Lawyer nixes filters

[Joe Schallan]

At 10:13 AM on 4/11/97, David Burt wrote:

>I'm no lawyer, but I don't understand how if a library knew about an
>undesirable situation in their library, and made a reasonable,
>good-faith effort to stop it that fell short, that this would actually
>increase their liability, as opposed to doing nothing.

We had a similar point raised in a panel at the Arizona Library
Association conference last November.  I think the idea here
is that filtering could constitute making a contract with the
public, an offer of a guarantee against "bad" sites being made
available in the library.  If a bad site nonetheless got through
the filter, and a child were damaged from using it, then
the library could be held liable for damages due to negligence.

I'm no lawyer, either, but our panelist said that employing
filters could constitute making a promise to our public that
we could not hope to keep.  She was a school librarian, but
was told this by her district's attorney.

Joe

PS.  A few days ago I raised the issue of the nature of the
web and our professional response to it.  Whether it is
a single, multifaceted resource, a collection of resources
that can be viewed as being "selectable," or a sort of data
pipeline for which we serve as a telco-like carrier are questions
that cut to the heart of our difficulties with the web.

I was astonished and disappointed that there has been *zero*
discussion of this.  So everyone out there has quickly decided
exactly what it is and how it should be handled, eh?

You might let all the congress members, lawyers, and
judges know that we librarians have got it all figured out --
the poor dears are still struggling with classifying and
writing law for the web.

============================
Joe Schallan, MLS
Reference Librarian/Web Page Editor
Glendale (Arizona) Public Library
jschall at glenpub.lib.az.us
============================