House Might Mandate Net filtering in Libraries

Richard Finney writes "US Congress expected to mandate censoship in libraries in a CNET News.com article. " Wonder how close Slashdot is to being banned. I think this is great. We really have to prevent the children from learning, as it would be terrible if they started thinking.

Comments

Nope, that not how it works

[Kaa]

The whole point in laws like this is to empower local communities to show discretion

Nope, that's wrong. The local communities can show discretion on their own without any help from the Feds. The whole point in laws like this is to force the local communities to adopt whatever standards Washington considers appropriate. Look at the legal min drinking age. The Feds cannot legislate it, but they shoved it down the throat of every state (do you really want federal highway funds? Here is how...)

The system works when local communities aren't told they MUST expose their children to a completely wide-open Internet.

I don't even know where to start. First, communities do not have children, parents do. I very specifically do not want my local community to tell me what I should teach my children. I am perfectly capable of taking such decisions by myself and do not need help from local politicians.

Second, what do you think the point of the Bill of Rights is? Community is a relative term, the Federal government is as much representative of a community, as you local town hall is. The whole point of the Bill of Rights is that people, individuals have rights that no government, including the local community one, can take away. Maybe my community wants to exercise discretion and forbid me to read Cosmopolitan (speaking of sex in the libraries [grin]), or to read Karl Marx or Ayn Rand or fill-in-the-blank -- well, it cannot. And why? Because I, as a person, have rights that my local community cannot take away.

Now, it's arguable whether absence of restrictions to access the Internet is a basic right. But that's not the issue. The issue is that the system does not work when the local communities can impose whatever idiocy the local politicians can come up with (and call it discretion) onto their population.

Phew, I am getting off the soapbox now...

Kaa

hope this gets shot down

[qmrf]

They want to block "child pornography and obscene content", eh?

Well, I can agree with not wanting child porn available to children, but, as a one-time library employee and current library volunteer (as well as a person capable of rational thought), I must say that this is a Bad Plan.

It's a Bad Plan because libraries are meant to be educational resources. Once we start banning "obscene content" from the screens of library computers, we have precedent to start banning "obscene content" from the shelves of the library. Which means that any overprotective mother who finds her child in the reference section browsing art books could sue the library for having books with pictures of Michealangelo's sculpture "David". (and wasn't the person who modeled for said sculpture only about 15? making it child porn, in a sense?) That's *just* what we need. Some of Picasso's works (if I'm identifying them correctly as his) have bare breasts represented. Can't have that, now can we? Our library carries movies too, including _Pleasantville_. In said movie, there is a painting of a nude woman. Need to get rid of that movie too.

And that's not even a very broad definition of "obscene content". Depending on how you interpret it, all of the trash romance novels (big loss, i know :), Stephen King books, war novels, chemistry books, newspapers, magazines, etc could be defined as containing "obscene content" (especially considering the post-Littleton context in which this is being proposed...I remember reading about the VietCong's homemade weaponry when I was a kid; we don't want kids learning how to fashion weapons, now do we?)

Granted, this law may not specifically endanger our book collections, but it's only a short step further. Also, I grant that censoring public library collections isn't a new thing, but it's something that (in my opinion, at least) we should not encourage with laws of this kind.

Does anyone know of any petitions we can sign against this?

Not really a full ban

[Izaak]

The way I read it, they are not really *requiring* the filters. The government will simply withhold specific net related funding for libraries and schools that do not implement it. It amounts to about the same thing really, considering how cash strapped these institutions are.

Hopefully it will still be found unconstitutional. Some filtering in grade schools I can understand, but it should be left up to individual schools to determine their policy. Censorship in libraries, however, is absolutely abhorant. Censorship at the highschool level is also a Bad Idea. Even at the grade school level, the best filter is teacher involvement in the web surfing experience. Making the computer an unattended *replacement* for adult supervision is almost as bad using the television for that (at least with small children).

And what about this possible ban on Internet gambling? The way I read it, it is really the casino industry trying to protect their business. I don't gamble, but I am annoyed that the government feels they need to *protect* me in this way. Just more errosion of our freedoms.

Thad

Censorship bad, but...

[substrate]

Enforced morals via censorship is bad, but there is also a time and a place for everything. Most libraries don't carry visual pornographic materials (one of the local libraries where I grew up used to carry Playboy, not sure if they still do) and thats their right. It shouldn't be the governments job or responsibility to provide, enforce or mandate filtering however.

Some people are going to have a problem with libraries censoring or discouraging pornography as well. Get over it, go buy a magazine or rent a video. Most forms of media or libraries are censored in one form or another. Slashdot is censored in the form of having editors. The editors only post articles which from their point of view fit in with the editorial guidelines they've set forth: News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. I might feel that to me "The Internet Archive of Invasively Nude Female Geeks" fits in with the mandate, but its up to Rob and Hemos and others whether it gets posted.

Likewise I can walk down the hallway to our company library and look at the magazines: IEEE Circuits and Systems yes, Hustler no. Do I feel offended that I can't get pornography here? Nope, I'm free to do that on my own time. I would be offended if the company decided to filter out certain websites. I wouldn't be offended if I were repremanded for visiting them on company time though.

Growing Federalism

[DonkPunch]

What bothers me is the legislators thinking that they can/should mandate this at a federal level. This is an issue which is best dealt with by the communities. I at least have a chance of being heard by my local library and school district.

Unfortunately, many Americans don't seem to understand that there are, by design, several "governments" in the U.S. Some laws should be federal in scope, some should only be state or local laws. Problems arise when the federal government starts meddling in affairs best handled at a local level. Community standards are not a "one-size-fits-all" matter.

I am also concerned about the TYPES of "solutions" legislators are pursuing in the wake of Littleton. Why is it that all of these solutions seem to involve restrictions of personal freedoms and/or legislation of dubious Consitutionality? Don't they have anything constructive to add?

Shame on you, Congress -- especially those of you who claim to be for less federal government. I guess growing federalism is OK when it furthers your own agenda.

Slashdot WILL be censored

[jamiemccarthy]

[I] think it's too over-reactive to think that SlashDot would be censored. I don't recall any nudie pics...

You're joking, right?

The censoring will be done by computer (because no humans can read the 1,000,000+ URLs added to the web every day). And it will be done broadly (because no human or computer can visit a site ten times a day to review what has changed).

Cyber Patrol, the most popular censorware program and widely regarded as one of the best, decided to block over 50 ISPs in their entirety. The whole domains. Gone. Often because of a few naughty words - or because of links to naughty sites - or sometimes not even for any reason we could figure out.

Slashdot does not have a naughty-words filter, so I can post the word "fuck" as much as I want. And it allows links to naughty sites, such as your link to Hustler. So slashdot.org will surely be blocked, in its entirety, by any censorware program that discovers it.

Jamie McCarthy