South Carolina's On-Again, Off-Again Filtering

fuzzbomb writes: "South Carolina libraries were forced to put filters on their computers or lose half of their funding. Now they're having to remove filters from some of their computers because the law says that every library system must offer unfiltered access on up to 10% or at least one of their computers. "

Comments

e-mail is being blocked?

[garcia]

it says that the main reason for removing the filter is for e-mail access (as the current filter blocks it).

now, correct me if I am wrong, but don't most of those that use a library computer for Internet access do *some* surfing and research but the majority use it for e-mail access? This is at least what I have noticed in my few trips to the public library.

wouldn't it make more sense to have a filter that did not block e-mail but did block the rest of the crap? According to the article one of the librarians said that the filter is the best thing for them? Why not allow e-mail but still block the other shit?

Just my worthless .02

so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the law was updated so that if the filters block valid research you can move to an unfiltered one.

This is what we wanted, right?

Problem of Perception

[matthewg]

One thing I noticed while reading the Charlotte Observer articule is that they kept referring to the filters as "pornography-blocking software". They implied that the filters block porn and only porn. One of the more serious problems with filters is that they block a lot of other material as well.

Re:Problem of Perception

[Erasmus Darwin]

I don't think medical radiation is quite the same thing -- you don't have private companies with zero accountability manipulating the effects of medical radiation to push their own political agendas.

In contrast, a so-called "anti-pornography" filter can (and in many cases does) delibrately censor sites containing information that is critical of the company producing the filter (Peacefire, anyway?) or that focuses on gay rights (a non-pornographic issue that is contrary to the religious-oriented nature of some of the filter companies). This same material, if presented in book form, would most likely not be blocked.

Futhermore, there have been cases where "anti-pornography" filters have been found to block the sites of various politicians. Whether on purpose or accidental, this underscores just how drastic the results of giving carte blanche censorship power to a private company can be.

Overall, we have a hard enough time trying to define pornography in a regular, open context. To just hand this decision off to a private company with no oversight and less regulation than a corner hotdog vendor.

Its called supervision

[gad_zuki!]

"I think as adults, we have to step up and see to it that (children) are safely using the computer and that they're not going to see the filth out there," Provence said.

So why are you enlightened adults passing this duty off to some lame filter? Kids will find their way through it in about, oh, 8 nanoseconds.

If you want effectiveness, post rules and take an occasional glance at what people are doing. Ban the rule breakers for x amount of time and let the fear and chilling effect do the rest.

Filters don't work and these "responsible" adults aren't being very responsible at all.

"People who cry that it's limiting their freedoms ... I don't think they have a leg to stand on. Children under 18 aren't allowed to go to R-rated movies, so why would we allow them to go into a school or a library and see X-rated material?"


This suggests that 18 and overs should be able to disable filters which is and never will be the case. Most people I see in the library are over 18 anyways.

Re:Its called supervision

[Velox_SwiftFox]

But what happens when an adult wants to research extremist hate sites (or something else nonpornographic that isn't covered by the agreement) and someone complains about the local church minister's viewing of ihatefags.com (easily viewable by anyone else in the library, thanks to your publically positioning the monitors)? Wouldn't you start getting into first amendment controversies there?

I can also imagine a comical situation as someone tries to block from the rest of the library's censorous view the sea of you-can't-close-them pornographic popups resulting from clicking on an apparently innocious link, say from a search engine. "No! Don't look! I'm not reading those! Nobody look!"

Re:Its called supervision

[orius_khan]

"People who cry that it's limiting their freedoms ... I don't think they have a leg to stand on. Children under 18 aren't allowed to go to R-rated movies, so why would we allow them to go into a school or a library and see X-rated material?"

This suggests that 18 and overs should be able to disable filters which is and never will be the case. Most people I see in the library are over 18 anyways.

It's also nothing like restricting children from seeing 'R'-rated (or NC17) movies. Movies are reviewed by a group of people on an individual basis, and a rating is given to each movie. The internet filtering software bans sites based on the pages matching a certain list of words, completely out of context, and it cannot tell the difference between a minor and an adult user. That would be like disallowing anyone to see "Saving Private Ryan" in the theater, because 'the title contains the word "private" and pornography is not suitable for children'.

Now obviously the movie mentioned is not made for children either, but the point is that everyone would be prevented from seeing it because of the so-called child-safety legislation. And how many otherwise acceptable movies be trapped under a similar word-net, considering all the different euphemisms for body parts and sexual acts?

Let me get that straight

[Anonymous Coward]

The South Carolina law says every library system must offer unfiltered Internet access on up to 10 percent, or at least one, of its public computers.

Assuming that the "or" in the law is logically an "and", it is illegal for a library to have <=9 computers because if 1 or more is unfiltered, it contradicts the "10 percent rule", and if 0 is unfiltered, it contradicts the "at least one" rule.

Of course, if the "or" is logically an "or", then a library can have 100% unfiltered and the legality boolean reads: (false || true) == true.

I think that Logic101 should be a required course in the study program of lawmakers.

WTF?

[Jaysyn]

What would be so freaking difficult about having a "Children's Section" in your library? If you're under 18 you use the filtered/monitored computer(s) near the librarian's desk. Keep the other computers in the reference area where they are supposed to be. I live in a small rural town that uses this system, and this isn't even an issue for us.

Jaysyn

X terminals will rule the day, then

[blang]

Teh requirement of 10% or at least one computer to offer unfiltered access will do away with filters nicely.

Set up only one Linux server, that works as display manager for the whole library. Let all workstations be X terminals. No more filtering.
Plus library will save a bundle and half worth of HW and software licenses.

Filters are useless...

[sfe_software]

Filtering any type of content will, at best, filter a larger percentage of acceptable content than the stuff it's supposed to filter. We see this time and time again.

Besides -- who the hell goes to the library to look at pr0n? I can't see how filtering legitimate medical-related sites and such really does anything more than hurt the situation. If there existed a filter that could do the right thing 95% of the time, I might agree, but as far as I know, no filtering system is even close to 50% right...

Again, though, the (hopefully) very small percentage of people who use public computers to look at pr0n and other such things, compared to the large amount of users who'd have legitimate content blocked, really makes these things pointless.

And then, to decide that making 10% of the PCs unfiltered -- doesn't that just defeat the purpose? One looking for pr0n can switch to another computer just as easily as someone who was un-fairly denied content... so again, it's just a waste of (taxpayer's) money.

Filtering the Internet is kinda like book banning

[Gezzus Krist]

I don't think that children should have unrestricted access to the Internet, and I don't think that the purpose
of library computers is so that people can access pornography. However, I don't think that it's the
governments place to say what information I have access to either. I have seen many books in the library
that I would not want small children to have access to because they have unsuitable content. However,
should we ban the Catcher in the Rye, Tropic of Cancer, or the Bible.

Should we restrict people from viewing any literature that has opinions that are contrary to the governments
views.

Why not just require a parent to sit with the child and monitor their online sessions. Wouldn't a responsible
parent do that anyway.