Rising pressure from parents and family groups to impose Internet content filtering software has prompted at least one library to drop the Internet altogether while other libraries who defend unrestricted Net access are feeling the heat.
The Washington Post says city commissioners in Hudsonville, Michigan voted last week to pull the plug on Internet access at the library there, which the American Library Association is calling unprecedented. Hudsonville officials tell the Post they felt "cornered," since free speech advocates might sue if the library installed filtering software while family groups might sue if they didn't.
"It's really sad we have to do this," says Hudsonville Assistant City Manager Pauline Luben to the Post. "We didn't feel we can financially fight it."
The battle over Internet filtering puts libraries onto a far different plane than fights over whether to keep out such books as Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye. With the Internet, the Post says, children can browse the world and see all kinds of sexually explicit material.
ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom director Judith Krug tells the paper the Hudsonville decision is appalling and she fears more similar battles coming from other communities as a result.
Libraries waver between installing filtering software for all its computers, installing it for the children's section alone, or refusing to install it at all. Filtering critics like the American Civil Liberties Union say one key problem with filtering software is that their imperfections often lead to non-sexually explicit sites, even newspapers or other news media, being blocked in hand with porn or other "objectionable" Web sites.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that Loudoun County, Virginia libraties violated the First Amendment by filtering all its computers. The ACLU also notes that electronic filters that search for certain words are imperfect and may even block materials on birth control and AIDS, the Post says.
Karen Jo Gounaud, president of Family Friendly Libraries in Springfield, VA, tells the paper free access isn't a free speech question, since the Constitution protects Playboy, she said, but libraries do not have to subscribe. "Constitutionally protected material does not mean taxpayers-funded, guaranteed access to materials," she tells the paper. "Material that is legal doesn't mean it must be in the library."
Library Net filtering is now mandatory in Arizona and South Dakota, while Congress is mulling similar legislation which ties Net filtering to federal library Internet subsidies, the Post says.
