EdLaw nat/us/cipa/README.md

language: en · status: in-force · last checked: 2026-09-04

Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)

US federal law (enacted 2000) conditioning E-Rate universal-service discounts for schools and libraries on internet-safety measures: a technology protection measure (filtering/blocking) and an internet safety policy. Statutory basis in 47 U.S.C. §254(h); implemented for E-Rate by the FCC's certification rule at 47 CFR §54.520, administered through USAC certification forms. The rule text in this folder shows amendment as recently as 2026 (see its source note) — re-verify before citing.

Applicability to EdTech

CIPA binds the school/library (as a funding condition), not the vendor — but it shapes what devices and services must support: filtering of visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors, and monitoring of minors' online activities under the school's internet safety policy. State E-Rate guidance (e.g. Wisconsin DPI) treats the filtering obligation as following device ownership rather than location — school-owned devices used off-campus still require filtering — which matters directly for take-home hardware.

Contents

Document Covers
FCC-CERTIFICATION-RULE.md 47 CFR §54.520 — who certifies, what the certifications cover, timing, consequences

Scope note: the statute (47 U.S.C. §254(h)) is linked rather than reproduced; the FCC rule carries the operational certification detail and is reproduced verbatim from the eCFR.

Licence

The corpus reproduces 47 CFR § 54.520 (Federal Communications Commission) verbatim from the eCFR, published by the Office of the Federal Register and the Government Publishing Office. The statute and the FCC and Wisconsin DPI guidance listed in Sources are linked, not reproduced. It is a work of the United States Government. 17 U.S.C. § 105(a) (govinfo, United States Code 2024 edition, title 17 § 105, read 2026-10-01) provides: "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

The Government Publishing Office's Public Domain & Copyright Notice (govinfo.gov/about/policies, read 2026-10-01) adds: "By virtue of the foregoing, public documents can generally be reprinted without legal restriction. However, Government publications may contain copyrighted material which was used with permission of the copyright owner." It also says that "whenever a work is published consisting predominantly of work of the U.S. Government, the copyright notice (if any) must identify those parts of the work in which copyright is claimed per 17 U.S.C. § 403."

Conditions: none attach to the text itself. The one formal point is § 403: if the public pages ever carry a copyright notice, it must identify the parts in which copyright is claimed (the corpus's own curation) and not cover the reproduced federal text. The corpus names the source in its Sources section and in each fact document's {.meta} provenance lines, and its Meta section describes what it changed (anchors added, nothing reworded).

Sources