The author of A Practical Guide To Internet Filters has told the Justice Department thanks but no thanks - she will not testify about Net filter deficiencies in "your upcoming retrial" of the controversial Child Online Protection Act. nrnKaren Schneider, a librarian, wrote to Justice Department official Gail Walker saying her first impulse was to testify, but that the potential weakening of the First Amendment in the case compelled her to change her mind. nrn"I believe information is a public good, and that no information is in itself harmful," Schneider wrote in a letter made available to AVN On The Net. "As an expert on the topic of Internet content filters, I was very tempted to reemphasize the points I made in legal testimony as well as in my book? However, after reviewing the information you shared with me regarding the government's intent with respect to COPA, I realized that testifying about the defects of Internet content filters would actually be in conflict with my professional responsibility." nrnThe Justice Department has been lining up filtering critics like Schneider, ironically, to help it defend the COPA, reasoning - as Wired columnist Declan McCullagh phrases it - that "(i)f products like Cyberpatrol and Surfwatch are so badly flawed that they don't block what they should, then the judge in the case should uphold a federal law making it a crime to post erotica online instead." nrnSchneider acknowledges she has seen "quite a bit of objectionable" material online, though she didn't specify the material she had in mind. "Nevertheless," she continued, "I believe the true danger to children would not come from exposing them to an unfettered information medium of such magnitude that it has become a matter-of-fact part of daily > life for a majority of Americans. The greater harm would come from weakening the First Amendment to the point where children would grow up to become adults in a shrunken, compromised democracy, deprived of the freedoms we now enjoy. nrn"In terms of obligations, I owe it to the people who wrote the First Amendment to assume they knew what they were doing." nrnSchneider also said being labeled objectionable keeps people from getting necessary information, especially gays and lesbians. "Gay teenagers have enough trouble coming to terms with their sexual orientation without finding out that the government has banished information about their very existence into the same realm as cheap pornography," she wrote. "? I do not trust the federal government to allow children access to age-appropriate gay-themed websites when it cannot stomach concepts as simple and mundane as an openly gay person serving her country, or two people of the same gender choosing to marry."
All models were at least 18 years old at the time of their performance. 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement.
