David Burt (filtering Advocate) - Filtering Industry and CIPA

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 the Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Copyright Office in the 2003 DMCA exemption hearings

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 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).

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.