News You Could Do Without

News You Could Do Without

by Mike Masnick




More On In School Internet Filters

from the they're-everywhere dept

We recently had an article talking about how schools didn't challenge the Children's Internet Protection Act that the libraries fought against, and now many schools are required to use filters that block out all sorts of legitimate material, in order to continue receiving federal funds. Well, here's another similar article that also lists different types of sites that aren't accessible to many students. A student couldn't read about race tracks because the filter thought it was gambling related. Another student couldn't write a report about the company Red Hat because Red Hat's website was blocked (for no clear reason). There is, however, a mention of one school district in Oregon that has stood up to the rule and refuses to put filters into their schools (thus, giving up a sizable chunk of cash from the government).

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. Mar 20th, 2003 @ 7:54am

    internet filters

    by Megan

    Hey I am doing a project on internet filters for Computers and I need to know some information on school filters. My school has internet filters and I tryed doing a project on the KKK's for Advanced Studies but all the sites were blocked. So please give me some information telling me why filters are bad. Because that is what I believe
    Thank You
    Sincerly,
    Megan

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. May 19th, 2004 @ 9:04am

    Re: internet filters

    by Jaeson

    Most of the school filters are very bad. The sites you need to be blocked arent and the sites that shouldnt be blocked are. All these filters seem to do is just piss all the students off. I personally believe they should either loose the filters all together or make one that actually blocks sites that need to be blocked and leave the ones that shouldnt be blocked undone. One example is a lot of people use angelfire sites to put up information that students need to research then when they go to that site its blocked becuase these filters have all angelfire sites blocked. These make a Real problem and they need to be fixed.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Feb 17th, 2009 @ 8:35am
    by Anonymous Coward

    Our high school blocks various parts of Wikipedia because of the CIPA, including the search function.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It