SCN: Filters

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

=====================


(John Schwartz, NY Times)---A federal court panel struck down a 
law requiring libraries to filter the Internet for material harmful to 
minors yesterday, saying that the technology blocks so much 
unobjectionable material that it would violate the First Amendment 
rights of library patrons.  

In a powerfully worded but sometimes wistful opinion, Chief Judge 
Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the 
Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, wrote that the three-judge panel 
hearing the case was "sympathetic" to the government's goal of 
using technology to protect children from the worst of the Internet.  

But, he wrote in the 195-page opinion, "Ultimately this outcome, 
devoutly to be wished, is not available in this less than best of all 
possible worlds."  

Advocates of civil liberties were jubilant. "I am ecstatic," said Judith 
F. Krug, director of the American Library Association's office for 
intellectual freedom, which opposed the filtering requirement. "We 
couldn't have wanted anything better."  

If the government chooses to appeal, the case will go to the 
Supreme Court. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the 
department was disappointed by the decision and was reviewing 
whether to appeal it.  

The law at issue, the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2001, 
was Congress's third effort since 1996 to shield children from 
pornography carried over the Internet. As with the two earlier 
versions, this one ran afoul of constitutional protections.  

The act required schools and libraries to install a "technology 
protection measure," like Internet filters, to prevent access to child 
pornography and materials considered obscene or "harmful to 
minors." Libraries and schools that did not comply would lose 
federal subsidies for financing Internet access.  

The public libraries of Multnomah County, Ore., banded together 
with the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties 
Union, a variety of Web sites and library patrons to challenge the 
bill in federal court.  

The law included provisions for a special three-judge panel to hear 
any legal challenges to it. Along with Chief Judge Becker, Judges 
John P. Fullam and Harvey Bartle III of Federal District Court 
served on the panel. Judge Becker was appointed by President 
Ronald Reagan, Judge Bartle was appointed by President George 
H. W. Bush, and Judge Fullam was appointed by President 
Lyndon B. Johnson.  

The decision comes a month before a Congressionally imposed 
deadline for libraries to install filters or lose the federal Internet 
financing.  

The appellate court's decision addressed only the provisions of the 
law affecting libraries; schools are still subject to the law's 
provisions.  

The libraries and other plaintiffs presented numerous examples of 
legitimate sites that had been erroneously blocked by the four most 
popular filtering programs. The three-judge panel mentioned many 
of those blocking errors in its opinion, including sites covering 
topics in education, medicine, politics and religion.  

Other sites the filters blocked, the panel noted, included the 
Knights of Columbus Council 4828 in Fallon, Nev.; a site for 
Tenzin Palmo, a Buddhist nun; a site that promotes federalism in 
Uganda; and the Lesbian and Gay Havurah of the Jewish 
Community Center of Long Beach, Calif.  

The panel called filters "blunt instruments" because of their 
propensity to overblock legitimate sites and underblock 
objectionable sites.  

"We find 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 opinion stated.  

The panel said that libraries could use less restrictive alternatives 
to filters, like setting policies on what users could view on the 
Internet, or offering parents filters for when their children use 
computers.  

Libraries could also keep children from seeing objectionable 
material on another patron's computer by having screens 
positioned to be visible only from the user's vantage point, the 
court said.  

The government had argued that the filtering software was 
effective enough to block most of the objectionable material, and 
that the law did not require a perfect performance. Government 
lawyers also contended that libraries restrict all manner of 
materials in the normal course of buying books.  

But the court ruled that mandating filters in a public forum like a 
library subjects the restrictions to a high degree of scrutiny under 
the First Amendment — far more than that which should apply to a 
library's budget-based purchasing decisions.  

"The court has barred the law from turning librarians into thought 
police armed with clumsy filters," said Ann Beeson, litigation 
director of the A.C.L.U.'s technology and liberty program.  

David Burt, a spokesman for N2H2 Inc., a filtering company based 
in Seattle, and a consultant to Congress when it drafted the law, 
said that the thousands of blocked sites the court alluded to 
constituted a tiny fraction of the world's Web sites. "We consider a 
99-plus percent accuracy rate to be something to be proud of," he 
said.  

Amitai Etzioni, a political scientist at George Washington 
University, said, "I'm saddened about it," since in his opinion it 
meant that children would receive no protection. "There are costs 
on both sides," he said.  

Should the government appeal, the Supreme Court has generally 
taken a strong First Amendment position when it comes to the 
Internet; in recent years the justices have overturned laws 
intended to restrict adult materials online. In April, they rejected a 
law banning "virtual" child pornography.  

In a May 13 opinion, though, the court rejected another Third 
Circuit panel's reasoning in striking down an earlier Internet 
pornography law, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, finding 
that the lower court had not undertaken a sufficiently thorough 
analysis of that law.  

Mr. Burt of N2H2 regarded that a sign that the Supreme Court 
might show more tolerance for any flaws filtering software might 
contain. "I think the Supreme Court is going to say the same thing - 
'You've gone too far again,' " he said.  

Then he paused, and added, "But then, I thought they were going 
to uphold the virtual child pornography law, too."  


Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company





* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  From the Listowner  * * * * * * * * * * * *
.	To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org		In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ====
* * * * * * *     http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/     * * * * * * *