LISNews: Librarian News

Normally when I find a story on filtering the title isn\'t quite as heroic as this one. This one, however, is different. The entire article reads as if it came from the ALA OIF.

\"You can find censorship at the Hayward Library, but only information about it in books, magazines and Internet files.

As a policy, the library has been fighting censorship for 37 years.

Library commissioners reaffirmed the principle of free access to information last week as they decided not to install filtering software on library computers. -- Read More

Even after COPPA was just found to be unconstitutional, John McCain feels compeled to puch filtering again. This time he introduced a sex-filtering amendment to a spending bill. It seems to be very obvious the Supreme Court is not allowing this kind of thing.

McCain said the measure was necessary to protect American children from the \"technological sophistication of online predators\" and websites featuring sex, racism, anti-semitism, drug-making information, and bomb recipes.

It\'s always for the children. Maybe we should out law everything that is no good for children. He did say conservative icon Laura Schlessinger agreed with his proposal. Which leads me to believe it\'s a terrible idea. Good Story at Wired -- Read More

Rob Brian wrote in from OZ:

Members of our
Parliament and those of us who may need to access
the Internet in order to provide them with relevant
information now once more have full access to the
Internet.You can read The Story from the The Sydney Morning
Herald

\"

An extraordinary exchange of e-mail communications
was provoked when MPs and parliamentary sections
were notified a week ago the Premier\'s Department
had ordered \"filtering\" (read censoring or shutting
down) of Web sites dealing with criminal skills, dating,
extreme or obscene sites, gambling, games, hate
speech and sex.\" -- Read More

The Pros and Cons of filtering in public libraries are debated here in this opinion piece from the Duluth News.
Pro filtering: \"A library is not a public forum open to all forms of expression. There is no constitutional requirement for government to provide access to illegal pornography such as obscenity and child pornography in libraries simply because it provides Internet access.\"
Anti Filtering: \"Yet there are powerful reasons filtering Internet access would be unwise, if not downright unconstitutional. A major problem with filtering Internet access is that current technology is too crude to target only material that might harm children -- for example, obscenity and child pornography.\" -- Read More