IMO it is ridiculous to have internet p*rn available at the library. http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20021112/D7N8MTDG1.html WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide if the government can restrict Internet surfing at public libraries, the third case pitting free-speech concerns against efforts to shield children from online p*rnography to reach the justices. The court will resolve whether federal funding can be stripped from libraries that don't install filters on computers to block sexually explicit Web sites. The decision would affect more than 14 million people a year who use public library computers to do research, send and receive e-mail, and, in some cases, log onto adult sites. A three-judge federal panel in Pennsylvania ruled last spring that the Children's Internet Protection Act violates the Constitution's First Amendment because the filtering programs also block sites on politics, health, science and other nonpornographic topics. The judges recommended less restrictive ways to control Internet use, such as requiring parental consent before minors are allowed to log in on an unfiltered computer or having a parent monitor a child's Web use. "The filtering turns the Internet into something fit for a 5-year-old, and not even that. It blocks enormous amounts of protected speech," said Charles Sims, a First Amendment lawyer in New York. "Congress can't get it right." Lawmakers have passed three child protection laws since 1996, but the Supreme Court struck down the first and blocked the second from taking effect. Those dealt with regulations on Web site operators. Legislators tried a new approach with the 2000 law, arguing that it should be able to regulate government property. "The government has more authority when it's controlling the purse strings than when it's deciding what people can do with private funds and private property," said Eugene Volokh, a conservative constitutional expert at UCLA Law School. Still, Volokh predicts the government will lose as the court again grapples with the balance between protecting children and preserving free speech. The court has been very protective of First Amendment rights. The Bush administration said in its filings that libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to p*rnography on their computers. The law is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Library Association and other groups. "The public library is for everybody. That's why it's called public," Barbara Gloriod, a librarian in Washington for more than 20 years, said Tuesday as patrons surfed the Internet nearby on computers without filters. "Filters are just not good enough. They don't filter out all the bad and they do filter out some of the good." The state of Texas joined the federal arguments at the Supreme Court. "Parents should not be afraid to send their children to the library, either because they might be exposed to such materials or because the library's free, filterless computers might attract people with a propensity to victimize children," wrote Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, who was elected to the U.S. Senate last week. Congress knew the latest law would be challenged, and directed any appeals to go straight to the Supreme Court after a trial before a three-judge panel. U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson said the lower court panel's ruling hurts Congress' effort to ensure that money spent for education does not pay instead for access "to the enormous amount of illegal and harmful p*rnography on the Internet." Paul Smith, the library association's attorney, said thousands of Web sites that have nothing to do with sex are blocked by filtering companies. "You have an awful lot of censorship going on, and it's censorship the librarian is not in control of," he said. The Supreme Court struck down the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which made it a crime to put adult-oriented material online where children can find it. The court said the law violated free-speech rights because it would keep material from adults who have a right to see it. This year the court upheld part of the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which required Web sites to collect credit card numbers or other proof of age before allowing Internet users to view material deemed harmful to minors. But justices did not rule on the law's constitutionality, and the government was barred from enforcing it. The case is United States v. American Library Association, 02-361.
I wish some people would have a sense of common decency so issues like these would never come up, but now that it has... Filtering problems are not 100% effective. Not only can they be circumvented, it blocks too many sites that are non-offensive. It's a joke to think a "net" can wrap up the "bad portions" of the English language with no conceivable leaks. Websites covering breast cancer research, the history of Germany from the span of 1930-1945, and other websites with "risque words" in their domain, like Hotmail, could be affected. The irony here is that most people use the access for email and not education/research (they ignore the disclaimer). Filtering out email is not only a First Amendment nightmare, it would draw the ire of the public. When Congress and the Administration passes legislation like the Child Online Protection Act, they know full well that it's most likely going to be struck down in the Supreme Court. They're mostly lawyers. They know the unconstitutionality of their actions. But lost causes like these make their constituents happy even though the result is the same...
Personally I think this case is a waste of time. A filter is gonna cause a lot of headaches for people trying to surf the web. Not to mention all the tax dollars its gonna cost to install the software.
If you're an optimist, it would bring cash flow into the troubled tech sector just like what the Y2K bug did. I can see comparisons of Dubya to FDR right now...
So what's the solution? I personally don't believe that computers at the public library should be used to download p*rn. Apparently this has been a problem. The article acknowledges as much. If a filter isn't the answer...how would you combat the problem? Certainly you can't think that the status quo is acceptable.
Yeah, you kind of have to hope some guy isn't intent on getting his jollies at the library's computer... Ideally, I'd line up the computers across the librarian's desk so she could enforce policy (research only), but the design and wiring of the building might not allow that. Some libraries I've been in position the reference desk so that it's in view of most of the computers. You could even go to the extreme of putting mirrors for the computers the librarian can't see. After all, if it was about privacy, p*rn would be in that umbrella. Personally, I think it's mostly about intent. If a person is intent on viewing p*rn despite the filter, there are conceivable ways. The act (or thought) of being watched can lower the intent for fear of castigation or for fear of being caught. It's not a perfect solution. There's a select group out there that gets a thrill from stuff like that. But it won't fly in the face of first amendment issues. It won't cost the tax payers the amount of money needed from licencing, installation, and maintanence. And if the issue was about some child molestor getting worked up over the p*rn he just saw from the library (after he bought his alluring candy that is...), then Congress could use the money that would come from the filter software (and maintaining it) and hire another librarian/babysitter.
Public display of p*rnography is specifically excluded from First Amendment protection by Supreme Court caselaw. The issue is twofold: 1) Children accessing the p*rn on their own at the library. Same goes for sites which show how to make bombs, etc. 2) Some wierdo looking up p*rn at the library and a child passing by seeing it while it is displayed on the screen. The bottom line is that there needs to be some mechanism in place to prevent the use of these machines for p*rn. True...but the vast majority of those technically savy enough to do so have a computer at home and don't use the net at the library.
I thought the issue was whether non-pornographic material was being excluded because of the filters. Stricter librarian enforcement wouldn't infringe on that (in a broad sense) I agree. The quote was a reaction to what John Cochran was quoted as saying. You could solve number one by putting up a sign, "Snitch at the wierdos you see." Or something like that. It would be as if some guy comes into the library with a brown bag, pulls out Hustler, and starts reading it. As for the children. I'm gonna go on a wild assumption to think that they would go to the same library on a daily basis, probably after school. If they spend enough time there, a number of them could become savvy enough to bypass the filters either alone, from a friend, from a website they found or that a friend gave them. Search engines are a double-edged sword...
I've worked in libraries for years and a) we're not really in the business of filtering what people read online, since we're supposed to be *part* of our communities, not their moral guardians (with a few exceptions like the children's section); plus b) librarians in public libraries are too ******* busy to watch over people's shoulders for this stuff! Circulation departments, particularly in larger libraries, don't have a moment to spare, and the reference desks have a sh!tload of work to do as well. Not sure how to solve this problem, though. Private booths for adults? Of course, then it would turn into a sex shop atmosphere... I dunno. A thought, however: if you're an offensive pervert, then you're going to be an offensive pervert whether the internet is there or not. At the library I work at, there have been men exposing themselves in the children's section, and one guy actually ejaculated onto a woman's backpack in the fiction. Everyone say 'ewwwwww...'
That's pretty nasty, Dimsie. Btw, I thought librarians had it easy since they always had time to give me that suspicious stare... The extreme alternative is going Big Brother on all the libraries. You could hire an independent firm to "ensure privacy", and what they would do is what many coorporations do now, spy on their employees web hits and instant messanges. If Big Brother finds something offensive, they can block access to the terminal. Statewide, you cluster a group of libraries to a firm and let them do the installation. The technology is already available. I'm not sure if we're at that point yet or if we want to be, but some companies are already there...
I personally have a lot more qualms about adults being able to go to the library to read about converting semi-automatic weapons into illegal automatic weapons than about them reading p*rn or sexually charged material. That said, we are in America, not Soudi Arabia, both should be protected in all but the most extreme cases where public safety is at stake (child p*rn, how to build an H-bomb from a kit). We are one screwed up society that is more worried about sex than violence (just look at network TV restrictions and our movie rating system). My 2cents anyway.
Why don't they just set up a little area with a curtain and sign, "Adult internet section of library" This stuff does not belong in libraries. Filter away.
The internet is WAY too complex for simplistic solutions like this. It is impractical. The problem is that, to curb this issue, we will need to increase government spending just to cover the cost of watching people online. I'm sure we could find better uses for our resources than library internet cops.
I wish it was possible to confine adult content sites to .xxx or .sex or whatever. Then it would be possible to filter adult content without keeping that one women a year who goes to the library to use the internet to find out how to do a breast exam from finding the information she needs. Here's another option. If a person believes that the information they're looking for is being blocked needlessly, why can't the librarians have an override code? p*rn still blocked; everything else still available. May take a little more effort, but would seem to be worth it. Most libraries I've been to have a librarian near the computers anyway, most likely hoping it will discourage people from looking up the stuff in the first place. I can remember going to the public library in Lubbock, Texas to use the internet before I had it at home. I didn't know much about using it at all. I made the mistake of hitting the back button. The guy who was using it before me was using it to look up p*rn. Pop up windows started coming up all over the place. Knowing as little as I did about computers at the time, I thought someone had taken over the computer remotely. As far as free speech is concerned, I fail to see how a woman pinned to a donkey is covered by such. It may very well make a statement, but I don't believe that's what the framers of the constitution had in mind.
You can't have violence without sex. Irresponsible sex spawns kids who become killers. Sex is at the root of the problem. I say take the internet out of the library altogether. You don't NEED the internet for anything.
There are really on two legal options, imo. One was suggested by TheFreak. I think this solution is rather poor. The internet is extremely useful, in many ways. Specifically, it's rapidly outstripping even excellent libraries in terms of research materials. My freshman year of college, it was considered a novelty form of research. By my senior year, professors were recommending it as a better way to gain access to information. It's also pretty clear that filters are going to block a great deal of protected speech. It's inadvertant - but I'm not sure how relevant that really is. Besides, part of what would be blocked would be speech that is controversial, yet still valuable according to accepted delineations. People are too scared of p*rn. Yes, I'm sure children will attempt to get p*rn. But they'd manage it even without the internet. And I really doubt that seeing an extra breast or two is going to irreparably harm anyway. I'd much rather let kids look at boobies than deprive people without internet access to a valuable source of information.
Children could get guns without Oshman's...but that doesn't make me think Oshman's should make guns available to children.
What scares me is not the p*rn or the filters in the library, but some guy jacking off to government property. I maybe a hard nosed conservative, but I do believe in the freedom of speech. What stops the library from filtering p*rn could also be used to filter out other information. Soon enough, you have people saying that websites about guns are dangerous to young minds and they need to be filtered or that socialism is dangerous and it needs to be filtered. When you filter you are invoking the thought police, like it or not. Now don't get me wrong I am not supporting p*rn or suggesting that we give it to children, but we really need to think about the idea of freedom of thoughts and ideas no matter how perverse and corrupted they may be.
Just let them have their p*rn. Jeez. The hoops a guy has to jump through to get his jerk on nowadays. I never understood what was so bad about kids being exposed to sex anyway. Maybe if we didn't make it so mysterious, we wouldn't have 13 year olds getting pregnant. Exposure to p*rn hasn't made me a deviant (IMO), even though I saw a Playboy when I was about seven. I say let people look at whatever they want. I am pretty opposed to the government getting involved in our lives when there is no danger to anyone.
The First Amendment jurisprudence contains a time, place and manner restriction. They aren't seeking to eliminate p*rn or censor it in any way. They are trying to put a place restriction on it. One that is reasonably tailored to a legitimate government interest.
