A $100-an-hour Internet access fee for adults at Georgetown Township's public library is canceled - in favor of a policy restricting access to "obscene (or) sexually explicit matters" from all the library's computer terminals.
Freedom Forum and other civil libertarians have criticized both the fee and the access restrictions. "This township's filter/fee system is simply government censorship by any name or method and violates the First Amendment," Freedom Forum says on its Web site, Free!
The group notes violence is restricted along with sexually-oriented adult material, asking whether supporters of the fee or restrictions would still support them "when adult library patrons at filter-equipped machines try to look up the schedule for the next professional wrestling bout on cable TV…(w)ill it cost adults $100 an hour to research gun-related crime or other violent activity in our society or elsewhere?"
Library officials had admitted the $100-an-hour access fee was aimed directly at stopping Web surfers from using the library's computers to visit adult-oriented Web sites, according to Free!
"Township supervisors candidly admit they're trying to meet the law and beat the law at the same time - hardly the proper posture for government officials," Free! says. "Six months ago, they ordered software installed at the public library to bar any access to Web sites with violent or sexual content. But fearing a new state law taking effect on 1 August would make them reverse that order, they devised the 'fee-for-access' system. What they fear they couldn't do openly they're trying to do by sleight of hand."
Georgetown Township Treasurer Dan Carlton was quoted in the Grand Rapids Press as saying people who want to look at pornography can do it in their own homes or "somewhere else." But Free! says that, in effect, imposes another "fee on freedom" - meaning, one cannot exercise one's viewing rights to legally available material without enough money to buy a computer and pay for Internet access.
"What about explicit items on violence or sexual material in "legitimate" news media - recent reviews of the recent film "Eyes Wide Shut" for example - that appear on online news sites?" Free! asks. "What about a detailed report in a recent issue of The Washington Post, warning parents of a new fascination with oral sex among some middle school students? Who in Ottawa County will determine that it costs $100 an hour today to read an online newsmagazine or The Washington Post, but not tomorrow?"
But supporters of restrictions on adult site Web access in the library say it is a question of whether other library users should have to be subject to views of adult Web material that they do not want to see while visiting the library and passing by computer stations.
