Minneapolis's public library says they're willing to forego about $160,000 worth of federal funding a year rather than let anyone other than themselves decide whether to install Internet filters that don't always filter what they're aimed at filtering while blocking Websites having nothing to do with adult or "objectionable" material.
As it is, the Minneapolis library is facing a budget squeeze, but director Kit Hadley told the St. Paul Pioneer-Press the library's board believes filtering "is a serious barrier to free and full access to information." And the Minneapolis library may not be the only one willing to shun federal funds if it means it keeps the decision on whether and even what to filter.
In fact, according to New Jersey attorney Eric Bernstein, whose practice includes First Amendment, civil rights, labor, and adult entertainment issues, many more libraries than people might suspect are likely to turn their backs on federal dollars, in large part because they don't want to get into censorship matters.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Congress was within its powers to tie federal funds for library technology to whether or not public libraries installed Internet filters. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the 6-3 majority, said filtering does not violate library patrons' First Amendment rights. "The interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in a concurring opinion.
"I think the arguments have been made," Bernstein told AVN Online. "It's basically a hammer to kill a gnat. It's overkill?The technology isn't available at this point...Nobody's in favor of having kids seeing Internet sites they don't belong seeing, but why should the library be different, necessarily, than homes, in the sense of we're not putting filtration on personal home or work computers, and children can see them any time of day, so long as there's no parental review?"
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said it was shown clearly enough in the lower federal court that filtering softwares are anything but perfect. "Given the quantity and ever-changing character of Websites offering free sexually explicit material," Stevens wrote in his dissent, going on to quote from the lower court ruling, "it is inevitable that a substantial amount of such material will never be blocked?Conversely, the software's reliance on words to identify undesirable sites necessarily results in the blocking of thousands of pages that 'contain content that is completely innocuous for both adults and minors, and that no rational person could conclude matches the?category definitions for 'pornography' or 'sex'."
In another dissent, Justice David Souter addressed the censorship question more directly. "Quite simply, we can smell a rat when a library blocks material already in its control," he wrote, "just as we do when a library removes books from its shelves for reasons having nothing to do with wear and tear, obsolescence, or lack of demand. Content-based blocking and removal tell us something that mere absence from shelves does not."
"The technology doesn't only block out certain sites and not others," Bernstein said. "Kennedy and (Justice Stephen Breyer, who also concurred with the majority) spoke about government interest in protecting library users. I understand that better than other arguments. But you're now asking a whole other group of people to get involved in providing censorship or oversight of individuals who should be learning that not (by) the government but at home."
The American Library Association, which denounced the Court decision, still noted that Kennedy and Breyer joined only the judgment but didn't agree with Rehnquist's ruling. "(They)?believe adult patrons need only ask the librarian to 'please disable the filter' and need not provide any reason for the request," said Judith Krug, who directs the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom. "In light of this, we expect libraries that decide they must accept filters to inform their patrons how easily the filters can be turned off."
The ALA repeated its demand that libraries who do filter disclose fully all the Websites or pages blocked and not just the "objectionable" sites. Filtering critics often point out that, depending on the keywords, Websites like daily newspapers, political Websites, health and medical sites, even sports or legal Websites, can get blocked by these programs.
ALA press officer Frank DiFulvio told AVN Online there had been a number of libraries around the United States who said, prior to the Supreme Court ruling, that they would reject federal funds if the Court ruled as it did in the end. But now that the ruling has come, just how many will follow Minneapolis and actively spurn the federal funds remains to be seen.
"I don't know if it's going to be a larger trend than it had been in anticipation of the ruling," DiFulvio said. "We don't have any numbers based yet on the decision, but there are a few. Before the decision, what they were saying was that if the decision comes down the way it did, they would forestall taking the federal funds because they didn't want to censor. They were committed to not doing that."
He said 95 percent of the nation's libraries have their own Internet use policies and each had the right to choose based on community standards. "We were saying," he said, "that this should not become a federal mandate."
Bernstein said the Court ruling also amounted to saying libraries should be parents. "Ultimately, the (ruling) is going to be a relatively typical federal law or government regulation, and there's going to be a way around it: in order not to be governed by the law, they don't take the money. I should not have to be told that I should not be at an adult site that I don't belong on as a child. That should be taught at home. And it now becomes the library's responsibility."
