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Utah About to Sign Library Filtering Law
I am not a lawyer, but here's something interesting. The bill requires that any public library receiving state funds:
"...adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material."
"Obscene" is a term with strict legal meaning. The definition is, roughly, that the material must depict sexual conduct in an offensive way, must appeal to prurient interest as defined by community standards, and must lack serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political ("SLAP") value.
But no internet blocking software in existence blocks material according to these or any other legal criteria. For example, "sexualconduct" is defined by the state. Is mere nudity sexual conduct? Not according to most states. In Utah? I don't know. Does Smartfilter offer a Utah- or Utah-community-specific version? Of course not.
Most censorware programs just lump nudity in with hardcore obscenity. Their simple categories are aimed at the home or business market, after all, and there's no need to be very picky. Sometimes they just block any webpage with "sex" in the URL - no, I'm not making this up, that's the software they were pushing in Holland.
In other words, the only way to satisfy the requirements of the bill is to install software which violates the First Amendment by indiscriminately blocking protected material. The bill uses legal terms that no software can live up to.
Also, the bill offers no definition of "site." Is a site an entire domain? If so, then no minor may access Yahoo, because, at any given time, somewhere on geocities.yahoo.com, there is probably a (soon-to-be-decommissioned) free page with sexual content.
This is not an abstract problem. The Smartfilter software used in Utah at the time of our tests blocked the Wiretap archive, which blocked library patrons from reading the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, "Wuthering Heights," and many other legitimate and valuable texts. Not theoretically - in reality - we know because we read the proxy logs.
But after our report came out, they unblocked it - so now patrons could read about how to have sex with a horse, make drugs, and build an atomic bomb. Same archive. Two very different types of material.
So, should the entire Wiretap archive be blocked, or not? Or should the decision be made at the directory level? The file level? Granularity is important, and by using the sloppy word "site," the lawmakers have dodged the issue.
And they are not alone. Lawmakers in every state and at the federal level are looking at similar legislation. It'll be worded slightly differently every time, but none of it can get around the fundamental problem: computer algorithms aren't up to the task of categorizing human expression.
If and when the governor signs this into law, it will be an important marker in the struggle over filters. It will probably encourage other states to do the same. But, this isn't the final word; wait for the lawsuits to begin.
The Mormon capitol of the world. Whether you share their beliefs or not, you have to respect them.
No Smoking, No Boozing, No Coffee, no Tea, No Pre-Marital Sex and many other rules that may seem arcane to outsiders.
I would have a very serious problem if my tax dollars were going directly to perform abortions. The people of Utah seem to have a problem with their tax dollars going to give people access to porn.
We all know that filtering doesn't work. Too many legitimate sites are blocked. And although I'd prefer a decision like this be done on a community by community basis, the people of Utah are within their rights to do this. Boneheaded idea or not.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Let me get this straight, its okay for people to enact laws that violate the rights of people as long as a majority of the people want it.
Here are a few you'd probably get past in several US states
1) All individuals who don't go to a Christian Church are to be registered and this will be marked on their driving license.
2) If a majority of people determine that an individual is subversive that individual is required to carry an identity card at all times.
3) Evolution (the theory of descent through modification and natural selection) is not to be taught.
The "people" does not mean 100% it means either a majority of the vote or a vocal minority. A lot of these censorship and anti-evolution type bills can be reduced to the distorted application of supposed "Christian" morality. This small mindedness can be very dangerous if allowed to continue. How highly do you value the first ammendment ? Should Utah or any other state be allowed to restrict it because they don't like you to see certain things and their approach to preventing anyone seeing these pages is to stop anyone seeing various other completely safe pages.
This is censorship by bigotry, if the Netherlands has no such censorship and yet has lower crime, teenage pregnancy etc etc than almost everyone else (especially the States) then what is the point of these actions ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
2. The Governor of said state signs the bill into law, taking a brave stand in the fight against the moral chaos of the WWW.
3. The law gets struck down in court, because it just doesn't work and restricts other information.
4. The legislators and governor shrug their shoulders and say they tried their best, but the godless ACLU and other legal weasals subverted their best efforts to protect the American family.
Just another sorry episode in the saga of American politics. There's simply nothing to deter these morons from enacting an obviously ineffective and unconstitutional law. Instead, the incentive is to push ahead and try SOMETHING, just to look like they're on the job.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Also, for a rough and ready guide to the reasons why people are against filtering in general, take a look at http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/box.html, also from the ACLU's site. It contains some interesting things I haven't seen mentioned here before.
According to this definition, a serious case can be made to censor some parts of the Bible. Take Genesis chapter 19, for example, which depicts the destruction of Sodom. That chapter ends with Lot having sex with his two daughters, and impregnating them with children. From those two children came the tribes of the Moabites and the Ammonites.
According to the comments in my catholic Bible, this chapter was meant to defame those two tribes, which were Israel's enemies at the time the text was written. Which means we have here a text with descriptions of perverted sex (incest) written solely to advance a political agenda of hate.
Let's try to look at it from another angle: suppose Saddam Hussein wrote a text describing Bill Clinton having sex with his daughter Chelsea. Would this be acceptable reading for children at a Utah public library?
Supermen are superthinkers; anything else is a side issue.
The first is the necessity of filtering publicaly accessible Internet content. It is obvious to me that there are certain types of sites that I simply don't want my kids looking at -- whether it be at home at school or at the public library. It is a shame that such sites are even on the Internet in the first place. I would be most supportive of blocking such sites at publicaly accessible terminals -- inasmuch as they were all that was blocked.
This leads to the second aspect of this situation. The effectiveness of the tools which are currently being used to do this job. As the above cited study shows, they currently fail miserabely.
It is definitely wrong to block valid sites in a blind attempt to block obscene material. If lawmakers are considering the use of software to do this trick, they must also consider the full implications of such an approach.
In order for it to be effective without overstepping its bounds, such software (whatever its fundamental approach) would require a large amount of human feedback and interaction. Admitidly this would be much more expensive than a blind approach, but should lawmakers want to accomplish something, they must consider the cost of truely accomplishing their goal.
This basicaly comes down to the fact that lawmakers should not dodge the issue by implementing a quick-fix, but should fully consider all of the implications of their decisions.
"I'm on my way to the freedom land..."
The bill doesn't require software filters; it requires a policy .
So, a library could just put up a notice about not accessing illegal materials.
They can hardly be expected to
Some people might think 2. or 3. is feasible, but here's why not: many library catalogs are online today. How are they supposed to keep minors from seeing the records for material owned by that library or by other libraries that may share the catalog? Have you seen any software filter which claims to work on online library catalogs? (And if the software companies do make this claim, I, for one, would be horrified at implementation of the capability, doubly so if imposed by law.)
Filter or not, grandstanding or not, this is a bad law.
They might just as well say,