Internet Filters
Internet Filters are not Needed in Schools and Libraries The Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000 has produced a debate on Internet Filters. ... These debates revolved around children and whether or not Internet filters were beneficial to the children who use the internet. The goal of the Act is to protect children from unwanted materials from the Internet, such as pornography. ... I believe that internet filters are not necessary because they are ineffective and violate students’ and teachers’ rights, therefore, there should not be Internet filters in schools and libraries. Currently filters dont work well, but can we hope that sometime in the future, technology will advance enough that filters will be reliable? ... The ideal filters would keep all constitutionally protected speech, and only block those sites that are legally obscene. ... Unless courts decide to spend their time evaluating every Internet site for obscenity, filters will never be consistent with the ALAs commitment to First Amendment principles. Patrick L puts it well when he writes “the use of Internet filters in high schools are unnecessary, ineffective and even discriminatory. ... The filters don’t serve as a protective limit of R-rated sites or sites that are not recommended for little children, but it serves as an educationally restrictive boundary for those who want to learn things about the Ku Klux Klan or even the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Nancy Kranich, President of the American Library Association (ALA), agrees with Patrick saying that Internet filters may do more harm than good because they block many sites that could be seen by any one. They sweep the Internet to broadly making it so people wont be able to look up sites such as Mars Exploration, the Quakers, National Rifle Association, and even Beanie Babies. ... With those statistics, people should just consider having internet filters installed in there personal computers.