[IP] more on Teacher, student suspended for bypassing school filters
Title: more on Teacher, student suspended for bypassing school filters
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Stephen D. Poe" <sdpoe@xxxxxxx>
Organization: Nautilus Solutions
Reply-To: <sdpoe@xxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 12:38:39 -0500
To: <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] Teacher, student suspended for bypassing school filters
Dave -
For IP, if you like.
>From everything I've read about this issue, the school should be liable.
The student set up a proxy offsite from the school. He did not, as far as I've found, hack into or make any changes to any of the school's equipment, computers, applications, or code. Nor did he bring anything illegal onto school grounds (except, perhaps, the URL to reach the proxy).
So now a school can go after a student on the basis of what they do off school grounds on their own time?
Filters have long been known to be a failed attempt to solve a non-problem; either they cut off information the students need to access (everything from Rep. 'Dick' Armey's site being blocked by porn filters to WWII historical sites being blocked by 'violence' filters to health and gay teen assistance sites being blocked by sex filters) or don't cut off enough. A sample report ("Faulty Filters: How Content Filters Block Access to Kid-Friendly Information on the Internet") detailing filter failings from Epic can be found at: http://www2.epic.org/reports/filter-report.html ; there are lots more out there.
See www.peacefire.org <http://www.peacefire.org> 's site ("Peacefire.org was created in August 1996 to represent the interests of people under 18 in the debate over freedom of speech on the Internet.") for the following offer (I don't notice the school system going after Peacefire):
"If you download and install our Circumventor <http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumventor-instructions.html> software, it will give you a URL that you can use -- and which you can also give to your friends -- to bypass all types of blocking software. And at the end of the installation process, the installer will ask you if you would like to share your Circumventor URL with users in censored countries such as China as well. By saying "Yes" to this option, you can help people in censored countries bypass Web blocking."
You might also take a look at the American Library Assoc.'s page on the Children's Internet Protection Act at http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/civilliberties/cipaweb/cipa.htm
Stephen
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