Library to block porn websites
YAKIMA HERALD REPUBLIC
Dan Catchpole | September 26, 2012
Yakima Valley Regional Library started blocking pornographic websites from its computers Wednesday after community members petitioned for tighter controls.
Library officials said a recent U.S. District Court ruling opened the door for them to be more selective about what content patrons can access while using a library’s computers.
Community members petitioned the library’s board of trustees for the policy change following a 22-year-old man’s arrest in August for allegedly masturbating while at one of the library’s computers. The board voted 5-0 to restrict online content at its Monday meeting.
The filters are works in progress, and will be reviewed and adjusted as needed, library Director Kim Hixson said. “We moved really quickly. We wanted to be proactive.”
But the new filters would not have prevented the August incident, because the man was not looking at content that would be considered pornographic, she said.
A local television station, however, reported last month that the man had been looking at sexually explicit material, which was not true, Hixson said.
Tags: Internet, Pornography, Public libraries, Washington
September 28th, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Any time there is a dramatic response to a negligible issue, it raises a red flag for me.
“The new filters would not have prevented the August incident” – So, this “solution” would have done nothing to prevent the situation it’s a response to? That’s the definition of a project unworthy of undertaking.
What’s more, the person involved in the incident (who apparently was not even viewing pornography) could have requested a filter override since he was 22 at the time and the library would be legally obligated to oblige him with no questions asked.
According to the article, this library has had a total of 6 incidents over the course of 1.6 million library visits, including 400,000 computer sessions. Just looking at the computer sessions, that’s 0.0015% of the time, or once every 66,667 transactions. This is not a real problem. The solution imposed, may be a problem, however.
Escalating the filter levels always means escalating the extent to which you over-filter. Depending on how this is handled, it can also open the door for lawsuits (consider all the cases of over-filtering preventing access to health information and LGBT community sites leading to successful suits against school libraries).
The good news? It’s still illegal to do illegal things, even if you do them in a library. Hence, the dude being arrested. Public display of obscene materials is illegal. It’s almost certain to be a violation of this library’s internet access policy, as well.