Library Lawsuit

[CMUNSON]

     David wrote:
>Good point.  When the Supreme Court ruled a year ago, they found that net 
porn was not "pervasive".  You have to wonder if they may change their minds 
if this situation continues.  Almost every habitual net surfer I know has a 
story about some term they entered into a search engine that brought up a 
site summary that would make a sailor blush.  My mother was looking for a 
children's play for her church, and the word "play" was the culprit.
"Toys", "girls", and "watersports" will almost always get you porn.
     
     What the search engines need to do is become more intelligent. And the 
     humans need to become better searchers, which is where we librarians 
     come in. It would be nice to see the search engines have options like 
     Dejanews where you could search "all" of the Internet (an oxymoron as 
     recent studies of search engine effectiveness show) or "adult" sites 
     or other cool options.
     
     I'm sure that folks looking for "sex toys" would be annoyed by bad 
     hits which led to the ToysRus catalog. It depends on how you look at 
     it.
     
There's also the "typo URLs", such as the infamous www.whitehouse.com.  I 
just found out about two more: www.alta-vista.com and www.espm.com are both 
porn sites.
     
     This is one of the wonderful things about the Internet. The fact that 
     it is still a relatively even playing field. Outside of the Internet, 
     if you wanted to parody the White House, you'd have to spend lots of 
     money developing, publishing, and distributing a magazine, or, 
     spending lots of money producing a TV show, and paying a network to 
     air it (which they will often refuse if it is political in nature). I 
     love the fact that if I can develop a good-looking site with good 
     content, I can have something on par with the big guys.
     
     Let's hope that that doesn't change, although I am pessimistic.
     
     The high entry cost for some avenues of free speech have also been 
     illuminated by those in the micropower radio movement. They ask why 
     ordinary folks can't have radio stations. The FCC imposes such high 
     entry costs (you have to be licensed, over a hundred watts, etc.) that 
     they are basically saying that you can have free speech, but your 
     soapbox needs to be made out of gold. Fortunately, in relative terms, 
     an Internet soapbox can still be had from the nearest dumpster.
     
     Chuck0
     
     Chuck0