Censorship High by Daniel Silverman Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/14/net_filtering/index.html June 14, 2001 A thoughtful, well-written first-person account of one high school student's experience with Internet filtering policies established by his school and school district. Filtering and the e-Rate: What You Need to Know Right Now by Liza Kessler eSchool News, http://www.eschoolnews.com/showstory.cfm?ArticleID=2677 June 6, 2001 This article is a must-read for any education technologist who works with K-12 schools with Year Four e-Rate funding , as it outlines precisely what steps must be taken in order to comply with CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act), a pre-requisite for the release of all e-Rate funds. The steps for compliance that are reviewed include: "undertaking action" between July 1, 2001 to October 27, 2001; developing an Internet safety policy, including a public meeting with the wider community; and installing "technology protection measures," such as Internet-filtering software programs on all school computers. Penalties for not complying in fully with the new law are discussed here as well. Filtering is Bad for Education: Filtering Gets in the Way by Ted Nellen. Internet Filters: A Public Policy Report This recently released report from the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) reports on their research about products and software used to filter Internet content. Over the spring and summer, NCAC's Free Expression Policy Project reviewed all of the studies and tests it could find covering the nineteen most common Internet filtering tools. This report, summarizing the review, gives a general introduction and results for each of the nineteen products as well as a bibliography and appendices covering blocked sites by subject and blocking categories. In the main, NCAC finds that the technology used in blocking is too indiscriminate because of its dependance, to at least some degree, on mechanized means of filtering. NCAC suggests that "Ultimately, less censorial approaches such as media literacy, sexuality education, and Internet acceptable-use training may be better policy choices than Internet filters. Web Filtering Law Does Not Violate Free Speech by Brian Krebs Newsbytes, http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166706.html June 11, 2001 The U.S. Department of Justice successfully argued that tying e-Rate funding to compliance with the recently-passed CIPA law does not violate the First Amendment because schools and libraries may customize their chosen filtering software programs as they (and their communities) see fit. E-Rate funding was tied to CIPA compliance via the same statute that allowed the government to tie federal funding for highways to a state's adherence to a minimum drinking age of twenty-one. You are welcome to download the set of handouts for my workshop "Intellectual Freedom and Filters: Can We Have Both?" which has a pretty thorough discussion about the issues from: It argues that although districts are pretty much stuck with filters because of CIPA, there are specific things they can and should to still promote intellectual freedom. Doug Johnson