Essay on Filters Are Needed to Protect Children From the Internet

The ACLU argued in the lower court that the censorship provisions are unconstitutional because they would criminalize expression that is protected by the First Amendment and because the terms “indecency” and “patently offensive” are unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. ACLU plaintiffs Particia Nell Warren of Wild Cat Press and Kiyoshi Kuromiya of the Critical Path AIDS Project told judges they fear censorship under the new law. Ann Duvall, president of Surf Watch, took judges on a first-ever live tour of the Internet, including a demonstration of how her company’s software blocks access to sites deemed unsuitable for children. Dr. Donna Hoffman, an expert witness on marketing in cyberspace, tells the court that the censorship law would destroy the democratic nature of cyberspace, causing many “mom & pop” websites to close up shop for fear of civil and criminal penalties under the vague “indecency” ban.

In the article “The Internet: A Clear and Present Danger?” written by Cathleen Cleaver presents a straightforward claim of the need for government laws to administer what is being displayed on the internet. The article begins with a few realistic examples of what is possible to occur to internet users when someone obtains a free entry to their confidential information in their computers. The point she addresses mostly throughout the article is how dangerous it is for children. The example she uses to demonstrate the danger it may have on children is that a pedophile could chat with your child, disguising as a “twelve-year-old.” They may establish an “online relationship” and arrange to meet someday after school, with the intention of molesting

    Ashcroft vs. ACLU, 00-1293, deals with a challenge to the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which Congress passed in 1998. The law, which is the subject of this essay, attempts to protect minors from exposure to Internet pornography by requiring that commercial adult websites containing "indecent" material that is "harmful to minors" use age-verification mechanisms such as credit cards or adult identification numbers.(Child)

While the United States has very little government regulation over the Internet compared to other countries, such as china, the United States government has made it a requirement for schools and libraries to use an intermediary software to filter the content available to minors. While these intermediaries restrict access to websites regarding child pornography, which is not a protection of the first amendment, there is also legislation pending to restrict access to social networking websites, which are considered protected by the First Amendment (Kreimer 22). White refers to the case United States v. American Library Association, which refers to the requirement of a software on computers prohibiting children from viewing anything that is harmful to them, such as pornography. The court ruled, adults still have the ability to view such sites if they ask a library official to remove the website from the blocked list, and therefore does not go against First Amendment liberties. However, the judge also said, “until a blocked site or group of sites is unblocked, a patron is unlikely to know what is being hidden and therefore whether there is any point in asking for the filter to be removed” (White 2009). White believed due to this statement alone, the individual’s rights of speech have been restrained prior to their knowledge (White 2009).

According to the Communication Decency Act of 1996 the CDA prohibits the users from using the internet that provides obscene, offensive material. It restricted the minors, individuals under 18 years of age. The CDA consider use of such salacious material to be taken as crime if made available to the minors. But the CDA was found to be unconstitutional and too broad because it violated the first amendment, according to the Supreme Court the communication decency act was not limited to a commercial speech or entity rather it was a prohibition on whole group. An alternative internet censorship law was made known as Child online protection act of 1998, it was found to be much more limited than the CDA but it too was found to be unconstitutional.

Innovations in technology are altering the ability of the government to create a regulatory regime that targets individuals. Technology has outstripped the governments capacity to regulate things. It is too hard for the government to regulate things on the internet. Policymakers are pre-technology; the technology is alien to them. Initial run of porn had to do with mail, technology created the mail system, and mad it obsolete. People access porn through the internet. Courts realize they can not regulate very well but it is a small interest in comparison, child porn. Courts slowly retrenches from regulating speech that has to do with sex. Every time they have a chance to regulate they back up. Obscenity does not equal pornography anymore because the government has so much more regulation to focus on. Court realizes its ability to regulate speech is impossible.

Much of the act was struck down in a 1997 Supreme Court decision due to it’s conflict with the First Amendment, although it left standing a section similar to that above but with the “intent to annoy or harass”. The judges indicated that the Internet should have those

Since there has not been a ruling in this case, the supporters of the censorship laws had to try and find a way to get the internet censored to children. So in the year 2000, Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act, which is aimed at the computers in the schools and libraries that the children would have access to. This law was limited to "only the schools and libraries that participated in certain federal programs such as, receiving federal money for technology". The schools and libraries that received this money were required to "install filtering software on all internet terminals to block access to sites with child pornography, obscene material, and material that is harmful to minors". My opinion on this law is that it is even better than the firs one. They are very similar, as you can tell from their names, there is very little changed in the names of the laws. I think that the sites that a minor can look at should be filtered. This way they cannot look at things that can be harmful to them.

The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is a federal law enacted by Congress to address concerns about access to offensive content over the Internet on school and library computers (Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)). This act like Children’s Online Privacy Act was implemented due to the advances of today’s internet technology. Because these sites allowed children to gain access to sites that contain media that is harmful to minors, and also allow predators to access the email of minors it was deemed necessary that they be blocked on computers that gave minors access to the internet in public schools and libarays (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 2011).

The Internet is a global network of vast information. With a few clicks, an individual can have access to up to 200 million web-sites filled with educational and recreational information. The Internet is not regulated in anyway (Carnegie Library 1). It is accessible throughout the entire world from the North to the South, to the early morning sunrise and dark sunsets. Different ethnicity and backgrounds come together linked upon this network resembling a connection of one body in unity. Sadly, issues arise creating concern for users, focusing particularly on minors. Pornography is one of the inappropriate materials on the Internet for minors. This material is harmful to young impressionable minds. Pornography is tearing and

Most would make the argument that it would be the best option for the government to take control of what we see on the internet, as if they don’t already do that with everything else in our lives. We should be asking ourselves if that’s what we really want, sure there can be murderers and pedophiles on places like dark-net but why should those of us who do nothing wrong, and simply use the internet as a means of knowledge, communication, and entertainment be controlled with what we’re able to see. When it comes down to the simple question of are you for or against it most that would say they are have defenitaly never had a parental block or firewall. Something as massive as the internet should never be censored, or controlled. How ludicrus would it sound if the president came out and said that the government was going to start regulating space and what we’re allowed to be expossed to when it comes to something that is literally endless and totally

Child pornography laws instated during the 1970s were some of the first in the crusade to protect children from sexual predators. This was because most of national news magazines were printing detailed articles concerning child sexual abuse at the time. In just a few weeks, "a national campaign against the making and sale of child pornography exploded" (Finkelhor 1) and politicians took note. In 1977, the government enacted the Sexual Exploitation of Children Act which prohibited sexually explicit photography of minors, the use of minors in production of pornography, and any material promoting child pornography. Due to misunderstandings of what "minor" really meant, the Child Protection Act of 1984 was ratified. It was then concluded that

These days the internet has become an essential part to living for almost everyone but one of the controversial topics that people bring up is that whether or not the government should regulate information on the internet. Both sides have valid points which form a reasonable argument. Some people would say that they need to because of the dangers lurking around in the cyber world but the reasons for why the government shouldn’t regulate the Internet outnumber the reasons for why they should. The federal government should not regulate or censor information on the internet because doing so violates the first amendment and citizen’s right to privacy, degrades the educational value of the web, prevents the promotion and facilitation of

It is obvious that for years, the government has been trying to regulate this type of content but has seen very limited success. Part of the reason for this is because certain regulatory actions intended to protect only a small group, such as children, should not require the prohibition of material that adults have access to in other arenas. It is for example, legal for people to rent pornographic movies or buy nude magazines, so distribution of this type of material on the Internet should not be completely limited. People shouting out for protection of their 1st Amendment rights have made a good point when arguing against complete censorship. What seems more feasible is a sort of multi-layered approach to regulate illegal and harmful content on the Net. This would make it possible to form some sort of insulation for children

“Never before in history of telecommunications media in the United States has so much indecent (and obscene material been so easily accessible by so many minors in so many American homes with so few restrictions” (qtd in “Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse”). The problem addressed in the quote by the U.S. Department of Justice is pornography, a 10 billion dollar industry, has made its way from discreet taboo to something that is today considered acceptable and even common. With the internet being such a common tool, it is no surprise that there is easy access to sexually explicit material. The widespread accessibility and usage of pornography has changed people’s outlook on the normality of watching such sexually explicit material, and