Lawyer nixes filters

[Earl Young]

     Such situations normally arise because of knowledge of the problem.  
     Couple that with a jury with an attitude, and Lord knows what emerges. 
      Doing nothing is thus the preferred approach in some instances.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Lawyer nixes filters
Author:  DBurt at ci.oswego.or.us at INTERNET
Date:    4/11/97 1:16 PM


Donald Barkley wrote:
     
> just came back from the Texas Library Association meeting in Fort Worth, 
>and while there I attended a program on Internet use policies in 
>libraries.  One of the librarians there (school? public?) said that the 
>lawyer who vets her library's policies told her not to rely on filtering 
>programs on the grounds that if a filtering program fails to weed out the 
>bad stuff, the library could be secondarily liable.  Her lawyer said that 
>relying on a use policy put them on safer legal ground.  This is, of 
>course, the opinion of one lawyer. Other lawyers will probably say just 
>the opposite.
     
     
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.
     
  ***********************************************************
          David Burt, Information Technology Librarian 
          The Lake Oswego Public Library 
          706 Fourth Street, Lake Oswego, OR 97034
          URL:          http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/library/library.htm 
          Phone:     (503) 635-0392 
          Fax:           (503) 635-4171 
          E-mail:      dburt at ci.oswego.or.us