Editing Internet filter (section)

===Legal actions===
In 1998, a United States federal district court in Virginia ruled ([[Loudoun v. Board of Trustees of the Loudoun County Library]]) that the imposition of mandatory filtering in a public library violates the First Amendment.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tomwbell.com/NetLaw/Ch04/Loudoun.html|title=Mainstream Loudon v. Board of Trustees of the Loudon County Library, 24 F. Supp. 2d 552 (E.D. Va. 1998)|website=Tomwbell.com|access-date=25 October 2009}}</ref>

In 1996 the US Congress passed the [[Communications Decency Act]], banning indecency on the Internet. Civil liberties groups challenged the law under the First Amendment, and in 1997 the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] ruled in their favor.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/521/844/case.html|title=Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union - 521 U.S. 844 (1997)|date=26 June 1997|website=[[Justia]].com}}</ref> Part of the civil liberties argument, especially from groups like the [[Electronic Frontier Foundation]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.eff.org/legal-victories|title=Legal Victories|website=Electronic Frontier Foundation|language=en|access-date=2019-02-01}}</ref> was that parents who wanted to block sites could use their own content-filtering software, making government involvement unnecessary.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/children-internet-safety|title=Children Internet Safety|date=2015-05-26|website=www.justice.gov|language=en|access-date=2019-02-01|archive-date=2019-02-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190202042245/https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/children-internet-safety|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In the late 1990s, groups such as the Censorware Project began reverse-engineering the content-control software and decrypting the blacklists to determine what kind of sites the software blocked. This led to legal action alleging violation of the "Cyber Patrol" [[EULA|license agreement]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/Microsystems_v_Scandinavia_Online/?f=20000316_verif_complaint.html|title=Microsystems v Scandinavia Online, Verified Complaint|location=United States District Court, District of Massachusetts|website=[[Electronic Frontier Foundation]]|date=15 March 2000|access-date=25 October 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090212065108/http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/Microsystems_v_Scandinavia_Online/?f=20000316_verif_complaint.html|archive-date=12 February 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> They discovered that such tools routinely blocked unobjectionable sites while also failing to block intended targets.

Some content-control software companies responded by claiming that their filtering criteria were backed by intensive manual checking. The companies' opponents argued, on the other hand, that performing the necessary checking would require resources greater than the companies possessed and that therefore their claims were not valid.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www7.nationalacademies.org/itas/whitepaper_1.html|title=Electronic Frontier Foundation White Paper 1 for NRC project on Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids from Pornography and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content|author1=Seth Finkelstein|author2=Lee Tien|name-list-style=amp|website=[[National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060419190143/http://www7.nationalacademies.org/itas/whitepaper_1.html|archive-date=19 April 2006}}</ref>

The [[Motion Picture Association]] successfully obtained a UK ruling enforcing ISPs to use content-control software to prevent [[copyright infringement]] by their subscribers.<ref>{{cite news|title=Sky, Virgin Media Asked to Block Piracy Site Newzbin2|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15653434|website=[[BBC News]]|date=9 November 2011|access-date=26 March 2012}}</ref>