NY Post Shocked To Learn People Look At Boobies In The Library

City libraries say ‘checking out’ porn protected by First Amendment:
Approached by The Post, the dirty old man skulked away, saying, “I don’t want to talk to you. Leave me alone.” Under US law, all libraries that take federal funding only must install filters on publicly used computers to block content containing illegal obscenity and child pornography, and New York City officials say they comply to the letter.

April 25, 2011 by Uncategorized 7

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7 Responses

  1. Walt says:
    April 25, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    The “US Law” description is only partly right
    1. CIPA only involves “filtering” images, not text. Let’s not even get into the inherently-oxymoronic legal definition of obscenity, but it’s clear that most “porn” is not obscenity.

    2. CIPA only affects libraries accepting *certain kinds* of federal funding.

    3. The library’s implementing CIPA correctly–that is, any adult can turn off the filter or request that it be turned off, without any specific reason.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous says:
    April 26, 2011 at 5:21 pm

    Actually, The Question isn’t Settled
    … or else why is Dean Marney’s NCRL embroiled in a federal lawsuit over the NCRL’s “no unblocking” policy? Just because Marney says it’s so doesn’t make it legal.

    And no less a legal scholar than Eugene Volokh says that the question is unsettled:

    “As it regards libraries, “the Supreme Court has not squarely dealt with the issue,” said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law.

    Volokh said the Supreme Court did hear a case in 2003, U.S. v. American Library Association, in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional to use Internet filtering software to block pornography, until a patron asks for it to be unblocked.

    The Supreme Court did not rule on wholesale blocking of Internet pornography at public libraries.

    “If the library says, ‘No, we don’t want to unblock. We don’t want to subsidize this kind of material,’ that’s something that’s not yet settled,” Volokh said.”

    See: City Council considers ways to block Internet pornography in libraries

    Reply
    • SafeLibraries says:
      April 26, 2011 at 7:24 pm

      That’s Not the Issue
      That’s not the issue. Volokh is correct, of course, but “No, we don’t want to unblock” is simply not the issue. The issue is whether libraries are open public fora where anything goes, including legal porn. No, they are not. It is legal to filter out porn. That is the issue.

      And Dean Marney clearly shows the ALA “dogma” should be challenged:

      The outdated tenets about using technology to manage the Internet, promoted by the Freedom To Read Foundation (FTRF) and American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom, express dogma and fundamentalism and deserve challenge.

      See http://tinyurl.com/ALAdogma.

      See also, “First Amendment Does Not Provide Right to Porn in NYC Libraries; U.S. Law Says Libraries Can Ban Porn,” by Leslie Bateman, Christian Newswire, 26 April 2011.

      Reply
  3. Anonymous says:
    April 28, 2011 at 1:59 pm

    I notice that Kleinman has
    I notice that Kleinman has caught on that no one will click a safelibraries.org link anymore, so is now using url-shortening services.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous says:
    April 28, 2011 at 2:21 pm

    “What they’re doing is
    “What they’re doing is publicly funding an appetite for the most debased fare available,” said Catholic League President Bill Donohue. “It’s not like a Playboy centerfold anymore — it’s far worse.”

    WRONG. That should read “…it’s far better.”

    Reply
  5. Anonymous says:
    May 10, 2011 at 5:00 pm

    It seems that many people are
    It seems that many people are complaining about their tax dollars going directly towards pornography when it’s not. It goes towards internet access, which of course includes porn, but the library isn’t subscribing to Hustler. Tax money was going into actively restricting access through software that does not have a very good track record anyway.

    Reply

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