Nice title from the Kennebec Journal Thieves try do-it-yourself censorship: In Maine, there’s a heightened awareness this year, at least among the state’s librarians after a Lewiston woman checked out copies of “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a popular sex education book for young adolescents, from the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries.
JoAn Karkos refused to return the book, which she described as pornographic, and sent each library a $20 check to cover the cost of the loss. She faces a court fine in Lewiston and the loss of library privileges in Auburn.
Discrimination
So why are they taking the woman to court if she paid for the book. If I lost a Chilton manual I would pay the appropriate lost book fee and that would be it. It seems they are treating her differently because of the content.
Now if she doesn’t pay for the books sure take her to Court or cut her off, but not because of the content.
Re:Discrimination
Haven’t we all discussed this again and again? She took the book and refused to return it. That’s stealing. As someone has said before, if someone breaks into my car and steals my GPS system then sends me a cheque for it, they have still stolen my GPS system.
Re:Discrimination
Correct. She stole them. There are proper channels for issuing a complaint against a book, and she did not follow them. And yeah, we did discuss it before.
Re:Discrimination
Your argument is absurd. Your GPS is not held out for public loan. People steal books from the library all the time. She paid for it just as if she had checked it out and lost it or dropped it in a lake.
If they are doing anything other than what they would do because of the content of the book that is missing that is improper.
Why did you even make the argument about your GPS, you know that is decidedly different from someone taking a circulating library book. You can’t assume it is the same. You can’t possibly be that stupid.