Comments on: The Wonderful Awful World Online

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 08 May 2011 22:00:06 +0000

The closest you would get (to my knowledge) is the Dean Marney case out in Washington. The short version is that if a site is blocked you have to request the site to be unblocked; there is no removal of filtering at the request of an adult patron. And they can say no to the request if it doesn’t meet their policy requirements. (Sarah has a bunch of links to it in her blog post on filters: http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/2010/05/filtering.html) The state supreme court held that the library was within its rights to do this, although it has yet to make its way through the federal court systems. Considering that one of the reasons CIPA was upheld is that an adult could ask for the filter to be removed, it should prove very interesting.

I would never say you were trolling, Barbara. You always ask great questions!

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 08 May 2011 21:52:53 +0000

Yeah, that sounds exactly like students I’ve helped (both college and high school) who thought I would read every single article on their search result to ensure that it was on the right topic. Uh, no.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sun, 08 May 2011 20:39:03 +0000

Wow. That’s kind of like saying “I order you to read these books because I want to know if they’re something I want to read.”

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sun, 08 May 2011 20:37:32 +0000

I’m curious – has a library ever been sued because they prohibited someone from viewing something online that they considered obscene? I’m not trolling – I honestly don’t know. It would be an interesting test case.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:03:36 +0000

As far as I’m concerned *viewing* pornography in the library is outside of the scope of the mission of public libraries. Consequently, I see no problem disallowing it in the library. Consistent with that, public libraries are limited public forums, not open public forums, so we do have some leeway in prohibiting certain types of behavior. Our library considers viewing pornography disruptive behavior, and we don’t allow it.

And, yes, we use filters because we accept E-rate money. And, no, they are not perfect, but we do *not* use keyword filtering, so they underblock rather than overblock. We have had very few instances of overblocking with this setup, but we can and have adjusted the filter for a few sites that were incorrectly blocked. The underblocking is sometimes a problem, but has not led to nearly as many issues as we ran into before we used filters.

By: Sarah Houghton-Jan

Sarah Houghton-Jan — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:43:38 +0000

All right, you know what I would say about this. Just in case you don’t, here’s everything I’ve written on my blog about obscene materials on library computers, privacy screens, the legal question about non-illegal “offensive” material, and how internet filters don’t work: http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/?s=filters. So….yeah.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 02 May 2011 17:29:27 +0000

From my library’s internet policy:

“Use of the Internet to access sites that are obscene, have child pornography, or contain material harmful to minors is prohibited.”

I think that makes it pretty clear. It might not be against the last to view pornography, but I feel we have the right to make our libraries as friendly to as many people as possible. If that means we have to enforce a “no porn” rule, then I have no problem with it, even if it is legal.

By: Judie Cooper

Judie Cooper — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:24:49 +0000

When the video of the execution of Daniel Pearl was released on to the internet I had a patron who wanted me to find it for him. I found a few whose descriptions fit and gave him the addresses but told him I wasn’t sure because I didn’t watch them. He said that it was my job to watch the videos to make sure they were what he wanted. I informed him that I was not going to watch material of that nature and that if he had a problem with it he could take it up with the library director. I never heard any thing about it after that.
We also had a number of people who would view Rotten.com and their suicide and violence pictures, sometimes leaving them up for others (especially children) to find. I tended to find this more offensive than the pornography.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 02 May 2011 02:21:17 +0000

The reverse end of this is getting sued because it is legal speech. It’s not a great place to be stuck in the middle.

By: Brian L. Baker

Brian L. Baker — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:41:19 +0000

At two places I’ve worked we’ve incorporated the viewing of “offensive” material into our sexual harassment prohibition. Material could be viewed as long as no one else could see it or hear it. Of course we worked hard to have no hidden seating areas and punishment/violation could mean expulsion from law school or, for non-law students, banning from either the law library or campus.