EFF Statement on Loudoun Ruling

Nov. 23, 1998

Another Victory for Free Speech on the Internet

For the second time this week, a U.S. court has handed down a ruling upholding the strongest Constitutional protections of free expression on the Internet. A U.S. District Court ruled today, in Mainstream Loudoun, et. al. v. Board of Trustees of the Loudoun County Library, that the Loudoun County, Virginia, policy requiring filtering software in public libaries violated the First Amendment by preventing adults from using library computers to access a wide array of mainstream, constitutionally-protected materials.

The decision follows closely on the heels of the first victory in the new legal challenge being mounted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, against the recently passed Child Online Protection Act (COPA, a.k.a. "CDA-II").

Filtering measures rob local libraries, schools, and ultimately parents of the authority to decide for themselves what are appropriate uses of the Internet and force them to install crude blocking software. All too often, material about topics ranging from the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, to women's rights, to current news stories about political sex scandals is likely to be blocked. Even religious groups such as the Society of Friends (Quaker religion) and mainstream organizations like the American Association of University Women have been blocked. Earlier this year we learned that even conservative groups like the American Family Association have been blacklisted by these imperfect tools, which are already being installed in libraries and schools today.

As EFF has said on numerous occasions that you can no more create a computer program to block out content that fits one community's view of "indecent", "obscene" or "harmful to minors", than you can devise a filtering program to block out misguided proposals by members of Congress. Both goals may be desirable, but neither are possible.

For more information, see EFF's Loudoun Co. Library Case Archive (major documents) and/or Censorware.org's Loudoun Co. Library Case Archive (all documents).

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