Federal Internet Filtering Regulations Released
Message Posted April 10, 2001
Last week the FCC released the regulations on the filtering and acceptable use policy requirements required by the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) that was passed by Congress in December. The 39-page report and order is available at:
www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2001/db0405/fcc01120.doc (actually interesting reading). Below is a summary of the regulations affecting E-rate, with more details to come from the SLD as they are known.
1) Who Is Affected and What are the Deadlines?
If a school or library (including IUs) is receiving Internet Access and/or Internal Connections funding for Year 4 E-rate funding (which begins July 1, 2001), they will be required to certify by October 28, 2001 that they are in compliance. The certification will be added to the Form 486, which applicants file when their services have been delivered and they are ready to receive support. Important: If a school or library is receiving E-rate discounts on Telecommunications Services ONLY, they are exempt from these requirements.
The FCC said that even though the certification does not have to be filed until October, schools and libraries will be required to be in compliance with the law at the time they begin receiving discounted services, which could be as early as July 1, 2001. However, for Year 4, schools and libraries will be permitted to certify that they are merely "undertaking such actions" to put in place "an Internet safety policy and technology protection measures," rather than having them in place already, thus giving all applicants a one-year implementation window.
2) What Will I Be Certifying To?
Affected applicants will be certifying that they are in compliance with the CIPA regulations, which basically means two things:
1) After at least one public hearing they have adopted an Internet Safety Policy (ISP) that addresses a number of issues, including:
* hacking
* the unauthorized disclosure, use or dissemination of personal information regarding minors
* and the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, etc.
* the technology protection measure that is or will be in place
2) The school is operating a 'technology protection measure' with respect to any of its computers with Internet access that protects against access through such computers to visual depictions that are: obscene, child pornographic, harmful to minors. In the rules, the FCC provided no further guidance on how a "technology protection measure" should be defined.
If schools and libraries have already adopted an Internet Safety Policy that complies with the law, including the public hearing requirement, they would not be required to adopt a new one.
3) Are filtering products (technology protection measures) E-rate eligible?
The FCC considered many comments about the funding needed to institute the filtering requirements, and stated “the statutory language is clear” that “recipients may not receive universal service discounts for technology protection measures”. Therefore, filters and blocking systems will not be eligible items for E-Rate.
4) Are ALL computers required to be filtered (including administrative computers)?
The FCC is imposing the requirements on ALL Internet-accessible computers used by the schools and libraries, including public, student, staff and administrative workstations on the Internet because the law made no distinction between school and library computers that are used only by adult staff, and those used by children or the public.
However, they have left it to local communities to determine how to implement the law's provision that permits technology protection measures to be disabled for adults for bona fide research or other lawful uses. The law specifically states, "an administrator, supervisor, or person authorized by the responsible authority [i.e. school, school board, local educational agency, or other authority with responsibility for administration of such school] may disable the technology protection measure concerned to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes." There are no additional definitions to these terms.
5) How will consortia applicants certify that their members are complying with CIPA?
The FCC is creating a new form, Form 479, that each member of a consortia will be required to complete and submit to the lead consortia member or agency. The FCC stipulated that if a consortium member is found not to be in compliance with the law, it would not jeopardize the funding commitment of the rest of the consortium and that the lead consortia member will not be responsible for verifying the accuracy of a member's certification. What is not known is whether any of the Form 479's will be required to be submitted to the SLD with the consortia's application.
6) What happens if I receive E-rate discounts but am found to be in noncompliance with the law?
Entities that are found not to be in compliance with the law would be required to reimburse the Universal Service Fund for discounts that were received during the period they were not in compliance.
7) Will I need to track the effectiveness of filters?
The FCC found that the CIPA law did not require that entities certify the effectiveness of their Internet Safety Policy and technology protection measures, and that they would therefore not impose that additional requirement. Further, the FCC indicated that they will not be mandating that schools and libraries track the number of attempts made to access prohibited visual depictions or the number of times the technology measure succeeded or failed. It also will not require schools or libraries to collect any complaints filed by the public and make these available. They note, "Because we concur that these data collection and reporting requirements fall outside the requirements of CIPA, we decline to impose such requirements on recipients."
8) Will we have to publicly post the CIPA requirements or a copy of our Internet Safety Policy?
The FCC considered requests by some commenters that requested schools and libraries to publicly post the key requirements of CIPA, and the text of the written Internet Safety Policy adopted, and chose to NOT require schools and libraries to post this material citing that it is not a requirement of the law.
9) Are there any model Internet Safety Policies available?
We are in the process of revising the model Acceptable Use Policies that are currently on the PDE website and also the L2L professional development website, to ensure that they meet the requirements of CIPA and the new regulations. As soon as model ISPs are developed, we'll post them to the Pennsylvania E-rate website at: http://www.pde.psu.edu/usf/index.html. Further, we would be grateful to any school or library that would be willing to share their current policies if they feel they already meet the requirements. Please just e-mail or fax them to me.
10) Will there be separate regulations for Technology Literacy Challenge Funds or LSTA Grants?
The E-rate rules supercede any rules that may be developed for these other programs. However if a school is not receiving E-rate funding and is ONLY receiving TLCF funding or if a library is not receiving E-rate funding and is only receiving LSTA funding, we anticipate that there will be separate regulations developed for those funding streams.
11) Will the court challenges to CIPA affect these regulations and their implementation?
It is unlikely that the courts will rule on the cases prior to July 1 or October 28 and therefore schools and libraries should proceed with implementing these requirements. For details on the court cases, visit: http://www.pde.psu.edu/usf/ala_and_aclu_file_internet_filte.html.
(If this message has been forwarded to you and you would like subscribed to the Pennsylvania E-rate listserve directly, please e-mail acooney@state.pa.us with your name, correct e-mail address, and subscribe e-rate listserve in the subject or body of the message.)
Julie Tritt Schell
Executive Policy Specialist
Pennsylvania Department of Education
333 Market Street, 10th Floor
Harrisburg, PA 17126
(717) 705-4486
(717) 787-7222 - fax
jtritt@state.pa.us
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