Ever since the funds from the Digital High School Grant introduced a vast array of computing equipment to each classroom across campus, the Los Angeles Unified School District has injudiciously delimited students’ Internet access with a website-filtering program designed by Websense Inc. The program restricts students from accessing websites featuring potentially inappropriate content (pornographic and amusement-focused websites alike), as well as connecting to peer-to-peer networks (such as Sharman Networks’ KaZaA) and instant messaging services (such as AOL Instant Messenger). While the intentions that motivate this service remain invaluable to controlling student vagrancy and equipment abuse, its present implementation greatly undermines the spirit of free information and students’ ability to practice unbiased research. For instance, Websense’s filter even prohibits the access of websites that rate the efficacy of various condom brands and the grade of latex (or polyurethane) they use.

The Websense warning page seems to surround students who peruse the Internet at school—Google search strings like “sucks to be an egg” may produce pages upon pages of search results that are almost all blocked. Worst of all, the filter blocks most free webmail services. Perhaps this feature is designed to promote students’ use of LAUSDnet’s webmail service. But as students have found, they can freely access AOL’s webmail interface. The webmail block is, in and of itself, absurd—many students would like to use computers to complete assignments they begin at home, and find email the only practical way to transfer those files.

Furthermore, not only does Websense’s program filter out potentially legitimate websites, no service can block every inappropriate website in the ever-expanding and unfathomably intricate Internet. Thus, students can access obscure and new websites featuring lewd content, and a number of students have found methods whereby they can bypass the filter that Websense creates. So, the Websense filter is faulty both in falsely identifying decent sites and failing to completely identify indecent ones.

Indeed, the restrictions imposed by Websense’s filtering program may motivate a problem-solving spirit, but even so, this facet is counterproductive to Websense’s design. More importantly, the Internet community is inextricably intertwined, and thus content on some servers may be accessed through others—the Google cache, for instance, stores a backup of the content and images of most of the servers in its index.

Further still, the Internet is a dynamic resource that changes perpetually. If a certain website is blocked for featuring sensational media one day, students lose all access to that information even after the page changes or such media is removed. Moreover, Internet domains are not permanent—if ownership of whitehouse.com changes hands from a pornographer (as the case may presently be) to a private historian, students are disenfranchised and at a loss to employ a resource that the state has invested countless tax dollars to make readily accessible.

Of course, the countless problems inherent to Websense’s system compel students to wonder why LAUSD might employ something so fallible. The answer lies in one, simple fact: like any product, Websense’s Internet filter is a commercial product tailored not to the needs of a public high school, but rather to the demands of its target consumer—in this case, a corporate business. In businesses, workers are expected to use the Internet for functions designated by the company. Email services are usually furnished to employees, and since they are being paid for their time, agents of corporations have no business accessing websites whose content may be even potentially questionable. The filter is designed to eliminate free reign, which is a fundamental principle of research and free information—ideals that are of prime importance in a public high school. An institution of education has functions that run more closely alongside the intentions of a public library—where patrons have completely unrestricted Internet access—than a business, which quite justifiably initiates such restrictions.

Many students are not fortunate enough to have Internet access from their homes, and thus, must rely instead on the school’s connection to access this rich resource. Blocked webmail services, for instance, are necessary to sign up for SATs and register for free access to articles from the New York Times.

To restrict Internet access is to alter what the Internet is for the many students who can only access it at school. It is to defile the nature of a tool unparalleled in history as a medium for communication and the distribution of ideas. Nothing can substitute personal supervision over student activity. Casual teacher discretion can indeed be the only reliable and feasible website filter that any educational establishment can implement.