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Victory in Holland
I think it was my friend Lizard on the fight-censorship mailing list who said: "You can't compromise with book-burners. When someone asks you to burn 1,000 books, you cannot agree to burn only 500." He's exactly right. Any middle ground is a step backwards, and hard to recover.
It's important to keep in mind how tough the battle was. Holland was chosen to be a testbed by national groups like the American Family Association and Family Research Council, and they spent a lot of money. Why? Because the AFA and FRC stood to make a lot of money by using Holland as an example for nationwide campaigning. They have been hyping up this ballot as the first big step in a nationwide campaign.
And they figured Holland would be a slam-dunk. It's one of the most conservative communities in American. And the measure was well-timed: the ballot was on the same night as the Republican primary. (Michigan is not a closed primary, though, and many Democrats did vote.)
Some Slashdot posters have commented that I've seemed pessimistic in my reports on the campaign. They've been right. I couldn't read the city's mood very well, not being a native, and based on the coverage and talks I'd seen, I didn't think the chances were very good.
While the AFA and FRC together contributed over $40,000, the anti-filter side raised - locally - $2,000.
The AFA sponsored a "pushpoll," in which a Florida firm made phone calls to hundreds of likely voters, asking them "questions" designed to leave the impression that the library is inviting to pedophiles. Local anti-filter volunteers went door-to-door.
The pro-filter organizations ran radio, newspaper, and cable TV advertisements, they sent out at least three direct mailings, and they spent thousands on slick presentations to local groups.
And when it came down to the vote, they lost.
This isn't the end, though. It's just the beginning. The heads of the various pro-filtering groups are all hinting that the battle is not over. Presumably that means it will become another ballot issue, perhaps later this year, perhaps next year. And it will certainly be happening elsewhere in America at the same time. (Write me when it gets to your community.)
In some cases, the unaccountable censorship of secretive blocking software will be turned down at the voting booth. I'm guessing that, in the next five years, we'll see a definitive statement on the relevance of the First Amendment, one way or the other, in the courts.
But for now ... well, I'll close by congratulating everyone in Holland who worked to defeat this measure, and by quoting from one of the direct mailings funded by the AFA. You'll have to imagine this text as it appears, in 30-point headlines, with yellow highlights:
"America's watching, Holland. The debate over Internet filters on library computers is a national issue. Now, the focus is on Holland, Michigan.
"Tuesday, February 22nd, Holland citizens will decide the first ballot vote on filtering in the nation. How we vote will affect this issue nationwide.
"On February 22, send a clear message to America. Tell America we must protect our children from Internet pornography and drugs."
To begin with, we need to get this idea out of our heads that a kid who accidentally looks at a nude human being will be emotionally or socially injured in some way.
The only reason this is such a big deal is because of the long tradition of Puritanical/conservative/whatever values in this country that associate sinfulness/evil with the nude human form. This is completely artificial, and the sooner that sentiment is gone, the better.
If you want to talk about something that young kids really shouldn't see, how about some of the horror films to come out of the Holocaust? Who here hasn't seen, say, that grainy black-and-white film clip showing a bulldozer pushing a huge pile of dead, emaciated bodies of Jewish victims into a shallow grave?
I saw that one a long time ago, I think when I was twelve, and it hit me pretty hard. If I had seen that when I was five or seven, it would probably have left a much stronger impression on me, to the point of being harmful. (As in, I'd have needed some serious counseling to be able to get on with my life).
But even then, the only reason seeing something should leave such a strong impression on a person (not just a young person) is that he/she is unprepared for it.
The heart of this whole problem is that we are giving children these incredibly sheltered lives, where sex is unknown to them until the two-digit age range, where racism and political realities are fuzzy concepts with no real-world relevance-- while, at the same time, mass media and the Internet are super-shotgunning that filtered worldview into Swiss cheese.
And there are two ways of reacting to that. Either you call for mass action to hold back the ocean of foreign thoughts, and ideas, and pictures coming in through the cable and telephone lines-- at this point, akin to commanding the tide not to come-- or you can push up the timetable of those "little talks" you've been preparing for your kids, by about five or six years. (Or more)
Children are learning about things a lot sooner than many people are expecting them to (and taking great pains that they do). Between valiantly fighting to keep the wool over their eyes, or telling them about such things earlier, I think the latter route is the better one.
(Not that I would tell my hypothetical four-year-old all about the Holocaust, but if she were to see some of those images, and come crying to me, I would sit down with her, and explain to her the whole sordid story. As well as why a great many people today go to a lot of effort to ensure such a thing will never happen again. This, as opposed to postponing the issue for a few years with, "No, no, that was just an old horror movie...")
iSKUNK!
Yesterday or the day before, I read bitter words to the effect that, "Fundamentalists can get anything on the ballot."
Well, fundamentalists (of which I am one) got the internet filter on the ballot. and thankfully, the measure was defeated. (i oppose internet filters, too.)
What the heck's wrong with getting divisive social issues put on the ballot? A worse problem is when unelected elites impose their morality upon others *without* the opportunity of putting the measure before the people for a vote.
smiles and cheers,
steve
This weekend I went to my local library (small town NH) and signed up for Internet access (as a convenience thing when I'm in the library and want to look something up). One of the steps I had to do was reading the "policies and guidelines". "Uh-oh," I thought, "Holland all over again."
Not so. Turns out they had VERY liberal policies. Essentially, you can do anything you want, although if you view porn, etc and other patrons complain they will ask you to stop.
The most interesting thing (and I wish I had kept a copy of the sheet for the URLs it gave) was the references to Supreme Court (of US? of NH? dunno) decisions that filtering in a library amounted to censorship and had been outlawed in 1996.
If no one here can post with any more information, I'll go get another copy of the sheet and copy the URLs for jamie (or someone) to post later.
--
Here is the result of your Slashdot Purity Test.
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Make no mistake, this was a loss for the AFA. They don't have an infinite supply of money and the money they spent on trying to get this through all went down the drain. That doesn't mean they'll give up though, not as long as their coffers are full, but it does mean that their threat to keep pushing this should not obscure the fact that this is a real victory for freedom of speech.
Good for Holland, the town proved that people who use dishonest and underhanded tactics to push their agenda don't always win and can be defeated by ordinary citizens standing up for their rights.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
"Our only concern is providing maximum protection for children," he says, citing a recent case in Muskegon, Mich., where a girl was raped at a library with full Internet access.
Woo-hoo! We've finally found the rhetorical level lower than "the dumb bitch asked for it by dressing like a slut", we have "the Internet made him do it".
<MODE=ABSOLUTELY_LIVID_WITH_RAGE>
I have a friend who was raped within a block of a library. It happened in 1985. Obviously it had nothing to do with the library having Internet access, but the library did have a wide selection of books.
It must've been the books.
Mr. Glenn should consider himself extremely fortunate that he's at least 1500 miles away from said friend at the moment, or he'd be the proud recipient of the Oxford English Dictionary (the unabridged version!), each volume delivered through what remains of his distended, torn and bleeding anal sphincter. Given such an opportunity, I'd gladly fly up to Holland and hand my friend each volume for insertion.
I'd vidcap the results and webcast it, live, in streaming screaming video, to the world. I'd make a (non-encrypted :) DVD of the video. I'd sample Gary's screams, lay 'em over a pumpin' backbeat and distribute the MP3s far and wide. And I'd print out choice .JPGs along with a narrative, and put the whole thing into a professionally-bound hardcover book. That MP3 would be a chart-topper. That book would go into every library in the world. That website would be the default home page on every copy of IE5 that Bill Gates shipped.
You want obscene, Gary? Obscene isn't what's on the bookshelves of your local library. Obscene isn't what's on the Internet. Obscene isn't even what happened to my friend 14 years ago.
Obscene is what you, Gary, just did to every rape victim and everyone who's had to help pick up the pieces.
Quickly, Gary, since you're the expert on what's obscene and what's not obscene - did I just jot down an obscene piece of violent pornography, or was I making valid commentary on what it means to the victims when you trivialize rape?
Now get the fuck out of our libraries.
> that grainy black-and-white film clip showing a bulldozer pushing a huge pile of dead, emaciated bodies
> of Jewish victims into a shallow grave?
True - our (North American) culture is one that puts a "PG" rating on a breast being blown to smithereens, but an "R" rating on one being kissed. (I suppose when that AFA guy is done trivializing rape, he can say that it's the nakedness of the bodies being bulldozed that's the problem with that footage...)
As for the effects of seeing real violence upon impressionable young minds, I learned about the Holocaust at about age 8 or 9, watching war documentaries. Seeing a clip of Hitler hollering his lungs out in this majestic-looking square, facing thousands of adoring fans, and having seen the occasional swastika spraypainted on the walls of my public school, I wondered aloud who was this guy with the funny moustache and squiggly symbols behind him, and why did all the people seem to like him so much?
Dad made a very quick judgment call (a clue to AFA: this how you protect kids, it's called "parenting"), and said "He's a very, very evil man", which I tentatively took for granted, although I didn't quite understand why. Dad picked up on my confusion, warned me that I might see some things that would disturb me, but invited me to have a seat. Being a kid, of course, I couldn't resist a golden opportunity to watch "adult stuff". (More style points for Dad :-)
So Dad and I watched the rest of the documentary and followed the history of WWII together. Six weekends later, 50,000,000 were dead on all sides, but the war was mostly over, our side had won, the Russians were blowing the hell out of the rubble that was once Berlin, and our troops finally started liberating the camps. And I had a much better appreciation of what Evil was.
"So the Russians were the good guys, right? So how come they're the bad guys now?" (Kids can come up with the most embarassing questions...)
So Dad (hey, nobody said parenting was easy :-) had to tell me about Stalin. We went to the library (oh, irony, a library, of all places!) and checked out some books. I found out how he came to power. What he did afterwards. Why we overlooked it during WWII. The purges. The KGB. Another 10,000,000 on top of Hitler's 6,000,000. Yet more Evil.
Over the next few years, I realized that you don't get to pull off anything really Evil without the support - or at least wilful ignorance - of the people. All that stuff about "the banality of evil"; excuses like "just following orders", and "hey, I'm bummed by it, but I just drive the bulldozer, it's not like I can stop them".
Evil is what happens when you let government - any government - get out of control. And all that is necessary for Evil to triumph is that Good do nothing.
It took a parent to teach me that, not an Internet filter.
For Gary Glenn, president of the family association's
state chapter, the issue is
simple. "Our only concern
is providing maximum
protection for children," he
says, citing a recent case
in Muskegon, Mich.,
where a girl was raped at
a library with full Internet access.
This is from the ZDnet article that Industrial Disease posted. Some of the stuff in it is unbelievable. Some of you might want to read the part about Hudsonville, MI--a nearby town--where the AFA got enough people to sign a petition to get the Internet access in the library shut off completely. And not because they refused to filter, but because their plan would have allowed adults unfiltered access with an ID card.
numb
I'm very happy that enough citizens in Holland had the intelligence and common sense to defeat this measure. However I feel that it will be short lived given the political, cultural climate of the community. Eventually there are going to be filters unless the community can work even harder/stronger to EDUCATE the communities of the world that filter technology is not the answer.
I used to live in Michigan (all of my life) until about five months ago when I took a position at a software company in ChicagoLand. In Michigan I worked as a trainer traveling from library to library teaching librarians and other staff members how to use databases and internet resources. My backgroung is in Library and Information Science. During that position I traveled to well over 100 libraries, and also spoke at several state-wide conferences for libraries or media-centers.
Sad to say, it seemed to me that the library community is split on the issue. Academic libraries don't wan't filters. Public libraries are about 50/50 on the issue. And school media centers, well they just want to protect themselves from the litigation by are society (same for probably the 50% of libraries that are leaning towards filters)
So, what next? How to proceed?
As a community we have been doing very well at fighting this. But for all of our good intentions of fighting against filters, we are going to fail and then it could very well be a domino effect.
What about also exploring avenues that would allow public forums, i.e. libraries to avoid the filter issue. Why not created a domain where the pornographic sites are. Perhaps a .sex or a .xxx or whatever. Then they could at least have a better chance of blocking some traffic. The movie industry already does this. The music industry has started.
Down side with this idea? It would take global committment and regulation. Do we want that? I don't think so... to hard to enforce.
So what other ideas/methods could there be?
Note: Please keep in mind that I am not pro-filter/censoring. I am just looking for discussion of possible alternatives.
Never make an argument for your cause which is both falible and unneccassary. If and when it fails, some people will percieve your entire position as invalidated with it. I'm seeing it happen on an issue I work on right now, and I started worrying when I read about your little bet. Think about that in the future.
Then there's this...
I think it was my friend Lizard on the fight-censorship mailing list who said: "You can't compromise with book-burners. When someone asks you to burn 1,000 books, you cannot agree to burn only 500." He's exactly right. Any middle ground is a step backwards, and hard to recover.
When you demonify your opponents, you lose the middle ground and you cheat yourself. Some proponants of filtering software may be in the same league as "book burners." Most aren't going to be. They will be concerned parents, people who have had a misleading porn site draw them in (a friend found a site posing as a pet supply retailer that dumped her into hard core porn then kept popping up windows on her. It might be unusual, but it only has to happen once to change your opinion on the internet) people who want to feel that dropping their kids off for an afternoon at the library is better than leaving them home with the TV, and people who take care of their kids, but are worried about other peoples. You deal with these people by educating them, not with insults.
And the "no compromise" attitude sucks too. When someone complained of finding another user's porn, you didn't say "deal with it, no compromising with book burners", you pointed out a solution which is not censorship. If you actually listen to what the average voter is concerned about, you can help them solve their problems without them feeling they have to resort to censorship. If you tar everyone with the same brush, you won't know how to change the moderate minds.
Sorry to be negitive, and I mean the congradulations, but the only problem with victories is that they rarely inspire you to learn from your mistakes, and in a closer contest those mistakes will cost you. Good luck in the future.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...