Not just porn filtering

[Jon Knight]

The recent discussions on the benefits or otherwise of filtering have
seemed to concentrate on the topics of pornography and sexuality, both of
which hit "moral buttons" for some people.  However are the filterers
removing access to other types of material which some people have in the
past viewed as questionable when found on the Internet?  I'm specifically
thinking of things like drug chemistry, bomb making, locksmithing and
maybe political/religious views? 

Certainly for the first two in that list I remember getting information
from both my parent's book collection at home and also the school library
when I was a child.  This was both for school work and for personal
interest.  Neither have turned me into a drug crazed terrorist, but both
are on touchy subjects in some regions.

Unlike pornography, where many libraries collection development policies
do exclude the paper forms, these topics often have information available
in paper form and often these paper forms _are_ accessible to minors. If
librarians are going to be passing over responsibility for filtering to
commerical organisations, I think its important to consider the less
"sexy" (no pun intended) information that might be blocked from electronic
access that has obviously been considered OK in the past.

Basically filtering != censoring porn is the message I think.

Tatty bye,

Jim'll

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND.  LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl.  More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *