My argument against CIPA

                 I am in favor of removing the blocking software mandated by the CIPA, at least for high schools.  Although I agree that children do need to be protected from things that they aren’t ready for, I believe that almost all high school-aged minors are old enough to merit less of this “protection”.  When a blanket software like this is used, it inevitably ends up doing more harm than good to parts of the group that it’s being used on.

                Take the computer-related classes, for example.  If a student is working on a project in which specific images are required, but those images happen to be blocked by the admittedly overzealous filter, then they’re going to have a problem.  Because of that problem, the project could be delayed (if the student waits until they’re at home and the school day is over to find the image) or not completed correctly (if the student uses the tiny unblocked thumbnail image).

                The filter even affects teachers.  Last year in German class, my teacher had arranged for the class to Skype with a friend from Germany.  Unfortunately, the filter software caused Skype to malfunction and refuse to work correctly.  When a solution was finally found, it involved using a lower-quality application which was almost more trouble than it was worth to use.  This is just one example of the issues with the filter – I’ve seen it block teachers from doing all kinds of things that were actually related to the lesson they were teaching.

                With these issues in mind, I am not in favor of using the blocking software.  Using a “protect ALL the minors!” viewpoint when it comes to things like the internet is ridiculous.  In that case, why don’t you just ban any books with violence from all school libraries?  Or any book that mentions anything that’s even slightly inappropriate?  It would make the English teachers’ jobs nearly impossible, but that’s essentially what the internet filter does to computer-related classes.  High-school-aged minors (usually) have more maturity than elementary- and middle-school-aged minors, and I think the internet filter (or rather, lack thereof) should reflect that.