The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was ruled unconstitutional for a second time by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision ACLU v. John Ashcroft, no. 19-1324, filed March 6. The court stated that “…provisions of COPA are not narrowly tailored to achieve the Government’s compelling interest in protecting minors from harmful material… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Censorship
Update on Supreme Court Library Net Filters Case
Below are links with details about Wednesday’s arguments by Solicitor General Theodore Olson and Paul Smith, for the American Library Association, in United States v. American Library Association, 02-361. Start here, with Shelf-Censorship, an opinion piece that includes useful links and an important perspective on the key issues of the case, and then move on… Continue Reading
Censorship and Libraries
From the USAToday, this Op-Ed, Library restrictions borrow from colonial-era abuses is worth a read. And an opposing view from another Op-Ed in the same paper: Congressman Pickering on Children’s Internet Protection Act. Continue Reading
CDT Opposes Maryland Bill Impacting ISPs
Maryland House Bill 661, Internet Child Pornography – Removal, is opposed by the advocacy group Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). CDT staff counsel John B. Morris testified before the Judiciary Committee Maryland House of Delegates on March 4 that the bill has “…due process problems under the Fourteenth Amendment, free speech problems under the… Continue Reading
Public Libraries and Internet Access
The Institute of Museum and Library Services commissioned a recently published study from the Information Institute at Florida State University, Public Libraries and the Internet 2002: Internet Connectivity and Networked Services, (PDF) to evaluate the extent of Internet connectivity in U.S. public libraries. The results, gleaned from 1,100 respondents, indicate that almost all public libraries… Continue Reading
Merits of PA Net Blocking Law Challenged
The Center for Democracy and Technology issued a press release and a report (PDF) contending that a recent Pennsylvania law (18 Pennsylvania Statutes Sec. 7330) requiring ISPs to remove or disable access to Internet pornography upon notification by the state Attorney General violates constitutional principles of due process. The law also results in the blocking… Continue Reading
Study Reveals New Consequences of Net Filtering
Web Sites Sharing IP Addresses: Prevalence and Significance, a study by Benjamin Edelman of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, establishes that “more than 87% of active domain names are found to share their web servers with one or more additional domains, and more than two third of active domain names share their web… Continue Reading
Censorship of U.S. Military Websites Escalates
U.S. military websites are subject to a new directive issued on January 3 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to remove sensitive, unclassified information published on the huge DOD web databases (comprising 770 gigabytes of total data), that could potentially be of assistance to the intelligence gathering efforts of our enemies. Continue Reading
Chinese Gov't Blocking Blogs
According to this posting, the Chinese government is blocking user access to blogs created with Blogspot. This source also provides links to a range of information concerning the ongoing, systematic campaign by the Chinese government to censor and restrict citizen access to the Web. Continue Reading
Net Libel Cases
The current issue of the ABA Journal eReport has a noteworthy article, Where in the World Wide Web to Fight, that weighs in on the growing concerns about jurisdiction and Internet libel cases. See my posting on the recent Australian case and the two U.S. cases here. Continue Reading
New Missouri Law Requires Filtering
A new Missouri law went into effect on January 1, 2003 that “requires public (elementary and secondary) schools and public libraries that provide access to the Internet to either: use filtering software; purchase Internet service through a provider that provides filter services; or otherwise restrict minors’ access to the Internet by local rule.” Continue Reading
Teen Found Not Guilty in DVD Case
On January 7, teenager Jon Lech Johansen was acquitted by a Norweigan criminal court of charges related to creating a utility (DeCSS) that descrambled the code for DVD players, and publishing it on the Web. For other articles on this decision, see CNN, The Register, BBC, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Continue Reading
