Introduction
The Children Internet Protection Act, its requirements and intent and recommendation to the library
According to Miller, Vandome and McBrewster (200), Children’s Internet Protection Act was passed in December 2000 by the congress with the aim of protecting children under the age of eighteen years and below from visual portrayal of internet sites and stuff whose content was sexually explicit, unsuitable for children viewing and was considered and classified as child pornography.
The act also demanded that the institutions involved were to certify that their internet security strategies embraced the observation of the internet activities of juveniles.
The Child Internet Protection Act demanded that schools, institutions and library that offered internet services to underage children and using Educational Rate discounts and grants that were made through the Library Services Technology Act, were to offer and manage a technology security procedure with regard to its computers with enabled internet access that safeguarded against the above mentioned materials and resources that were available in the internet.
The technology security procedure was to be utilized at any given moment that a juvenile got access to the internet. The act also required that the institutions involved disabled the child protection technology procedure during access of the internet by a grownup to allow for legitimate research and other legal functions. Institutions that did not get E-Rate discounts and those that received telecommunication service concessions not meant for internet admissions were not under any obligation to comply with the law.
Internet admission assisted in the satisfaction of the library’s objective of connecting the users to the world of data and imagination using various resources. The library was enabled to offer internet services as internet offered unparalleled chances for providing users with access to information beyond the physical books and materials that were available in the libraries and schools.
However, due to the fact that the internet had an enormous and varied data network whose subject matter was impressed, imperfect and abusive to others, some of the notions, data and portraits were beyond the library’s objectives and selection criteria.
The library took into account the fact that all resources accessed by grownups were safeguarded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution until they were resolved as unprotected by court ruling. The library controlled the internet content accessed by juveniles while giving adults the option of removing the filtering apparatus.
Filtering and control was to be to the extent demanded by the Children Internet Protection Act and gave adults the ability to remove the filter when necessary. To fully comply with the act, the library provided a filtering gadget to all computers that were accessible to juveniles and also recommended apparatus that helped parents and guardians in monitoring their children and minors.
Forslund (2007) noted that internet blocking software was not to be applied as they blocked even materials that were not harmful to children. The choice of blocking apparatus was to filter sexually explicit contents, music with explicit language and materials that contained child pornography and were injurious to children.
Other internet sources that needed filtering included websites that were likely to cause safety concerns for children such as social chats, those that promoted the performance of illegal activities and lastly, sites that advanced illegal display, application of, and distribution of identification data on juveniles (p. 56).
References
Bell, M. A., Ezell, B., & Roekel, J. L. (2006). Cybersins and Digital Good Deeds: A Book About Technology and Ethics. London: Routledge.
Forslund, A. C. (2007). Protecting America’s Youth Online: A Legal and Ethical Analysis. Michigan: ProQuest.
Miller, F. P., Vandome, A. F., & McBrewster, J. (2010). Children’s Internet Protection Act. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller e.K.