of the Internet to any member of the public who wishes to speak.  In particular, speakers on the Internet enjoy low barriers to entry and the ability to reach a mass audience, unhindered by the constraints of geography.  Moreover, just as the development of new media “presents unique problems, which inform our assessment of the interests at stake, and which may justify restrictions that would be unacceptable in other contexts,” United States v.  Playboy Entm’t Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 813 (2000), the development of new media, such as the Internet, also presents unique possibilities for promoting First Amendment values, which also inform our assessment of the interests at stake, and which we believe, in the context of the provision of Internet access in public libraries, justify the application of heightened scrutiny to content-based restrictions that might be subject to only rational review in other contexts, such as the development of the library’s print collection.  Cf. id. at 818 ("Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.").

A faithful translation of First Amendment values from the context of traditional public fora such as sidewalks and parks to the distinctly non-traditional public forum of Internet access in public libraries requires, in our view, that content-based restrictions on Internet access in public libraries be subject to the same exacting standards of First Amendment scrutiny as content-based restrictions on speech in traditional public fora such as sidewalks, town squares, and parks:  The architecture of the Internet, as it is right now, is perhaps the most important model of free speech since the founding. . . .  Two hundred years after the framers ratified the Constitution, the Net has taught us what the First Amendment means. . . .  The model for speech that the framers embraced was the model of the Internet – distributed, noncentralized, fully free and diverse.  Lessig, Code, at 167, 185.  Indeed, “[m]inds are not changed in streets and parks as they once were.  To an increasing degree, the more significant interchanges of ideas and shaping of public consciousness occur in mass and electronic media.”  Denver Area Educ.  Telecomms.  Consortium, Inc. v.  FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 802-03 (1996) (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment).

In providing patrons with even filtered Internet access, a public library is not exercising editorial discretion in selecting only speech of particular quality for inclusion in its collection, as it may do when it decides to acquire print materials.  By providing its patrons with Internet access, public libraries create a forum in which any member of the public may receive speech from anyone around the world who wishes to disseminate information over the Internet.  Within this “vast democratic forum[],” Reno, 521 U.S. at 868, which facilitates speech that