================================================================= ALAWON Volume 7, Number 16 ISSN 1069-7799 February 11, 1998 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (193 lines) SEN. MCCAIN INTRODUCES INTERNET SCHOOL FILTERING ACT; CONDUCTS HEARING ON INTERNET INDECENCY _________________________________________________________________ SEN. MCCAIN INTRODUCES INTERNET SCHOOL FILTERING ACT; CONDUCTS HEARING ON INTERNET INDECENCY On Tuesday, February 10, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee conducted a hearing on "Internet Indecency". The Internet School Filtering Act, S. 1619, a bill introduced on February 9 by Senate Commerce Committee Chair John McCain, (R-AZ) was the main focus of the hearing. This bill is cosponsored by Senators Fritz Hollings (D-SC), Dan Coats (R-IN), and Patty Murray (D-WA). Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) announced his cosponsorship of S. 1619 during the hearing, which had been scheduled long before introduction of McCain's bill. McCain's proposal would deny schools and libraries that do not use filtering or blocking software, eligibility to use the telecommunications discounts as authorized by the Snowe-Rockefeller provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. If a school or library does not certify that it will use a filtering system, they will not be eligible to receive universal service fund support. Witnesses at the Feb.10 hearing included cosponsors Senators Coats and Murray, who are clearly supportive of S.1619. Coats is the sponsor of S. 1482 which prohibits commercial distribution on the Web of material that is harmful to minors without blocking access to minors through credit card or other adult verification. Murray's cosponsorship of S. 1619 was a major disappointment given her usually strong support for education and technology. An undercover detective from California, who wanted to remain anonymous and who investigates criminal activity on the Internet, pointed out that much of the questionable activity on the Internet relating to the stalking of children, etc. was via email and chat rooms although he generally advocated filtering and blocking software. Seth Warshavsky, president of Internet Entertainment Group, Inc., which provides adult Internet content, usually for a fee, suggested that creating new domain names for "adult" material would lead to more affective filtering and thus minimize overly broad filtering of other information. His company cooperates with various filtering software manufacturers by voluntarily providing addresses for adult sites to the filtering developers. He also argued that use of credit cards and related techniques would also protect children from adult materials. Christine Varney, chair of the December 1997 Internet Online Summit, and a lawyer with Hogan & Hartson, emphasized that filtering software and technologies are in their infancies and PICS (Platform for Internet Content selection) had yet to be fully developed. She urged more flexibility for schools and libraries, a position that Sen. McCain disagreed with in the hearing. The only school or library witness was Elizabeth Whitaker, coordinator of Instructional Technologies, Tucson (AZ) Unified School District, who testified that their school system does deploy filtering software. She indicated that the only complaints about filtering being censorship came from "internal librarians". She argued that the filtering should not be connected to nor deny eligibility to the telecommunications discounts. Andrew Sernovitz, president of the Association for Interactive Media, representing a coalition of businesses that use the Internet, encouraged passage of the McCain bill but spoke strongly against the Coats bill, S. 1482. In his floor remarks when introducing the bill on February 9 McCain said: ...school and library administrators who accept universal service support to provide students with [the Internet's] intended benefits must also safeguard them against unintended harm....It requires schools receive universal service discounts to use a filtering system on their computers so that objectionable online materials will not be accessible to students. Libraries are required to use a filtering system on one or more of their computers so that at least one computer will be appropriate for minors' use. Filtering technology is itself eligible to be subsidized by the E-rate discount... According to S. 1619, in order to receive universal service fund support: a library would have to certify that it employs filtering or blocking software on one or more computers and that, should the library remove or "ceases to employ any such system" that it must notify the Federal Communications Commission about the change. a school would have to certify that it had "selected a system for computers with Internet access to filter or block matter deemed to be inappropriate for minors" and had installed or would install once computers were obtained, a software to filter or block such matter. The bill also says that "determination of what matter is appropriate for minors shall be made by the school, school board, library or other authority responsible for making the required certification" and that no agency of the United States government may "establish criteria" or review the decisions made by a local governing board. ALA argues that, since there is little control at the local of level as to what is filtered by the available filtering/blocking software this provision in the act would be problematic. In its statement, ALA also argued that there should be no federal requirements mandating filters nor should such filtering be tied in any way into the telecommunications discount program. The key sponsors of the discount program appeared cautionary in their approach to S. 1610. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) stated that she concurred that something needed to be done to control the proliferation of pornography on the Internet but she did not specifically endorse the McCain proposal. In a written statement Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said "I believe that we need an approach that's clear about our bottom-line but flexible enough that local communities can set the standards and use the tools that they believe are right for their circumstances, their communities, and their children." Several other senators from the committee were not present because of a major scheduling conflict with another Senate committee. The ALA written statement for the hearing record is now posted at http://www.ala.org/washoff/mccain.html. It reads in part: ....While blocking and filtering products can be useful tools for parents to use at home, their use in a library setting is questionable at best. Libraries serve all the families and all library users in a given community. As public institutions supported primarily by local public tax monies, libraries are obligated to meet the information needs of the entire community or school population, while upholding the basic principles of the First Amendment. Within the same community, within the same school district or library system, indeed, even within the same library or school building, users have vastly needs. Federally mandated blocking software cannot responsibly anticipate the information and curricular needs of a community or determine the best sources of information for any particular public or school library users. ALA continues to analyze the McCain proposal and discuss preferable options. ALA is seeking clarification on reports that Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) will sponsor similar legislation in the House but may focus more on requiring local, acceptable use policies rather than mandating filtering or software. Depending upon how its crafted, that would appear preferable to S. 1619. However, these federally mandated filtering proposals have in no way stopped or changed the telecommunications discount program or the process or requirements for applying for the discounts. Public and school librarians working on discount applications should aggressively continue with the application process within the current deadlines. The message from public and school library supporters to their congressional representatives and senators, should be that there should be no federal mandate to require local filtering or blocking software and it should certainly not be tied into eligibility for the telecommunications discount program. There are practical and constitutional questions raised by S. 1619. ALA will provide further analysis of the McCain bill and report here and elsewhere on this developing situation. _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc @ala.org. To unsubscribe, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/ washoff/alawon. Visit our Web site at http://www.alawash.org. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 800.941.8478 (V) Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Deirdre Herman, Managing Editor Contributors: Carol C. Henderson All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================