See Also: the UBC iSchool Student Journal
Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 2016)
A Legal, Ethical, & Technological Dilemma:
Internet Filtering for Explicit Content in Public Libraries
Peter Doolan, Mattias Olshausen, & Tim Rainey
peter.doolan@gmail.com ‖ m.olshausen@alumni.ubc.ca ‖ rainey.tim@gmail.com
Keywords: Public libraries, censorship, filtering, collection development
Abstract
This
literature review, originally written in February 2015 to satisfy
course requirements for LIBR 505: Research Methods in Information
Organizations, explores various aspects of the debate surrounding
Internet filtering for explicit content on public library computers in
North America, with a focus on libraries and legislation in the United
States. The literature examined extends from the early 2000s to the
present.
Statement of Purpose
Over
the last couple of decades, public libraries have become significant
providers of free internet access (Pautz, 2013). This has expanded what
resources and services they can offer their communities. For
individuals who cannot afford home internet access public library
computers may be their sole means of getting online, whether it be to
apply for jobs, communicate with friends and family, do personal or
school-related research, or simply surf the Web.
Some
also use public library computers for entertainment. Much of this use
consists of activities that would generally be considered innocuous
(aside from associated excessive bandwidth usage), such as playing
online games or viewing YouTube videos. However some patrons of public
libraries use, or try to use, the computers to view pornography or
other explicit images, which creates a potentially uncomfortable and
unsafe environment for staff and other users, especially minors.
This
raises the question of whether accessing such material should be
prohibited on library computers altogether, and, if so, how to go about
blocking it while ensuring that access to valid material remains
unimpaired and the rights of patrons protected. In the West, the debate
on this issue is heavily affected by laws guaranteeing free speech and
freedom of information. This is most true of the debate in the United
States, where proponents of unfiltered access can cite the First
Amendment as a powerful legal foundation in their favor.
In
addition to the legal aspect, there is also a technological side to
this problem. Filtering technology in its present state has not
progressed to the point where it is possible to block any and all
explicit material of a certain kind without also blocking legitimate
material that coincidentally shares similar search language, such as a
website on safe sex that includes images.
This
issue has relevance and importance both because of the traditional role
of the public library as an unbiased source of free information and
because of the ongoing evolution of the public library as an
institution and communal resource. Librarians have always had some
power over what the public reads or accesses because they select
materials and manage collections, but the profession also has a strong
cultural inclination against censorship. At a more practical level, one
of the foremost reasons for the existence of the public library in our
society has been to empower ordinary people, including youths, to
educate and inform themselves in a safe environment where
thoughtfulness and studiousness are nurtured and encouraged. Allowing
certain users to view pornography in the same spaces as those occupied
by, for example, a middle school student writing a report or a young
mother researching postpartum depression, creates obvious problems. It
damages the library’s cultural image and is likely to discourage
certain groups, especially parents with small children, from using the
library.
The
existing literature on this subject is rich in analyses from a legal
point of view, especially regarding legislation in the United States.
Much of this literature first appeared in law reviews. Less work,
however, seems to have been done on considering the issue from the
points of view of user groups themselves, and it is this angle that is
of greatest interest to us. Specifically, we are interested in knowing
how user groups have reacted - negatively, positively, or indifferently
- to filtering (or the lack thereof) of internet access on public
library computers and how they have reacted, or may react, to solutions
that attempt to find a middle ground between unfettered access to
explicit imagery and heavy-handed restrictive policies.
Defining explicit content
One
of the largest obstacles to a comprehensive analysis of the subject is
the difficulty of defining the term “pornography.” Robert Bravard
writes, “Pornography is impossible to define in any useful fashion.
There is no universal legal definition. All efforts at achieving a
definition move in a circle from pornography to obscenity to prurient
to licentious to indecent to lascivious to lewd and back again” (1989).
The meaning of the term is especially unclear when considering similar,
but better respected, genres like “erotica.” The lack of a clear,
legally useful, definition that is consistent over time and across
various communities has been a focal point of the legal debate within
the United States and has been a hindrance to the crafting of effective
policies or laws there and elsewhere. Literature within both the
information science and legal disciplines routinely cite the “Miller
test,” a product of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case Miller v.
California, as a starting point (Skaggs, 2003, p. 824; Wardak, 2003, p.
671; Cohen & Minow, 2006, p. 76) but often critique it as a poor
basis for policy-making. This test determines a work is “obscene” if
“the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would
find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient interest…
[whether it] depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual
conduct… [and whether] the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious
literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” (Miller, as cited
in Wardak, 2003). Applying this test to online materials is difficult
since the internet transcends any single community. If libraries were
expected to use national standards, they would either be forced to use
those of the most “puritanical community,” or they would end up
applying them inconsistently, defeating the point (Skaggs, 2003, p.
826-7). The test has also been criticized as internally inconsistent,
since it requires a work simultaneously appeal to and offend the same
person. Moreover, the test defines “obscenity” rather than
“pornography” – a work may be considered pornographic without being
obscene (Cohen & Minow, 2006, p. 77) – and this approach is too
specific to the laws of the United States to be applied universally.
Another
approach in the information science discipline has been the development
of ways to properly classify and catalogue pornographic materials. The
methodology of this research has been mostly theoretical discussion,
with some analysis of existing classification schemes. Dilevko and
Gottlieb approach the subject by considering the needs of academic
libraries, where access to such materials is justified by the study of
them within universities as artifacts of popular culture (2004, p. 36).
The purpose of Dilveko and Gottlieb’s research is to help users find
specific types of pornography; liberated from legal and moral concerns,
determining conclusively whether a work should or should not be
considered pornographic is less urgent. As such, they employ a simpler
definition of “pornography” borrowed from Bill Katz: “any material that
seeks primarily, even exclusively, to bring about sexual stimulation”
(p. 38). This definition derives from the intentions of authors and
individual users, not the whole of society, allowing a greater degree
of flexibility and specificity than the Miller Test. They conducted a
review of existing classification schemes for pornography in libraries
and found they covered the study of pornography as a topic but not
pornographic materials themselves (p. 43). Dilevko and Gottlieb propose
the use of subject headings modeled after specific areas of existing
scholarly research supplemented with subheadings derived from
categories used by adult websites (p. 46), producing a classification
system that combines how pornography is studied with how it is produced
and consumed. They further suggest records for adult websites be added
to the Online Computer Library Center’s Cooperative Online Resource
Catalog (p. 40), allowing libraries to share the burden of developing a
comprehensive online collection. This research shows promise since the
deep level of analysis necessary to catalogue websites would likely
result in fair usage of the label “pornographic,” but it is too
inchoate and work-intensive for use in public libraries to resolve
issues of access. The bottom-up approach of the classification system
may be helpful to public librarians, though: rather than trying to
define what pornography is according to abstract principles, they can
categorize the variety of forms of pornographic material they come
across, and decide which among these should be accessible or not.
A
third approach common in the literature is to essentially sidestep the
issue of definitions. For example, Pors conducted questionnaire surveys
in Denmark asking librarians about their policies on internet filtering
and misuse, but left it to them to decide what constituted “misuse”
(2001, p. 310), which could have meant accessing racist, violent, or
pro-Nazi materials as well as pornography. Spacey, Cooke, Muir, and
Creaser define “misuse” as “viewing harmful content, such as
pornography” (2013, p. 481), assuming the meanings of “harmful” and
“pornography” are either obvious or determined ad hoc. Houghton-Jan
writes that internet filters are inaccurate at blocking sexually
explicit content but does not directly address how accuracy should be
determined (2010). This may be just as well since, like the notion of
“relevance” in information retrieval, what is most important are the
perceptions of the user, who ultimately decides on an individual basis
whether a given material is pornographic.
It
is assumed in much of the research that pornography is graphic, visual
material rather than text; or that textual material is less extreme,
offensive, or cause for concern. For example, Ann Curry’s 2000 study of
Burnaby Public Library (British Columbia, Canada) internet logs
classifies websites with only textual material as “soft core,” in
contrast to “hard core”. Certainly, viewing textual pornographic
material is less bothersome to other users and easier to ignore – one
can discern the contents of an image from a peripheral glance, whereas
reading another’s screen is more purposeful. This implies the debate
over internet pornography is more often concerned with preserving the
library as a welcoming environment, rather than preserving the morals
of individual users.
Use of internet content filters
Internet
filtering programs are powerful tools for controlling user access to
online resources. They generally employ either whitelists (allowing
users access to only pre-specified websites), blacklists (allowing
users access to all but pre-specified websites), or keyword and content
filters (which can make complex assessments of websites but cannot
determine the actual content and intent of a page, an image, or a
video) (Houghton-Jan, 2010, p. 26). The literature reviewed mostly
covered policies in Western countries with strong legal protections of
free speech like the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and
Denmark. Trushina’s international analysis of librarian ethics codes
includes Eastern Europe and Asia as well. That study shows that the
ideals of equality of access and freedom of information have an
essentially universal appeal; on the other hand, librarians in
countries such as Russia have more freedom than their Western
counterparts to block access to pornography and other online materials
by their own discretion (2004).
One
thread in the literature emphasizes the inaccuracy inherent in
filtering technology. Although authors note the power and complexity of
filtering programs, there is a general consensus among the articles
reviewed that most filters over-block legitimate content and
under-block illegitimate content (Cohen & Minow, 2006, p. 87;
Houghton-Jan, 2010, p. 27; Pautz, 2013, p. 313; Spacey et al., 2014, p.
485), with the possible exception of blacklist filters, wherein
librarians must specifically choose to block individual websites
(Laughlin, 2003, p. 274). Studies from 2001 to 2008 concluded filters
were accurate only 78.347 to 83.316 percent of the time (Houghton-Jan,
2010, p. 27) and blocked legitimate pages on topics such as sexual
orientation, sexual health, women’s organizations, religion, and the
academic study of pornography (Laughlin, 2003, p. 262; Houghton-Jan,
2010, p. 29; Pautz, 2013, p. 313). Given the rapidity of software
development, filters in 2015 may be subtler and more discriminating
than those in 2008. Regarding implementing filters in libraries, Lisa
Hone, deputy division chief of the (U.S.) Federal Communications
Commission’s Telecommunications Access Policy Division, stated in 2014,
“The technology has advanced so tremendously that it's pretty easy to
have a different standard for adults and children, which I don't think
was really the case when CIPA [Children's Internet Protection Act] was
first enacted.” (Chambers, Halley, Hone, & Eberle). Should
filtering technology become increasingly accurate, arguments against
filtering may undermine themselves by relying too much on the
technology’s inefficacy.
Another
thread discusses alternative methods to regulate internet use. These
include: clear acceptable use policies and honor systems,
“tap-the-shoulder” monitoring by librarians, requiring user
registration (Pors, 2001; Pautz, 2013; Spacey et al., 2014), “zoning”
computers into various levels of access (e.g. children versus adults),
privacy-enhancing screens, portals to guide users toward specific,
high-quality resources (Pautz, 2013), information literacy classes
(Spacey et al., 2014), and physical arrangements of computers that
either enhance or disrupt private viewing (Pors, 2001). The implication
is that these methods should allow libraries to use filters more
sparingly or forego them entirely. However, there is a gap in the
scholarship regarding issues of security: filters are important tools
for blocking access to websites, emails, and downloadable files that
contain viruses, malware, or trojans that could infect library
computers and render them unusable. Focusing only on content ignores
other, more practical, uses of filter technology.
The
literature presents reasons for and against filtering based on
hypothetical concerns, abstract principles, or legal issues. There is
little substantial direct evidence gathered on users’ needs,
perspectives, or behaviors – with the exception of Ann Curry’s study in
2000, which showed users seldom (and then only briefly) viewed
pornography on library computers. That study, however, may be
completely outdated given the rapid evolution of the internet: websites
were often viewed briefly because they were behind paywalls users could
not, or chose not to, access. On today’s internet users’ ability to
access and download free videos and images quickly is greatly expanded.
There is no reason to assume data from 2000 can be extrapolated to 2015.
Common
arguments against filtering include: first, the problem of users
viewing pornography is greatly exaggerated (Pors, 2001; Pautz, 2013;
Spacey et al. 2014); second, blocking access to information is
unethical for public librarians (Trushina, 2004) and harms populations
lacking alternative means of access (Pors, 2001); third, filters can be
circumvented by proxy services that are not in themselves illicit
(Houghton-Jan, 2010); and fourth, automatic filters let librarians
shirk their responsibility to make informed decisions regarding access
and parents their responsibility to monitor children (Laughlin, 2003).
Arguments
for filtering generally mention that: first, librarians have a
responsibility to steer users toward more enlightening materials
(Pautz, 2013); second, accessible materials should fit the “profile”
and mission of the library (e.g. blocking online games in spaces meant
as reading rooms) (Trushina, 2004), which is especially pertinent given
limited bandwidth resources; third, librarians have a responsibility to
uphold the law and prevent access to patently illegal materials like
child pornography (Laughlin, 2003); fourth, internet filtering is
analogous to selection decisions made for material collections (Wardak,
2003); fifth, libraries serve communities and should respect community
values; and sixth, libraries must maintain a welcoming environment free
of sexual harassment (Young, 2003).
Regardless
of the strength of any argument for or against filtering, the
literature is missing a more thorough analysis of what users themselves
expect to find available via a library computer. As Pors points out the
internet has changed the demographics of library users (2001, p. 312),
and these users may have wants or needs for internet access unrelated
to librarians’ principled arguments on the subject.
Impact on user groups and staff
One
segment of the literature which this review found wanting was
concerning the impact on users groups and staff who must share a public
space with those using the internet to view pornographic material.
Interestingly, although this topic is addressed infrequently in the
academic literature, it appeared often in journalistic and personal
media, such as blogs.
When
questions of impact are raised in the literature, two qualities are
notable in the discussions; namely, that A.) the coverage typically
surrounds the occasion of a legal finding and B.) the coverage tends
towards examining impact on staff over impact on users. There seems to
be very little survey-based research concerning the impact of
second-hand viewing of pornography on library users, either on their
mental well-being or on their perception of the library or library
spaces in general.
One
prominent account from a librarian's perspective was published in the
“New Breed Librarian” journal in 2002. Adamson details the tribulations
of staff resulting from their open policy on internet use when the
service was first introduced at her library; she recounts patrons
purposefully exposing minors to sexually explicit materials, taunting
staff and fellow users with print-outs of images obtained online, and
publicly masturbating. The author prefaces her account with a quote by
Theyer, which states, in part, “by its very nature, a public library is
a public building. That is part of how it serves its critical mission.
It is therefore also part of our mission to serve those whose tastes we
find repulsive” (2000, p. 60). After detailing the experiences of
herself, her fellow staff, and members of the public, she dismisses the
mission statement above as “no longer an option” (Adamson, 2002, p. 5).
The account then proceeds to describe the media attention paid to their
situation and subsequent findings of the court (a case also referred to
by Minow (2004) in First Monday), all of which resulted in a re-written
internet policy (forbidding the accessing of explicit material) and a
sexual harassment lawsuit against the library for not taking steps
towards ameliorating a hostile work environment. While the Department
of Justice did not take the case, a personal suit later resulted in the
library reaching an out-of-court settlement with its staff (Young,
2003).
Contemporaneously,
in an editorial published in Library Journal, editor-in-chief John
Berry (2002) spoke out against this group and their efforts, referring
to them as “zealots” and stating that “fear of information” such as
they evinced “has always been the most effective weapon of censors and
those who wish to impose their morality and ideology on all of us” (p.
8). Clearly, opinion remained divided concerning the proper steps
needed to protect users and staff.
On
the whole, though, the furor over the above case seems emblematic of
the over-diagnosis of libraries' pornography problems that Estabrook
and Lakner describe in their 2000 paper. They argue that “media
coverage of isolated abuses of Internet access in public libraries can
distort public perceptions, leading people to assume that most public
libraries offer children easy access to sexually explicit images
online” (p. 60). However, through their survey of over one thousand
American libraries, they determined that the large majority of
libraries do regulate their patrons browsing in some way, whether
through posting and enforcing policy guidelines, requiring parental
permission of supervision of minors, or using filters.
Filtering Legislation
Most
of the existing literature on legislative efforts to regulate access to
explicit material online in public libraries and schools and on legal
challenges to those efforts, is almost entirely concerned with the
debate on this subject within the United States. This is largely
because there has been more American legislation directly applicable to
public internet access in the recent past than in other countries. The
majority of the literature focused on the relevant legislative acts and
the challenges mounted to them by the American Library Association
(ALA) and other bodies has been published, unsurprisingly, in law
reviews rather than journals of library science and related fields. As
such, the most prevalent methodology consists of constitutional
analysis of Supreme Court decisions.
The
primary conflict present within this debate is between lawmakers'
desires to make the internet and spaces that offer it freely and
publicly safe for children and the interpretations of the First
Amendment of the US Constitution, which generally guarantee more than
just an individual's freedom of speech per se. Leah Wardak writes, “The
Supreme Court has recognized that the First Amendment creates an
implicit right to receive information because without this ancillary
rule, freedom of speech would have no real meaning. The right to
receive information directly flows from the right of an individual to
send information” (Wardak, 2003, p. 669). In this context, information
is understood to include pornography and a wide variety of other
materials not generally seen as being “informative” in other contexts.
The First Amendment “right to receive information” has historically
been interpreted differently for adults and minors, with minors
generally being granted fewer guarantees in this regard (Laughlin,
2003, p. 254).
One
of the first legislative attempts to regulate minors' access to
explicit or “harmful” content online resulted in the passage of the
1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA). Wardak writes, “As enacted, the
CDA prohibited (1) the knowing transmission of obscene or indecent
messages or images to any person under the age of eighteen, and (2) the
sending or displaying of "patently offensive" sexual messages that
would be accessible to minors. This statute criminalized the above acts
and created penalties of up to two years in prison” (Wardak, 2003, p.
682). However, the CDA was soon challenged by American Civil Liberties
Union, the ALA, and others as being too broad and vague in its
language, and was subsequently struck down as unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court (Wardak, 2003; Cohen & Minow, 2006).
The
CDA's spiritual successor, the Children's Internet Protection Act
(CIPA) of 2000, is still in effect despite constitutional challenges.
CIPA requires that public schools and libraries that provide Internet
access and receive federal “e-rate” funding develop a “technology
protection measure” (TPM) – in other words, the installation of a
filtering system on their computers – preventing users from accessing
or downloading explicit imagery. For some libraries, especially in
poorer areas, this essentially forces them to adopt an Internet filter
or seek alternate funding. Ironically, for larger libraries, the cost
of implementing filters sometimes exceeded the federal grant offered
(Houghton-Jan, 2010). The primary problem this creates is the
inadvertent blocking of non-explicit material caused by the limitations
of filtering technology. The Act also requires that all computers
capable of accessing the Internet, including those used only by staff,
have filters installed on them. CIPA does, however, allow for filters
to be disabled by library staff at the request of individual adult
patrons for legitimate user needs (Spacey et al., 2014).
Challenges to CIPA
Legal
challenges to CIPA have been based primarily on the argument that
filters block access to material protected by the First Amendment,
thereby violating the rights of users. The Supreme Court's
justifications for upholding the Act are varied and complex, but
include the argument that selectively blocking access to certain sites
has a historical parallel in collection development, as well as the
point that filters may be turned off on a case-by-case basis without
violating the terms of CIPA. Both of these justifications are
controversial, and have been debated both within the formal opinions of
the Court itself and within the existing literature.
An
early challenge to CIPA heard in the District Court for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania resulted in that court determining that “due
to the limitations of the filtering technology [...] public libraries
could never comply with CIPA's requirements without also restricting
access to a substantial amount of protected speech,” and the Act was
ruled unconstitutional (Wardak, 2003, p. 694). In a 6-3 decision, the
Supreme Court reversed the lower court's ruling, upholding CIPA. One of
the district court's concerns had been that patrons might be
embarrassed to ask for a filter to be disabled so they could, for
example, search for information on breast cancer or
sexually-transmitted diseases. However, in the assenting (plurality)
opinion of the Supreme Court the justices noted that the Constitution
“did not guarantee the right to ask for information without
embarrassment” (Wardak, 2003, p. 705).
In
this decision, the plurality also drew an analogy between filtering and
collection development. One of the three dissenting justices argued
(correctly, in Wardak’s analysis) that this analogy was invalid because
librarians do not, and cannot, review individual websites as they would
books or other materials for inclusion in physical or electronic
collections, whether for the sake of compliance with CIPA or for any
other reason (Wardak, 2003). Similarly, in the literature, it has been
argued that filtering is akin to weeding or segregating collections for
materials deemed objectionable for political, moral, or religious
reasons – a practice traditionally opposed by the ALA and other library
organizations as unethical. Bernard Bell writes, “When a library
secures Internet access, it gains access to all Internet sites. A
filter removes some of the Web sites to which the library has right of
access. In effect, the library has acquired a set of materials and then
refused to make some of those materials available to its patrons”
(2000, p. 215-216). This point of view invites a debate on whether
generalized Internet content truly qualifies as “material” in a library
context. Bell’s use of the term “a set of materials” implies a level of
cohesion and organization that cannot be applied to the galaxy of
resources and diversions that is the Web.
A
debate of this kind was evident in a 2010 Washington State Supreme
Court ruling on filtering. The majority ruled that a library district’s
policy of not disabling filters upon request by adult patrons was not
unconstitutional, being a form of collection development; however, the
dissenting opinion countered “that the policy was more like refusing to
circulate a book in the collection because of its content, which would
be unconstitutional” (Cannan, 2010).
Legal & Practical Solutions to CIPA & Other Legislation
Because
of its opposition to filtering, the ALA has provided instructions on
managing software and navigating legislation, intended for librarians
who have to contend with CIPA or related laws in their institutions.
One such guide was published for Washington libraries in 2012. The
packet, “A FAQ on Library Filtering Policies in Washington State” came
about following a recent ruling on an area public library's filtering
policy, which was deemed “overly broad” (p. 1). The ruling determined
that a policy of selective unblocking on demand was sufficient in
guaranteeing user's rights to information. The ALA published this
document to voice their disagreement with the finding and caution
librarians that they still risk violating their patrons’ civil
liberties by filtering web content. They refer to Chmara's (2012)
contention that “the court decision... has little impact beyond that
particular library” (p. 3), because the ruling was contingent on the
specific library layout and furthermore went unpublished. The document
addresses other possible concerns for librarians and recommends more
comprehensive resources for further information (such as the ACLU's
statement regarding the case) while cautioning against other related
documents known to be circulating (namely, those drafted by
anti-pornography lobby groups) and dispelling myths. It also recommends
the organization's own “Libraries and the Internet Toolkit,” available
on its website.
Another
notable argument advanced by the ALA in this guide is that the
responsibility for shielding children from pornography lies primarily
with parents, a viewpoint with which, they claim, “most parents agree”
(p. 4). The responsibility of librarians, they counter, is “to
safeguard everyone’s access to information protected by the First
Amendment” (p. 4) [emphasis in the original]. The ALA makes it clear
that not only do librarians risk running afoul of their professional
commitments by over-filtering the content of their patrons, but they
also face significant legal liability should patrons or civil liberties
groups take issue with their practices.
Given
the seemingly intractable differences between librarians and some user
groups on the topic of filtering, Estabrook and Lakner reflect that “it
is difficult to understand why more public libraries are not engaging
their clienteles in helping to draft Internet-use policies” (p. 62).
They state that fewer than 10% of libraries in their survey had
included members of the public in policy formation.
Conclusion
Pornography
is a pernicious subject for librarians managing internet use – trying
to balance the desires of patrons and staff wanting unfettered access
online with those wanting a family-friendly environment has proven an
extremely complicated task wherever the freedoms of expression and
information have strong legal protections. Filtering pornography leaves
libraries open to lawsuits for personal rights violations, while
refusing to filter could lead to suits over sexual harassment and
hostile environments instead. While most librarians are committed to
the ideal of freedom of access, even when it violates their personal
moral codes (Trushina, 2004, p. 418), new experiences of pornography in
the shared space of the public library may necessitate a reassessment
of values and priorities.
The
largest gap in the literature we have identified is a lack of user
perspectives. Although much survey-based research has been conducted on
librarians’ opinions of principles in the abstract, less is available
concerning their reactions to on-the-job experiences (this is somewhat
ameliorated by accounts found in personal media and journalism). There
has been almost no consideration of user opinions: How do users
perceive the role of the internet in the public library? What kinds of
internet access do users desire or expect? What are their experiences
or opinions of other users viewing pornography in public? Have their
perceptions or usage of the library changed because of internet
pornography? What are their ideas for possible compromises or
solutions? Moving forward, we would like to help answer these questions.
This
gap seems to reflect the legal entanglement of the issue – since the
debate involves the framework of individual rights, the opinions of
users as a group may be considered irrelevant: if librarians cannot
legally interfere with an individual’s viewing choices, are other
users’ feelings of discomfort irrelevant – is the onus on them to look
the other way? On the other hand, how should librarians react to
attempts by lawmakers to impose blanket restrictions on internet use,
and should these reactions reflect principles of professional
librarianship or the desires of the communities they serve?
This
issue is current and reflects the rapid changes in communication
technology, has a significant impact on user habits, and challenges
researchers, librarians, lawmakers, and the public to more clearly
define what the public library means as a shared space for individual
pursuits of knowledge and entertainment.
Peter
Doolan, Mattias Olshausen, and Tim Rainey are MLIS candidates in their
final year of study at UBC. All are originally from the United States.
References
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W. (2002). Sex in the city: What happened at the Minneapolis Public
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American
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Washington state. Retrieved from
http://connect.ala.org/files/28462/Exhibit_I_FilteringPacket.pdf
Bell,
Bernard W. (2000). Filth, filtering, and the First Amendment:
Ruminations on public libraries' use of internet filtering
software. Federal Communications Law Journal, 53, 191-237.
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Berry,
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Cannan,
John (2010, June 15). United States: Washington State Supreme Court
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