CDA Oral Arguments: Filtering the OPAC

[Albert Lunde]

At 2:49 PM -0600 3/26/97, Sheryl Dwinell wrote:
>Isn't it rather frightening to read this and other transcripts from the CDA
>case before the Supreme Court, and witness the utter lack of knowledge
>about the technology involved.  It's almost laughable. Particularly, the
>idea of offensive cards!!

It's important to study of chain of arguments involved.

_If_ the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's finding on the CDA it
wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.  The real ignorance was shown by
the lawmakers who passed the CDA.

The lower court decision was fairly literate about the Internet because
they accepted a lot of stipulations made by the ACLU. et. al about the
nature of the net.

I think the line of argument Rich quoted about filtering software was
intended to demonstrate that censorship at the source, in the manner
originally proposed by the CDA, is not the "least restrictive means" of
controlling access to offensive/indecent material (which covers a lot of
ground, as the law was framed).

(Prior free speech, etc. rulings extablished that for indecent material the
least restrictive means of control should be used.)

If the Supreme Court overturns the CDA indecency provisions, it does not
mean that we will be legally _required_ to use filtering software the would
produce such a drastic effect.

However, there are more neo-victorian law makers out there, (as context has
illustrated) who will keep pushing the same ideas that created the CDA in
the first place, and they may well force the use of more filtering software.

---
    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde at nwu.edu