s97 Children's Internet Protection Act

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s97 Children's Internet Protection Act - Would require public schools to install filtering software on library computers in order to receive federal funds (Censorship begins at school - alot of schools are just now getting computers and/or the Internet. To make this work they would have to provide the software for FREE! Also, filtering software doesn't filter all the bad sites out and filters out some good sites too!)

Mandatory Filters in Juvenile Justice Bill

A bloated Juvenile justice bill passed by both houses of Congress in different forms and currently in conference committee contains, in the House version ( http://www.eff.org/censorship1999/hr1501_1999_bill.html ), a requirement that publicly-funded libraries (and schools) install Internet content filters on their computers to block access to illegal content (child porn, obscenity) for all users and to block legal but somewhat explicit content for kids ("material harmful to minors"). The principal problems with this legislation are of course:

It is physically impossible for any software to block "illegal" content, since only a court can deem it illegal on a case-by-case basis.
Filtering software is notoriously imprecise, and does not perform as advertised (or as believed by Congress) - it both fails to block a wide range of "obscene", "indecent" or "harmful-to-minors" material, and accidentally (and in some cases maliciously) blocks material that is not in any way pornographic, including a wide range of news coverage, political content and health-related material, even sites that provide facts about filtering software in some cases. Even conservative groups oppose this legislation, since their own sites are frequently censored for "intolerance".
Much of this material is First Amendment-protected, even for minors, making the bill unconstitutional.