Week 3, Thing 7 : Technological Thing of Interest

Internet Filtering in Public Libraries

In one sense, filtering the internet in public libraries is just an update on the age-old practice of attempting to ban books deamed unsuitable for children. On the other hand, it is both more widespread and more insidious than any such attempt. The Blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship has a good article about the issue here. As noted there, the U.S. government supports internet filtering in public libraries, virtually mandating it in many places, since the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) states that public libraries must filter the internet in order to receive public funds.

The arguments for filtering, in my opinion, depend on a little grain of truth and a heaping supply of misinformation and fear-mongering. The obvious little bit of truth is that there is a lot of material readily available on the internet that is unsuitable for children. Many would agree that plenty of this material is inappropriate for humans in general. The government should not be supporting pornography, some argue. What an adult wants to see on their own computer in their own home is their business, but the government shouldn't be paying for computers used to view porn in public libraries. So, if these libraries want the government to fund them, they need to use software that keeps the porn out. That way, impressionable children in libraries won't be harmed by it.

The problem with this argument is partly a problem of technology. Filters lack the "intelligence" to filter out all material that fits a reasonable definition of "pornography" without also inadvertently filtering out much clearly non-pornographic material. As the article cited above notes, filters tend to filter out all materials relevant to sexuality along with the explicitly sexual sites that the majority would agree actually are unsuitable for use by minors. Suppose a fifteen year old wants information about sexuality or sexual health. Unless one is an extreme social conservative, most would agree that even children may be legitimately curious about these issues, and would be well-served to have reliable information. It's not simply a matter of curiosity in some cases, but of health, and even of life and death. Is the threat to childhood innocence of inadvertantly running into explicit sexual pictures so severe that, for instance, we have to deprive a gay teen of the ability to use the internet to find information about LGBT support organizations? I don't believe so.

An additional problem is that some filtering software is not merely inept at determining the difference between helpful information and pornography; some is designed by people who actually want to see the distinction blurred. For instance, there are filters that ban the sites of organizations that provide helpful information on sexuality and birth control, but allow sites that promote the dubious goal of convincing gay teenagers that their sexuality is a disease that can be cured. Companies that provide filtering software have proprietary standards, so neither the library nor its patrons can know what it is that they're being "protected" from. Certain sites, whether by accident or by design, simply vanish.