Hiroki Takakuwa

The purpose of this study was to review Supreme Court Decision to "Children' s Internet Protection Act," which American Library Association and some other groups challenged, in the context of public library. In the supreme court decision, District court decision was reversed, and so ALA was defeated. The prurality opinion said that public forum principles on which district court relied were out of place in the context of this case, and that because public library must have broad discretion to decide what material to provide to their patrons, they also have the same discretion to Internet information. And, in view of the ease, with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled, the prurality opinion concluded the restriction CIPA require does not impose an unconstitutional condition. This study examined the supreme court decision, and found that, although ALA was defeated in this case, court ruling contains some hopes that public libraries with Internet access services should consider.