cyberfiltering: just say no... Not no, yes!

[Albert Lunde]

>It is a fact that if a minor trys to purchase porn at a convient store, or
>even an adult book store, the owner can not sell it to them.  Why?  Because
>it is against the law for anyone to sell porn to a minor.
>
>The funny thing is, most of you believe that you can give the stuff away.
>What do you think is going to happen to the owner of the adult book store
>if he started giving it away simply because they are under-aged?  He'll be
>shut down so fast, it'll make your head spin.
>
>Yet, most of you still want to provide the stuff, to anyone, for free.

This general line of argument is rather closely related to why the
"indecency" provisions of the Communication Decency Act were found
unconstitutional in the appeals court ruling.

It _is_ legal to provide "indecent" material to adults, (including thereby
some types of pornography). The appeals court ruled that the CDA's limits
on indecent material on the US Internet did not constitute the least
restrictive means of controlling such material (and presumably protecting
minors). (Limitations on "obscene" materials remain intact.)

The CDA did in fact have a provision that would have allowed the _sale_ of
"indecent" material to anyone with a credit card.  (A cynic might suggest
it was created to protect the profits of the pornography industry ;)

But, *unlike* your shopkeeper, web information providers not operating for
profit have easy no way to determine the age of their readers and restrict
their pages to adults.  IP addresses have no ages attached.

Beyond the particular question of "pornography", an important reason the
CDA was so widely opposed was the broad scope of what "indecent" material
covers, and the difficult of drawing the line in the grey areas.

I'm not a librarian; I'm a sysadmin and "webmaster" of two major systems at
a private university. I also work in "user services" supporting Internet
users, and it is the close relationship between that job and library
support for Internet access which keeps me reading this list. One of the
systems I look after has 2000 personal home pages of students, faculty, and
staff, so I'm somewhat aware of the legal morass that affects Internet
Service Provides.

At the same time, my personal web page (hosted outside the university), is
listed among many hundreds of URLs in the class-action counter-suit against
the CDA.  I doubt the page itself would have been judged indecent, but some
of the sites, like a collection of safe-sex information for teens, might
well have been taken off the net.

Speaking for myself, I have to say that I suffered a lot more as a teen
from lack of information about sexuality, than from excessive exposure to
pornography.

It is my personal belief that the main danger from the porn industry is
economic exploitation of people in the production of pornography. (Like
sexologist John Money, I don't think paraphillias are contagious. (That is,
watching porn won't make someone into a pervert or sex fiend.))

With the rate of suicide among gay teens, and the spread of HIV, it seems to
me that free access, even by minors, to some kinds of potentially
"indecent" sexual material is a life-and-death matter.

At the same time, I'm aware of the political sentiment that produced the CDA.

It seems quite possible that you might prefer to shield your children from
information I think they deserve, even need, to have the chance to see.

In my view, this doesn't put me in quite the same ethical position, as say,
playboy.com or some adult BBS offering free samples. But I'm not sure I can
expect the law to be able to tell the difference.

Librarians and Internet Service Providers are operating in a society that
spans our range of views, and most likely more.

This makes it hard to offer a simple legal or ethical solution.

I'd say I was personally offended by ethical smugness on this subject
(except that I suppose someone might accuse me of the same thing.)

As a professional, it think it is my job to seek out and support a variety
of technical options so that my organization and others can try to comply
with the law, and preserve our goals and values.

I feel fortunate to work in an organization that generally supports free
speech. As an individual I'm acutely aware that the freedoms I protect may
include my own, and that my professional requirements may at times conflict
my personal views.

---
    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde at nwu.edu