LOS ANGELES—While it's been clear for quite some time that many of the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., have little understanding of the U.S. Constitution, and most particularly the First Amendment that was added to it, without which many of the Founders would have refused to sign the document, that same ignorance has apparently now taken over at least a couple of members of the Los Angeles City Council.
The issue is software filters to screen out "objectionable content" on computers at the city's public library, and Councilman David Ryu and Councilwoman Nury Martinez are all for it.
"Libraries are places of learning; they are a place for communities to connect, for individuals to empower themselves with information, and for children to grow and explore. They are not a place for lewd content or behavior," Ryu told CBS-LA last week. "Reports of individuals using illegal drugs and viewing online pornography are wholly unacceptable. Our families and children deserve better."
Trouble is, although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Children's Internet Protection Act case in 2004 that Congress could withhold funds from public libraries that failed to take steps to block access to the allegedly "objectionable" material, the result has been a hodgepodge of responses across the country, with some libraries installing software filters on all computers, or just ones that could be accessed by children, while others opted for hardware solutions: Placing opaque barriers around the computer screens and relocating some of them to areas where there would be minimal pedestrian traffic.
Until now, L.A. has chosen the latter approach, but depending on how the Council votes when the Ryu/Martinez bill hits the floor, that could change ... and one organization that opposes that change is the adult industry trade organization Free Speech Coalition.
"Librarians and patrons should not have to tolerate lewd behavior or drug use in public," Free Speech Executive Director Eric Paul Leue agreed in an email to LA Weekly's Dennis Romero, "but limiting what people access online is anathema to free speech, and antithetical to the free flow of ideas. Filtering software sounds like an easy solution, but we know that such software often casts an egregiously wide net, blocking not only sexually explicit content but also sexual health information, LGBTQ sites and sites like ours, which contains no sexual imagery whatsoever but discusses issues relevant to the adult industry."
Indeed; according to the American Library Association's Deborah Caldwell-Stone, "According to legal complaints, some libraries are denying users access to websites that discuss Wicca and Native American spirituality; blacklisting websites that affirm the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities while whitelisting sites that advocate against gay rights and promote 'ex-gay' ministries; and refusing to unblock webpages that deal with youth tobacco use, art galleries, blogs, and firearms. School librarians, teachers, and even Department of Education officials are openly complaining that the overzealous blocking of online information in schools is impairing the educational process." Also subject to blocking: information on sexual health, self-examinations of breasts to detect cancer, and even circumcision and labiaplasty.
But while Ryu has stated that "Libraries are supposed to be for learning, not lewdness. No parent should ever have to worry that their child will be exposed to sexually explicit images and videos," Leue voiced concern about the extent of the filtering being proposed.
"The councilmembers' motion wrongly suggests that 'pornography' is easily identifiable and clearly defined, rather than a shifting concept that depends on views of those policing it," he stated. "In the past year alone, we've seen magazines like Cosmopolitan attacked as pornography in conservative districts, just as we've seen crackdowns on LGBTQ content and imagery, and mere nudity elsewhere. No one should be comfortable with state-funded employees determining what is or isn't acceptable for adults to read or research, or what ideas are or aren't detrimental to public health."
That's hardly a new idea. For instance, back in 2005, The New York Times' "Ethicist" Randy Cohen made the case for library freedom: "Libraries should provide for the free exchange of ideas—not just ideas you or I find palatable, not just ideas suitable for 5-year-olds. And librarians should not be forced to censor patrons' reading, let alone eject them for looking at disturbing images." And just last year, the American Library Association noted that, "The lack of access to certain content poses a big obstacle for individuals who do not have home Internet access. Their research can be viewed as 'incomplete' simply because much of their access is denied, and these individuals rely on public computers for much or all of their school work in this digital age."
"Artists like Mapplethorpe, Larry Sultan and Jeff Koons certainly grace public library shelves, though they deal with the same explicit themes in the same manner," Leue added. "Censoring adult content may seem simple in practice, but history of libraries is crowded with literature, from Fanny Hall to the Kinsey Report to Heather Has Two Mommies, that was not long ago deemed obscene or harmful by censors."
No date has yet been announced for when the Council will take up the Ryu/Martinez proposal.
