children accessing porn; adults turning off filterware

[Burt, David]

 Mark Wilden wrote:

>But this is why I'm talking about free speech. There are some
governments which >believe that exposing its citizens to anti-government
opinion has bad side-effects, >so they prohibit it. A basic concomitant
of free speech is that some of us will think >some of it is harmful.
Personally, I'd rather not have my son exposed to religious
>proselytizing, but I certainly wouldn't ask the local library to filter
such material.
>Not all speech is protected, of course. But pornography is. And if it
should be >allowed to be "spoken" it should be allowed to be listened
to. The First Amendment >includes no age limit.

 So why doesn't your local public library provide "Hustler" for your
son?
After all, it's protected by the First Amendment.
As Justice Brennan pointed out in the Pico decision on the removal of
books from a school library, libraries are *not* obligated to acquire
materials for patrons, constitutionally protected or not.  A connection
to the Internet does not mean the library has "acquired the Internet",
so the library is under no constitutional obligations to provide
*anything* on the Internet.

  ***********************************************************
          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) 675-2537 
          Fax:           (503) 635-4171 
          E-mail:      dburt at ci.oswego.or.us