David Burt (filtering advocate)

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David Burt
David burt 2007.JPG
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Television executive
Executive producer
Notable workThe Good Wife

David Burt is a former librarian and a longtime advocate for content-control software. Burt's research on Internet filtering and the problems allegedly associated with unfiltered Internet access have been cited by both the United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States in upholding the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). [1] He is discussed in various sources such as the book Pornified .

Contents

Early life and career

David Burt completed an undergraduate degree in history and a masters of library science from the University of Washington in 1992. He worked for the New York Public Library for three years, then worked at the Lake Oswego, Oregon Public Library as an information technology manager from 1996 to 2000. Since then he has worked with filtering software companies.

Filtering Facts

In July 1997, his concerns about children potentially being exposed to pornography on the Internet led him to start Filtering Facts, a nonprofit organization that encouraged libraries to voluntarily adopt filters. [2] Burt's advocacy included testifying as an expert witness in the library filtering case Mainstream Loudon v. Board in 1998; [3] before the National Commission on Library and Information Science; [4] as well as state legislatures, city councils, and local library boards. This activism was profiled in an article in The New York Times in 1999. [5]

In 1999, Burt filed over 15,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests of public libraries seeking public records documenting incidents involving Internet pornography in public libraries. [6] Burt compiled the over 2,000 incidents [7] into a report published by the Family Research Council entitled Dangerous Access 2000: Uncovering Pornography in America's Libraries [8] The reports included news stories but also anecdotal, often second and thirdhand, reports. Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, stated that the report was "inflammatory and sensational", based on an agenda "to control what everyone reads, views, and listens to." [9]

Dangerous Access 2000 was entered into the Congressional Record [10] in 2000 in support of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), a law Congress passed in 2000 requiring public libraries that receive certain types of federal funding to purchase filtering software.

Filtering industry and CIPA

In March 2000, Burt closed Filtering Facts and accepted a job in marketing with the (now defunct) filtering company N2H2. While at N2H2, he testified before the Congressional Commission on Child Online Protection (COPA) in 2000 [11] the Department of Commerce, [12] and the U.S. Copyright Office in the 2003 DMCA exemption hearings [13]

In 2001, the Department of Justice legal team charged with defending CIPA hired Burt as a consultant. Burt helped identify and recruit most of the witnesses used by the DOJ, and assisted the DOJ in depositions of opposing witnesses.

On June 23, 2003, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of CIPA, specifically citing Burt and Dangerous Access 2000 as justification for Congress passing CIPA:

Congress learned that adults us[e] library computers to access pornography that is then exposed to staff, passersby, and children, and that minors access child and adult pornography in libraries. Footnote 1,(citing D. Burt, Dangerous Access, 2000 Edition: Uncovering Internet Pornography in America's Libraries (2000)) (noting more than 2,000 incidents of patrons, both adults, and minors, using library computers to view online pornography, including obscenity and child pornography). [14]

In 2003, N2H2 was acquired by Secure Computing, which hired Burt to promote Secure Computing's filtering and other network security products. In 2006, Burt left Secure Computing for his current position promoting network security products in Microsoft's Security and Access Services Division.

Get Parental Controls

In 2007, Burt revived FilteringFacts.org. In 2010, FilteringFacts.org was replaced by GetParentalControls.org. "The purpose of GetParentalControls.org is to provide accurate, comprehensive, and unbiased information about parental control technology." [15]

Related Research Articles

An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software determines what content will be available or be blocked.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parental controls</span> Software feature allowing content filtering

Parental controls are features which may be included in digital television services, computers and video games, mobile devices and software that allow parents to restrict the access of content to their children. These controls were created to assist parents in their ability to restrict certain content viewable by their children. This may be content they deem inappropriate for their age, maturity level or feel is aimed more at an adult audience. Parental controls fall into roughly four categories: content filters, which limit access to age inappropriate content; usage controls, which constrain the usage of these devices such as placing time-limits on usage or forbidding certain types of usage; computer usage management tools, which enforces the use of certain software; and monitoring, which can track location and activity when using the devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Children's Internet Protection Act</span> United States federal law

The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is one of a number of bills that the United States Congress proposed to limit children's exposure to pornography and explicit content online.

Secure Web SmartFilter EDU, formerly known as Bess, is a brand of content-control software made by Secure Computing Corporation, which acquired maker N2H2 in 2003; it is usually used in libraries and schools. The main purpose of the system is as an Internet filter, blocking minors using the public computers from accessing web content deemed inappropriate by the local administrators of the system based on the Acceptable Use Policy of the organization. The system is not installed locally, but installs on the server between the users and the open Internet. This feature makes it harder to bypass, though it is not uncommon for students with more extensive computer knowledge to attempt to bypass the system. The system allows for teachers or administrators to temporarily bypass the system if they need to access blocked sites for educational purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Krug</span> American librarian and freedom of speech proponent (1940–2009)

Judith Fingeret Krug was an American librarian, freedom of speech proponent, and critic of censorship. Krug became director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association in 1967. In 1969, she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation as its executive director. Krug co-founded Banned Books Week in 1982.

Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), followed by 542 U.S. 656 (2004), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.

K9 Web Protection is discontinued content-control software developed by Blue Coat Systems. In 2016, K9 Web Protection was acquired by Symantec as part of the company's purchase of Blue Coat Systems. In April 2019, Symantec announced that K9 Web Protection would be discontinued and would no longer be made available for download or purchase. Technical support for the software ended on June 30, 2019.

The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA) is a bill brought before the United States House of Representatives on May 9, 2006 by Republican Pennsylvania Representative (R-PA) Mike Fitzpatrick. The bill, if enacted, would have amended the Communications Act of 1934, requiring schools and libraries that receive E-rate funding to protect minors from online predators in the absence of parental supervision when using "Commercial Social Networking Websites" and "Chat Rooms". The bill would prohibit schools and libraries from providing access to these types of websites to minors or create restrictions to use of these type of sites. The bill also would require the institutions to be capable of disabling the restrictions for "use by an adult or by minors with adult supervision to enable access for educational purposes."

In the United States, internet censorship is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship.

Internet censorship in the United Kingdom is conducted under a variety of laws, judicial processes, administrative regulations and voluntary arrangements. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, regulations against incitement to terrorism and child pornography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberethics</span>

Cyber ethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers, encompassing user behavior and what computers are programmed to do, and how this affects individuals and society. For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.

United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003), was a decision in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States Congress has the authority to require public schools and libraries receiving E-Rate discounts to install web filtering software as a condition of receiving federal funding. In a plurality opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that public school and library usage of Internet filtering software does not violate their patrons' First Amendment free speech rights and that the Children's Internet Protection Act is not unconstitutional.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Net Nanny</span>

Net Nanny is a content-control software suite marketed primarily towards parents as a way to monitor and control their child's computer and phone activity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet pornography</span> Any pornography that is accessible over the internet

Internet pornography is any pornography that is accessible over the internet; primarily via websites, FTP connections, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups. The greater accessibility of the World Wide Web from the late 1990s led to an incremental growth of internet pornography, the use of which among adolescents and adults has since become increasingly popular.

Mobicip is a cloud-based Internet filter and parental control service that works on all major platforms of mobile Internet devices. Mobicip is supported on various types of devices used by families such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Windows, macOS and Chromebook. Mobicip was launched in 2008. Mobicip used to be a safe browser app but is now a VPN on iOS & Android that filters any browser. Mobicip is a parental control application that protects internet, regulates screentime, allows/blocks apps and tracks location as well, while allowing parents to customize the configuration and view activity reports. Using the web-based or mobile applications, parents can customize the filter to set up whitelists and blacklists, block categories of websites, and manage users and devices. In addition, the application lets parents monitor the Internet activity on the device, group the activity by user, by allowed or blocked websites, sort by time etc.

Enough Is Enough is an American non-profit organization whose stated purpose is to make the Internet safer for families and children. It carries out lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., and played a role in the passage of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, and the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000. The group is based in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They sometimes refer to themselves acronymically as EIE.

Web filtering in schools blocks students from inappropriate content across the web, while allowing sites that are selected by school administrators. Rather than simply blocking off large portions of the Internet, many schools are utilizing customizable web filtering systems that provide them with greater control over which sites are allowed and which are blocked. Schools will typically block NSFW content, social media websites, games, distracting websites, websites that harm academic integrity etc.

The precise number of websites blocked in the United Kingdom is unknown. Blocking techniques vary from one Internet service provider (ISP) to another with some sites or specific URLs blocked by some ISPs and not others. Websites and services are blocked using a combination of data feeds from private content-control technology companies, government agencies, NGOs, court orders in conjunction with the service administrators who may or may not have the power to unblock, additionally block, appeal or recategorise blocked content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online predator</span> Person who commits child sexual abuse via the Internet

Online predators are individuals who commit child sexual abuse that begins or takes place on the Internet.

John W. Berry is an American librarian. Berry served as president of the American Library Association from 2001 to 2002, leading the profession's response to the Children's Internet Protection Act.

References

  1. ↑ United States v. ALA, June 23, 2003 See footnote 1 for both references
  2. ↑ Filtering Facts Archived 2007-06-07 at the Wayback Machine (Filtering Facts Archives)
  3. ↑ Expert Report of David Burt in Mainstream Loudoun, July 14, 1998
  4. ↑ Testimony of David Burt Archived 2006-09-30 at the Wayback Machine before the National Commissions on Library and Information Science, Nov. 17, 1998
  5. ↑ Librarian Seeks Evidence of Complaints About Internet Misuse, April 20, 1999 The New York Times.
  6. ↑ American Libraries, "Pro-Filtering Crusader Blankets States with FOIA Requests" Archived 2008-01-07 at the Wayback Machine — June 28, 1999.
  7. ↑ The over 2,000 incidents are transcribed from the FOIA requests here
  8. ↑ David Burt, Dangerous Access 2000 (pdf)
  9. ↑ Library Journal 125 no7 12 Ap 15 2000
  10. ↑ (Prepared statement of Bruce Taylor) The Children's Internet Protection Act: Hearing on S. 97 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 106th Cong., 1st Sess., 49 (1999)
  11. ↑ Testimony of David Burt, Child Online Protection Act Commission, July 20, 2000
  12. ↑ Transcript of oral testimony of David Burt, The Kids.US Internet Domain Forum, Department of Commerce, NTIA, July 14, 2005
  13. ↑ Testimony of David Burt Archived 2006-12-28 at the Wayback Machine , Copyright Office, April 11, 2003
  14. ↑ United States v. ALA, June 23, 2003
  15. ↑ "About Me" . Retrieved 2015-05-16.
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