a-a-ck. As busy as the Senate has been with the impeachment of President Clinton, two of its members still found time to introduce legislation to require public schools and libraries to install filtering software or lose federal funds for Internet hookups.
Sound familiar? It should. The proposed legislation, the Children's Internet Protection Act, is nearly identical to another bill, the Internet School Filtering Act, that was introduced about a year ago. The Senate approved the bill 98-0 in July and attached it to a huge appropriations bill.
The huge appropriations bill approved by the Senate was different from the one passed by the House. When the two versions were reconciled in a conference committee, the Internet School Filtering Act had vanished without a trace.
The bill requires filters on all public school terminals with Internet access. It requires libraries with more than one terminal put a filter on at least one terminal. Libraries with only one terminal must use some other system to keep children away from material that is "harmful to minors."
The "harmful to minors" standard in the new bill is the main difference between it and the original version. Last year's bill said the filter must block material that is "inappropriate for minors," a far more vague description of what is off-limits.
As to who decides what is harmful, the bill from Republicans John McCain and Ernest Hollings leaves that up to the school, the school board or the library board.
McCain said the bill, if enacted, will let parents protect their children from harmful Internet material even when the parents can't be present to supervise. Hollings called it "an important step in the battle to protect children from the dark side of the Internet."
A senior staff attorney for People for the American Way, a civil liberties group, said the bill is not needed. Larry Ottinger said the federal government should leave it to individual communities as to whether they want to filter.
He said changing the wording in the new law won't solve the problem because filters impose content-based distinctions on speech which still must be consistent with the standards of the First Amendment.
