House Subcommittee Holds
Belated Hearing on CIPA
The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing April 4 on the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Although the law was passed last December, the hearing was apparently held to create a record to be used in defending the act against lawsuits filed by the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Testifying in support of the law were Bruce Taylor, president of the National Law Center for Children and Families; two representatives from filter manufacturers, Susan Getgood of SurfControl and Chris Ophus of SF4 Technologies; and librarian Laura Morgan, whose charges of sexual discrimination against the Chicago Public Library prompted a systemwide investigation of how Internet porn is affecting the workplace. Opposing CIPA were Carolyn A. Caywood of the Virginia Beach (Va.) Public Library and Marvin Johnson, legislative counsel to the ACLU.
Wired News online reported that Johnson was involved in a heated exchange with Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Miss.), one of the authors of CIPA, who said ACLU and ALA represented “an extreme agenda” intent on the “legitimizing of pornography and making it accessible to people of all ages.”
Posted April 9, 2001.
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