Earlier this week, a three-judge panel led by Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned the law requiring libraries to filter Internet content for material harmful to minors. Judge Becker, a Reagan appointee, found that the filtering technology blocks so much unobjectionable material so as to violate the First Amendment rights of library patrons.
The law that was overturned, the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2001 (CIPA), was the third effort by U.S. legislators to prevent children from viewing pornography and other harmful material on the Internet. Libraries and schools that failed to comply with the filtering law would lose federal subsidies used to finance Internet access.
Too bad there’s not a three-strikes provision for censorship laws in the United States.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.