Porn filters found to be ineffective tools

As seen on The ResourceShelf:

An Editorial from AK by Karen Jensen, a librarian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, on an upcoming vote by the Borough Assembly on whether to force the public library to install “expensive, ineffective Internet censorship filters on all its public and staff computers.”

You can probably guess the rest… She provides a couple good arguments against.

September 8, 2003 by Uncategorized 4

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4 Responses

  1. naysayer says:
    September 8, 2003 at 8:46 pm

    Irrelevant!!!
    Great points! However totally irrelevant unless the library agrees to do without E-Rate or LSTA funding! This type of thing is unpress worthy. The Supreme Court made this moot.

    Reply
  2. April says:
    September 8, 2003 at 8:48 pm

    The worst thing about filters…
    I don’t like filters because I’m anti-censorship and all that jazz… but probably the thing that bothers me the most with filters is that so many of them look for words that describe body parts and block anything containing those words. It’s so illustrative of the attitude that certain areas of the body are “bad” and we shouldn’t ever talk about them. I don’t like keeping kids in the dark about their own bodies and health issues.

    Reply
  3. jay currie says:
    September 8, 2003 at 11:22 pm

    Not doing their homework
    Karen Jensen’s article on internet filtering in Faibanks underscores a couple of key points.

    First, any mid-sized library system which is paying $20,000 for filters needs to get more quotes. While I don’t know how many seats there are in the Fairbanks libraries, I do know 20K would buy 3000 seats on the IF2K filter.

    Second, any library thinking of installing filtering equipment should know exactly what is being blocked.As Ms. Jensen points out, there are really awful examples of overblocking but if a filter company refuses to disclose its block list the library will never know.

    Third, the SCOTUS decision requires unblocking and, arguably, failure to provide unblocked access to legal websites on request is a violation of CIPA – make sure the filter can be turned off and make sure you tell your patrons that.

    Finally, a better way to do the calculation on the E-rate funding is to look at five years of E-Rate. If the system is getting $3000 a year and pays, say, a single $3000 fee to licence filtering software, it is 12K ahead of the game. (But don’t forget to include implementation costs and ongoing staff time),

    Reply
  4. Walt says:
    September 9, 2003 at 12:41 am

    Re:Irrelevant!!!
    Well, no, it’s not–if you read the story. The librarian is saying that $3,000 in Erate funding can’t possibly justify $20,000 in “filter” costs–even if the filters worked.

    For a librarian to couple the free-speech argument with an economics argument is *precisely* relevant, since the Supreme Court begged off on the free-speech question by neutering CIPA for adult users.

    Reply

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