SCN: Congressional panel says no to filters

[Brian High]

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Congressional panel says no to filters

 Congress may be stunned by its own commission that says filtering
technology is not ready to police our schools and libraries.

By Ted Bridis, WSJ Interactive Edition
October 19, 2000 5:03 AM PT [clear.gif]

WASHINGTON -- A commission created by Congress to study ways to
protect children online will advise against requiring public schools
and libraries to use filtering software, even as lawmakers in the
waning days of the legislative session consider mandating the use of
such tools.

In a report expected to be released Friday, the 18-member panel, set
up under the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, recommends that
government should encourage the use of filtering technology to protect
children from the Internet's seedier neighborhoods. It also will call
on industry to improve filtering software.

But the commission declined to recommend the mandatory use of
antipornography filters, saying no particular technology yet offers an
ideal solution. That puts the panel directly at odds with a
Republican-sponsored amendment to the annual spending bill for the
Department of Education and some other agencies, which would require
schools and libraries to install software filters if they buy
technology with certain types of federal subsidies.

"We didn't recommend any mandatory practices," said Donald Telage,
chairman of the commission and an executive at Network Solutions Inc.
"We did consider them, but not even the most-conservative members of
the commission felt that was the road to go down."

[...]

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2642392,00.html


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