Re: USA Today poll on Library Internet Filtering (fwd)

On 04/29/98, Susan Harris <susan.harris[_at_]sonoma.edu> wrote:
>
> On 4/29/98, Craig A. Summerhill <craig[_at_]cni.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, Bob Stock <bstock[_at_]ucla.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > As of April 28, at 8:27 p.m. ET, the voting is as follows:
> > >
> > > 60.9% no filtering
> > > 13.7% filtering for kids' computers
> > > 22.2% filtering for all computers
> > > 3.1% no Internet access at all
> >
> > And what am I to infer from this if the average age of participants in
> > the poll is 13 years of age? Anybody who believes that a voluntary poll
> > done on a Web site in the Internet is even marginally representative of
> > a random sampling of the population at large is naive.
>
> Regardless of how foolish the poll is, it will influence some
> legislators. Free speech is a right, but it is not a right that cannot
> be lost if nobody cares to defend it. Libraries are coming under
> increasingly broad public pressure to censor their readers. I hope CNI
> members do take this threat seriously.

I don't think the issue is so much free speech as it is who is responsible for for "protecting" our children. If libraries restricted their access to people over the age of 18, there would be no need to filter web sites. The problem is that the web is more integrated than many would like. It forces parents to take a more active part in their child's education and development than many parents would like because the parents have less control over the child's exsposure to those aspects of our society that but for the internet, they could prevent access or avoid even disclosure.

I would categorize this issue as a "right to access" - do these children have the right to access these web sites? What are limits on their parent's abilitty to control access? If a library provides restricted access to their copies of Playboy, to say users over the age of 18, can a user under the age of 18 sue to obtain access? Has anyone ever challenged the motion piction ratings association and movie theaters for restricting access to R and PG movies?

I apologize, this is off-topic from the copyright issues of this list. - can/should we take this issue somewhere else?

Regards,
David F. Crosby
dcrosby[_at_]lappinkusmer.com
dfcrosby[_at_]earthlink.net

This message is composed using 100% recycled electrons - 50% from post-consumer waste
50% from pre-consumer waste Received on Thu Apr 30 1998 - 16:06:34 GMT