United States Supreme Court & Technology
The United States Supreme Court is faced with a variety of issues in finding
their decisions that will be the foundation for future American law. Creating a
larger problem for the Court is their reliance on precedent in the law which
must guide their decisions even in previously uncharted territory especially
in regards to internet regulation. Below are some current cases that are on the
Supreme Court docket awaiting final decisions.
June 2003
The Supreme Court upheld the Child Internet Protection Act passed by
Congress in a split decision. Voting was split 5-4 in favor of demanding that
public libraries have filtering of the internet when children have access. The
Court did say that it would be unconstitutional for the filtering to be active
when adults were accessing the internet.
January 2004
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is requesting that the
Supreme Court rules against the constitutionality of the Child Online
Protection Act (COPA), a law that seeks to place regulations on speech on the
internet. The link below outlines the progress of the CDT and their argument
that it is education and user control that will protect children on the
Internet, not federal regulation.
The CDT's web site
http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_10.02.shtml
FCC Rulings
Here is a comparison of the FCC's Telecommunications Act of 1996 and 1934.
FCC link to the Telecommunications act of 1996
http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html
Telecommunications act of 1996 in Adobe Acrobat format
http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.pdf
Old Telecommunications act of 1934 in Adobe Acrobat format
http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf
This site provides a US plan to implement the Act
of
1996 that other countries could use as a model for bridging the digital divide
and creating a modern-nation state:
http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/implsched.html
The United Nations & Technology
UNITeS is the United Nations Information Technology Service, whose main responsibility is to do work in underdeveloped countries to create Internet infrastructures and to help spread the skills needed to make the internet a commonality all across the world.
A quote from UNITeS website: "With scarce resources available for very basic development needs, such as
water and sanitation, education, food security, income generation, many people
wonder why bother to provide these new technologies, and whether they are not
unnecessary luxuries in many contexts. It is not an "either-or" scenario
anymore, as these technologies are nothing more than advanced information tools
to be used if/when it is beneficial. Among a poor farmer's first priorities is
to get sufficient food for his family; perhaps ICTs (Information and Communications Technologies) can help him find better
prices for his produce, enabling him to buy more (and higher quality) food.
People from development countries are best placed to know when and whether ICTs
are appropriate for them. Much will depend on the value they attach to
information. Hardly anyone will question the value of basic education. Yet
reading and writing are, at their core, skills to access and produce
information. The issue of ICTs and the digital divide is ultimately about
greater choices, as is human development."
Links to UNITeS web sites
http://www.unv.org/infobase/facts/unites.htm
http://www.unites.org/
Center for Democracy and Technology International page
This page has a variety of links to global internet issues including
spreading the internet to all parts of the globe and ensuring that regulation
of the internet is not commonplace.
http://www.cdt.org/international/
