porn filters on Internet terminals is dead for now, thanks to the state Senate's bill failing to get to a vote in the state House of Representatives.
At least one group supporting the bill isn't exactly ready to lay down their swords and shields. "When the legislators go back into session next spring," says Citizens for Community Values spokeswoman Kathy Valente to Conservative News Service, "it's possible this will be reintroduced as a fresh new bill and we'll have to start all over again…(b)ut we're going to continue. We're going to get this bill through."
CNS says studies show "overwhelming" majorities among teachers and students favor some kind of Internet filtering software. And legislation has moved through Congress to require all schools receiving special funding to use filtering software, under penalty of losing the funding if and when such legislation becomes law.
Yet unnamed Internet surveys cited by CNS say that, among teenagers who have accessed "objectionable" Web sites - 60 percent, says CNS - only 25 percent had visited sites featuring sexual content, compared to 40 percent visiting sites featuring "offensive" music.
But another survey by Media & Schools, a magazine reviewing the Internet, says 76 percent of middle- and high school teachers support some kind of filtering program, while another poll by the QED Market Research Center showed 72 percent of American public schools looking to install some kind of filtering in the current school year.
Valente tells CNS that three software makers offered free Net filtering to every school in the country, after some Illinois lawmakers objected to the filtering requirement because it might be too expensive to put in. Other critics object to filtering software's unreliability, citing frequent instances when the filters block out mainstream news and other Web sites in hand with porn and violence sites.
Focus on the Family spokesman Steve Watters tells CNS the filters aren't "as clumsy and awkward" as before, though. "You're not going to have content that is educational getting blocked out accidentally," he says. "A couple of months in the Internet world is like a year, and we've made substantial progress against filtering to begin with."
