Maine Lawmaker Wants to Filter
Students’ Laptops
A first-term state legislator has introduced a bill that would require the Maine School and Library Network to block sexually explicit materials from minors logging on via school and public library computers, as well as through networked portable computers that Gov. Angus King has proposed loaning to 7th- and 8th-graders. “I tend to err on the side of caution with kids,” Rep. Brian Duprey (R-Hampden), who home-schools his three children, said in the December 29 Bangor Daily News.
Duprey’s proposal is more restrictive than legislation passed December 15 by Congress and signed by President Clinton that makes blocking software a condition for e-rate eligibility. The Maine bill requires the state to pay for the filters because some school districts are claiming they cannot afford the software, Duprey told the paper.
The proposal has met opposition from the state library association. “Local control is being taken away,” MLA Vice-president Anne Davis told the paper. N2H2 already filters 70% of Maine’s school-district cyber-traffic through MSLN’s off-campus connection to the University of Maine network.
Posted January 1, 2001.
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