Web Filters

Stories about web filtering in libraries

Los Angeles Wants to Filter Out Porn at City Libraries

“Librarians and patrons should not have to tolerate lewd behavior or drug use in public, but limiting what people access online is an anathema to free speech, and antithetical to the free flow of ideas,” FSC executive director Eric Paul Leue said via email. “Filtering software sounds like an easy solution, but we know that such software often casts an egregiously wide net, blocking not only sexually explicit content, but also sexual health information, LGBTQ sites and sites like ours, which contains no sexual imagery whatsoever, but discusses issues relevant to the adult industry.”

From Los Angeles Wants to Filter Out Porn at City Libraries | L.A. Weekly

November 27, 2017 by Censorship Internet Legal Issues Libraries Web Filters

Washington library wins suit to leave filters on

Washington library wins suit; it can filter porn
A rural Eastern Washington library system may continue to filter the Internet to block porn and gambling sites, a federal court judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge Edward Shea of the Eastern Washington Federal District Court ruled that the North Central Regional Library (NCRL) is not violating the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by filtering some adult Internet content on library computers.

The lawsuit was brought by the ACLU of Seattle which argued that the library’s filtering was overly broad and illegally censored material based on content.

April 11, 2012 by Internet Legal Issues Librarians Libraries Web Filters

School District Told to Replace Web Filter Blocking Pro-Gay Sites

CAMDENTON, Mo. — Students using the computers at Camdenton High School here in central Missouri have been able to access the Web sites for Exodus International as well as People Can Change, antigay organizations that counsel men and women on how to become heterosexual.

But the students have not been able to access the Web sites of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

They have been able to read Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy. But they have been blocked from reading Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that held that laws criminalizing sodomy were unconstitutional.

They have been given access to scores of antigay sites, but not to those supportive of gay people.

A clear-cut case of censorship? Actually, not so clear. “These filters are a new version of book-banning or pulling books off the shelf,” said Pat Scales of the American Library Association. “The difference is, this is much more subtle and harder to identify.”

March 26, 2012 by American Library Association Censorship Internet Legal Issues Libraries School Libraries Web Filters

Elsevier Filters Recommendation Engine to Show Elsevier Titles Only

As the Elsevier boycott continues to gain attention, a good example of what the company stands for: the Ex Libris bX service is a neat little recommendation tool that displays suggested citations, working from a known item and based on search traffic. It provides researchers with suggestions based on their area of interest, and the items displayed are usually additional relevant articles (similar to Amazon’s “people who bought this also bought…” feature). The Elsevier ScienceDirect site embeds this service in their own custom application, but librarians noticed the results it was displaying were only for Elsevier titles. Here is the Ex Libris explanation:

bX itself is entirely publisher and platform neutral and sends and displays all relevant articles regardless of journal, publisher or platform. But those who build their own applications – like Elsevier did – can manipulate the data by filtering before displaying it. For the app on Science Direct Elsevier indeed filters the bX articles by those available from Science Direct.

Is it any wonder this company gets a bad rap?

February 14, 2012 by Libraries Web Filters

Idaho Libraries to adjust to new Internet filtering law

Idaho Libraries to adjust to new Internet filtering law
But the Coeur d’Alene library, like every other library in the state, will have to change its system between now and October, under a new law enacted by the Idaho Legislature this year.

Although the new law is a scaled-back version of the original proposal — which would have required libraries to filter Internet access for everyone — it’s still a concern to some library officials. Currently, every library in Idaho handles the issue its own way, with some choosing to install filters on all their Internet-accessible computers, others choosing to filter just some, and some leaving the choice to parents and adult library patrons. That local control works well, Ammons and others say, noting that Idaho libraries don’t get any state funding. Libraries are supported by local property taxes and governed by local boards.

Under the new law, Internet use by children must be filtered.

November 23, 2011 by Internet Legal Issues Libraries Web Filters

The Battle Against Info-Overload: Is Relevance or Popularity the Best Filter?

The Battle Against Info-Overload: Is Relevance or Popularity the Best Filter?
The rise of social media has led to an exponential proliferation of content online and widespread demand for tools to filter that information. Popularity and relevance are the most common metrics through which to filter that content – but are they the best?

RWW asked three people building cutting-edge social software what they think the relationship between relevance, popularity and filtering is going to be in the future. They offered three very different responses. What do you think the future of information filtering will look like?

January 27, 2011 by Internet Web Filters

Time for Filtering at Greensboro NC Library

Using public library computers to search the Internet for inappropriate material soon may be a little more difficult.

The Greensboro Public Library board of trustees voted Monday to ask the City Council to consider adding software to filter inappropriate material from Internet searches. The filter would be limited to computers designated for use by children, as well as for users ages 17 and younger, and for adults who want filtered searches.

That is the less restrictive of two options city library Director Sandy Neerman proposed to trustees at their meeting Monday. The other proposal would have filtered all Internet searches by users of any age.

A filter — whether wholesale or tiered as the library trustees recommend — would become part of the library system’s overall computer-management system, she said. The library operates 230 public computers with Internet access, 105 of them at Central Library.

Article from the News-Record also lists patron infractions during the first six months of the year (sleeping was the number one no-no).

August 17, 2010 by Internet Librarians Libraries Web Filters

Washington Supreme Court Approves Use of Library Internet Filters

Public libraries, in theory, are supposed to be bastions of information. But with the rise of the Internet, many libraries have begun putting up online filters, to make sure users are using public broadband connections to search for actual information and not, well, porn. To many, it’s a practical measure. But is it constitutional? According to the Washington state Supreme Court, it is.

Full article here

May 7, 2010 by Internet Librarians Libraries Web Filters

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