Although it can be re-examined again based on the actual impact on library patrons, it looks like the filters are here to stay.
If a library wants to keep it’s federal funding, then they have to install the filters. Now, according to the pro-filter groups, it would keep porn out of public libraries to protect their children.
The ALA and other oponents of this law say that children already have filters for internet usage - their parents. Filters will stop valid research into biological and medical research by blocking search topics such as sex, breast, and other body parts and functions.
I’ve already been in one debate about this topic on the Yahoo message board before it was taken over by the jerks making fun of it.
There is a real existing problem with this law. Even though it says PUBLIC libraries in the articles I’ve seen, it could be applied to academic libraries. The original court documents are as follows:
If a library does not have a filter on their internet, they have the choice of giving up their federal funding or putting on the filter. Which do you think would win?
Now, you may not think this is such a big deal… after all, who needs to look at porn in the public library? However, you try doing research that general biology and some target school nursing students have to do on the subjects of HIV, Breast Cancer, Sexually transmitted disease, and even sex linked traits of gerbils with that filter in place. You can’t do it because the filters look for words like Sex, Breast and other body parts in the meta tags of the websites and if those words are there, they can’t get to the sites.
Now, if you take that to a further extreme, what if that library is in a University which receives Federal technology money? You have a potentially dangerous situation. You have nurses and pre-med students in Universities. If they can’t research those issues, they lose a great deal of medical information.
Given the filters, a student would not be able to access The New England Journal of Medicine as well as other journals.
So much for the current administration taking us into the 21st century.
Well, in defense of the decision, it does not say “turn it off for any adult patron who asks.” A teen researching breast cancer for an advanced biology/health class, or looking into sexual mores among other cultures for a social science course, should have no problem asking for a bypass. And certainly no adult using the machines for legitimate research should have a problem.
We’ve had other threads on how the filter keywords are too broad, eliminating, for example, this very site, or the examples given above. Writing a filter that halts “breast” but allows “breast cancer” or stops “hot sex” but allows “sex-linked” or “sexagenarian” ought not to be very tricky.
What concerns me is the kid who is legitimately looking for information on his or her own sexuality (straight or gay) and is blocked from it. And that’s not something they’re going to ask the librarians for help with.
Yeah, I can hear the chorus of “they should be taught it in their homes by their parents” now. Right, and they should have locked off all pornography without proof that you’re over 18, and they should have come up with machines that count all votes accurately, and a lot of other “shoulds.”
Guess what? In the real world, they didn’t. And a lot of parents shirked this duty, or gave a highly-embarrassed, overcondensed version of the Talk that didn’t answer the kids’ questions.
In all the libraries I’ve been in, the public-access computers are in banks and visible from the circulation desks. It’d take a brazen teen to be looking at porn in such a situation. I think that the law addresses a problem that isn’t really there.
Just how many teens are going to go up to a librarian and ask for the porn filter to be turned off? And how many librarians are going to say… Yeah, right, you’re doing “research”.
Will the kid need a note from his parents and his teachers to get the filter turned off? What about the schools that have one or two librarians who have to watch the whole place and not just the computer room? Will they have to hire another one just for the filters?
It all goes back to responsibility. Whose responsibility is it to actually police up the library computer room?
If the kids really want that porn, they will find a way to get it anyway.
Well I can see the problem.
But the supposition that such a limitation would ever be applied on academic libraries is an irrealistic stretch to me. University students are adults.
The SC decision is coercive censorship, using federal dollars as the carrot. Legislating morality, be it through enacted laws or judicial opinions, does not work.
Not only is this a sad day for the First Amendment, it’s a sad day that parents are further absolved from parental responsibility.
It may be an unrealistic stretch right now, but the way it’s worded, it can be applied at any time as long as the library is receiving federal technology money.
Alhamdalilahi (I know the spelling is off)
btw… University students adults? Hahahaha! Some of them are pretty good, but there are some worse than second graders.
Another important thing to note is these filters have a lot of false positives, and not just pages that mention key words like “breast” or “sex”.
A library that uses BESS might block the Institute of Australian Psychologists, Mother Jones Magazine, American Home Entertainment, Catholic Views Broadcasting, as well as free hosts like GeoCities and Angelfire.
A library that uses SmartFilter might block the sites of Community United Against Violence, Peaceable Texans for Firearms Rights, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Ontario Center for Religious Tolerance, the United States Information Agency, and the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker site).
Naturally, Peacefire (the site where I found those lists) is also blocked by the filters.
Why don’t they just have some “kid-friendly” computers and some “18 and older” computers? And with a note from a teacher/parent, a teen can use the “18 and older” ones?
Name a library that allows porno sites to be displayed. You don’t see Hustler magazines on the shelf. It’s just common sense not to display it on the screen. The libraries in my district have had filters on for years without problems. The filters can be overridden for research, but porn sites would get you thrown off the terminal.
The inconvenience of having to ask for a pass key outweighs the need to keep porn surfers from displaying their web searches in a public building.
A thought that has been in the back of my mind. If porn sites were restricted to .prn or some other moniker it would be simpler for all concerned, including porn sites.
So what goes under .prn? Would a fairly explicit advice column like “Savage Love” be enough to fall under .prn? What about things like those sites that show pre-teens in skimpy clothes that are not obscene, but arn’t innocent in any way, either? What about sites that detail safe sex procedures? What about pornographic fan fiction?
What is and what is not porn is not cut and dried, and oftentimes there will be somewhat explicit material on an otherwise non-pornographic site. Should they have to get a whole new domain for a page?
Good lord, has our government completely stopped reading and/or thinking? (No, the never started. Hat hat hat and so forth…) What about the books? I will be utterly skeptical of any library that claims to be doing anything to keep kids from smut when anybody can borrow, for example, Aztec, by Gary Jennings.
Also, how is porn in libraries a serious problem? How do you define porn? Dammit, I know that it’s paranoid to assume that there are a cabal of eeeevil men who are offended by the existence of freely available information and are attempting to chip away at it in a ‘they came for the Jews and I did not speak up…’ fashion, but it’s either that, or our government is a bunch of morons. We need a better government pronto. (I’m talking to you, Poly.)
What really pisses me off is that as libraries are in fact federally funded, my inner libertarian is pointing out that if I’m in their house, I should play by their rules.
This is a sad day for libraries. I’ve been dreading this decision. The way this is written is so vague. They don’t define what constitutes a filter–could I sent my bandwidth management device to block access to hustler.com and would that constitute filtering?
The low cost filter (WebSense) that’s offered by my consortium allows us only one profile that would be in effect on all of our machines and we would not have the power to turn it off locally. So do we have to purchase some expensive software? Where do we get that money?
What constitutes “valid research”? Who am I to be making that decision for my patrons?
This is just outrageous. Parents are the filter for their children. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone else making these decisions for my kids. And, as was pointed out on NPR this morning, if my son wanted to visit gay.com for whatever reason (personal or school research), these filters would block it even though it’s not a porn site. We’re cutting off avenues of important information that some people may need but may be too embarassed to ask us about.
Sorry to go on about this. I’m going to go pout in a corner for a little while then try and figure out what my library is going to do now.
I take your point, robert. It’s an interesting line where one defines the different between “government rightly preventing unscrupulous practices by others” and “government improperly regulating my personal life.”
Some decisions are clearcut; others are not. For example, to market Lydia Pinkham’s Medicinal Compound with the claims it made in its heydey is to run into the former, but as I came back south, New York was banning all OTC products containing ephedrine, or so my son told me. I think most people would look for a middle ground, and one that allows for individual, informed choice.
A similar argument is called for in this circumstance. I’m confident that a little search would turn up sites that not even the most libertarian among us would say are acceptable viewing matter for children. And I recall seeing a site designed for 11-14 year old boys, explaining the mysteries of sexuality in simple language with a “you’re not weird for feeling this” tone,which this program would definitely filter out. And again there’s a line somewhere, and each of us would draw it at a slightly different place.
But your last sentence, robert, is one I have to take exception to. Yes, the Federal government does have the right to set rules to be followed by anything that it puts funds into. But it’s not “their house” and “their rules” – it’s ours. “We the people” are the final definition of political authority in this country – the (corporately) sovereign people of the United States.
And I’m getting the impression that we enjoy putting ourselves on a metaphorical diet just so that we can cheat on it.
I’m very curious about what Hugo Black might say about the law in question. Granted, it does allow the libraries a choice, and provide (thanks to SCOTUS) for their patrons to have a way around this self-policing – but in the back of my mind, I can hear him ruling “‘Congress shall make no law…’ means that *Congress shall make no law!”
Federal funding - According to the paper this morning (Rocky Mountain News) the amount of money is very small. Most libraries gave numbers in the $3,000 - $5,000 range (annualy); a very small percentage of their overall budget.
In all cases, the librarians said they would just stop asking for the money. Good for them.
Library internet access is not there so people can view pornography – and overt pornography has never been considered part of a library collection. Otherwise, I would have expected to see print issues of Swank, Hustler, and Cherry on library shelves long ago. That being the case, why should pornography be considered part of the collection now? Traditionally, libraries were created so that patrons could enrich themselves personally, do research, and pursue other literary goals — a purpose for all ages. While libraries neither were created for nor are they a proper forum to view pornography – one is certainly free to view it if he or she chooses — in their home or, if he wants to do it in public for some reason, at the numerous other public places created for this purpose. Not only does pornography have no legitimate place in a library, exposed computer screens showing internet pornography can be viewed not only by those who did not come to the library for that purpose but also by passing children — might as well just drop my pants in front of a family of five —
Louisiana buckled under the burden of losing federal funding, and the “we the people” of Louisiana couldn’t do much about it, and the rest of the country largely wouldn’t care enough to stick up for one southern state. There went the drinking age.
This is a little larger in scale, but they market the issue as ANTI PORN and that’s a powerful meme right now. I say good luck to whoever wants to fight it.
As a personal matter, I think I’m with the compromise crowd; I know at the libraries I went to in Ohio there were children, teen, and adult sections, and the library in my town went so far as to indicate with a friggin’ sign something to the effect that they would not babysit children. So in principle some 14 year old could go check out “Baby Farm” and read about explicit kidnaping and rape (what, so I read some of it! :p). Of course, most people aren’t exactly worried that Billy is going to pick up some steamy novel like that.
The internet isn’t quite the same thing, though. So I can see why some people might say, “You know what, we have done a lot as a society to keep pornography away from children. And even as a good parent I can’t be around my child 24-7. We put covers on pornographic magazines and/or keep them behind the counter at convenience stores, yet we are supposed to do nothing with public internet access?” And even if I have to grit my teeth as I say it, they’re right.
If kids need to learn about sexuality, the library can in principle be such a place to do that, and the information obtained there (should those works not be withheld as well, of course) would be probably more appropriate to someone genuinely interested in the issues than a quick web search.
There are workarounds. I can see the filters up and running at full speed, but there are workarounds for diligent parties. The idea of some computers being unrestricted isn’t that bad of an idea, but all solutions are pretty imperfect.
urban1z, if that is the case, I agree wholeheartedly: good for them. I hope that’s as large as the issue gets, and that it largely gets shot down in the same way.
One question that I haven’t seen adequately answered is how difficult (or easy) is it to turn the filters on and off? Is it a simple setting on each computer, or will it mean switching between Internet service providers? And what kind of trouble will a library get into if its forgets to turn the filter back on after someone has left a computer station?
My concern is that libraries will see all of this as more of a hassle than it’s worth, either setting a policy of not switching the filters off for anyone, or discouraing use of the Internet.
Tigers, since on this particular issue you seem in need of a clue (surprising in view of your cogent comments on some other threads), nobody is arguing that libraries should be in the business of distributing pornography, either printed or Internet.
Rather, there are two key points being made:
The philosophy behind libraries is traditionally in opposition to the entire idea of censorship. That which might upset or offend you might be suitable to give insight to someone else. And who makes the call on what’s appropriate? The ACLU? The local Baptist church? The Legion of Decency? The nut down the street?
More importantly, there are a lot of issues connected with the fact that “male and female created He them,” the body parts which may give rise to prurient interests, and even the nature of the sex drive, which are not pornographic but the topic of legitimate interest. Breast cancer has already been given as an example. Priapism, far from being a teenage boy’s dream, is a very real and usually debilitating condition. Medical students need to be able to access these things. Any high school biology student will find himself looking at sex-linked traits in genetics (e.g., hemophilia and baldness). Examples galore of things which these filters customarily block which are quite valid reasons to use a library’s Internet access can be cited.
Nobody’s suggesting that libraries have the responsibility to let your 13-year-old view TeenSlutsRUs.com – but your daughter in nursing school may need to read up on testicular cancer as a part of her studies. Your wife may want to check out the website her doctor provided her after sending her for tests for that lump in her armpit. And though you may be a conscientious father who takes his son’s sex education seriously, his best friend with the father who was too embarrassed to say more than three sentences to him about it may want to know just why he’s getting that odd reaction when he sees a pretty girl, and your own boy may be embarrassed to ask you about masturbation and want to look up anonymously what a reliable website for teens has to say about people doing it.
I respond once again with Aztec. The book is 1000 pages of smut, covering a veritable checklist of perversions (of course, it uses Aztec genital terminology, so it sneaks past the censors on that accord), and available to any kid who wants to read it. Considering that there is a whole world of useful information (plus smut) on the internet, and a whole world of smut (plus some information) in Aztec, why are you people (well, you person, Tigers) so concerned about unrestricted internet access? Aztec lurks! 'Ware!
(In case my sarcasm was blunted by transposition into text, I would like to state that I don’t see a major problem with little Johnny finding either TeenSlutsRUs.com or Aztec. Either he’ll say ‘Yuk’ and leave, or he’s into that thing, and you’d have to start removing bits to keep him away from it.
Get it, removing bits, referring both to anatonomy and digital data? Hah hah hah. I should close this parenthetical remark now.)