Before he leaves office, President Clinton may not be seeing a law requiring schools and libraries to implement filtering or blocking technology for computers with Internet access as a condition of universal service discounts. H. R. 4600, the House's version of the Senate bill championed by Senator McCain for the last two years, was referred to the House Committee on Commerce on June 8, 2000, and referred by the Committee to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection on June 21, 2000. With the busy campaign season, the Subcommittee, the Committee, and the full House likely won't have time to work out differences with a version that the Senate might have approved by the end of the year.
In a related development, a federal judge has barred Virginia from enforcing its law aimed at protecting children from “harmful” material on the Internet. U.S. District Judge James H. Michael Jr. ruled that the law violates the First Amendment and that Internet businesses would have no practical way of preventing minors from viewing material online except to eliminate the material altogether.