As Americans have become increasingly connected to the internet, it might appear that public school education will solely benefit from internet use. Currently, about 99 percent of U.S. public schools have access to the internet, according to a September 2002 United States Department of Education press release. This number is up from 35 percent access in 1994. Moreover, 87 percent of instructional rooms in U.S. public schools now have internet access. The 1994 access percentage was a mere three percent. These recent statistics, however, bring with them a host of legal issues that force a weighing of free speech against public policy concerns about protecting minors from objectionable content.
The proliferation of internet access in public schools led to the enactment of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in December, 2000. In 2001, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued regulations to ensure CIPA's success. Under CIPA, public schools and libraries were to certify that they had safety procedures in place in order to receive federal funding for internet access. Such safety procedures included filtering software developed to prevent minors from accessing harmful material.
Filtering software and its effects have been targeted by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Library Association (ALA). Because companies that provide filtering software are private, schools have little control over what is blocked, leading to over and under-blocking of material. According to the ACLU, CIPA promotes censorship, which primarily affects students who are only able to access the internet at public libraries and schools.
In a May, 2002 Pennsylvania federal district court case, a three judge panel held that sections of the CIPA violated First Amendment rights and were therefore unconstitutional as they related to public libraries. The libraries showed that commonly used filtering software resulted in over and under-blocking of material not deemed upon further consideration to be harmful to minors, i.e. protected speech which library patrons have a right to access. The libraries further argued that while blocked materials could be unblocked, the process forces library patrons to communicate with library employees when they may wish to remain anonymous. On June 20, 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and oral argument is slated for March 5, 2003.
Although the Pennsylvania decision has affected only libraries, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have urged public school boards to filter the minimum amount of material as is legally possible. The ACLU and other groups continue to urge Congress to repeal the relevant sections of CIPA.
As these issues are being litigated, however, filters are becoming more and more sophisticated. It will be interesting to note how the development of filtering software impacts both the courts and legislators in balancing free speech against measures aimed at protecting child access to the internet.
For more information, please see:
http://www.ifea.net/cipa.html
http://archive.aclu.org/news/2002/n091802a.html
http://www.cybertelecom.org/cda/cipa.htm
http://www.nber.org/digest/feb03/w9090.html
http://www.ala.org
