Residents threaten suit over Internet filters

Fosters.com (not the beer) has a interesting Story on a group of citizens ready to take the local library to court over filtering. This time they are against the filters. I\’m not sure I\’ve seen citizens fighting to get filters taken off.

\”The system they have now is very arbitrary and it essentially takes the right away from the parents,\” Arthur Ketchen, president of the Nashua-based First Amendment Legal Defense Fund Citizens Against Censorship, said in a telephone interview Thursday. \”And if the library can’t exist for all citizens, it should be private or not exist at all.\”

Fosters.com (not the beer) has a interesting Story on a group of citizens ready to take the local library to court over filtering. This time they are against the filters. I\’m not sure I\’ve seen citizens fighting to get filters taken off.

\”The system they have now is very arbitrary and it essentially takes the right away from the parents,\” Arthur Ketchen, president of the Nashua-based First Amendment Legal Defense Fund Citizens Against Censorship, said in a telephone interview Thursday. \”And if the library can’t exist for all citizens, it should be private or not exist at all.\”\”The mandatory use of filtering software is simply unsuited for a system of public access to information,\” the letter said. \”No screening software can make judgments about what information is or is not protected under the First Amendment.\”


Barrett did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.


The library has used filtering software on all its public computers since it began offering Internet access about a year ago, according to Robert Frost, the library’s assistant director.