Utah law mandates filtering

A woman in Utah has been pushing for a bill to get public libraries to use filters. The article in the The Spectrum (“Southern Utah’s Homepage”) states quite matter-of-factly: “The bill will cut off state funds to libraries that refuse to put filters on their computers to filter Internet smut.” Apparently the woman’s hometown library in Cedar City already refuses to carry R-rated movies, so there is precedent for being restrictive about what a public library can make available. The article, interestingly, does not explain what the lawmakers view as an objectionable site, although it refers casually to “porn filters,” ignoring the issue of what actually could get filtered.

March 3, 2004 by Uncategorized 2

You may also like...

2 Responses

  1. shoe says:
    March 3, 2004 at 10:49 pm

    For me it’s not about protecting children…

    Well, it is, but I think children are used as convenient excuses in these arguments… For me it’s more about protecting equipment.

    My concern is all the extraneous crap that comes hidden in the objectionable things people manage to download or view… I don’t like the idea that there is spyware on computers that the public unwittingly uses to book trips, file taxes, etc. Spyware can come from any site, but man there’s a lot of it associated with sites of a questionable nature.

    I really wish we could have unfiltered terminals at our library. I really, really do. But it gets abused, and as a systems person, I’m the one cleaning it up. That’s not fair to me, the taxpayers, or other patrons. I spent as much time cleaning up our unfiltered yesterday as I did our six filtereds, that get more use.

    I am not above going to an informational site and printing it out on the reference computer for someone doing legitimate research on a subject our filters block. No one has ever asked me to do this, though.

    Reply
  2. John says:
    March 3, 2004 at 11:07 pm

    non sequitur
    You should check out a product like Deep Freeze and/or fine-tuning your browser/OS security settings.

    Objectionable and malware sites often have similarities, but many distinctions can be made between the two — just as a site like toolbar.google.com has no justification being classified as ‘filtered smut.’

    >I am not above going to an informational site and printing it out on the reference computer for someone doing legitimate research on a subject our filters block.

    A good argument… for closed stacks.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

LISNews Archives