Most parents don’t want their children taking advantage of everything the Internet has to offer because, quite frankly, the Internet contains obscene amounts of questionable content. When children are using their home computers, parents can keep tabs on the sites their children visit through filters and over-the-shoulder techniques. But parents can’t go to school with their children, and their children have access to the Internet at school.
The Children’s Internet Protection Act, signed into law in 2000 by then-President Bill Clinton, was aimed at the issue outlined above. The bill, which was sustained by the Supreme Court in 2003, instructs schools and libraries to filter online content. If they do not, the institutions run the risk of losing federal funding.
This federal funding program the schools would lose, called E-Rate, supplies schools and libraries with discounts on computers and other technology. Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act, any school or library using E-Rate funds must restrict content that would be “harmful to minors.” But what makes certain content “harmful to minors”? The bill claims that harmful content is that which depicts nudity or sex that is not educational.
The bill, along with other bills of a similar nature, has garnered much controversy throughout the years from the American Civil Liberties Union and American Library Association. The court has been able to uphold the bill because of an exception that allows adults to conduct unfiltered research if completely necessary. Since the passing the bill, others have come along in hopes of incorporating stricter filters. One of these was the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, which hoped to stop schools and libraries from allowing minors to visit social networking sites that harbor pedophiles and predators.