Advocacy Groups Join
to Oppose Mandatory Filters
A network of privacy and free-speech organizations and concerned individuals released a joint statement January 23 opposing Internet blocking technologies required by the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) passed by Congress December 21.
Fifteen advocacy groups—among them the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression—have endorsed the statement, which asserts that “government-mandated censorship does not solve problems better handled through local decision making and educational efforts.”
ACLU staff attorney Ann Beeson said in an accompanying release that CIPA “has a discriminatory effect on communities of color, whose use of library computers to access the Internet is central to bridging the ‘digital divide.’”
The groups are urging librarians, parents, teachers, and administrators to adopt educational methods that assist children in navigating the Internet safely.
The American Library Association, which intends to file a lawsuit challenging CIPA, has launched a Web site to report on related developments.
Posted January 29, 2001.
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