CIPA Trial Begins
with Testimony from Librarians
A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Children’s Internet Protection Act opened in Philadelphia March 25. The measure was signed into law in December 2000, but implementation has been delayed until July 2002.
The first two days of the trial, scheduled to conclude April 4, heard testimony in support of the challenge from librarians Candace Morgan, associate director of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library in Vancouver, Washington; Ginnie Cooper, director of Multnomah County Public Library in Portland, Oregon; and Sally Reed, former director of the Norfolk (Va.) Public Library.
Emmalyn Rood, a 16-year-old who researched her sexuality at the Multnomah library before coming out as a lesbian, said the library’s optional filters blocked sites that were clearly informational. Rood was able to turn off the software, but she said that although CIPA allows an exemption for “bona fide research,” she would have been reluctant to ask a librarian for help. Rood testified, “I couldn’t go up to a grownup or an adult and ask them to do that,” the Portland Oregonian reported March 27.
Also testifying were Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics researcher at Stanford University; Christopher Hunter, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, who has tested the effectiveness of blocking software; Joseph Janes, assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School; Mark Brown, a Philadelphia Free Library user; Michael Ryan, director of the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania; and Jonathan Bertman, president and medical director of plaintiff Afraid to Ask.com.
The government’s defense of the law began with testimony from David Biek, manager of Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library’s main library, who said filters “made it possible for us to continue to deliver services effectively, including the Internet.” Biek testified that 95% of the sites that filters suppressed at his library were blocked correctly, the Associated Press reported March 28.
Other pro-filtering witnesses were David Sudduth, chair of the Greenville County (S.C.) Library board of trustees; and Chris Lemmon of the technology-testing firm eTesting Labs.
A special three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court is hearing the suit, filed by the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a coalition of library groups, health organizations, individual library patrons, and Internet publishers.
Posted April 1, 2002.
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