US highest Court rewrites Web censorship legislation

The US Supreme Court in Washington. PHOTO: REUTERS

The US Supreme Court Monday upheld a law forcing libraries to use Internet porn filters, dismissing arguments that the law violated the rights of cyber-surfers when they blocked legitimate Web sites by mistake.

The 6-3 decision overturned an appellate court ruling, which found that imprecise Web filtering software would block constitutionally protected speech.

The challenge to the Childrens's Internet Protection Act case became a battle between free-speech advocates who argued against filtering and those who had sought to shield minors from obscenity.

Some said filters blocked access to sites that include information on sexually transmitted diseases, gay rights and family planning and may not be fully effective in filtering out obscenity.

The ruling could affect millions of people who use US public libraries, at least 95 percent of which offer Internet access.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority, said: "When a patron encounters a blocked site, he need only ask a librarian to unblock it or [at least in the case of adults] disable the filter."

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said porn filters, which rely on certain keywords, will block out many legitimate informational sites, and that porn sites will find a way around them.

"Given the quantity and ever-changing character of Web sites offering free sexually explicit material ... the statute will provide parents with a false sense of security without really solving the problem that motivated its enactment," Stevens wrote.

Unlike other laws that sought to ban certain content on the Internet that children might access, this measure simply ties funding to the use of filters. There was no legal challenge to the law's requirement for filtering in schools.

"The tragedy is that millions of library patrons now join the millions of students, many of them no longer minors, who face the Internet blocking barrier to obtaining a proper education at schools nationwide," said Will Doherty at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which released a study indicating that for every Web page correctly blocked, one or more was blocked incorrectly.

"The Children's Internet Protection Act holds library patrons and students hostage to faulty blocking software created with arbitrary standards foreign to their own communities."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law, said it was disappointed with the decision but praised justices for appearing to insist that Web filters be disabled upon request.

"Although we are disappointed that the court upheld a law that is unequivocally a form of censorship, there is a silver lining. The Justices essentially rewrote the law to minimize its effect on adult library patrons," said ACLU attorney Chris Hansen.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative public interest law firm, said the ruling is an important step in curbing Internet pornography.

"This is a landmark case that will ultimately help pave the way for a clearer understanding on how to set parameters for a deepening problem: pornography aimed at children on the Internet," said Jay Sekulow, lawyer for the group that sided with the backers of the law.

The law is the third attempt by Congress to restrict sexually explicit Web sites.