Filtering Internet in Public Libraries

A woman walks quietly onto a bare stage with mysterious lighting and pulls open a massive double door. Behind it is revealed a mysterious machine in motion, gears and pulleys, flaps and treads, and projected onto it a distorted image from the century's brand-new medium: film. At the League of Women Voters meeting in Holland's library on Monday night, I felt like I'd walked into a ridiculous play, perhaps one like George Bernard Shaw's HeartbreakHouse. Click for more...

Many of Shaw's plays deal with the absurdity of modernity. As Shaw wrote HeartbreakHouse in 1919, he was looking back over the old century he was from, but also turning his gaze forward to the new era of technological whirligigs: their promise and, more often, their price. In the production I saw at the ShawFestival, the crazy machinery and projected film images from the era set the tone for Shaw's bemused, puzzled, sad question: what on earth are we to do now?

Monday night's meeting at the library was an informational forum arranged by the League of Women Voters. It opened with a detailed talk by a lawyer about exactly what the local ballot initiative means in legal terms, which was interesting to me but which many attendees found tedious. Oddly enough, the first item on his agenda was the First Amendment, which he simply skipped as too complicated. In the final analysis, of course, it may be the only legal issue of any importance.

After a half-hour of careful explanation, the co-chair of one of the local pro-filtering groups took her turn at the lectern, and began her talk by listing the organizations that were for and against filters in libraries. Those in favor: 2500 local signers of the petition, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, our beloved governor John Engler, her group Holland Area Citizens Voting Yes, several Republican groups I didn't catch, and I think she would have mentioned Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Mother Theresa if they weren't dead.

The groups against filters? The Gay/Lesbian Alliance, and Feminists For Free Expression - who, she was careful to point out, believes that the proper response to "badporn" is "goodporn."

Well, isn't that special. No word on whether the Communist Party or Atheists International had taken sides on the issue.

She repeated that the library does not track patron usage and so does not know if there is a problem with pornography. This is one of the contentious issues - with tens of thousands of patrons using the internet in the last four years, there have been only six instances where someone had to be removed for violating library usage rules. Only one of these is known to involve viewing pornography. In that respect, Holland is probably fairly typical; my local library has roughly the same number of complaints proportional to number of terminals.

I wanted to point out that, even if the library did keep logs, it would be a full-time job just to keep figures on the appropriateness of patrons' reading choices. I know. I've written perl code to break down a month's worth of school and library logs in the state of Utah: a gigabyte gzipped. We still don't have good figures. About four-tenths of a percent of websurfing is inappropriate for libraries, is our best guess. But we don't know.

When the first anti-filtering speaker got up, almost the first words out of his mouth were that he wasn't affiliated with the gay and feminist groups mentioned - and a nervous laugh and smile. I can't blame him.

I was the first one to stand up with a question. I briefly mentioned the fact that, in Loudoun County, a federal judge had declared library censorware to be a violation of the First Amendment and struck it down - after an extended and expensive legal dispute. I asked how, hypothetically, such a dispute would impact the city.

I was hoping to get people thinking about the way that a simple vote could divide the community. Holland has the potential to become one of the nation's test cases, and I'm not sure the city realizes what it's getting into.

But the woman who walked to the lectern to answer my question was KimberleyFraser of the Family Research Council, to whom I had addressed a Slashdot openletter earlier that same day.

I'd told Kimberley last week that I would be writing such a letter, and told her she'd get a chance to respond. I made it clear that her response would not be edited in any way. I'd just print it as she wrote it. Free publicity.

But when she got to the mike, the first thing she said was that she would not be responding. Why? Take a look at that letter again. Each Slashdot story has a clever little "dept." that it's "from" - this story pointed out that the Blue-Footed Booby was blocked by the stupid software, so I ran it "from the don't-look-at-those-boobies dept."

I'm not sure if any Slashdot regulars are even reading the depts. - I've never gotten e-mail or read a comment that even mentions them. But Ms.Fraser did. She informed us that she would not be responding to the letter because it was "from the don't look at those boobies department" (pause for dramatic effect). She held aloft a printout of the Slashdot page and shook it. From my chair I could see the yellow streaks of highlighter.

I'm not sure she even understood that the boobies in question were birds. She may not have read the whole letter. She then proceeded to share more comments, as many as she was allowed in her one minute to answer my question. It seems many of the blocked sites I'd listed were (as I said) from products besides SurfWatch, as if that entitled her to ignore SurfWatch's own errors; then she started making another point and her minute ran out. She walked out of microphone range saying that the debate would be continued. Debate?

The anti-filtering side did manage to stand up and talk about the effect of legal action on the community. I'm sure nobody remembers what they said.

Another question was on how patrons will know that material is blocked, so that errors can be unblocked. Good question - our analysis of the Utah logs shows that, in practice, errors are almost never corrected. For some reason, patrons just don't want to go to their librarian to say, "please let me look at this page that apparently is hardcore pornography."

The example that the Family Research Council has been using to show how easy it is to unblock sites is The Onion (and this was what Kimberley said in her answer). They've been standing up in front of audiences while their techies click at the keys, showing first how The Onion is blocked as obscenity, then how with a swift adjustment of the filter, we can read the story Local Prostitutes Eagerly Await Dentists' Convention. Then - I'm not making this up - Kimberley reads the first few paragraphs of that story, to illustrate how lascivious it is.

The funny thing is that their demonstration illustrates the opposite. Their techies only type in www.theonion.com to be unblocked; graphics.theonion.com remains blocked, so the pictures don't come through. They've actually been demonstrating how difficult it is for librarians to make on-the-fly corrections to blacklists. Nobody has seemed to notice.

After some more questions, an exchange developed where the director of the library ended up pointing out that attendants are near the internet terminals, and explaining the procedure to follow if someone is offended by inappropriate material. (Some people do complain: the last complaint I heard about was the BritneySpears site, though I doubt they thought it was offensive for the same reason that I do.)

The meeting closed with Kimberley retorting, "If my child sees porn, how will you erase that image from his mind?" I assume that was a rhetorical question. "A library attendant is good," she said, "but an attendant can't throw his body between the child and the screen." It was late and the building was closing; that pretty much wrapped things up.

In my work with the Censorware Project over the last two years, I've gotten used to analyzing blocking software in intricate detail. Often I think we know more about some software packages than even their manufacturers; in any event we pore over megabytes and gigabytes of data to learn as much as we can.

That knowledge is worth nothing at meetings like these. Nobody cares how the software works. Nobody is interested in terms like keyword blocking, overbroad blocking or underblocking, nor even information on effectiveness or First Amendment legal issues. The issue will be decided purely on the basis of emotion. Gigabytes evaporate down to two bits of data: (1)there exists porn; (2)filters block porn. There seems to be nothing more that anyone wants to know.

Through much of HeartbreakHouse, the characters talked past each other, unable to communicate, unable to understand. At the end, the stage that had served as workshop and sitting-room for the entire play slowly cracked open, drew apart, and a chasm grew between the rear of the stage and the front. The players, now set outside on a balcony, talked fearfully as the lights reddened and the first mortars of the GreatWar were heard in the distance. As Shaw and his audience knew in 1919, all of their talk, their whole world from the past, was now a faded backdrop of meaningless words to the machine guns, zeppelins, aeroplanes, and tanks of the modern era. Technology itself had caused the chasm between centuries. Some things never change.

Comments

The 150th Time...

[KagatoLNX]

The problem transcends the majority.

Ever hear the phrase "Tyranny of the Majority"? It was coined by one of the founders of the United States (don't remember which one, but I'm reminded of Hamilton or Jefferson).

The majority of people want nothing more than a warm bed, food, and a few shiny things to make their lives worthwhile. A society that provides that doesn't need documents like the American Bill of Rights. If you like that, look at Communism, Socialism, or Monarchy done well. There have been marches in Russia calling for a return to the days of Joseph Stalin. Why? Those people aren't stupid or brainwashed, they're hungry and cold. Their newfound freedom hasn't gained them what they want. They remember food, warmth, and safe streets. The oppression was, to them, worth it. So you may see, this is not just about protecting the children--this is about people who either:

a) Want freedoms for themselves but don't feel them appropriate for children.
-or-
b) Don't want people to excersize freedoms they have and can't get around that pesky First Amendment.

It's not about what the majority wants. It's about living the life that you want to live--quality of life. If people want to view controversial pages at the library, they should. Knowledge (and thus libraries) are not about what the entire community feels comfortable showing their children.

If you want to protect your children, that's fine--but you do it. You can't leave children alone in the world. The Internet and Libraries reflect the world--as they should. Why should you be able to leave your child alone there? Don't try to make the world be a parent for you. If you don't have enough time to spend with your children, don't have them . . . it's that simple.

While library terminals are obviously not the place to be viewing pornography, a librarian can be infinitely more effective than blocking software. A community of tens of millions of people can post pornography at a rate with which active blocking can never compete. It's impractical. Computers just aren't that smart yet.

Furthermore, incorrect blocking clearly violates the rights of minorities who need to be heard. They can never recover the damage from being blocked--mindshare.

Given that, you must understand that the library is responsible--as a public institution--to aide them in being heard. They are not responsible for protecting your children from the world. It is impractical at best--censorship at worst.

At any rate, has anyone proposed a compromise? Bottom line, anything that is blocked is *LEGAL* material for adults to view. Has anyone considered blocking software that can be deactivated for adults?

The issue is that there are some things that can have an adverse effect on children because they are not prepared to deal with those things. Adults don't have that problem. What about conditional blocking?

At any rate, just because you find it unpleasant or unsuitable for your children, doesn't mean it has no place in a public library or in our society. It's just not for you or your children.

That said, try conditional blocking that accomplishes the same thing without violating others' rights--or better yet, start a children's library. That would completely solve the problem, wouldn't it?

Re:The internet has no local standards

[Tassach]

It's tiring to repeat this, but here goes: (1) Library acquisitions are and must be governed by local community standards.

(2) There are no local community standards on the internet.

(3) Therefore, if libraries are going to make use of the internet, they will have to find a way to impose local standards on it, EVEN if that means much desirable content is lost.

As a matter of political fact, this argument will win EVERY time, but it's also the right argument. (3) follows from (1) and (2). Which premise do you disagree with?

[emphesis added] I disagree with premise (1). Public libraries are (generally) funded from the public coffers. This means, that as a (de facto if not de jure) branch of the government, there are Constitutional limits on what they can and cannot do. Public funds are to be spent to benefit the entire public, not just those that yell the loudest or who claim to have the Almighty's cell phone number. By your "local standards" rule, a Christian fundamenalist community should be able to bar their local library from carrying books that portray Judeism or Islam (or, heaven forbid, Wicca) in a positive manner; or books which teach Evil-loution instead of creationism -- because those offensive books might (gasp) cause The Children to question their parent's belief systems.

The whole "Protect our Children" mantra is getting old; My wife and I neither want nor expect Big Brother to tell us how to raise our children - that is our sole right and responsibility. If you want your children "protected" from pr0n (somthing censorware is unable to do, BTW), then do it yourself - supervise your child when s/he is surfing the net. Don't expect me to subsidize your religious predjudices with my tax dollars.

A public library is a repository for books owned in the collective public interest -- it is not a free day-care facility for your personal use, nor an indoctrination center for you to impose your belief system on other people.

"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'