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

Filters may be OK

[Waffle Iron]

If they're having a lot of problems with dusty conditions in South Carolina libraries, then I support filters on the computers. It could help the fans and other components last longer.

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

[BrianH]

I agree completely, and this is exactly the route my local library took. Three years ago when they first installed Internet access, the problem arose that children were accessing porn via the libraries computers. Did they filter? Did they restrict access? Did they prohibit the Internet altogether?

No. First they instituted the Internet Card. It's like a library card, but for Internet access. You have to agree to several rules to get the card (including no porn), and then it must be inserted into the machine during each use. The beauty of the card is that the parents of minor children must sign for their access INSIDE the library, and must also agree to a few things...including acceptance of the fact that they know about the objectionable materials on the internet and are allowing them on anyway. This eliminates the libraries liability and reduces pressure on them to filter. The second step was to RELOCATE the computers to the middle of the library. The public computers are in two large circles in the center of the main room, where you can be assured ZERO privacy (the keyboard trays were recessed to prevent people from peeking your passwords as you typed them in.) The third and final step to eliminate porn from the library was to scrap the paltry 14" monitors originally supplied by Compaq and replace them with shiny new 21" screens...which are BIG and EASILY VIEWABLE from behind.

Today, there is no longer a problem with porn in our libraries public computers. Anyone dumb enough to open up xxxsluts.com on one of their computers would be spotted within minutes, and they are usually reported to the librarian immediately. Wthout the user even being aware that he's being investigated, the librarian can then verify what sites that computer has viewed via a special proxy monitoring package and establish exactly what was being looked at. If the librarian determines that the user was in fact trolling for porn, then his card can be instantly suspended for 7, 30, or 90 days, depending on whether he's done it before (subsequent offenses result in a five year access loss).

And there you have it. The perfect way to eliminate porn in libraries without filters! And before anyone tries to argue it's effectiveness, let me point out that it's worked perfectly. A few people were nailed within a few weeks of the new systems implementation, but after those instances the reports of porn viewing dropped SHARPLY. They now average one suspension a month, and those tend to be new users who didn't expect rigid enforcement. Parents love it because their kids are safe from viewing porn and extremist hate sites, students love it because they don't have to deal with annoying filters blocking their access when they try to do their biology homework, and computer geeks love it because they get to stare at those beautiful 21" screens whenever they go to the library. Everyones happy :-)

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

[BrianH]

Ah, they have an answer for THAT too. Adults are permitted to view pretty much any non-pornographic site on the Internet. If you want to view IHateFags.Com, then you are permitted to. What they have done is set up two computers at the end of the librarians counter that aren't visible to regular users. They ask that people who are viewing "objectionable" material use these (you must get librarian permission to use them), but make it clear that screen content is still visible to the staff. If you view something objectionable on one of the regular machines and someone complains, they may ask you to change to one of the private machines. And what about innocuous links and popups? That's why they review the request logs. It's pretty easy to tell a porn surfer from someone who may have accidentally brought up a single page (and promptly closed it)

See, all it takes is a little forethought and common sense.

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.

Re:how to filter

[MikeFM]

I've suggested before that Mozilla have a filtering technology built-in that lets the web be filtered by content-on-the-page, url/filename, image size, etc and all these be able to be specified in XML files on the web so you could subscribe at choice to one or more filters that'd block/modify your web experience. My main reason is to have easy ad-blocking but it'd work just as well to block porn.

An example would be that I happen to have a web site I wrote that collects images viewed through my web proxy and lets users vote on categories those images belong in.. including ratings on nudity and content.. so w/ such a filtering technology in the browser you could subscribe to my website and let other users moderate what images were acceptable.

It is democratic so at least it is reasonably fair (unlike company controlled software) and extensible and you could choose to block any kind of image you wanted.. you could block out images in the 'Al Gore' category if that was the one thing that you wanted to protect your children from.

As a South Carolina resident...

[pgpckt]

I can assure you our state is a little messed up sometimes. Catch this:

The state of South Carolina for years uses one-time funds for multiple years projects (not the brightest bulbs). This year the one time money didn't come in, and the state had a budget shortfall of $800M. The state decides to account for this shortfall they will cut funding to all state programs...except education...except colleges, because apparently colleges don't count as education. Tuition for instate residents at Clemson University just went up 40% this year to make up for the "we won't cut education, except for those rich colleges" decision. This is increasing ironic as last year Clemson University was named "Time Magazine's Public College of the Year" and this year we won a couple more awards. Apparently, in South Carolina, if you college wins a national award, you cut their funding. After all, we wouldn't want people to think South Carolina actually has GOOD schools! (I for the record do not mind the tuition increase. I personally support it as I feel the college had no choice. I fault the State, not the school.)

It does not suprise me in the slightest that South Carolina is having a little trouble figuring out what the law with regard to filtering should be. At least they made a decision here that tends more to the libertarian side.

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

Why censor it at all?

[3141]

State Attorney General Charlie Condon says that "Pornographic smut anywhere is undesirable, but in the local library where our children visit, is intolerable."

I have to ask, why? I can't understand why people are so keen to stop their children seeing things. When they finally get to see what it is they've been blocked from it'll obviously hold more interest for them, being completely new. Blocking things can only be successful if every single instance of that thing is blocked, which is impossible. If you remove pornography from the Internet, then the kids can see see it on TV. Block it from TV, and they'll see it in some magazine one of their friends at school smuggled in.

It's a losing battle, and it would be far better to just leave the Internet unfiltered and foster a spirit of family discussion in the home. If the kid sees something like hate propaganda, it's going to have a lot more effect on him if it's a totally new idea. Let them see everything, so that they know to spot the gunk when they see it.

One day they're going to see it, they might as well be prepared for it.

unpopular opinion

[sinster]

I'm probably going to get flamed here, but I don't really have a big problem with filtering in public libraries.

Remember that we're talking about libraries that are funded with public money. That means money that comes from taxpayers.

I, a taxpayer, should be allowed to exert unilateral control over which public programs are candidates to receive my portion of the tax pie. If I'm an ignorant baboon and I demand that none of my money be used to view bomb making instructions, then I should be allowed to do that. And if I demand that none of my money should go to pro-DMCA biased studies, then I should be able to do that as well.

Of course, implementing such a system would be a bookkeeping nightmare. So then we get the all or nothing solution that is so popular in the US' version of a democracy: if enough people raise a stink about something, then no one's tax money is spent to do that thing.

Fine. Better that than forcing me to pay for something that I'm opposed to. All that means is that as different groups scream and fight about different funding programs, more and more programs get cut. And as more programs get cut, there's more room for the government to lower my taxes. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

The real problem here isn't that we have filtering in public libraries. The problem is that we don't have enough private organizations operating libraries for the public. Let them charge a monthly fee for the library card and go from there. These baboons who demand filtering in the libraries probably don't use the libraries anyway, and therefore they'd have no influence on whether or not a privately run library would have filtering.

Of course, there are certain problems that a privately run library would have that public libraries wouldn't. And that's why we need both. Go to the private library for almost everything, but go to the public library when you need to read something that's critical of the corporation running the private library.

And there's the possibility that a cowardly management team in the private library would follow suit with the public library's filtering. But if they did that they'd be particularly dumb: if the public library is all filtered, then a private library that doesn't filter would have exclusive access to that portion of the market that wants unfiltered information. Talk about a revenue boon! Alas, cowardly managers are pretty common.

Censorware MUST ban privacy, anonymity sites

[Seth Finkelstein]

Let's see if it's safe for me to go back to Slashdot ...

Readers may be interested in my anticensorware reports on the above topic, particularly

• http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php - BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity)
• http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/greate stevils.php - SmartFilter's Greatest Evils - censorware & privacy/anonymity

Censorware MUST ban privacy, anonymity, even language-translation sites, because these represent a possible escape from the control of censorware.

See also, by Peacefire, http://peacefire.org/babelfish/ - BabelFish blocked by censorware

I'm going to be releasing much more anticensorware work in the near future, but it's not clear if it'll be accepted for consideration on Slashdot. This is in part due to the still-active issue of What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org), and the acrimony between myself and Slashdot editor Michael Sims. I'm trying to see if there is a way to work around that editorial abuse, but frankly I'm a programmer, not a diplomat.

-- Seth Finkelstein

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.

Library in Dublin, California

[rossz]

They came up with a simple solution to the requirement that they install filtering software on the computers. When you fire up the browser it asks if you want filtered or unfiltered access. Meets the legal requirements and doesn't interfere with internet access (the law doesn't say anything about requiring people to use it, just that it must be installed on the computer).

For the hell of it, I checked a few non-porn sites to see if they were blocked. Slashdot wasn't, but Peacefire was.

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.