Filtering sex off the Net in schools By Reuters NEWS.COM February 10, 1998, 5:55 a.m. PT URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,19002,00.html WASHINGTON--Senate Commerce Committee chairman John McCain (R-Arizona) and Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina), the ranking Democrat on the panel, introduced a bill yesterday to protect children from sexually explicit materials on the Internet at school and in the library. The Commerce committee will hold a hearing on indecency on the Internet today. The legislation would force schools and libraries to filter or block access to some Internet sites in order to qualify for billions of dollars of federal subsidies aimed at bringing more computers into classrooms and public libraries. Under the legislation, schools would have to certify with the Federal Communications Commission that they are using or will use a filtering device on computers with Internet access so that students will not be able to access sexually explicit or other materials deemed "harmful." A school would not be eligible to receive government subsidies for universal access to the Internet unless it met those conditions. To qualify for the subsidies, libraries would be required to use a filtering system on one or more of their computers so that at least one computer would be "suitable for minors' use," McCain's office said. "The prevention lies not in censoring what goes on the Internet, but rather in filtering what comes out of it onto the computers our children use outside the home," McCain said. In a speech on the Senate floor introducing the measure, McCain noted that when the word "teen" was typed into a Web search engine, a site about teen sex was the first search result to appear. Civil liberties groups have criticized efforts to filter access to materials available on the Internet, saying that such technologies often block out data that children need to learn about AIDS prevention and find support for depression and issues related to their sexuality. Hollings said the legislation gave schools and libraries "an added financial incentive to filter children's access to the Internet," adding, "We must tackle this problem of children innocently stumbling onto indecent material while using the Web for legitimate research purposes or face dire consequences." Under the legislation, school and library administrators would be free to choose any filtering or blocking system that would best fit their community standards and local needs. The bill forbids the federal government from making "qualitative judgments about the system a school or library has chosen to implement," according to a summary. Sen. Dan Coats (R-Indiana) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) are also sponsoring the legislation. Story Copyright ® 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Go to Front Door | The Net | Search | Short takes | One Week View Copyright ® 1995-98 CNET, Inc. All rights reserved.