Anything they download goes through the filter before the user can view the material. The filter is programmed with key words to look for, for example sex, and if it finds those words, the user is not permitted to view the site. The government is implementing an increase in the banning of material that they consider inappropriate. The counter argument to the federal government is that the filtering system that the government wants would keep out all the political interest groups that they themselves feel would influence the student in a negative way. Plus, as stated in the article, "The Federal Government: Moral Guardian of the Internet," "filtering disregards age-appropriate levels completely"(Dority 2). The article is explaining that the filtering systems would block the same information no matter who was using the Internet, whether it be a second grader or a teacher at the school. The system has no way to distinguish between the two. As you can see, there is not merely one argument against this controversial topic, which is the first reason why it is difficult to create laws to govern the Internet.
The First Amendment clearly states that people of America have the right to freedom of press, speech, and religion. "Freedom of expression was put in a primary position in the Bill of Rights because a self-governing people must be able to discuss all ideas regardless of how repulsive they might be" (McGaffey 35). The Constitution gives every American the freedom to express themselves as they wish and to state their beliefs as they wish. Filtering the Internet in public places is in direct violation of these freedoms articulated in the Constitution. By filtering out "damaging" material, you could also be filtering out perfectly good information only because it has a key word in it that it is not supposed to have. Is it right that information is filtered from adults who are protected from the first amendment? Some argue that filtering is necessary for the sake of children who can access the information at a library; however, some argue that children should have the same rights under the First Amendment that adults do.