Kids on Internet: Controls or no controls?

In a quiet courtroom tucked away in a federal building here, a titanic battle is pitting free speech against government efforts to protect children from the seemingly limitless pages of pornography in cyberspace.

Titled innocuously enough, the American Library Association v. the United States of America, the trial will determine the constitutionality of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). In doing so, it could also reshape Americans' notions of free speech well into the technology-driven 21st century.

Passed by Congress in December 2000, the law requires all libraries that receive federal technology funds to install "protection measures" on all computers that have access to the Internet. In other words, they must have blocking software to prevent youngsters from accidentally, or even intentionally, getting a peek at the myriad of hard-core sites available with just a few well-placed clicks on a computer terminal.

To free-speech advocates, from librarians to the American Civil Liberties Union, it's a well-intentioned but dangerous assault on America's First Amendment freedoms. They argue that even the best blocking software is so flawed that it would also limit adult access to a wide array of constitutionally protected speech.

"It's very easy to suggest that 'we all believe in the First Amendment, we just want to keep our kids safe,' " says John Berry, president of the American Library Association in Chicago. "But as soon as you start making those kind of concessions, you begin to undermine one of our founding principles, and you can't sacrifice those kinds of things for a little temporary security."

Supporters of the Internet-filtering law say that Mr. Berry and the other plaintiffs are missing the target. They argue that the First Amendment has nothing to do with CIPA because it's nothing more than a funding bill.

If libraries have objections, they simply don't have to accept the federal funds upon which the blocking software's use is conditioned.

"Congress has broad authority over the use of federal monies, and as long as they're acting to promote the general welfare of the people in the United States, the courts tend to defer," says Jan LaRue, the director of legal studies at the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group in Washington. "It's like requiring states that accept federal highway funds to have a 21-year-old drinking age."

That's just a taste of a series of complex issues this mostly silver-haired and sometimes droll three-judge federal panel will decide in the coming weeks. In fact, the two sides cover so much ground that it's easy to wonder if they're even discussing the same law.

For instance, from the librarians' point of view, Congress's decision to tie the use of federal technology funds to mandatory blocking software was just a "crafty" end run around the Constitution.

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