NYTimes.com Article: Law Limiting Internet in Libraries Challenged

[anne_oe _at__ web.de]

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by anne_oe _at__ web.de.


Hallo Inetbibler!

Dieser Artikel aus der heutigen NY Times passt im Zusammenhang mit der Frage nach geeigneter Filtersoftware. "Keine Zensur" ist doch auch eine überzeugende Einstellung, oder?

Grüsse aus Braunschweig,

Anne Oechtering (Referendarin)

anne_oe _at__ web.de

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Law Limiting Internet in Libraries Challenged

March 25, 2002 

By JOHN SCHWARTZ


 

This morning in a Philadelphia courtroom, a coalition of
libraries, Web sites and library patrons will begin nine
days of hearings in which they will ask three federal
judges to help decide a seemingly simple question: What is
a library for? 

They argue that a law passed by Congress in December 2000
requiring schools and libraries to use Internet filtering
software changes the nature of libraries from being places
that provide information to places that unconstitutionally
restrict it. 

The law that the librarians and their allies are trying to
overturn, the Children's Internet Protection Act, denies
federal financing and technology discounts via the federal
e-Rate program to schools and public libraries if they do
not install a "technology protection measure" like filters
to block access to Web sites deemed harmful to minors. 

The coalition of plaintiffs includes the American Library
Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and Jeffrey
L. Pollock, a Republican Congressional candidate who
favored mandatory filtering until he discovered that his
own campaign's Web site was blocked by one of the most
popular filtering programs. 

They call the law a case of good intentions leading to a
bad result, hamstringing the computers that are, for many
people, the sole link to the Internet. They argue that the
law pre-empts community control over libraries and the
judgment of local librarians. They also point to the
failings of the software, which can let objectionable
material through and block constitutionally protected
sites. The law constitutes "classic prior restraint on
speech," said Ann Beeson, staff lawyer for the American
Civil Liberties Union. 

Those in favor of the filtering law say its opponents
mischaracterize the law and the software. Senator John
McCain, Republican of Arizona, who co-sponsored the bill,
has said it "allows local communities to decide what
technology they want to use, and what to filter out, so
that our children's minds aren't polluted." 

Courts have, historically, given the government high
hurdles when restricting speech, requiring strong proof
that the restrictions are necessary and evidence that they
have been designed with a finesse that makes them the least
restrictive means of accomplishing the goal. 

The government has moved toward a more limited approach,
the Children's Internet Protection Act being only the
latest effort by Congress to restrict the Internet to
protect children. 

The first major law, the Communications Decency Act of
1996, was struck down by the Supreme Court as
unconstitutionally restrictive on First Amendment speech
rights, in part, the court said, because it would reduce
material that adults had a constitutional right to see "to
only what is fit for children." 

A more narrow follow-up law, the Children's Online
Protection Act, was challenged before the Supreme Court
last November; the decision is pending. 

The new case will be heard in United States District Court
for the Third Circuit, by a panel of three judges; under
procedures set out in the filtering law, any appeals will
go directly to the Supreme Court. 

Donna Rice Hughes, an opponent of pornography who has
supported mandatory filtering, said the law contained "a
tremendous amount of flexibility." She noted that the
precise technology to be used by libraries was not
prescribed, and that a library patron with a "bona fide
research or other lawful purpose" can get the library to
temporarily turn off the filters. 

Ms. Rice Hughes said the message to libraries was simple:
"You've got to do your part - you've got to put these
filters on or you've got to get your funding elsewhere." 

Librarians and their allies say the simple message is
complex in practice. Families might do well with filters as
part of the close supervision of a child's Internet
wanderings at home, opponents of the bill say, but the same
technology is ill-suited for use in libraries. Turning off
the filters, they say, is cumbersome, and having to prove a
"bona fide" research purpose violates users' privacy. 

"It is going to affect everyone's First Amendment right to
get access to information that is perfectly legal," said
Judith F. Krug, director of the American Library
Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. 

Computers, the plaintiffs argue, cannot make the fine
distinctions among online sites that are called for in the
legislation, which defines material that is "harmful to
minors" as images that appeal to "prurient interest in
nudity, sex or excrement," depictions of sexual acts
presented in a "patently offensive way" and material that,
"taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic,
political or scientific value as to minors." 

Some librarians say they would not understand how to apply
such a broad definition. 

Nancy Willard, director of the Center for Advanced
Technology in Education at the University of Oregon, said
there was a deeper issue that had been lost in the debate
over filters: blocking access to what children see does not
prepare them for the unrestricted world that awaits them
when they turn 18. Ms. Willard recommends training children
in responsible Internet use, and has developed a school
program for doing so. 

"We need to help kids develop effective filtering and
software systems that will reside in the hardware that sits
upon their shoulders," she said. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/national/25LIBR.html?ex=1018077413&ei=1&en=271ddfe49197a935



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