Issues With CIPA

The conflict between CIPA and Library authority After computer was invented, the thing called internet appeared. Today, more and more people are using internet to search information and chat with others. Especially, young people love to surf internet to find new friends and discover new knowledge. Of course, they may find out something sexual and obscene. Then, the United States government took actions to that. In 2000, a new act called Children Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was passed by Congress. This act required that in order to qualify for federal assistance for internet access and protect young users in public library from inappropriate materials, public library must install filtering software to block those materials from the internet,

The filtering system is only working for protecting children. It won’t forbid adults to surf internet and view anything as they want. The requirement of CIPA is to make sure that every library which receives federal government’s funding has installed the filtering software so that children is protected from harmful, sexual and obscene contents. Because the CIPA does not violates the First Amendment and there is nothing that is against CIPA mentioned in constitution, then the CIPA is not unconstitutional. (Unite states et al.v.american library asoociation, inc et al) The filter blocked many websites, but it blocked that every website includes pornography and other obscene materials which is perfect for its main

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, it is a theory that deciding what is wrong or right depends on if its action brings “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. (RACHELS) which means that action that people take should bring about the best balance of benefit and harm. It means that the result of filtering decides it should be installed or not. What happened after the filtering is applied to most public libraries? Firstly, children are protected. They don’t have any chance to accidently access pornography websites. Kids are the future of the country. They are pure and full of potential. What they experience directly affect in the shaping of their personality. They should not come into contact with any sexual and obscene materials till they are adults because children lacks of judgement. Some kids might open those website because they see advertisement and they are curious. For an instance, Jeanne Sager let her daughter watching “My Little Pony” videos. But when she left the room for a moment and went back room, she found that her daughter is exposed to a sexually explicit video by clicking on a related link listed to the right of the video player. (O'Leary) However, due to their strong learning ability, they might remember those inappropriate words, actions and scenes. They also might imitate what websites shows which is definite only for adults. Also, it might cause them to have