What are the similarities between the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Neighborhood Children’s Internet Protection Act (NCIPA)? Are CIPA and NCIPA necessary to protect our children are all they really just acts of censorship? This paper will compare the two acts, and explore some different interpretations of the 1st amendment; specifically Article 13. It will then go in to the case of the American Library Association challenging the acts vs. the United States in 2003. This paper will show both sides of the case and how and why the United States won.
There plainly is material on the Web that is educationally unsuitable and pervasively vulgar (Chmara, 2010).CIPA and NCIPA are two similar acts that were put in to effect on April 20, 2001. They were passed to implement web-monitoring software for children. CIPA offers discounts through an E-rate program or LIPA if school libraries use the web filters to block certain content. They can apply for the discounts on-line. NCIPA uses the same filters and has the same concept, but it is used in public libraries and there are no discounts offered. CIPA applicants may not receive the discounts offered by the E-rate program unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy that includes technology protection measures. The protection measures must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene; (b) child pornography; or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors)(Federal Communications Commission, 2001). CIPA and NCIPA do not actually keep a log of all the websites that are viewed. They do not keep track of any content that is accessed on a computer, instead they just block inappropriate content from being accessible in the first...
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...n unlimited amount of information that can be posted by anyone, anywhere in the world. It can be a wonderful thing, but sometimes too much information can do more harm than good. Our children are growing up faster and faster, with unlimited access to unlimited information that we never even dreamed would be possible twenty years ago. I believe that CIPA and NCIPA are absolutely necessary and should be applauded, not frowned upon. They are protecting the innocence of America’s youth. Parents need to be able to trust that their children will not be subjected to any harmful material while doing a research paper for school or while trying to play a simple, harmless game on the internet. Parents cannot always be there to protect their children, but CIPA and NCIPA can help give them peace of mind and step in to protect their children in areas that are out of their reach.
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)
Imagine a place where you have access to anything and everything one could want. Some would say that is only existent in a utopia, and some would say that describes the Internet. Many adults go on to the net and access pornographic material that would be unsuitable for children. This is called cyberporn. The controversy lies in the fact that children are accessing these materials also. Government, activist groups, and concerned parents are fighting to regulate obscene material found over the Internet to protect children. The first amendment is the only thing protecting adults from losing their rights to obtain pornographic or indecent material on the net. Under the first amendment the government must not regulate cyberporn. Online sex has been around since the first bulletin boards were available over the computer in the early 1980's. People would pay to down load pornographic pictures and talk dirty to each other. Usenet groups took control of porn after the Internet came about. They did not charge people to down load picture and to interact with others. In result, Internet porn grew (Rosen 16). Things have changed drastically since then with over a million different sites available to access porn. Now it is not just for adults. Children are accessing the obscene materials. This brings rise to issues of how to protect them from problems that can arise. The materials they view, could influence children. They could also be subjected to cybersex in a chat room full of people that could be three times their age. Worst of all pedophilias could influence children to meet with them outside of the computer. The government and the United States citizens must now figure out how to protect our children from the effects of cyberporn, and y...
In conclusion, it is important that parents give their freedom to make sure kids learn to be independent and now days most teens spend a lot of their time in the internet so by parents not letting them have their privacy there, they are taking over all their lives without even giving them a chance to “explored their identity and the world” like Boyd mention. Parents, need to realize that by over protecting their kids is like sending them to war without weapons because they will not know how to confront the world and worst of all they will not know they things they are capable of doing by themselves.
Issues of censorship in public schools are contests between the exercise of discretion and the exercise of a Constitutional right. The law must reconcile conflicting claims of liberty and authority, as expressed by Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 1940 in “Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries” by Herbert N. Foerstel (23).
The Constitutional issue that was addressed was whether the CDA violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech (Reno, 1997). The court found that the CDA did infringe upon the freedom of speech protection afforded in the First Amendment. The CDA was an effort to restrict inappropriate material from reaching children under the age of eighteen through the internet. However, the court found that the CDA’s language was too vague and because of that, it ...
... who want to safely enjoy the internet. This act is extremely unjust and fails to recognize the unique nature of the internet. I clearly understand the motivation for the Communications Decency Act, but feel that there was a terribly misguided effort to protect children from what some prosecutors consider offensive or indecent online material. I believe that this responsibility should be put on parents. Parents, not the Federal Government should determine for themselves and their children what material should come into their homes based on their own tastes and values. The Communication Decency Act simply goes to far in the attempt to "protect the children." I think that Vermont senator Patrick Leahy summed it up best by saying that, "Banning indecent material from the Internet is like using a meat cleaver to deal with the problems better addressed with a scalpel."
Since the internet has been available in schools and libraries in this country, there has been a debate about what should be accessible to users, especially minors. The amount of information disseminated on the world wide web is vast, with some sources valuable for scholarly and personal research and entertainment, and some sources that contain material that is objectionable to some (ie. pornography, gambling, hate groups sites, violent materials). Some information potentially accessible on the internet such as child pornography and obscenity is strictly illegal and is not protected under the First Amendment. Some information available on the internet that may be valuable to some is at the same time perceived to be worthless or potentially harmful to some. For libraries serving the public, there has been controversy on the issue of providing the internet, free of censorship or filtering, to users. While some librarians and their professional associations align with ideals of free and unfiltered access to all information provided by the internet, some feel that filtering internet content to exclude possibly objectionable materials is a reasonable measure to prevent potential harm to minors.
This article emphasizes the point that censors go too far when they attempt to not only ban a book for their own children but want to remove it altogether from a school library, so that other students cannot read it.
Tears begin to fall down a child’s face. Her body goes into shock out of fear. Her mother warned her about watching inappropriate content, and there it was, right on her computer screen. This could not have happened though. All she was doing was casually browsing the internet before a pop-up appeared. Although it may seem hard to believe, the major cause of events such as this is the lack of censorship on the internet. Internet censorship relates to the removal of offensive, inappropriate, or controversial content published online. The current problem with the internet is that there are few restrictions on what can be published or viewed. Several sites on the internet only offer a warning about inappropriate content that can easily be bypassed by agreeing to the terms. Other websites provide access to private or military information. More dreadfully, however, are websites that use their explicit content as a promotion. These factors bring the conclusion that anybody of any given age can view and publish inappropriate or dangerous content. The current problems with the internet serve for clarification as to why the United States should create a nonpartisan assembly to censor the internet in order to protect its citizens from the mental, emotional, and physical harms the internet creates.
Another reason for not censoring the internet is the psychological effects that it can have on a child. The filtering of the internet can tell a child that adults do not trust them to surf the net on their own. This can lead them to believe that they can not make their own decisions, and that a computer determines what right and wr...
The Stop Online Piracy Act was proposed in January of 2012. SOPA was a legislative act that attempted to prevent piracy through DNS blocking and censorship. The legislation caused the protest and blackout of multiple online internet services including Reddit, 4Chan, Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla, and Tumblr. Now, internet users are faced with another possible challenge called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. CISPA was quickly passed by the House of Representatives on April 26th, 2012, and is now being processed through the Senate (Beadon). CISPA's purpose is to promote national cybersecurity through allowing private companies and the federal government to exchange users' private information, including emails and text messages, with complete legal immunity and one hundred percent anonymity. To some, CISPA appears as SOPA 2.0, another attempt to further limit American rights and privacy. Meanwhile, to others, CISPA appears as a milestone that needs to be reached in order to advance technologically and improve the nation's security. CISPA's purpose appears noble, but the current version of the legislation at least requires a revision due to its privacy invading policies, vague terminology, possible restrictions of internet freedom, and violation of the Fourth Amendment.
McCarthy, M. (2005). THE CONTINUING SAGA OF INTERNET CENSORSHIP: THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT. Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, (2), 83-101.
The internet is a wonderful learning tool. Of course, like any good thing, the Internet comes with its ups and downs. There are several things that aren’t suitable for any child on the internet, such as pornography, violent material, adult chat rooms, and racist or hateful sites, there are even websites about cheating in schools.
Reitman, Rainey. " The Cost of Censorship in Libraries: 10 Years Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act." Electronic Frontier Foundation. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 4 Sept. 2013. Web.
There are two real issues at stake when looking at this controversial topic. The first issue is finding a way to protect our children from potentially damaging material. There are advocates to censoring the Internet and removing this type of material because it will help shelter our children from this type of content. On the other hand, Free Speech advocates believe that it is the individual citizens right to have access to this typ...