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A three-judge panel in Pennsylvania ruled Friday that provisions of the Children's Internet Protection Act requiring libraries to install Internet filtering measures on public computers are unconstitutional.

CIPA would "block access to substantial amounts of constitutionally protected free speech whose suppression serves no legitimate government interest," said the panel in its decision. The panel, which was appointed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, therefore ruled the provisions "facially invalid under the first Amendment" and enjoined the government from enforcing them.

The ruling comes as a victory for libraries and free-speech advocates who have been lobbying against the law since it was passed in December 2000. Originally intended to shield children from viewing obscene or potentially offensive material online, CIPA has been criticized for endangering adults' free speech rights and deepening the digital divide by limiting public Net access.

Under the law, libraries that wish to receive certain federal funding must install Internet filtering on all their Internet access terminals, regardless of whether the funding is used to pay for the computer resources. The suit was filed last year by a group of libraries, library patrons and Web publishers, who took umbrage with installing filters that could potentially block legitimate, unoffensive sites.

Filters Have Holes

Paula Bruening, an attorney with the civil liberties group the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that her group was happy with the panel's decision and its recognition that filters are not perfect tools.

"We believe that those same filters can work with families at home ... but they can't be fine-tuned enough to reflect the values of an entire community," Bruening said.

Central to the plaintiffs' case was the unreliability of Web filtering software, which has been known to not only block nonoffensive sites, but also to overlook offensive ones. In its ruling, the panel noted filtering software's tendency to "overblock and underblock," deciding that it was a haphazard tool.

While the plaintiffs said that they feel they have a strong argument concerning CIPA's Web filtering provisions, they predict that the government will appeal the verdict, which would put the final decision in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. No one arguing the government's case in the matter was immediately available for comment Friday.

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