Filter me this…

\”Congress apparently disagrees. In December, lawmakers passed a bill requiring federally financed schools and libraries to use a \”technology protection measure\” like filters to block access to obscene material, child pornography and anything considered to be \”harmful to minors.\” Tucked into an enormous last- minute appropriations bill, the new law bars schools and libraries that do not comply from receiving federal money from a number of sources — including the popular e-Rate program, which has helped to link thousands of public and private institutions to the Internet.\”

\”On Tuesday, Mr. Pollock plans to join the American Civil Liberties Union in filing suit in federal court in Philadelphia to overturn the new law, known as the Children\’s Internet Protection Act. He is part of a group of Internet publishers of similarly blocked sites, as well as libraries and library patrons. The American Library Association is set to file a suit at the same time. Both lawsuits contend that the law violates the First Amendment\’s guarantees of freedom of speech.\”

\”It would be the third time a federal law that sought to shield children from the Internet\’s wild side faced scrutiny in a Philadelphia court. So far, the government has not fared especially well. The civil liberties union and other groups successfully fought the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Civil liberties groups have also won a preliminary round in their challenge to the Children\’s Online Protection Act, a more narrowly drawn follow-up law; a federal judge has blocked enforcement of that law until a full trial can be held.\”

\”In the cases to be filed on Tuesday, groups contend that even the best filtering programs are still rough tools that tend to block legitimate sites and let objectionable sites slip through. That means sites with constitutionally protected material, like Mr. Pollock\’s, and other often- blocked sites, including those of Planned Parenthood, hit a digital dead end.\”

\”The blocking of Mr. Pollock\’s site was a mistake, said Susan Getgood, who heads the education division for SurfControl, the maker of Cyber Patrol. Ms. Getgood said it happened because home versions of the product blocked any site from computer servers that were also hosts of pornography sites. Many companies that are hosts of Web sites for the general public are also hosts of pornography sites, and Mr. Pollock\’s host was on Cyber Patrol\’s list even though there was nothing on his site that should have triggered the blocking process. Ms. Getgood said the flaw had been fixed in the coming version of her company\’s product.\”