CDA and filtering

[Burt, David]

Well I bet nobody is partying harder tonight than the fitlering vendors.
If any of there stock is publicly traded, I bet it way up today.  While
I have no legal training whatsover (other than a business law class as a
college sophomore), it does seem from my reading of this text from
today's decison that filters played a key role in the Courts decison:

>(e) The CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires
>when a statute regulates the content of speech.  Although the Govern-
>ment has an interest in protecting children from potentially harmful
>materials, see, e.g., Ginsberg, 390 U. S., at 639, the CDA pursues that
>interest by suppressing a large amount of speech that adults have a
>constitutional right to send and receive, see, e.g., Sable, supra, at
126.
>Its breadth is wholly unprecedented.  The CDA's burden on adult
>speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at
least
>as effective in achieving the Act's legitimate purposes.  See, e.g.,
>Sable, 492 U. S., at 126.  The Government has not proved otherwise.
>On the other hand, the District Court found that currently available
>user-based software suggests that a reasonably effective method by
>which parents can prevent their children from accessing material
>which the parents believe is inappropriate will soon be widely avail-
>able.  Moreover, the arguments in this Court referred to possible
>alternatives such as requiring that indecent material be "tagged" to
>facilitate parental control, making exceptions for messages with
>artistic or educational value, providing some tolerance for parental
>choice, and regulating some portions of the Internet differently than
>others.  Particularly in the light of the absence of any detailed con-
>gressional findings, or even hearings addressing the CDA's special
>problems, the Court is persuaded that the CDA is not narrowly
>tailored.  Pp. 28-33.


The Courts thoughts on "accidental exposure" are also interersting:

>Though such material is widely available, users seldom
>encounter such content accidentally. "A document's title
>or a description of the document will usually appear
>before the document itself . . . and in many cases the
>user will receive detailed information about a site's
>content before he or she need take the step to access the
>document. Almost all sexually explicit images are
>preceded by warnings as to the content."[15] For that
>reason, the "odds are slim" that a user would enter a
>sexually explicit site by accident.


  ***********************************************************
          David Burt, Information Technology Librarian 
          The Lake Oswego Public Library 
          706 Fourth Street, Lake Oswego, OR 97034
          URL:          http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/library/library.htm
          Phone:     (503) 675-2537 
          Fax:           (503) 635-4171 
          E-mail:      dburt at ci.oswego.or.us