush administration today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a law that denies federal funds for public libraries that allow patrons to look at pornographic Web sites.
In May, a three-judge panel in Philadelphia overturned the "Children's Internet Protection Act" (CIPA), a two-year-old law that requires public libraries and schools to use Internet filtering software on their computers by July 1 or risk losing millions of dollars in federal money.
The American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to overturn the law, claiming it would prevent adult library patrons from accessing constitutionally protected speech.
The groups said that filters block material that is unrelated to pornographic content or hate sites, and that almost all filters approve at least some of that content.
The appeals court agreed, saying that "it is currently impossible, given the Internet's size, rate of growth, rate of change and architecture, and given the state of the art of automated classification systems, to develop a filter that neither underblocks nor overblocks a substantial amount of speech."
The Justice Department argued that the law did not violate the First Amendment because it gave local communities ultimate control over how the technology should be used. The DOJ also said libraries that wanted to bypass the law simply would turn down federal funding for Internet access.
The decision marked the third time in recent years that such a law was overturned for being too broad or in violation of free-speech protections.
The Supreme Court likely will hear arguments in the case early next year.
Assuming the high court does not dismiss the appeal, it probably "won't issue some type of ruling on the case until this time next year," a Justice Department spokesman said.
For now, public libraries do not have to install filters to qualify for the subsidies. Public schools and school libraries, however, are still obliged to meet the July 1 deadline. To date, more than 97 percent of schools filter their Internet connections.
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