Who's To Blame For Library Patron Accessing Porn?
from the playing-the-blame-game dept
It's been over two years since the Supreme Court said that it was fine for the federal government to require libraries that receive federal funding to install internet filters on their computers. This was despite the fact that many libraries found the filters ineffective (both in letting through plenty of porn and being overly aggressive in blocking perfectly fine sites) and expensive. So, it shouldn't come as any surprise that such filters don't work well. Yet, when evidence of that was presented in one case in Florida, local officials immediately started playing the blame game and have suspended, and may fire, the head librarian. Apparently, a registered sex offender, as well as three under age boys, used the computers in the library to view pornographic sites. It's hard to see how the librarian could be blamed for such things, but it seems like the local city council wants someone's head for this -- and the librarian is the easy target.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Whose? Try Who's
[ link to this | view in thread ]
How about ratings
you get a rating of 1-5 for each of sex, violence, language, and more.
to get it being used, you would just need to get microsoft so ship Ie with the default of not viewing sites without any ratings.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: How about ratings
www.icra.org
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
http://www.ala.org/
Thats fine. As long as they understand that the people who write their paychecks DO want filtering; and are prepared to relieve the librarians of their jobs on this principle.
Allowing convicted sex offenders and little boys to access porn on taxpayer purchased computers is guaranteed to get a Librarian fired (or should.)
And there is nothing wrong with the politicians, who are representing their constituents, to demand that Librarians not allow it.
The Librarians, of course, are perfectly within their rights to refuse to butt in to people's privacy.
But we don't have to pay for the Librarian who takes such a stance.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: No Subject Given
(First comment on Techdirt, love the site)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Whose? Try Who's
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Who's to blame?
Was this even a real question? Of course it was the person that looked at it. The librarian did not force him to.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Whose? Try Who's
Whoops. That was a bad mistake. You're right. Thanks for pointing it out. Fixed now.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: No Subject Given
Geee Bobby, that depends, by �the tax payers paying their salaries� do you mean, each and every tax payer who walks in with an absurd religious perspective gets to clamp shit down and start banning books?
Do you mean the type of moron who threatens the cop who pulled him over with �I pay your salary!!!�
Just because you A) Pay taxes and B) are stupid, does not mean that any one should listen to you.
Librarians are for free speech, free expression of ideas, and free access to information for a reason. A very good reason - specifically so that the politicians, and tax payers who �hire� them cannot control the thoughts of the constituents.
Is it bad that a sex offended looked at porn? Not really.
Is it bad that a few young boys looked at porn? Not really. (Try to find one who hasn�t)
Is it bad that Americans get all flustered about porn? BIG TIME.
Is it bad that Americans are getting excited about censoring and blocking access to information and ideas, even porn? BIG FUCKING TIME.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: How about ratings
Who does have ratings? Microsoft. Disney. It's a perfect system, right?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
Sure, there's no privacy that way, but it also means no need for a software filter because the social/human filter will be far more effective.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Responsible
The fault and blame lies with the municipality, namely the city council itself. If that council must punish someone, then they should punish themselves, for failure and negligence to provide an environment to prevent this type occurence from happening.
[ link to this | view in thread ]