By Robert Harrington
Library Commission does nothing about internet porn
Internet Porn in the Library
Library Porn and Modern Liberalism
Religion of free speech defends porn for children
The American Library Association protesteth too much
Library Commission does nothing about internet porn
This commission serves mainly as a cheering section for the library administration and is irrelevant for any issue of importance. The members seem to have no clear idea of a charter, and the only thing the newly-elected chairperson could think of for the next meeting was to ask members to bring lists of topics to talk about.
My remarks, prepared beforehand, were designed to stimulate them to take meaningful action on the matter of pornography and children in the libraries. So far as I could tell, nothing happened. Here's what I said:
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This internet-porn argument has fallen into a sort of perpetual kabuki where the antiporn people propose ever-more sophisticated methods to block pornography and the internet libertarians pick them apart, no matter what. The anti-porners are chasing a mechanical rabbit and will never catch it because there is a fundamental disagreement in values that cannot be bridged.
"Value" is another word for moral premise, or article of faith. The moral premise of the anti-porners is that giving pornography to children is wrong and the imperatives of free speech must give way to that principle. The moral premise of the open access absolutists is that free speech is the highest value and no compromise can be tolerated, even if it means that children are given access to pornography.
What grates for me is the pose of the open access advocates that their position is purely a matter of logic, not grounded in faith. This attitude is expressed in the often-heard sneer that the antiporn people are a bunch of yahoos who, as they put it, "are trying to impose their morality on the rest." The answer is: Yes, they are driven by moral considerations, but no more so than the open access people. In fact, almost every political issue is a contest of competing values. The values in this case are protection of children from pornography versus an overarching purity of free speech rights. For me, it's a slam dunk in favor of protecting children, but I strenuously object to the contention that this argument is not fundamentally a clash of moral values.
The library is what some call an "insular bureaucracy," meaning an agency which has weak accountability to the public and does as it pleases. Now, I don't propose that the library should respond to every public whim, but when a bureaucracy is driven by an ideology that is materially at odds with public sentiment, sooner or later there is a price to pay.
The CAC has served as a layer of the library's insulation, supporting its policy willy-nilly, not rocking the boat, and those who ask for protection of their children have been consistently stiffed in the process. There is a growing feeling of disenfranchisement, but public revulsion for what the library is doing will sooner or later find a way to assert itself. A letter-writer to the Mercury News expressed it well: "Give pornography to a child in an alley and go to jail; do it in a library and you lose my vote."
Gilroy Dispatch, January 16, 1998
Morgan Hill Times, January 16, 1998
There have always been some people who complained about the choices librarians make, but it is only since they brought in Internet terminals that it became an explosive issue.
The origin of this problem is what librarians refer to as their "open access" policy, through which all library materials are to be made available to all patrons, regardless of age. Most of us probably never even heard the term "open access" before this, and it's become a problem only because of the Internet.
The reason is that librarians exercise common sense in choosing print materials. They don't put Hustler magazine on the children's shelves, for example, and very few people complained about what children might encounter roaming the shelves.
The trouble came when "library materials" came to include all of cyberspace. Cyberspace is a reflection of the entire world, a vast sea of human detritus, good, bad and indifferent. It has been described as the most democratic of institutions, meaning that there are no practical limits on what people say or display there. One consequence of this is that it serves low as well as high purposes, and it has turned out that the Internet is an especially appealing medium for purveyors of pornography. SurfWatch, a provider of software filters, reports that it is tracking about 50,000 such sites, and its software blocks many times that based on keywords.
While librarians provide suggestions in use of the Internet by children, they do not choose materials in the sense that they do with print materials. Unless special steps are taken, any terminal can access any site, and it is easy to wander into dark alleys, even by accident.
In real space, our society prevents children from wandering into dark alleys, such as X-rated movies and adult bookstores. We do this as a matter of course, and no one, as far as I know, objects.
There is nothing about the Internet or the library which requires us to abandon this commonsense policy. As the Wall Street Journal said, "the Internet is just electrons," meaning that it is nothing but technology and not a reason to abandon the conventions that apply elsewhere.
By the same token there is nothing about a library that should negate the rules of civility and decency we apply everywhere else. Disallowing the display and distribution of pornography to children is an exception to free speech rights which is fully justified and accepted and implemented in our laws and customs. These laws and customs are in fact part of the bedrock of our society, and there is no reason to suspend them when we enter a library.
Remarks to Morgan Hill City Council, September 17, 1997
Library Porn and Modern Liberalism
Scholars have traced the evolution of liberalism from the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century to the schizoid condition of present-day liberals who approve of campus speech codes and suppression of cigarette ads and at the same time justify any obscenity in the name of the First Amendment. County Librarian Susan Fuller demonstates the second half of this pathology in her defense of the library's policy of refusing to take steps to prevent exposure to children of the pornography which floods the Internet.
It is a mystery whose First Amendment rights are infringed when unfettered adult terminals are available within a few steps of the children's terminals which are at issue. If, inexplicably, some parents insist that their children have unrestricted access, including the pedophile nets and living-color depictions of sodomy from Moldova, let them take their children to the adult terminals. This policy would be perfectly consistent with Ms. Fuller's insistence that this is entirely a matter for parental supervision.
For families with two working parents who would like to let their children visit the library after school without being in the equivalent of an adult book store, it seems a small favor for the library to provide terminals which are equipped with some degree of protection from the depravity which has taken over so much of the Internet.
San Jose Mercury News, July 19, 1997
Religion of free speech defends porn for children
The reason this debate about Internet pornography in the library has raised hackles far beyond what it would appear to deserve is that it strikes at the heart of our collective view of American society. The question is: Are there any moral or ethical standards that we as a society agree on, that are of sufficient import that we insist on them?
If we cannot agree to take measures against the display and distribution of pornography to children in a public facility, one which goes out of its way to invite children, then surely the answer is no. I do not accept that answer, and I cannot believe that many others in their hearts do either.
The anti-filter people have tried to portray those on the other side as self-righteous meddlers, trying to impose their particular moral beliefs on everyone. This is an expression of the relativist philosophy which holds that all moral systems are of equal merit and none deserves primacy. There are two problems with it:
1. It is not true; our society is in fact based on certain moral precepts that are essential to its existence. This was expressed concisely by Historian Page Smith this way (quoting sociologist Louis Wirth): "'A society is possible in the last analysis because the individuals in it carry around in their heads some sort of picture of that society.' Without such a picture, society begins to unravel."
2. The prescription they promote is itself a moral one. Their fervent belief in "First Amendment rights" is nothing more or less than another moral system, which by their own philosophy deserves no higher claim for our allegiance than any other. It is a matter of faith as much as any religion. It is a religion, the Religion of Free Speech, a faith that they are strving mightily to impose on all of us. They are guilty of precisely that of which they accuse their opponents.
The faithful in the Religion of Free Speech are quite unaware that their prescriptions are based on faith. They take the axioms of their faith as self-evident, from which any deviation, to use Mr. Pinion's term, is "abhorrent." They see no reason to justify that feeling; all right-thinking persons must agree. This unconscious certitude is the mark of a faith; something we fervently believe in but can't say why, about which questions only make us furious.
They will protest that their position is grounded in the Constitution and that it, through the courts, must be the final arbiter of our disagreements.
This excessive faith in law is a generalization of the Religion of Free Speech. The underlying axiom is that the only glue of our society is the law. It discounts all of our cultural institutions for any matter of importance. It is fine if people attend church, but to suggest that society should be guided by the moral precepts which flow from religion is taboo, a faux pas.
Our choice is between two fundamental and divergent views of our society: one in which we agree on certain moral precepts and insist on conformance, albeit imperfectly, through our social institutions apart from the ponderous mechanism and force of the law versus one that denies the ethical basis of society and holds that the law is the means of first resort, indeed the only one which holds us together.
We are sliding to the latter. It is this view which tends to limit discussion of these matters to "rights talk," the worst being the doctrinaire and absolutist kind: "Access to materials in library is protected by the First Amendment. When the library provides access to the Internet and then blocks some information, that would be a violation." (Ann Ravel, Chief Assistant County Counsel.) By this philosophy we are powerless to prevent exposing children to pornography because It's the Law.
We need to restore the ascendency of our common beliefs in right and wrong for guidance in our social interactions without resorting to the law for every question. There is a picture of our society that "individuals carry around in their heads," and a small part of that picture, one on which there could be no more universal agreement, is that we profoundly disapprove of exposing children to pornography. Failing to take steps to protect them from this decadence is the unraveling of a few threads of society in a process that will ultimately tear us apart.
Morgan Hill Times, August 12, 1997
The American Library Association protesteth too much
The American Library Association claims not to feel threatened by the Internet, but it doth protest too much. Their advocacy campaign is entirely focused on positioning libraries to the front of the information superhighway. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they are obsessed with this issue, and perhaps with good reason: The meteoric rise in the Internet is changing the way information is handled in the modern world in a fundamental way, and to a very great extent it displaces the traditional functions of libraries.
The trouble with librarians' claim to be the public provider of Internet service is that they are so infatuated with free speech rights that they have abdicated responsibility for any function beyond simply providing terminals.
The mind boggles at the quantity of information at your fingertips with a computer and modem. You can read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and any number of other newspapers. You can find almost anybody's phone number and look up any product you can imagine. You can trade stocks. Mercury Center has the entire text of the San Jose Mercury News back to 1984, and you can search by any word or phrase. Law libraries can be consulted. One could spend full time just reading the output of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
All of these things can be done with vastly greater speed and convenience via the Internet than anything the libraries have ever provided by their conventional methods. It is not surprising that the libraries are concerned about their role in this era and are taking steps to get on board with this new technology.
The ALA speaks of little else; it has become a crusade. Their battle to position libraries as the main public dispenser of the Internet is very aggressive, with lobbying, speeches, petitions, training videos for activists, sample letters-to-editor, and so forth. There's nothing wrong with this in principle, and many other organizations aggressively promote their particular interests. The problem with the ALA is its pose as a promoter of the public interest and its cloying moralism about free speech.
It is perhaps not surprising that the ALA's first priority is self-interest; what grates is its hypocritical claim to be looking out for the public. Where the two conflict, there can be no doubt which the ALA will choose.
Librarians' claim to be the public's "navigator" for the Internet is based on tenuous qualifications at best. Practically anyone can find his own way after only an hour or two, and most patrons would resent a librarian "navigator" looking over a shoulder.
As part of the justification for positioning librarians as the principle provider of the Internet for the public, the ALA made the claim that "librarians' unique expertise in selecting, analyzing, organizing, preserving, and distributing information in all formats is a significant resource for making the emerging information environment meaningful and accessible to the public." Huh?
The functions identified are indeed traditional functions of librarians, but for Internet access they have simply punted on all but the last. Considering their adamant refusal to place any restrictions on Internet access, in what sense are librarians "selecting, analyzing, organizing, [and] preserving" information? The answer is: None at all. They have abdicated these responsibilities entirely. It is the users' and parents' responsibility, they have told us over and over.
Two of the functions which librarians are refusing to perform, namely analyzing and selecting, are precisely what parents are requesting in asking for use of anti-pornography filters. Since librarians refuse to do that, why not automate it? In fact, filters will do it at less cost and more thoroughly than librarians could hope to do.
Librarians like to speak of their "unique role," but the only function they want to perform for the information superhighway is to act as a conduit. The qualifications needed for this function are practically nil: install computers, load software and arrange for Internet service, that's all. Who needs libraries and librarians for that? We might as well put them in bars; in fact, some bars do have them, and they provide the same level of service that you get at the library.
Gilroy Dispatch, June 30, 1997