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Date: 1998-06-25

Filter/zwang: Neuer Anlauf im U.S. Kongress


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q/depesche 98.6.25.1

Filter/zwang: Neuer Anlauf im U.S. Kongress

Schon mal von Representative Ernest Istook (Oklahoma) gehört? ACLU & EFF halten ausgesprochen wenig
von seiner neuen Bill, die Bibliotheken öffentlich verpflichten soll, nur zensurierte
Internet/zugänge anzubieten.

WASHINGTON – Yet another censorship threat to the Internet has emerged in Congress with the approval
by a House appropriations subcommittee of a new measure that would force public schools and
libraries to install costly and ineffective blocking software.

Sponsored by Rep. Ernest Istook, R-OK, the new measure is similar to legislation approved by the
Senate Commerce Committee in March. But the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation said that the new Istook amendment differs in that it would require schools and
libraries to install filtering software to block only “obscene information,” a requirement that is
not technologically feasible.

“No one is suggesting that children should have access to obscene material,” said Ron Weich, a
legislative consultant on cyberliberties issues for the ACLU’s Washington National Office. “But the
Istook amendment ignores the hard fact that it is technically and humanly impossible to block access
only to obscene material.

“For Congress to adopt the Istook amendment,” Weich added, “would be like ordering every newsstand
in the country to be wrapped entirely in a brown paper bag to protect any child from seeing any
potentially obscene materials.”

The Labor, Health and Human Services and Education subcommittee of the House Appropriations
Committee approved the Istook amendment as it considered $81.9 billion in spending for the
government in fiscal year 1999. The measure will next be considered by the full House Appropriations
Committee.

The ACLU has warned that forcing schools and libraries to install blocking software would cost some
communities hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, the Istook amendment would likely impose
new staffing requirements on local schools and libraries.

“We believe that local educators, parents and librarians, not Congress, should be the ones making
decisions about what students can see on the Internet,” said Barry Steinhardt, President of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Although the ACLU and EFF support parent’s rights to install blocking software in the home, it warns
that the technology is clumsy and ineffective. In a new report, “Censorship in a Box: Why Blocking
Software is Wrong for Public Libraries,” the ACLU said that no product can effectively screen the
vast content of the web and that many products block constitutionally protected speech for
ideological reasons.

Just last month, in fact, the American Family Association, a conservative advocacy group, learned
this lesson when it discovered that CyberPatrol, a popular brand of blocking software, had placed
AFA on its “Cybernot” list because the group is considered “intolerant of homosexuality.”

“You can no more create a computer program to block out one community’s view of ‘indecency’ or
‘obscenity’ than you can devise a filtering program to block out misguided proposals by members of
Congress,” Steinhardt said. “Both may be desirable, but neither are possible.”

The new ACLU report, Censorship in a Box, can be found on the ACLU’s Freedom Network at
http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/box.html.

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published on: 1998-06-25
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