Utah About to Sign Library Filtering Law

Greyfox writes "This USA Today story tells us that the Utah Senate just passed a law to withhold funding from libraries that don't implement net filtering. The law now goes to the governor for signing or not signing." The bill text talks about keeping minors off sites with "obscene" material. Most Utah libraries will probably just sign on to the existing statewide Smartfilter network, which (as the Censorware Project has shown) already blocks a legitimate access every 99 seconds. As the law pressures more libraries to sign up, that rate will climb. More thoughts below...

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.

Comments

Nitpicking

[knuth]

The bill doesn't require software filters; it requires a policy .

No state funds shall be provided to any public library that offers use of the Internet or an online service to the public unless the library adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material.

So, a library could just put up a notice about not accessing illegal materials.

They can hardly be expected to

1. Make Internet access available only to adults,
2. Prevent minors from accessing all systems that might contain obscene materials by community standards, or
3. Effectively filter terminals to which minors have access.

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,

No state funds shall be provided to any public school that offers use of the telephone to the public unless the school adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to calls that contain obscene material