The Supreme Court decided Tuesday it will hear a case regarding the use of pornography filters in public libraries.
The court will decide whether the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which requires libraries to block obscene Web sites or lose certain federal funds, is constitutional. This hearing comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association.
That’s right – the American Library Association is against this law. The libraries – the very institutions affected by this law – do not want it implemented.
Anne Turner, president of the California Library Association, described CIPA as “very dangerous” and said, “It denies people access to information that libraries have always been able to provide.”
Turner’s assessment is on target. Filtering out obscene Web sites – which is generally done by blocking sites which use certain words – can have unforeseen consequences. Any word used in pornographic Web sites could have a hundred perfectly family-friendly uses.
The word “teen,” for example, is often used in sites advertising underage sex acts. If “teen” is put on the list of words to filter, then what happens to the mother looking for advice on raising her surly adolescent, or the junior-high student looking for makeup tips from Teen magazine?
Kristen Hansen, spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, called CIPA “common-sense and constitutional,” saying, “The government has an obligation to protect kids from obscenity.”
Hansen, obviously, must be thinking of parents, rather than government. The government has no such obligation; in fact, it is obligated to “make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” – or so the Bill of Rights says. The federal government is not supposed to be in the business of telling the public what it may or may not be allowed to see – and libraries, as public institutions, should be no exception.
It’s not a librarian’s job to parent children any more than it is the government’s job. Parents who are worried about children stumbling onto something obscene should keep an eye on their Internet activity – at home as well as at the library.
If a library decides to make its materials G-rated, then that’s its business. It is not the government’s place to blackmail libraries into installing Internet filters. Libraries are too important to this country to lose funding just because they want to do their job of providing information to the public.
