ACLU sues library for not allowing access to internet porn

[Tez3]

Good to see that the article writers are following up and revising tho' the image is now in the readers brains anyhow so the issue of freedom of public access to information will be drowned in the clamour to not let kiddies see porn in the library.

The two don't have to go together. It is perfectly possible to filter pornography (of any sort, whether it be sexual based video content or gore-fest violence) without having to deny access to other sites of interest. There are some kinds of art based content that might be harder to filter properly but that's why you have staff to help out on request - after all, there's a world of difference between researching Botticelli and wanting to go to "Bare Naked Ladies dot com".

For the record, no, I don't think that being able to watch pornography in a public library is appropriate. What people want to watch in private is their own business and our own senses of propriety should be able to draw the line between what is acceptable where.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barenaked_Ladies

I think anyone wanting to find porn at Barenaked Ladies.com may have a surprise as it's a Canadian band not a porn site lol!

Child molesters however wouldn't be watching porn in a library, what they would be doing however if they didn't have a computer at home is grooming children online. The other thing they would be doing online is finding something that would amuse children like story sites, cartoons etc with a view to chatting to the children and looking to groom them from there. they want to appear soft and fuzzy to the children they won't be dirty old men leering at photos online, they will be respectable looking people ( I say people because it's not only men as some high profiles cases here have proved) aiming to look like teachers, parents or grandparents trying to win the trust of children. The computers in this case aren't the things we should watch for. Child molesters for the most part are planners, the 'chase', the preparation turns them on as much as the actual deed. It's unlikely that the child molesters are the ones looking at porn in libraries.

 

[Cryozombie]

Just as an FYI on a technical note... most of these filtering packages are customized at the server level based on lists provided by third parties and added to by admins. Me, I wouldn't expect the average Librarian to have the technical knowledge to manage changing which PCs were in which server lists on their systems at any given time... Unless you were gonna pay a full time admin to sit there and activate and deactivate filter lists based on who was accessing a PC, I just don't see it happening that way.

 

[Sukerkin]

Whilst what Cryo noted above is true, it is also true that it is hardly rocket science to alter the filters.

I don't know what it is like in America but over here librarians are trained information specialists (or at least they used to be) so it would not be beyond their wit to do this. I nearly took a degree in Librarianship myself before I sailed down the Economics river . One of my close friends is a library assistant at the local university and he'd have no trouble doing this.