Are web filters at your school too restrictive essay

PUBLISHED BY CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC.

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H QC Libraries and the Internet

Researcher

Are filters needed to block pornography?

P eople of all ages — from school kids to senior

citizens — are going to public libraries to use

the Internet. But along with vast sources of

valuable information, the Web also provides

access to X-rated material regarded as unsuitable for

youngsters. A new federal law seeks to limit minors’

access to pornography on the Internet by requiring

federally subsidized libraries to install software filters to

block Web sites with objectionable material. But the

American Library Association and the American Civil

Liberties Union say the law violates freedom of speech.

Supporters and opponents of the law disagree about

whether filters work in blocking pornography. They also

disagree about whether using library computers to view

X-rated sites is widespread or rare.

◆ WINNER, SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE

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THIS ISSUE THE ISSUES ........................... 467

BACKGROUND ..................... 474

CHRONOLOGY ..................... 475

CURRENT SITUATION ........... 479

AT ISSUE ................................ 481

OUTLOOK ............................. 483

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................... 485

THE NEXT STEP .................... 486

LIBRARIES AND THE INTERNET

466 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

467 • Can filtering protectchildren from objection- able materials? • Can other policies protect children from objectionable Internet materials? • Is it constitutional to require libraries to install filtering?

BACKGROUND

474 Library RightsThe library profession’s advocacy for intellectual freedom evolved gradually.

476 Freedom to ReadLibrarians have strength- ened their commitment to intellectual freedom.

478 Cyberspace BattlesLibraries are embroiled in legal battles over efforts to regulate the Internet.

CURRENT SITUATION

479 Filtering PracticesDiffering views on filtering emerged in hearings earlier this year.

480 Legal IssuesThe ALA and ACLU oppose mandatory filtering.

OUTLOOK

483 Access IssuesSupporters and opponents of filtering remain at odds over the effects of the policy on library patrons’ access to information.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

468 Most Libraries HaveInternet Connections Ninety-six percent of public library outlets are connected.

469 Blocking Software Used atFew Libraries Three-quarters of the work- stations can’t block porn.

471 Protecting KidsRecommendations from the Commission on Online Children Protection.

472 Can Computers SolvePreservation Problems? New technologies create strains on libraries as well as new opportunities.

474 Many Libraries Treat KidsLike Adults Nearly half the nation’s public libraries do not have separate Internet-use policies.

475 ChronologyKey events since 1876.

477 School Libraries FacingFilter Mandate Filtering is more widespread in schools.

481 At IssueShould public libraries use filters to block pornography?

FOR MORE INFORMATION

485 BibliographySelected sources used.

486 The Next StepAdditional articles from current periodicals.

487 Citing The CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

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Cover: Young people can use computers in public libraries to get valuable information from the Internet — or to visit pornographic Web sites. (AP Photo/Mark Crosse)

June 1, 2001 467CQ on the Web: www.cq.com

BY KENNETH JOST

THE ISSUES

Libraries and the Internet

K athleen R.’s 12-year- o l d s o n B r a n d o n was spending a lot of

time at the Livermore, Ca- lif., public library, ostensi- bly working on his home- work. But when Kathleen looked inside his gym bag one day, she found some- thing besides dirty clothes: a cache of dirty pictures from pornographic Web sites.

“He was spending the whole time at the library downloading pornography and taking it to my brother’s house and printing it,” Kathleen re- calls today. “I had a fit.”

Kathleen — who shields her last name to protect her son from pub- licity — complained to the librarian, who said there was nothing she could do. So Kathleen went to court to force the library to install software filters to block sites with sexually explicit material. “I can’t have porno day in my house for the neighbor- hood kids,” she explains. “So I want to know why the library can.”

California courts rejected Kathleen’s suit, but the state legislature is now con- sidering a bill to require public libraries to install filters to block pornographic sites. “We lost the battle,” Kathleen says, “but we’re winning the war.” 1

In fact, Congress is on her side on the issue, which is roiling librarians and library boards throughout the country. A new law, approved by Congress in late December and signed by President Bill Clinton, re- quires all federally subsidized school and public libraries to install soft- ware on their computer terminals to block “visual depictions” of obscen- ity, child pornography and sexual matter deemed “harmful to minors.”

Some patrons, however, say they want no limits on Internet access from library computers. Carol Will- iams, an administrative assistant to a civil liberties organization in Phila- delphia, says her teenaged niece, Marnique Tynesha Overby, needs an unfiltered gateway to the Internet in her local public library. “With the filtering system, you put in breast cancer or sexually transmitted dis- eases, and you couldn’t possibly get to some of the sites out there,” says Williams. She points out that young people may use Web sites to find information about sexual subjects that they do not feel comfortable discuss- ing with their parents or caregivers.

Williams cannot afford a personal computer in her home, so the library’s terminals are essential to her niece, who lives with her. Williams says filtering is just wrong. “It’s censor- ship,” she concludes.

The library establishment agrees with Williams. The American Library Association (ALA) strenuously op- posed the filtering legislation as it worked its way through Congress and filed suit in federal court as it was about to take effect. The group con-

tends the measure violates the free-speech rights of libraries and library patrons.

“Filters are anathema to what we as librarians want to accomplish,” says Judith Krug, director of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. “The best filter is the individual. Every bit of information is not appropriate for every indi- vidual, but the best person to make that decision is the in- dividual or, for children, in concert with their parents or guardians.”

Supporters of the law, how- ever, contend that the mea- sure is needed to make librar- ies safe for young people.

“This simply says the federal govern- ment is not going to subsidize getting hard-core pornography in the librar- ies,” says Bruce Taylor, president of the National Law Center for Children and Families, an anti-pornography group. Without filters, Taylor says, “the library becomes the peep show section of adult bookstores.”

The law — the Children’s Internet Protection Act or CIPA (known as CIPA, or sometimes, CHIPA) — rep- resents Congress’ third attempt in four years to limit young people’s access to sexually explicit material on the Internet. The Supreme Court struck down the first of the laws: the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA). Congress responded by enacting a modified Child Online Protection Act (COPA) in 1998, but federal courts have blocked that law from going into effect, too.

For libraries, the filtering issue merges a new technology that is revolutionizing access to information with a 60-year tradition of battling for intellectual freedom. 2 Computer ter- minals are now nearly universal in school and public libraries. Students who once went to the library to use

Numerous computer workstations are available at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library, one of four NYPL research libraries. Many of the system’s 85 branches provide computer training.

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books and encyclopedias to do their homework now find the information they need on the Web.

“It’s a big part of the way we provide the public access to informa- tion,” says Ginny Cooper, library director for Multnomah County, Ore., serving Portland. Her library system is the lead plaintiff in a second law- suit challenging the new law, filed by lawyers for the American Civil Liber- ties Union (ACLU).

Before the new law went into effect, only a small number of the nation’s estimated 16,000 public li- brary outlets * were using filters, according to a survey by the U.S. National Commission on Library and Information Science. The survey, completed last year, showed that about 10 percent of public libraries used blocking software on all com- puter terminals and another 15 per- cent provided blocking at some

workstations. (See graph, p. 472.) By contrast, about three-fourths of school libraries use filtering or blocking software, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

ies,” says David Biek, manager of the main library in Tacoma, Wash.

David Burt, a former librarian in the Portland, Ore., suburb of Lake Oswego, says sentiment in support of filtering among librarians is in- creasing. “The problems have gotten so much worse as the Internet has gotten more pervasive in libraries and pornography is much more perva- sive in libraries,” he says.

As for the threat to intellectual freedom, some librarians say the ALA’s arguments are overblown. “The dogma that the ALA establishment frequently espouses is put forward as an absolute: If you touch this, every- thing else will fall,” says Donald Davis, a professor at the University of Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Austin. “There is a danger of that, but it is exagger- ated.”

In addition to the legal and philo- sophical arguments, there is a prac- tical technological question: Do the filters work? Theoretically, filtering software looks through a Web site for objectionable material and blocks the site when the program finds the words or images specified by the programmer.

Critics, however, say filtering pro- grams are notoriously inaccurate in practice: They block sites that should not be blocked (“overblocking”) while sometimes failing to block sites that should be (“underblocking”). In a test of six well-known filters, Con- sumer Reports found that several failed to test certain “inappropriate” sites and that some blocked “harm- less” sites — in some cases based on what the magazine called “moral or political value judgments.” 3

But Burt, who now works for N2H2, a filtering-software company in Washington state, says the critics are off base. Other filtering compa- nies also defend their products. “Fil- ters do work; they work very well,” says Susan Getgood, a vice president

Most U.S. Libraries Have Internet Connections

Connections to the Internet increased rapidly in recent years at the nation’s 16,000 public library outlets. Today, Internet connections, and public Internet access, are almost universal in the United States.

Source: National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, “Public Libraries and the Internet 2000: Summary Findings and Data Tables,” Sept. 7, 2000.

1998 1999

84%

96

73%

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Public Library Connections

Public Access to Internet

* The figure for library outlets includes all branches of the nation’s 8,967 library systems.

Librarians opposed to filters say they clash with their understanding of providing free and open access to information. “The major loss is the loss of First Amendment rights and the concern about people’s ability to find information freely and openly,” says Leigh Estabrook, dean of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Champaign. “It’s an enormously high price to pay concerning the funda- mental freedoms that we have.”

Librarians who support filters, however, argue that most parents do not want their children using library terminals to view sexually explicit material or being exposed to porno- graphic images on screens being viewed by other patrons. “Many people would feel uncomfortable enough to stop coming to the librar-

June 1, 2001 469CQ on the Web: www.cq.com

of the California-based company SurfControl. “Our customers buy them and renew them year after year because they do work well.”

For the moment, the government has decided that libraries have until July 2002 to decide whether to install filters without fear of losing federal aid or federally mandated discounts for Internet services.

As librarians and library patrons continue to make greater and greater use of the Internet, here are some of the major questions being debated:

Can filtering protect children from objectionable materials on the Internet?

A commission created by Congress spent nearly two years studying ways to reduce youngsters’ access to sexu- ally explicit materials on the Internet. The report by the 18-member group called on schools and libraries to voluntarily adopt Internet-use poli- cies, but stopped short of recom- mending mandatory use of filtering software.

“No single technology or method will completely protect children from harmful material online,” Donald Telage, chairman of the commission, said in announcing the commission’s 95-page report. Filters are “hopelessly outgunned.” 4

Filtering opponents hailed the commission’s report. “We hope Con- gress sees this as a wake-up call” to reject mandatory filtering, an ACLU spokeswoman said. But some com- mission members repeated their sup- port for the legislation. “If you use federal money for the Internet, we want you to take appropriate steps to make sure that kids are safe when they’re online using our money,” said Donna Rice Hughes, vice president of the anti-pornography group Enough Is Enough.

The simplest filters block Web sites that contain designated words or phrases anywhere on the site. Critics

say this type of filter carries an inevi- table risk of “overblocking” — pre- venting access to a site about “breast” cancer, for example, or even a site about the “Mars explorer” because of the embedded three-letter sequence “s-e-x.” At the same time, opponents say, some filters fail to block Web sites with patently objectionable material (“underblocking”).

Filtering supporters, however, say newer software is finer-tuned — look- ing at entire sites, not just an isolated word or phrase — and are therefore less susceptible to inaccurate block- ing. “The modern generation of fil- ters do a very good job,” says Taylor of the National Law Center for Chil- dren and Families. And filters will get better, he says, because the new law “uses federal incentives to foster advances in filtering technology.”

“There is a small amount of error,” says Burt of N2H2. “But when we talked with schools or with libraries,

we found that’s something that they don’t encounter much. And when they do encounter it, the librarian can override it.”

Opponents of filtering are unconvinced. “Filtering software does not work,” says Margaret Dempsey, head of Chicago’s public library system. “It arbitrarily blocks words over which we have no con- trol, and it inhibits access to legiti- mate research sites.”

“Experts continue to uncover thou- sands and thousands of [blocked] sites that people could not conceivably think are unsuitable for minors,” says ACLU attorney Ann Beeson. “I’m not talking about controversial sites.”

Defending the law, Taylor stresses that it requires libraries to block access only to visual depictions — not text — that fall into three catego- ries that are already illegal.

“Libraries have responsibilities to block illegal materials: obscenity,

Few Libraries Use Blocking Software

The Internet workstations at three-quarters of the nation’s public libraries do not have software that can block the downloading of certain words or information, such as X-rated material. Only 10 percent of the libraries have blocking software at all workstations.

Blocking of Internet services on all workstations

Blocking on some workstations

No blocking

9.6%

75.5%

15%

Note: Total does not add to 100% due to rounding.

Source: National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, “Public Libraries and the Internet 2000: Summary Findings and Data Tables,” Sept. 7, 2000.

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child pornography and material that is harmful to minors within state law,” he says.

But Teresa Chmara, a Washington lawyer representing the ALA in chal- lenging the law, says all three catego- ries require judgments that cannot be made by a computer program. “Fil- ters cannot make the legal determi- nation whether material is obscene or harmful to minors,” she says.

Burt counters, however, that li- brarians are already charged with making those kinds of judg- ments. “People who work for filtering companies can apply a standard just as readily as a librarian can,” he says.

The law includes a fail- safe provision that allows a librarian to “disable” a filter- ing program in order to give a patron access to blocked material “for bona fide re- search or other lawful pur- poses.” “Even if a filter in- advertently blocks some- thing,” says Taylor, librar- ians “have the ability to unblock it.”

But librarians and civil liberties advocates say that procedure is an unfair bur- den on library patrons’ pri- vacy. “Most adults will be too stigmatized to go ask a librarian for access to a site that has already been blocked,” Beeson says. In addition, librarians say it is unclear how they are to decide what constitutes “bona fide research” for purposes of the law.

Even if filters did work as adver- tised, many librarians believe that the law gives them a responsibility for monitoring children’s Internet usage that instead ought to lie with parents. “I am not going to become the parent in absentia,” the ALA’s Krug says. “It’s not our role. It’s not our respon-

sibility, either legally or by virtue of being a librarian.”

But Burt says libraries have always had the responsibility to select the informational materials in their col- lections. “This is a very reasonable approach to a serious problem,” Burt says, “and it’s within the traditional mission of public libraries.”

Can other policies protect children from objectionable Internet materials?

The Tacoma library uses a filtering software designed by its systems manager to block visual depictions of sexual acts or full nudity on com- puter terminals. By analyzing the logs of Internet sessions, librarians com- piled some interesting information about the extent of the use of library computers for access to sexually explicit materials.

The findings, detailed in a paper prepared for a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, show that

Tacoma library patrons made nearly 28,000 attempts to access sexually explicit materials on the Internet during the calendar year 2000. Most of those efforts — about 53 percent — were by youngsters under age 18. And three-quarters of the logged entries occurred in the late afternoon, after kids leave school but before they go home for dinner.

Librarian Biek found the numbers disturbing. “Certainly, staff at the Tacoma Public Library would not

have guessed that Internet users made nearly 28,000 at- tempts to access sexually explicit materials last year,” Biek wrote in the 17-page report. “Many young people are not making ‘good choices’ in their use of the Internet, and it is debatable whether classes and tips offered by the library will affect this.” 5

Biek’s support for filtering in libraries puts him at odds with the position of the ALA and most librarians who have joined in the public debate. They argue that a combina- tion of formal Internet poli- cies, patron education and li- brarian oversight will ad- equately control misuse of library computers by minors or adult users.

“There are all kinds of ways libraries have developed in working with their com-

munities,” says the ALA’s Krug. “Some libraries have contacts with kids, some have contacts with the kids and their parents. If libraries have poli- cies, they will say you are not follow- ing the rules.”

Librarians opposed to filtering emphasize their efforts to educate young patrons on using the Internet. “The Internet is not a very fine tool,” says Portland library director Cooper. “It’s still pretty difficult to get infor- mation there. And with kids, we feel

Marnique Tynesha Overby, 15, tells a press conference why she joined the ACLU in challenging a new federal law

requiring federally subsidized libraries to install “blocking” software on their computers. She said she relies on public

libraries for Internet access to help with homework projects on health and cultural issues.

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we have a special responsibility to help them get information that’s ap- propriate for them.”

The Chicago Public Library employs tech-savvy college and high school stu- dents as “cyber-navigators” to assist young patrons in using the Internet. The program, funded by AT&T, “has been really wonderful,” says Chicago library chief Dempsey.

Tacoma’s Biek agrees that young patrons need instruction on using the Internet, but he says training is un- likely to reduce the misuse of library terminals to view pornography. “Most of these were very obviously inten- tional acts,” Biek says, referring to the Tacoma library study. “No amount of education is going to change a person who wants to look for sexu- ally explicit materials on the Internet if that’s their intent.”

Filtering opponents suggest sev- eral other steps. Some libraries use privacy screens to block other pa- trons’ view of a user’s screen. Time limits on computer use — necessi- tated by the demand for terminals — also help control viewing of objec- tionable materials, librarians say. And most libraries, it appears, set termi-

nals in children’s areas to log onto customized home pages designed for kids with links to other age-appropri- ate sites.

But supporters of filtering say these steps are inadequate. “We had pri- vacy screens,” Burt says of his expe- rience in the Lake Oswego Library. “That seemed to encourage people. We had one man in particular who took delight in taking the privacy screen off and having women see what he was looking at.”

Supporters of filtering believe that librarians simply disagree with the goal of regulating young people’s use of the Internet in libraries. “They won’t because they don’t want to,” says Taylor of the National Law Center for Children and Families. “They have said that they think it’s their job as libraries to provide un- filtered access to the Internet to anyone, whatever age. They have said that they have no intention of providing filtering because they be- lieve it’s censorship.”

Librarians frame the issue in those terms themselves, though with a more favorable spin. “Librarians have taken the position that without limiting

adult reading material, they cannot limit reading material for children,” says Louise Robbins, director of the University of Wisconsin School of Library and Information Studies in Madison. “The librarian’s responsibil- ity is to make as much information available as possible — given the constraints of budget, space and expertise — and let citizens make decisions about what materials they need,” she says.

Is it constitutional to require libraries to install filtering?

When Congress passed the CDA five years ago making it a crime to transmit sexually explicit materials to minors across the Internet, the ACLU and the ALA challenged it in federal court as unconstitutional. As one of their arguments, the two groups contended that there was a less re- strictive way to control youngsters’ access to pornography on the Web: filters.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the law violated the First Amendment. But now that Congress has passed a law requiring software filters in public and school libraries,

Protecting Kids From Web Porn

Public Education • Major education campaign by government and private

sector to promote awareness of technologies and methods to protect children online.

• Promotion of acceptable use policies by government and industry.

Consumer Empowerment • Independent evaluation of child protection technologies. • Steps by industry to improve child-protection

mechanisms and make them more accessible online. • “Broad, national, private-sector conversation” on

development of next-generation systems for labeling, rating and identifying content.

Law Enforcement • Government funding of “aggressive programs” to

investigate, prosecute and report violations of federal and state obscenity laws.

• Listing by state and federal law enforcement of Internet sources found to contain child pornography or obscenity.

• Federal rulemaking to discourage deceptive or unfair practices that entice children to view obscene materials.

Industry Action • Voluntary adoption by Internet service provider industry

of “best practices” to protect minors. • Voluntary steps by online commercial adult industry to

restrict minors’ access to adult content.

T he Commission on Online Child Protection recommended the following measures to help reduce access by minorsto sexually explicit material on the Internet:

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472 CQ Researcher

the ACLU and the ALA say that it, too, is unconstitutional.

Supporters of the new law — CIPA — say that given their previous po- sition, the ACLU and ALA are being disingenuous today in attacking fil-

tering. “They waited to come out against filtering until the CDA was declared unconstitutional,” maintains Burt of N2H2. “Then, as soon as the CDA was declared unconstitutional, they turned around and said, ‘Wait.

Filters don’t work. You can’t use them in libraries.’ ”

Lawyers for the two groups insist, however, that there is no inconsis- tency between their positions in the two cases. “We don’t have a problem

Are Computers the Answer . . .

I magine reading Mark Twain’s account of a trip to France in a Western literary journal published in 1868 while sitting at your home computer rather than

standing in the dark and dusty stacks of a distant research library.

Imagine clicking on your computer and seeing a representation of Michelangelo’s famous statue of David so detailed that you could make out the sculptor’s individual chisel marks.

Imagine using your computer to microscopically examine a fragile fossil or botanical specimen held in a laboratory halfway around the globe and too delicate to be moved.

No need to imagine. Internet-linked computers already allow professional researchers or amateur scholars to access such information resources. And more digital wonders are on the way.

Soon, you may be able to whistle into a computer a few bars of a vaguely recalled musical composition and get back not only the name of the piece and the composer but also a complete account of the work and its historical and cultural background.

These 21st-century advances are redefining libraries — or “media centers,” as some have been renamed — and creating countless new opportunities for serving patrons both inside and outside of the brick-and-mortar buildings. But new technologies also create logistical and financial strains on libraries, just as many are grappling with maintaining and preserving their primary collections of printed books, journals, magazines and newspapers.

At first blush, digitization — or converting printed material to digital form — may appear to be a panacea for a host of preservation and access problems. In fact, it poses a new set of preservation problems: Computers and

word-processing systems obsolesce, disks and drives deteriorate.

“Scholars are just now becoming aware that digital media are not preservable now,” says Abby Smith, program director of the Council on Library and Information Resources, a nonprofit group that studies issues affecting libraries.

In a draft report, a 15-member task force of scholars established by the council is calling for a more compre- hensive and coordinated approach to preserving informa- tion resources from all media — including sound recordings, films and photographs. 1 Among the major recommendations: more money.

“There is no library that receives a steady stream of funding to ensure coordination of preservation of collections,” Smith explains. “Preservation is an unfunded mandate, totally unfunded.”

Library preservation issues have received unaccustomed attention over the past two months thanks to the publi- cation of a controversial book sharply critical of how many libraries handle old print collections, including the Library of Congress. In his

book Double Fold, novelist Nicholson Baker contends that out of an exaggerated fear of disintegrating newsprint and paper, many libraries have dismantled their collections of books and old newspapers — microfilming them at considerable expense and then trashing the originals to save space and storage costs. 2

Baker was sufficiently concerned to use foundation grants and $26,000 of his own money to buy a trove of old U.S. newspaper collections that the British Museum was about to auction off. For now, he is storing the newspapers in a former textile mill in New Hampshire renamed the American Newspaper Repository.

Rare books and manuscripts can now be viewed on a digital book at the National Institutes of Health’s

National Library of Medicine in Rockville, Md.

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with blocking programs being avail- able in libraries as an option for patrons who want to use them,” the ACLU’s Beeson says. “And certainly the use of these programs in the home doesn’t present any constitu-