Censorship-Free Libraries

Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FCC

2010-07-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

On July 13^th a federal appeals court overturned the Federal Communication Commission’s “Fleeting Expletive,” policy (see news coverage at the New York Times, Fox News, and The First Amendment Center News)The policy, implemented in 2004, allowed the FCC to fine broadcasters for airing certain tabooed words and references, even if their use was rare and accidental. The court found the policy to be unconstitutionally vague, and therefore an infringement on free speech. The FCC has not yet announced whether it will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court or will rewrite the policy to pass constitutional scrutiny.

The court’s decision does not mean that television and radio broadcasters can suddenly air anything they want without restrictions. The decision was aimed at one particular regulation out of many, a regulation that was written too hastily, without careful consideration of its Free Speech implications.

The decision has no direct bearing on library censorship, but reminds us of a legal principle that applies to all forms of Censorship, whether they affect expression in audio, video, or print formats: the need to be specific. Long-established jurisprudence says that restrictions on Free Speech must not only support legitimate governmental objectives, but must also be constructed as narrowly as possible to meet only those legitimate objectives.

This, of course, is a problem for wanna-be book-banners, who seem to have a severe disability when it comes to getting specific. Last summer, when the West Bend, WI, debacle was in progress, I pleaded repeatedly for the censors to come up with a set of standards they thought should be used to determine which books would be restricted and which wouldn’t. They steadfastly refused. I reviewed many of their targeted books here on this blog, and could find no pattern, no rhyme or reason, to what was and wasn’t on their hit list. This was quickly repeated in Lake County, FL, with the hodgepodge of books challenged there, again without ever offering a set of censorship criteria. It’s going on right now in Fond du Lac, WI, where a censor has gone so far as to circulate a petition demanding that book acquisitions be reviewed by a committee, but has given no thought at all to how members would be selected for the committee, what their qualifications would be, nor the least inkling of what criteria the committee would use to make their decisions.

What these censors are asking for is the right to implement their personal, idiosyncratic prejudices as public policy. They are demanding a right to be capricious.

Even smaller-scale challenges, focused on as little as one title, can be surprisingly vague. At first glance it might appear otherwise, because the challenger will say something like, “this book shouldn’t be used in the classroom because it contains the F-word,” or “this book shouldn’t be in a public library because it encourages homosexuality,” etc. These may sound specific, and perhaps in comparison to the larger-scale book challenges, they are. But they still lack that critical detail: thinking in terms of process and procedure. If one book should be removed or restricted for containing a certain word or theme, should all such books be censored? Can a book be censored because such a word or idea appears once, or does it have to have more than one? How many times? How will you measure? If we apply the rule you’re developing, will it really censor all the books you want to censor, but leave uncensored all the books you think should be unrestricted? What kind of library collection or classroom curriculum will your rules leave us with?

All of that, of course, is without even beginning to consider whether or not the proposed restrictions are even remotely legal. They rarely are.

Click Here to see a PDF of the unanimous decision, known as Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FCC, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York).

Tightening Delaware’s CIPA?

2010-06-23T18:26:00.000-05:00

I wasn’t going to comment on Delaware’s recent attempt to “tighten” its own CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act), because I thought this was an unimportant story of minor changes to an already minor law. But since Safelibraries and some other sources are commenting on it, and are getting some key details wrong, I thought I might attempt a clarification.

The School Library Journal recently reported that the Governor of the state of Delaware has signed into law HB 340, which the journal describes as a “revision of CIPA” that “extends the law’s reach to wireless access in the public library.” The Journal quotes the governor as saying that the new law will “make it clear for the first time that even if it's on a personal laptop, public library network policies on acceptable use still apply.”

The Governor’s accurate summary of the law has been misinterpreted by some, who think it means that “WiFi will be filtered as well as the usual means of Internet access.” This is not the case.

I can only guess about the source of the confusion, but I think it comes from a failure to read carefully. There is, of course, a big difference between a “use policy,” a set of rules that tells people what they can and cannot do, and an “internet filter,” a set of software and hardware that actively prevents computer users from accessing web pages that are estimated to contain pornographic images. What Delaware HB 340 says is that the “use of any computer or mobile device at a library shall be governed by the library's acceptable use policy.” This makes patron-owned computers subject to the library’s internet use policy; it does not make patron-owned computers subject to the library’s internet filter, if a given library even has one.

Some might also be confusing the requirements of two different CIPA laws, the federal and the state. HB 340 is a modification to Delaware state’s CIPA, which never required internet filters, only a usage policy. It is the federal CIPA, an entirely separate matter, which requires libraries that get certain federal funds to implement filters. HB 340 changes only the state’s CIPA; it does nothing at all to the federal CIPA (nor could it).

So what problem does wimpy HB 340 address? The existing Delaware CIPA required libraries to have use policies for computers the library owned. The law didn’t empower library staff to take enforcement action against patrons who violated that internet use policy when the patrons were using their own computers at the library. HB 340 changes that, allowing library staff to deny library privileges to any patron who violates the internet use policy while at the library, regardless of who owns the computer the patron used.

Both the Delaware State CIPA (Title 29, Chapter 66C) and HB 340 are short and clear. I recommend reading them. As of 23 June, Title 29 has not yet been updated to reflect the changes established in HB 340, which are scheduled to go into effect in about 90 days.

Censorship and Delusional Thought

2010-06-21T09:59:00.000-05:00

Maybe I should call this one “Revolutionary Voices Part 4.” I wonder how many parts there will be!

My May 23^rd post on a challenge to a book called Revolutionary Voices recently generated a revealing exchange of comments with an “anonymous” correspondent. The correspondent supports the decision of the Rancocas Valley (NJ) school board to ban the book. At least in part, the correspondent takes this position because, he claims, the artwork in page 103 of the book shows “two adult men engaging in anal sex,” which is how the image is captioned in a blog post he cites, but not in the book itself (a clearer mage of the artwork can be seen HERE).

As with any art, much of the interpretation and meaning is in the mind of the viewer, and this image is, perhaps deliberately, fuzzy and ambiguous. Nonetheless, my correspondent’s interpretation is not merely wrong but delusional.

I wouldn’t ordinarily say “I’m right and you’re wrong,” about an interpretation of art. I wouldn’t ordinarily call someone who disagreed with me “crazy,” and to be clear, I’m not calling this correspondent crazy merely because he disagrees me. I’m calling him crazy because his comments give evidence of cognitive dysfunction.

Exactly how is the correspondent delusional?

First, he asserts that he can interpret, with a clarity and certainty that other people lack, exactly what is going on in a grainy, indistinct drawing that simply does not contain sufficient detail to make the claim that he makes.

Second, he ignores the simple reality of what detail the image does contain, since a careful observer can plainly see that the participants are clothed.

Third, he claims to know better than the book’s editor what the image depicts. The editor, Amy Sonnie, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “the drawing was actually a stock image of one man hiking a football to another.”

Fourth, he claims that my position in opposition to banning this book amounts to “anything goes in high school libraries.” To draw such a conclusion from my defense of this book is no more and no less than irrational, since the contents of this book are far, far from “anything goes.” In fact, I wouldn’t argue at all about removing from a school library any book that could be shown to meet the legal definition of obscenity, but Revolutionary Voices comes nowhere close to that.

While not all book challenges are so cut and dried, this example is not at all unusual. The plain facts are that Revolutionary Voices is a serious work of literature of great value to queer and questioning youth, but some adults don’t approve. Their disapproval is based in their social and political agendas, perhaps even a religious agenda, but they know they won’t be able to ban the book if they’re honest about that. So they have to exaggerate obscenity claims and hope nobody bothers to check their claims by actually opening the book. None of that is crazy; it’s just devious, dishonest and treacherous.

But when one refuses to take personal responsibility for the meaning one gives to art, when one claims an ability to see what others cannot see, when one contradicts the plainly observable facts, that’s just plain nuts.

The good news is that the Revolutionary Readings project I mentioned in my May 26^th post is proceeding as planned, and has even expanded its scope. In an effort to demonstrate the serious value of Revolutionary Voices, the contents of the book will be performed in Montclair, NJ, on June 27^th, Metuchen on July 8^th, East Rutherford on the 28^th, and back at Montclair on August 19^th. They’ve even got a performance in New York City on July 12^th. See http://www.revolutionaryreadings.com/ for details.

Following the lead of this enterprising and creative group, I’m going to ask that readings from Revolutionary Voices be included in the Banned Books Week observances we’ll be having in my area from 25 Sep through 02 Oct, 2010.

Nickel and Dimed?

2010-06-18T01:00:00.000-05:00

An unusually honest book challenge is still under consideration in Easton, Pennsylvania, according to Lehigh Valley Live.com. I say unusually honest because many book challengers never admit that their objections are political or religious in nature, especially when they really are. Too often, challengers exaggerate -- or outright fabricate -- claims that a book contains sexually explicit materials or foul language, specifically to avoid revealing their true objections. Not so in Easton.

The book in question is Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. This is a journalistic investigation into what it’s like for Americans earning the minimum wage to try to make ends meet. Ehrenreich tried living this way herself, and wrote up her experiences from an eye-witness perspective. The results are less than kind to corporate America and even to some individuals with a higher standard of living. At the Easton Area School District, the book was “part of the school's 11th-grade Advanced Placement English curriculum.” As one administrator put it, “We read books like this to spark debate, get kids thinking about what they actually believe in, and stand up and defend it.”

Since the book is non-fiction and contains no sexually explicit material, the challenger had no choice but to be honest. He accused the district of engaging in “political activism” by using the book, which he claims promotes economic fallacies, socialist ideas, and illegal drug use. He also claims it belittles Christians. The challenger has no children in the school district, but feels he has standing to make his claim as a tax-payer and as a graduate of the school district.

This kind of challenge is a waste of time for the school district and for the challenger, since even if the challenger’s claims are true, they do not constitute a legally defensible basis for removing a book. In fact, removing books in an attempt to enforce political orthodoxy has been specifically tested and rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court (Board v. Pico, 1982). Nevertheless, waste time is just what the school district did, creating an 11-member committee to review the book. No harm done. The committee met in December and found the book pedagogically sound, voting to retain it.

The school board has yet to discuss the challenge. It could override the review committee’s recommendations, as School Boards have sometimes done in other book challenges. Let’s hope the board of the Easton Area School District are abler than those others.

The Bluest Eye, Again.

2010-06-04T12:27:00.000-05:00

2 The Advocate.com reports yet another challenge to The Bluest Eye, a magnificent novel by author Toni Morrison, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature. The news article says that a parent has challenged the inclusion of the book on an Advanced Placement reading list for high school (!) English students. A bone-headed parent claims to be challenging the book because of a graphic depiction of rape.

The challenge is being made at Lafayette High School, part of the Lafayette Parish School System (that’s a public school system, a Louisiana parish being the equivalent of a county in other states). School policy allows students to substitute an alternative reading if they object to a particular assignment, and The Bluest Eye is optional reading, not required. Of course, students at this school are in ninth through twelfth grades, and are old enough to have some idea of what life is really like out in the real world. That’s not enough to satisfy the parent, who is “asking that the book no longer be a recommended reading selection.” Existing school policy is more than enough to allow this parent to control his own child’s reading, but he’s insisting on also being able to control what other people’s children can read.

The article reports that “the teacher voluntarily removed the book as an option from the Advanced Placement reading list,” an unfortunate capitulation to the values of the dull-witted. It is also procedurally dubious, since the book has not yet been reviewed by a committee. A better procedure would have been to leave the book on the reading list until the review process was complete.

Speaking of review by committee, the district has stated it will do just that. While the school is to be praised for having a procedure in place and following it, this really is a waste of time and resources. This book is of such high literary and social value that the challenge can hardly be taken seriously. It has been challenged many times in many schools, and is retained more often than not.

I reviewed The Bluest Eye and described some other challenges against it in my blog post of 31 Oct 2009.

Revolutionary Voices, Part 3

2010-05-26T19:59:00.000-05:00

An anonymous commentator has brought attention to a great idea about how to respond to a book ban. Here’s an excellent example of a creative and educational response to a school board decision that is as opposite to creativity and education as you can get.

Readers may recall that the school board controlling the Rancocas Valley Regional High School (in New Jersey) recently banned an anthology for queer and questioning youth entitled Revolutionary Voices (see my posts of 5 May and 23 May). “Banned” in this case means “removed from the school library.”

A local group has hit on a brilliant way to respond to this. They are going to put on a “theatrical reading” of the banned book at a local café. The varied prose and poetry in the book readily lends itself to live performance, and it appears that the group has put some real thought into how to stage their production.

Their stated hope is that:

"Upon witnessing our performances, upon reading this text, upon viewing these images, upon hearing these stories, you will recognize that Revolutionary Voices is not pornographic."

To see what they’re up to, visit: http://www.revolutionaryreadings.com

And if you find yourself in the Montclair, NJ, area on June 27, attend the 8pm performance!

This seem like an excellent idea to me, since only a handful of people will every sit and read a banned book to verify the claims being made about it. This performance will give the interested public a chance to learn about the contents of the book, to learn why the book is important for young readers, and to see that there is serious opposition to its censorship. At many levels, this calls the bluff of the school board and the political activists who have challenged the book.

Revolutionary Voices, part 2

2010-05-23T22:21:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month I noted that the Rancocas Valley Board of Education, in New Jersey, had made a dubious decision to ban (remove from library shelves) Revolutionary Voices, an anthology by and for queer and questioning youth. What will happen next remains to be seen, but there might be more to the story.

The New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union reports on its own website that it has made an Open Public Records request for documents relating to the board's decision. That doesn't mean they ACLU will necessarily take action against the board, but it does indicate that they're considering what action to take.

Why seek these documents? Probably because they ACLU is looking for evidence as to the motivations behind the board's decision. Court precedents, especially the 1982 Board v. Pico decision, make it clear that school boards need to have a valid pedagogical reason for removing a book that is already on a school library shelf, and cannot remove books in an attempt to enforce any kind of political orthodoxy. Were the ACLU to sue the school board over this act of censorship, the court would probably examine transcripts of board discussions, emails, memos, and the like, looking for information about what motivated the ban. The court would probably ask whether or not the district had an established procedure for handling challenges to library books, and whether or not that procedure was followed. The court would want to know if the board followed or overrode the recommendations of a review committee, if there was one. The court would try to determine whether the board members actually knew the contents of the book, what details of the contents made the book educationally unfit, and how that analysis was arrived at. Of course, any comments indicating that the board made an uninformed decision, or made their decision in order to implement political or religious objectives, could weigh heavily against the ban.

In deciding what action, if any, to take, the ACLU would be likely to evaluate those same kinds of documents in order to estimate the strength of a possible lawsuit. It would be interesting to see what documents the school board produces in response to the Open Public Records request, and what they contain. I can only speculate, but with a copy of the banned book right here in my hand, I'd say the school board made a major legal blunder. If they're smart, they'll reverse their decision before they have to divert large chunks of tax dollars to pay legal fees.

Doomed to Repeat History?

2010-05-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

It appears that those who are ignorant of history are, indeed, doomed to repeat it.

The Post-Journal reported on May 12^th that a parent has challenged Go Ask Alice, a Young Adult novel with a strong anti-drug message. The book was going to be used in 7^th- and 8^th-grade health classes at the Thomas Jefferson middle school in Jamestown, New York. Pending formal paperwork, a review committee will be formed to review the book and make recommendations.

The school district had sent a letter to parents prior to the book’s use, noting that the book contained some profanity and sexual activity. Some parents then read the book and found it offensive. School district policy allows parents to opt their own children out of lesson materials they find offensive. This was not sufficient for some parents, who have stated their intent to have the book removed from curricula throughout the school district.

Both the school district and the parents in this incident seem to think they’ve discovered something new. They’re quite mistaken about that.

First published in 1971, Go Ask Alice has been a frequent target of attempted censorship for decades. More recently, it occupies position 18 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books 2000-2009. It has sometimes been removed as the result of a challenge, but often retained, in part because many educators find that the book effectively communicates an anti-drug-use message to younger teens. It was one of the books that the board of the Island Trees Union Free School District, also in New York state, removed from their school library in 1975. That got them sued, with the result that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered this book returned to school library shelves in the famous Board of Education v. Pico decision (1982).

Banning Ghosts and Ghoulies?

2010-05-13T13:05:00.000-05:00

The Nashua Telegraph reports that a parent at the Pennichuck Middle School in Nashua, New Hampshire, has challenged the availability of Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story, a Young Adult novel written by Mary Downing Hahn. Online reviews indicate that many adults fondly remember this as one of their favorite scary books when they were kids. The news article says:

"The parent, whose name was not released, is objecting to the book’s themes of talking to the dead, spiritualism and 'the belief that a part of the body survives after death and that you can communicate with it,' according to the School District."

This is a refreshingly honest challenge, since no exaggerated or invented claims are being made about profane language or sexual content. A challenge like this is unlikely to succeed, though, since a difference of religious beliefs is simply not a valid reason for removing or restricting books in any public context. The newspaper says the district will form a seven-member review committee to consider the challenge. While it is laudable that the district has a challenge procedure and is following it, this all seems rather a waste of time, given the nature of the challenge. It is a foregone conclusion that the book will be retained, since there is no legally supportable basis for doing otherwise.

The Nashua Telegraph did a good job in reporting on the challenge. They had the presence of mind to contact the American Library Association to find out about previous challenges. The ALA spokesperson found that the book has been challenged, but not frequently, the last previously known challenge having taken place 14 years ago. That, of course, is based on the challenges that are reported to the ALA, and that there might have been other, undocumented challenges.

Think Globally and Act Locally

2010-05-10T01:00:00.000-05:00

I’ve begun preliminary organizing in my area for the 2010 observance of Banned Books Week, which runs from Saturday, 25 September through Saturday, 02 October. This may seem a bit early, but for those of us operating in an academic environment, preliminary plans have to be made before the summer break in order to have a successful event in September.

Observance of Banned Books Week is important because: 1) hundreds of attempts to remove, hide, or restrict access to books are made every year in these United States, 2) most people are unaware of this problem, and 3) the best defense against censorship is an informed public.

Organizing any event can be time-consuming, but Banned Book Week events are relatively easy to put together. For one thing, I found that there already were a number of observances taking place in my area each year, but most of these were small in scope and little noticed. Just making sure one group knows what another group is doing can increase visibility and participation.

I’m passing all this on in hopes that others will take the initiative to organize similar events in their areas. I’m finding a lot of local support for ideas like:

A display of banned and challenged books at a local bookstore and/or library.
Web pages dedicated to banned and challenged books, put up by bookstores and libraries.
A display and other activities at the English departments of nearby colleges and universities.
A speech or presentation by an author whose books have been challenged.
A presentation or panel on Free Speech law by local law students.
A speech or presentation by a representative of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association, or the National Coalition Against Censorship.

I’m also starting up a Banned Books reading club that will operate year-round. We’ll meet once a month at a local bookstore, which was very happy to help start up the group. At each meeting we’ll discuss a pre-selected title that has been banned or challenged, including a little of the censorship history of the selected book, which in many cases is easy to look up. Between the ALA’s lists of frequently challenged books and new challenges going on constantly, there are more than enough titles to keep this reading club running for years.

I've put together some ideas and suggestions on my website, and have links there to resources available from organizations like the ALA, ABFFE, etc. That info can be found at:

http://www.BannedInWestBend.info/bbw

A Bizarre Decision

2010-05-08T00:31:00.000-05:00

A recent internet censorship case took an odd turn in Washington State on May 6^th. The state Supreme Court decision is actually part of a suit that is being decided by a U.S. District court (a federal court), so the May 6^th decision has not yet settled the matter. An AP article explains that the next step is back to the federal court.

The case, known as Bradburn v. North Central Regional Library District, is actually about a very narrow issue: whether or not a public library has to unblock access to a legitimate website blocked by an internet filter upon demand by an adult. It’s not at all about obscenity or minors. What the federal court asked the state Supreme Court to evaluate was whether or not such unblocking was required by the Free Speech provisions of the Washington state constitution. The federal court will take the state court’s findings into consideration in a separate decision that will also consider the implications of federal law.

In a split decision, the majority of the justices on the state Supreme Court decided that the state constitution allowed the library to ignore an adult’s demand for unblocking. Five justices wrote the prevailing opinion, with one justice agreeing with them, but writing a separate opinion. Three of the Supreme Court justices disagreed, writing a dissenting opinion.

It’s no surprise that I disagree with the majority’s decision. But it’s not just a question of disagreement. The court’s decision is nothing less than bizarre, bordering on the incomprehensible. And its incomprehensibility is not a question of legalese. It’s a question of basic logic. The decision makes little sense.

To make their decision work, the majority treated internet filtering like “selection,” the process by which a library selects and acquires books and other materials. A library does not (in fact, cannot) house every constitutionally-protected book, and so, the court reasoned, a library does not have to provide access to every constitutionally-protected web page. Somehow, according to the court, this means that a library doesn't have to unblock a blocked web page just because an adult asks for it, even if the blocked page is clearly within the bounds of protected speech.

There are many quantum leaps of illogic in the court’s line of reasoning, and I’ll bore everybody to tears if I try to pick every detail apart. The main point is that the analogy between selection and internet filters is irrational. Following the court’s logic, a library could subscribe to the New York Times, but could cut pages out of selected issues for any reason, or for no reason at all. By the court’s logic, the library could buy ten books and decide keep two of them under lock and key.

I am not alone in holding this opinion. Three justices on the Washington state Supreme Court also took the majority to task. Short and to the point, the dissenting opinion’s opening sentence speaks volumes:

“The question before this court is whether, consistent with our state constitution's free speech protections, a public library can actively restrict adult access to web sites containing constitutionally protected speech. The question is easy to answer: of course it cannot.”

The dissenting opinion also says:

“There is simply no reason . . . to install a system to protect children that cannot be disabled when used by adults.”

“But censoring material on the Internet is not the same thing as declining to purchase a particular book. It is more like refusing to circulate a book that is in the collection based on its content. That would raise serious constitutional concerns.”

“Simply put, the State has no interest in protecting adults from constitutionally protected materials on the Internet. These policies do exactly that. The filter should be removed on the request of an adult patron.”

The problem with the court’s reasoning is not (at least not entirely) with its analysis of the law. That is, after all, their area of expertise. But in this decision, as in some others, the judges have demonstrated a lack of comprehension of what the internet is or what filters do. The split in the decision on this case probably reflects different levels of technical understanding. Some things the majority seems not to have grasped are:

The internet itself is a public forum. It is, in many ways, the ultimate public forum. As such, infringements upon internet Free Speech should always be subject to “strict scrutiny,” the most rigorous protection of Free Speech that courts can provide.
When a library connects to the internet, it automatically has access to countless web pages. Few libraries, if any, engage in any kind of selection process regarding internet sites. In the absence of planned action, the library and its patrons have access to the entire internet, not just portions of it.
Internet filters do not equate to selecting books to put on a library shelf. Internet filters actively prevent access to materials that library patrons would otherwise have access to. Internet filters are much more like removing books from the shelves than they are like any kind of selection process.

How this case will turn out remains to be seen. The Washington State Supreme Court’s decision is only one of the pieces of information that the U.S. District Court will consider. Of course, however that District Court decision turns it, it might also be appealed. I suspect that in the long run decisions like this one one will be overturned, not because of any change in law or ideology, but because judges and justices will become more internet savvy over time. Sadly, this process could take another decade or two.

Asking About Life, Part 4

2010-05-06T01:55:00.003-05:00

On May 5^th, in Tennessee, logic and reason won a small victory, however fleeting it may be. The Knox County school board in that fine state voted 6-3 to retain a challenged biology textbook titled Asking About Life. News coverage of the vote was released within a few hours on KnoxNews.com, VolunteerTV.com, and Wate.com.

The father of a high school student had challenged the use of the textbook in the school’s honors Biology program because on one page, out of over 900, the book defined Creationism as a “biblical myth.” In response to his initial challenge, a review committee was set up. But when that committee recommended keeping the book, the father appealed to the school board. The school board has now also voted to keep the book, and the father has indicated he may appeal further, although it is not clear to whom.

This follows the ever-so-typical pattern of book challenges in public schools: 1) a parent overreacts to excerpts without considering the work as a whole, 2) the parent challenges the book without reasonable justification, 3) a review committee is formed and recommends keeping the book, then 4) the school board ignores the recommendations of the experts and bans the book anyway. By luck or logic, I don’t know which, step four turned out differently this time.

The cash-strapped school district could ill afford to replace the textbook at present. The district was already planning to replace the textbook at some unknown future date, whenever regular funding next became available. It is not clear whether that would have entailed an upgrade to the next edition of the same textbook or a different title altogether. Nor is it clear how the present challenge will affect that decision, if and when the funding to replace the book does become available.

What the textbook actually says on the offending page (I have the book in front of me) is:

“In 1973, antievolutionists in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana passed identical bills calling for ‘equal time’ for teaching evolution and creationism, the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian God in 7 days. But a court ruled that the ‘equal-time’ bill was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state” [emphasis original].

Some Christian creationists (or are they creationist Christians?) feel this statement unfairly belittles their religion, and that a science textbook shouldn't mention religion at all. But given their all-out assault on science, I don’t think creationists can legitimately claim to be the victims here. The textbook’s statements are irreproachably fair and accurate.

Of course, the term myth has two slightly different meanings, and a lot of the debate within this book challenge was about which meaning was intended by the authors. Myth can mean a story that is false. Myth can also mean a story with symbolic and metaphorical meanings that are more important than the story’s factual accuracy, regardless of whether the story is true or not. The latter is the more technically accurate sense of the term, and is the one the authors have said they intended.

The distinction is irrelevant, however, since the Genesis creation story is a myth in both senses. The vast majority of Christians acknowledge that Genesis is a myth. They recognize that what’s important about it is its spiritual message about the relationship between the human and the divine, and know that it is not, and cannot be, a statement of historical fact. Only a small group of literal-minded fundamentalists claim that the first few chapters of Genesis can be taken as a statement of scientific fact. Genesis says that plants grew on earth before the sun, moon and stars had been created (1:11-17), which is a simple impossibility in several ways. Genesis explicitly states that birds and mammals were created before humankind (1:20-26), then immediately contradicts itself, saying that God created man first (2:7), and created birds and mammals after that (2:18-20). Genesis says that men and women (plural) were created together after all the other life forms (1:26-28), then immediately contradicts itself, saying that God created a man, then birds and mammals, then created a woman out of the man’s rib (2:18-22). Don’t get me started about talking snakes. Calling Genesis a myth is the best thing we can say about it.

I agree that no science textbook should attempt to practice theology, and Asking About Life comes nowhere close to doing that. What the book does is correctly recount some of the recent history of the teaching of science, a topic that is clearly legitimate within a science textbook. It is completely ridiculous for creationists to cry foul here. Creationists started this fight by trying to turn our officially secular public school system into an instrument for the propagation of faith. They lost that battle, and now want to insist that nobody discuss that loss as the simple historical fact that it is. I realize some won’t like it, but creationists have made their own bed, and now they have to lie in it.

Revolutionary Voices

2010-05-05T11:15:00.000-05:00

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that on May 4^th the Rancocas Valley Board of Education (in New Jersey) banned Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology. The board voted unanimously to pull the book from high school library shelves. In the same meeting, the board voted to retain two other challenged books, Love and Sex: 10 Stories of Truth and The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities. All three titles had been challenged by parents associated with conservative group 9.12.

According to the article, the board consulted attorneys who advised the board that they “had the legal authority to ban books because of obscenity but not on political grounds.” That is stating the obvious, and the board hardly needed to pay legal fees if that’s the only advice they got. What the article does not make clear is whether or not the lawyers evaluated this particular book to determine whether or not it fell into a category that the board could legally ban.

Having reviewed the book myself, it appears to me that the board has clearly crossed the line into illegal censorship. One can only hope that an aggrieved parent in the school district has the presence of mind to contact the ACLU and sue the school board for infringing upon their First Amendment rights.

Revolutionary Voices was written by youth and for youth. It was designed to give voice to individuals and groups often overlooked in anthologies for queer and questioning youth, specifically “youth of color, young women, transgender and bisexual youth, (dis)abled youth, and poor/working class youth.“ Many of the writers included in the volume have gone on to make a name for themselves as authors.

This is a serious work with serious literary and social value. As such, it cannot be classified as obscene. A critical legal detail that the school board seems to have overlooked is that the book must be evaluated as a whole, meaning that the decision to ban it cannot be based on isolated excerpts. Interestingly, the Inquirer describes the opinion of one of the parents who read the book this way:

“She said that for the most part, the stories and material were sensible and in good taste, the sort of thing that might help teenagers struggling to figure out their sexuality. But certain sections of Revolutionary Voices, including a piece about a ‘gay porn star,’ Lange said, were distasteful and ‘without educational value.’”

The parent/reviewer is acknowledging here that the book, as a whole, has serious value. This is the kind of analysis that will come back to haunt the school board, should they be sued on account of their decision.

Shame on the Rancocas Valley Board of Education for kowtowing to a small group bent on controlling public discourse! Once again, a school board earns an “F” in education.

The Dim Bulbs Grow Dimmer in Fond du Lac

2010-05-03T21:33:00.000-05:00

In my April 13^th post I mentioned the supposed end of a perfectly ridiculous challenge to Sonya Sones’ One of those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. A mother in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, had challenged that book at a school library, and had dug in her heels about it. On that same date, an article in the Fond Du Lac Reporter noted that the challenge had gone through multiple levels, the challenger being unwilling to accept the decision of a review committee and then of the superintendent to keep the book. When the school board also voted to keep the book, the newspaper declared that the “parent's mission to remove a book from Fond du Lac middle schools has ended.”

This may have been premature.

Those who want to censor books are of many types and have varying motivations, but the Fond Du Lac situation seems increasingly typical of the worst aspects of censors as a group. It starts with a parent who has a tiny sliver of a legitimate complaint: a book that he or she finds objectionable by personal standards. But any hint of reasonableness disappears the moment that parent refuses to accept personal responsibility for his or her personal values. A personal objection becomes a public debate when the parent demands that a public institution, ordinarily bound by the ethics and legalities of Free Speech, impose one person’s values on an entire community. The book is reviewed by others, discussed, and voted on, and (almost always) is retained, which should be a process that educates the challenger about Free Speech in a pluralistic society. But the censors don't get educated by that process. On the contrary, they just get more intransigent.

And so we come to the May 3^rd letter by the same book challenger to the Fond Du Lac Reporter, in which she repeats the empty platitudes we’ve seen in so many failed challenges elsewhere. “It was never about ‘banning books,’” she declares, even as she tries to ban books, apparently comprehending neither the meaning of the word “ban” nor the gravity of her demand. She writes, “I realize there are parents who disagree with me,” and adds “to them, I say your children can visit the public library for that type of book.” Here we see the very essence of the censors’ worldview, a belief that a whole community should have the job of avoiding offense to the peculiar sensitivities of one individual. Of course, both ethics and the law demand exactly the opposite, that especially sensitive individuals should take steps to shield themselves from unwelcome materials, without burdening the community at large. But a censor cannot be bothered with such facts.

Undeterred by three levels of failure, the letter-writer points to a petition she is now circulating. Her petition is shockingly inane, revealing a lack of thought that is nearly absolute. It reads, in its entirety:

We the citizens of the Fond du Lac School District are asking our local school board for a change in policy in how literature is selected in our schools. We ask for a committee to read and select books for our children. We also ask for a book content rating system to be put into place.

Could she have been more hopelessly vague? How many people will be on her proposed committee? With what qualifications? Will they be elected or appointed? By whom? Will they be paid for their services? To whom will they report? Are their findings to be final or will they only be suggestions? What guidelines will they follow to decide which books the school should acquire and which the school should not? Who will get to define those guidelines? Similar questions are instantly apparent for the rating system she fails to define. Who will rate the books? Into how many categories will books be rated? What specific characteristics will determine the rating category into which a book is placed? Who will decide on the number of categories and define the characteristics of each category? How will a book’s rating be communicated to a potential reader? Will it affect a potential reader’s borrowing privileges? If so, how?

An inability or unwillingness to think logically is part of most censorship attempts at every step, and the Fond Du Lac situation is certainly no exception. That refusal to think is present at the beginning of every challenge, when someone first makes an unrealistic assessment of the offensiveness or harmfulness of a piece of literature. It’s present every time book challengers refuse to recognize that they don’t have a right to dictate public policy or refuse to acknowledge what the law plainly says about Free Speech. It’s present when censors insist that review committees and rating systems are simple, uncomplicated things, and can't be bothered to get specific about what they really want. Censors just don’t think.

Deal With It!

2010-05-02T01:00:00.005-05:00

For over a decade Deal With It has been high on the hit list of censors across America. Among their various claims, varying from the exaggerated to the dishonest to the deranged, are that the book contains “graphic” or “explicit” depictions of sex, or that it promotes teenage sex, abortion, and homosexuality.

As usual, on actually reviewing the book, I find myself wondering whether the censors ever opened the cover. And if they actually did consider the contents of the book, I can’t help but wonder at the bizarre notions of human nature and human sexuality the censors must be living with.

Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a Gurl, written by Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, and Rebecca Odes, and first published in 1999, is a book of information about health, puberty, and sex for teenage and pre-teen girls. A limited preview can be seen on books.google.com, and the most controversial parts of the text, taken completely out of context and anything but a fair representation of the book as a whole, can be found at pabbis.com. The book is a distillation of information accumulated over several years on gurl.com, a website that continues to be active and useful.

Frankly, the front cover is the most provocative part of the book. It shows a young woman with her back to the reader, holding her raincoat open (but faced away from the reader), in what many would take to be a “flasher” pose. This is an overleaf attached to the front cover, and when this is opened the figure is reversed, revealing that the “flasher” is not nude, but is wearing either a bikini or bra and panties.

That is the totality of any luridness or salaciousness in the book. The rest is information, practical, useful and technically accurate, presented with fairness and balance. In fact, the text is dense by the standards of young readers, so much so that pre-teens and even some young teens are just not that likely to read it.

Illustrations are both minimal and minimalist. There are technical drawings of both male and female genitalia, rendered as monochrome line-drawings with the usual scientific names of the parts. There are a total of three illustrations of sexual positions, which are made up of black-and-white stick figures, lacking any detail.

The informational content of the book is exactly focused on the issues of bodily and emotional changes that most teenage girls have concerns about. It’s about: breast development and brassieres, acne, body hair and how to deal with it, menstruation, sex, sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, what to expect in the gynecologist’s office, etc. There are also sections on mental health, drugs and drug use, self-esteem, healthy boundaries, emotions, relationships, and the like.

Deal With It is empowering, because knowledge is power, but it doesn’t “promote” anything. The emphasis throughout the book is on balanced and factual completeness, not on any particular ideology. That means that, for example, methods for controlling pregnancy and the transmission of disease are discussed, in terms of both their effectiveness and failures. The effects of recreational drugs are described, but so are their risks. Room is made for consideration of individual values and religious beliefs, without promoting or denigrating them. A few quotes illustrate this balance:

“When it comes to protection from sexually transmitted diseases, the only truly safe sex is no sex at all (or sex with yourself only). Any sex with another person introduces an element of risk” (p. 108).

“If you’re sexually active, there is a chance that you will get pregnant, no matter which birth control method you use. The possibility is higher or lower depending on which method of birth control you use. But know that no birth control method, except abstinence, is 100 percent effective” (p. 121).

“If you’re sure that you’re pregnant, you have to make a relatively quick decision about whether you will continue the pregnancy. For some people, there is no decision to make. Their religious, moral, or personal beliefs make it unthinkable to intentionally terminate a pregnancy” (p. 124).

Is there any valid legal principle that would allow this book to be banned or restricted anywhere? No. Not at all. There is nothing in the least bit prurient about the book, and it clearly has serious value, both to minors and adults. By definition, then, the book is neither obscene nor “harmful to minors.” So far is the law is concerned, this book can be handed out to five-year-olds (not that they’d be able to read it).

Some parents won’t want their daughters to have the information in this book, in spite of its fairness, balance, and accuracy. They are entitled to make that personal decision, although they’re deluding themselves if they think they’re protecting their daughters from the “promotion” or “encouragement” of anything, or a challenge to the values of one or another religion. Parents who would withhold this book are those who believe that their children, and society as a whole, are better served by knowing less, which is exactly why those particular parents should not be allowed to make this kind of decision for anybody else’s children.

Banning or restricting access to this book is just ignorance striving to beget ignorance.

Asking About Life, Part 3

2010-04-28T11:04:00.000-05:00

To: Members of School Board of Knox County, Tennessee

Dear School Board Member:

I read with dismay of the recent attempt at censorship in your school district against Tobin and Dusheck's biology textbook Asking About Life. I urge the School Board to respect the Establishment and Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by retaining the book in classroom curricula.

I have reviewed the contested section of the textbook, and find nothing that raises the slightest concern about its fairness, its scientific or historical accuracy, or its suitability for educational purposes. Tennessee State education standards require teaching evolution in Biology II and Advanced Placement Biology, and it is impossible to fulfill this mandate without offending the religious sensibilities of some constituents.

By removing Asking About Life from the curriculum, the board will be violating the constitutional rights of students, parents, and teachers in at least two ways. First, you will be subordinating sound scientific education to one particular religious perspective, an entanglement with religion that a public school, as an agency of government, cannot engage in. Secondly, you will be censoring a book on the basis of of the board's sense of religious or political orthodoxy, something a school board cannot do, regardless of the subject matter in question.

Before you make your decision, I urge the board to seek competent legal advice about the applicability of prior court decisions to the specifics of the situation at hand. Hopefully, the school district has its own attorney or has access to the county's attorney. I suggest giving careful consideration to the implications of the Kitzmiller v. Dover (400 F. Supp. 2d 707) and Edwards v. Aguillard (482 U.S. 578) decisions regarding creationism and the teaching of science in public schools. Consideration should also be given to Minarcini v. Strongsville (541 F.2d 577) and Board V. Pico (457 U.S. 853), to name but two precedents that establish limits on the power of school boards to censor books in an attempt to enforce ideological orthodoxy.

If the board makes the wrong choice by removing Asking About Life from curricula, it will only take one aggrieved parent to drag the district into a costly lawsuit that the district is almost certain to loose. Please give careful consideration to the budgetary implications of your decision.

Thank you for your consideration.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Part 2

2010-04-26T00:36:00.000-05:00

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a magnificent book. Although this is a novel, author Sherman Alexie draws heavily on his real-life experiences, giving the book an autobiographical flavor. The story is written from the perspective of a 14-year-old boy, and is intended for a young adult audience. Nevertheless, adult readers will find the book both touching and eye-opening.

The story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy growing up on an Indian reservation in Washington state. Seeking educational opportunities outside the reservation, he starts attending an all white school 22 miles away. He suddenly finds himself to be a teen without an identity, the “other” no matter where he goes, the one brown face at school, perceived as a traitor by many back home on the reservation. The differences in expectations and economic opportunity on and off of the reservation are starkly explored, in terms of both race and class. The evils of alcoholism are made plain, as they cause the protagonist tragic losses. But with all the struggles and losses, the story ends on a positive note, as he finds greater self-acceptance, and acceptance by others in both of the worlds in which he lives.

A reviewer for the School Library Journal wrote, “this kind of subject matter requires a seemingly effortless mixture of laughter and tears. Sherman Alexie manages to deliver this.” I heartily concur, having found the book illuminating, entertaining, and heart-rending all at once. This is also the kind of book educators love, since it can be mined for endless discussion topics. It is for these kinds of reasons that the book has won many awards, including a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, The New York Times Notable Children’s Books of 2007, The Los Angeles Times Favorite Children’s Books of 2007, and School Library Journal Best Books of 2007. On April 12^th, the Walla Walla County Rural Library District began giving away 200 copies of the novel to teenagers who visited library branches.

It is not at all clear to me why the Stockton, Missouri, school district banned this book. One news article stated it was due to “violence, language and some sexual content,” but that is hard to believe. The book does contain a fair amount of rough language, reflecting the way teenage boys interact with each other. But compared to what is heard in real-life high school hallways, the author has shown restraint. Violence in the book is in no way glorified, is not portrayed in any detail, and there’s far less of it than one might see in an hour of prime-time television. Sexual content is limited to a few references to erections and masturbation, also not described in any detail.

I suspect that the book makes some parents and administrators uncomfortable because of the social, political, and religious commentary that is sometimes woven into the story. If I were to pick one passage most likely to rouse the ire of a censor, I’d bet on page 155. It has no violence, strong language, or sexual content at all. But it does include the following:

“Now, in the old days, Indians used to be forgiving of any kind of eccentricity. In fact, weird people were often celebrated.

“Epileptics were often shamans because people just assumed that God gave seizure-visions to the lucky ones.

“Gay people were seen as magical, too.

“I mean, like in many cultures, men were viewed as warriors and women were viewed as caregivers. But gay people, being both male and female, were seen as both warriors and caregivers.

“Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss Army knives!

“My grandmother had no use for all the gay bashing and homophobia in the world, especially among other Indians.

“’Jeez,’ she said. ‘Who cares if a man wants to marry another man? All I want to know is who’s going to pick up all the dirty socks?’

“Of course, ever since white people showed up and brought along their Christianity and their fear of eccentricity, Indians have gradually lost all of their tolerance.

“Indians can be just as judgmental and hateful as any white person.

“But not my grandmother.

“She still hung onto that old-time Indian spirit, you know?”

An able educator could easily turn just this passage into an hour of classroom discussion, exploring the assumptions the protagonist is making about human nature, sexual orientation, and differences in cultural values. The idiots running the schools in Stockton, Missouri, have chosen to deny their students this educational opportunity.

Of Mice and Men

2010-04-22T01:00:00.001-05:00

John Steinbeck was a major American writer, a winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize for Literature, who gave us The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Cannery Row, to name but a few of his notable works. Each of his novels captures the essence and atmosphere of a particular time and place, often exploring the hard lives of poorer Americans in difficult circumstances. His portraits of Americana have been bestsellers, have won numerous literary awards, and have been adapted to the cinema, television, and the stage. They are studied in high school and college literature courses throughout the U.S, and the English-speaking world.

Not that any of that gives the censors even a moment's pause.

And so it goes with Of Mice and Men, a short yet deep work by a literary giant, available in paperback and library binding, Ebook format and audio, with optional Spark Notes and Cliff Notes. Educators find Of Mice and Men to be an excellent tool for teaching literature because it is clear yet profound, and because its lean simplicity makes it easy to show students how structure supports theme (see the discussion in H. N. Foerstel's Banned In the USA, pp. 197-199). Of course, it is banned, challenged, and censored. A lot. It held sixth position on the American Library Association's list of the top 100 challenged books for the decade 1990-1999, and moved up to fifth place for the decade 2000-2009.

I've just re-read Of Mice and Men, and found myself wondering what could possibly possess anyone to censor it. Most of us are familiar with the story, having seen one or another movie or TV version, even if we've never read it. Yes, it's depressing; it is a tragedy after all (note to censors: that's a genre of serious literature). It's a look into the character of men who are loners, fending for themselves without family or friends, a look into what happens when people who can't afford to dream dare to dream. The characters of the story are coarse, and they sometimes employ coarse language, though nowhere near as much as a portrayal of such characters might have included. Dated racial epithets are used, but form part of the realistic portrayal of a certain segment of American society in the 1930s. The violence in the story, far from extreme, is the result of circumstances, lack of opportunity, and personal responsibility. It is never glorified or exalted. References to sex are quite indirect.

D. B. Sova, in her volume on Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds, documents more than 35 challenges from 1974 through 2003, mostly revolving around the use of the book in English classes in grades 7 and higher. Typical complaints refer to profane language, racial slurs, and taking the Lord's name in vain. One can only assume that the occasional complaints of "lurid passages about sex" were made by individuals who simply had not read the book. In 1992, in Hamilton, Ohio, a group of parents actually counted 108 profanities and 12 racial slurs (different reviewers come of with different counts, since they don't agree with each other about which terms are or are not profane). A minister addressing the school board said the book should be burned. In 1994 a school superintendent in Putnam County, Tennessee, removed the book from classrooms. The school board in George County, Mississippi, voted to ban the book in 2002, and in 2003 the book was removed from all classrooms and school libraries in Lucedale, Mississippi.

The challenges continue unabated. A 2008 article in USA Today adds instances in Greencastle-Antrim (PA) schools in 2006, Newton (IA) schools in 2007, and Olathe (KS) schools in 2007. The Olathe school district voted to retain Of Mice and Men, ostensibly on the book's own merits. It is possible, though, that the Olathe board knew a bit more about Free Speech law than many school boards, their 1995 predecessors having had their wrists slapped by a US District Court after they removed copies of Annie on my Mind from the school library (Case v. Unified School District, 908 F.Supp. 864).

Objections to Of Mice and Men rarely come from teachers or librarians, people who actually know something about literature, the role of literature in education, and protections of Free Speech. One might make allowances for the occasional parent, not so enlightened, to raise an objection to this or any work. But Of Mice and Men is nowhere near as offensive as its frequent banning and attempted banning would suggest. We can conclude that this is one of those books that has got on some list of "inappropriate" books somewhere, and is then recycled from one non-reader to another non-reader, the blind leading to blind. A school board is supposed to know better than that. They're supposed to appreciate that great books have an important role in education, and they're supposed to know at least a little bit about Free Speech in schools. It is unethical and incompetent for a school board to kowtow to each and every illiterate cretin's request to reduce our children's education to milquetoasty pablum.

Minarcini v. Strongsville

2010-04-19T01:00:00.013-05:00

Kurt Vonnegut’s apocalyptic novel Cat’s Cradle is not one of the most frequently challenged of challenged books, but it is an interesting example, both because of the motivations behind the attempted censorship of it, and because of the court decision that censorship led to.

First published in 1963, Cat’s Cradle is one of Vonnegut’s many satirical observations of the human condition. Using fiction as a metaphor for current events, it deals with the relationship between technology and society, religion and society, economic development, and the arms race. Ice-nine, a mysterious substance invented by scientists without thought to its consequences, is a transparent metaphor for nuclear weaponry.

The usual objections are unsupportable in this case. Some strong language appears, but is quite limited. The gerundive of the “F” word is rendered as “fugging,” which isn't much of a disguise, but must have made some censors happy. There are a few minor and very indirect references to sexual activity, but nothing approaching a description of any such act. Even though, operatically, everybody winds up dead in the end, there is no violence at all.

Objections to the book have more to do with its political and religious perspective. Its primary political stance is one against war, with some focus on the darker side of capitalism, although it is far from anti-American. Oddly, Cat’s cradle is listed in N. J. Karolides’ volume Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds, rather than the companion volume, Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds, by M. Bald. Vonnegut's well-known secularism is readily apparent in the text. Although carefully crafted as cynicism about the invented and fictional religion of Bokononism, it is clear that all religions are being portrayed as so much hokum.

In 1972, the School District of the City of Strongsville, Ohio, decided to remove Cat’s Cradle from classroom curricula and the school library, also taking action against Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Unsurprisingly, some students and their parents, with the assistance of the ACLU, sued the district in a case known as Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District (541 F.2d 577, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, 1976). The school district won a first round, but lost on appeal.

Minarcini v. Strongsville anticipates later decisions such as Right to Read Defense Committee v. School Committee of the City of Chelsea (1978, 454 F. Supp. 703), Board of Education v. Pico (1982, 457 U.S. 853), Case v. Unified School District (1995, 908 F.Supp. 864), and Counts v. Cedarville School District (2003, 295 F.Supp.2d 996). In Minarcini the court acknowledged the broad power of school boards to regulate the informational content of schools, and cautioned that courts should not interfere with that power unless a board’s actions “directly and sharply implicate basic constitutional values.” Such a direct and sharp implication is exactly what the court found the board had committed, given the uncontested literary value of the challenged book, and the absence of any claim of obscenity (one of the few legitimate grounds for removing a book from a school library).

Even today, censorship proponents like to claim that removing a book from a library or classroom isn’t really censorship, since the removed book will remain available elsewhere. This ridiculous and self-serving redefinition of the term censorship has been done away with in a number of court cases, including this one. In Minarcini, the court accused the school board of attempting “to censor the school library," and wrote:

“Further, we do not think this burden is minimized by the availability of the disputed book in sources outside the school. Restraint on expression may not generally be justified by the fact that there may be other times, places, or circumstances available for such expression.”

The court’s final decision was:

“. . . to declare the School Board resolutions of August 19, 1972 and August 31, 1972, null and void as violative of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and to direct the members of the Strongsville School Board to replace in the library the books with which these resolutions dealt . . .”

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

2010-04-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

Frustratingly short reports on KSPR and KTTS news tell that the Stockton School District (Missouri) has banned (the term used by the news articles) Sherman Alexie's Young Adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the winner of a 2007 National Book Award. Apparently, the book had been in use in classrooms there for some time, but when a parent complained about "violence, language, and some sexual content," the board decided to remove it. The articles don't mention if the book was reviewed by a committee, and whether or not the board's decision accepted or rejected the committee's recommendations. The KTTS article does note that some teachers who used the book in their classrooms disagreed with the board's decision.

The district superintendent recalled that in her 5-year tenure there one other book, by Nicholas Sparks, was also banned. The news stories are unclear as to which of Sparks' titles was banned, Message in a Bottle or The Notebook.

We hope for more detailed new coverage soon.

ALA Updates Lists of Banned and Challenged Books

2010-04-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

In a press release dated 14 April, the American Library Association published its Top Ten List of the most frequently challenged books of 2009. At the same time, a list of the 100 Most Banned/Challenged Books in the decade 2000-2009 was added to their website. Both are worth perusing.

Those who don’t read continue to attempt to control what those who do read can read. Newcomers to the fickle wrath of the nearly literate include Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. On the updated list of the top 100, the Harry Potter series is now in position number 1. A number of the top 100 have been reviewed here on this blog, including Lauren Myracle’s TTYL, Stehphen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Robbie Harris’ It’s Perfectly Normal, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Rudolfa Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

Fond du Lac keeps One of Those Hideous Books

2010-04-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

After three months of consideration and reconsideration, drawn out by an obstinate parent's refusal to accept the outcomes, the school board in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, has voted to retain Sonya Sones' Young Adult novel One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. The challenge was brought in January, and a review committee recommended keeping the book in the school library, but the challenging parent insisted on appealing that decision to the board. During the challenge process, the challenger added in at least two titles from the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series, which are still under consideration.

Asking About Life, Part 2

2010-04-08T11:16:00.000-05:00

The Creationist and Censorious plot thickens in Tennessee, where the board of the Knox County School system maneuvered a delay in voting on the retention of honors biology textbook Asking About Life. Apparently, the board was leaning toward overriding the review committee and voting in favor of dropping the book from the curriculum, and the chair invoked a parliamentary rule to delay the vote for 30 days.

In terms of a creationist debate, the possible removal of a biology textbook is extraordinary in the 21st century. Even in the famous/infamous Kitzmiller v. Dover case (2005), the school board didn't try to remove a book. They sought to add statements questioning the validity of Evolution, and to make a creationist textbook available to students who sought it, but they had enough sense not to add censorship to their list of egregious errors likely to draw judicial disapproval. Even so, the U.S. district court shot them down completely.

Some creationists in Knox County, Tennessee, have far less common sense then those in Dover, Pa. They think they can actually remove a textbook because they feel it challenges their particular view of Christian dogma.

Oddly for this day and age, what is at issue is whether or not the Genesis creation story is a "biblical myth." What a ridiculous argument to have! Of course it is a myth! Whether one takes the term myth to mean a story that is false, or (more technically accurate) a story in which symbolic meanings are more important than factual content, the Genesis story is still a myth from any empirical or scientific perspective. A tale in which "night" and "day" exist before there is a sun, or in which plants grow before there is a sun, or in which the sun and stars are fixed in a "firmament," cannot be accepted as any kind of science. The Genesis story is taken as metaphor even by the majority of self-identified Christians.

At a personal level, of course, individuals have a right to believe what they wish, no matter how counter-scientific such belief may be. But creationists have no right to tell anybody else what science textbooks can say, nor can they insist that public schools avoid teaching science that challenges their particular religious beliefs. Attempting to force Creationism or Intelligent Design into school curricula, or just to weaken the teaching of the science of Evolution, have been adjudicated over and over again. The result has always been the same: public schools teach science, not one or another religious dogma.

Some of the members of the School Board in Knox County have clearly demonstrated their lack of qualifications for that job. They're in charge of public education, and yet are willing to allow their personal religious beliefs to corrupt an educational system that the law requires to be secular. They're in charge of public education, yet don't understand the scientific background of the theory of evolution. They're in charge of public education, and yet are willing to use censorship as a means to promote their personal ideologies. Why are people who've earned an "F" in education running the school?

Asking About Life

2010-04-06T13:43:00.000-05:00

Some people just think they have a right to decide what other people read, and no amount of education seems to dissuade them. In a separate but parallel track, some people believe that the scientific Theory of Evolution is bunk, and no amount of education seems to dissuade them. The two so easily combine it is hard to keep them apart.

So it is no surprise that the parent of a high school student in Tennessee's Knox County school system has challenged an honors biology textbook that touches on evolution. One would think that Free Speech law, related court precedents, the risk of public ridicule, and the failure of the vast majority of censorship attempts would have taught everyone not to waste their own time or anybody else's. Failing that, one would think that repeated court decisions against teaching creationism in public schools would scare people away from the topic altogether. But apparently not. The parent has asked the school system to drop the book from the curriculum.

Asking About Life by Allan J. Tobin and Jennie Dusheck is an immense textbook (about 960 pages) that covers cell biology, genetics, the physical structures of plants and animals, and includes a section on Evolution. The parent's complaint, as reported by knoxnews.com, is that the book is biased against Christianity in that it labels the Genesis creation story a "biblical myth." The news article notes that "on page 319 of the text, the authors describe creationism as 'the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian God in 7 days.'" An extensive preview of the book is available on Google Books, and the book does indeed contain the quoted phrase, albeit on page 299 rather than 319 (that might just be a difference in editions; the 3rd is online).

A story on wate.com quotes one former science teacher as telling the board "Evolution has no good science behind it. To put it forth as if it has a good scientific explanation is to deal in mythology," a rather tired argument at this late date. It might be a shock for some who are not yet mentally ready for the 21st Century to learn both that Evolution is on a sound scientific footing and that questioning Christian dogma is not a legitimate basis for dropping textbooks from public school curricula.

A review committee apparently has recommended the retention of the book. The parent is appealing this decision, however, and the school board is expected to vote on the matter on Wednesday night.

Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak

2010-04-03T01:00:00.002-05:00

Back in September I posted a short article about a challenge to Laurie Halse Anderson's Novel Speak. I didn't review the book at that time, and just now read it.

Speak addresses a very difficult topic:the rape of a teenage girl and its emotional consequences. It is a touching, painful look into the mind of the victim, her feelings of shame, guilt, isolation, and above all, inability to communicate. The entire book explores her struggle to speak, to find her own feelings and give them expression, to believe she had a right to speak, to make herself heard by adults and peers who don't want to hear her, who really aren't listening. Ultimately, it is a story of healing, of trauma overcome.

The book is neither vulgar nor lurid. There are references to sexual activity, but no detailed descriptions of them. Strong words are used very occasionally, just enough to give the book some realism as a reflection of high school society. There is no glorification of violence, criminality, drugs, or alcohol. This is a book about consequences.

Speak is a powerful learning opportunity for anyone, whether reading it personally or in a classroom. Some of the things the reader might learn from it are that alcohol consumption increases the risks of becoming a victim, that a perpetrator who raped once is likely to rape again, that emotional scars are not minor just because they are hidden, that a victim needs to speak up to protect others, that a victim needs to speak up to protect herself, to heal herself, that peers and adults need to pay attention when a teenager shuts down emotionally. I can't imagine how or why anyone would want to deny these lessons to any teenager, or adult for that matter.

This is certainly my opinion as a reader, but not only mine. Speak has been a bestseller on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists, a winner of the Michael L. Printz award, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has been adapted into a movie.

In September, the book was challenged but retained in Temecula, California. The author's website acknowledges challenges in Michigan, New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Washington, New York, and Maine. Luckily, since review committees usually include adults who actually read, challenges are mostly decided in favor of keeping the book on the shelf, in the curriculum, or wherever it was challenged.

South Park Does Censorship

2010-03-31T01:00:00.001-05:00

With its usual satire and sarcasm, the South Park comedy cartoon recently took on the issue of censorship. The episode, titled The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs and originally aired on March 24^th, is crudely hysterical, and definitely not for the sensitive viewer.

The episode starts with a perspective on censorship in real world. A school teacher assigns the usual gang of South Park characters to read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, explaining that it is banned in many schools because of its vulgar and dangerous content. This encourages the students, usually reluctant readers, who look forward to something stimulating. They rush home to read the banned book, but become sorely disappointed when they are unable to find anything in it that shocks them in the least.

Feeling cheated, Cartman declares, “it’s not obscene, dude; I’ll show them f***ing obscene!” The boys then set out to write the most vulgar and offensive book of all time. They entertain themselves by coming up with a story that is beyond disgusting and is utterly devoid of any serious content. When one student’s mother accidentally discovers the book, she vomits on reading the first paragraph. In fact no adult can get through the first page without puking, and the book is declared a literary hit.

I won’t spoil the twists or ending of the plot. Suffice it to say that the episode challenges readers to take personal responsibility for the meanings and importance they give to literature.

The episode can be viewed online at: http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267108.

Running With Scissors

2010-03-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

I read Running With Scissors in a single day, unable to put the book down. I found it quite funny, a drily witty examination of impossible levels of familial disorder and dysfunction. For those of us who grew up in households approximating what passes for normal in our society, it is difficult to react to this story as anything other than a comedy of errors.

But Running With Scissors isn’t a comedy, or even a novel. Author Augusten Burroughs offers it to us as a memoir, an autobiography, a recollection of historical facts.

So this is a peek into madness, the recollections of a pre-teen and teen growing up under bizarre circumstances. His father is emotionally unavailable and then completely absent. His mother is beyond self-absorbed, when she’s not having a psychotic episode. Burroughs winds up living in the household of his mother’s psychiatrist, which is much more a web of interlocking neuroses than a family. The older teens around him are immature and out of control; the adults around him are adults in years only, certainly not in emotional maturity. Co-dependency rules.

Growing up far too fast and far too soon has its consequences. Burroughs smokes, drinks, uses drugs and has sex. None of this is glorified in any way. All of these behaviors are depicted as symptoms of the massive dysfunction of his developmental environment. The teenage Burroughs has the freedom many teens think they want, and the direct result is an acute awareness of his own need for adult guidance.

Readers of differing backgrounds will find very different benefits from reading the book, which is probably why it’s been on the New York Times Bestsellers list and has been made into a movie. Some will be entertained by what seems to them to be a home life that couldn’t possibly be real. Many will gain a new appreciation for the normalcy of their own upbringing. A few may be comforted to learn they’re not the only ones raised in the midst of a mental hurricane.

Of course, I wouldn’t be reviewing Running With Scissors here if it hadn’t been challenged somewhere by misguided adults who mistakenly believed they were doing minors a favor by keeping this book from them. Currently (March 2010), in the frequently censorious state of Florida, some parents in the Hillsborough County School District want the book dropped from a high school reading list and removed from all school libraries in the district. Committees at each of the nine high schools in the district reviewed the book and made varying recommendations. In four high schools the committees voted to retain the book with a “mature readers” sticker on the front, three decided to require parental permission, and two voted to ban the book altogether. Ironically, a book about adults who can’t act as adults is being banned by some supposed adults who do not understand the value of literature, don’t understand the choices teenagers are realistically faced with, and simply cannot grasp the distinction between private choices and public policy.

Refusing to Learn?

2010-03-26T12:01:00.000-05:00

I’ve written before about the crying need to educate the administrators of public schools about censorship. Recent news stories have focused again on the peculiar learning disabilities of that group.

To begin with an example that goes beyond library censorship, consider this week’s case of the high school prom in Itawamba County, Mississippi. The school district prohibited a female student, who self-identified as lesbian, from wearing a tuxedo or bringing a same-sex date to the prom. The student contacted the ACLU, who wrote a letter to the school district, explaining the applicable law and demanding that the student be allowed to attend as she planned. This is not a difficult or obscure area of law. The applicable statutes are clear and recent court precedents strongly supported the position of the student and the ACLU. But the hard-headed school board, probably acting on very bad legal advice, dug in their heels, cancelling the prom altogether. The result, drearily predictable to everyone other than the school administrators, was a US District Court decision finding that the school had violated the student’s First Amendment rights in three different ways. The student is now in a position to sue the school district for punitive and compensatory damages.

One might hope that extensive news coverage would educate educators everywhere, putting them on notice that they have a thing or two to learn about the First Amendment. The Itawamba County incident drew international attention, appearing in all of the major US news services and in at least a dozen languages internationally. Similarly, international news coverage and ridicule fell on the Riverside County, California, school district that pulled copies of the dictionary from elementary school classrooms (because it contained dirty words), and on a Culpeper County, Virginia, school district that dropped (or tried to drop) Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl from the curriculum.

Sadly, recent news indicates that many administrators missed these educational opportunities. In Hillsborough County, Florida, a challenge is underway against Augusten Burroughs’ memoir Running With Scissors. Never mind that we’re talking here about high school students or that the book was a New York Times bestseller or was made into a movie. At the Rancocas Valley school district in New Jersey, some parents have formally objected to Revolutionary Voices and several other gay-themed books, proclaiming that “they are detrimental to children,” and “we need to protect our children.” Meanwhile, in Huntington Beach, California, a controversy continues over Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The district has determined that the book is “inappropriate” for minors and requires students to present a signed parental permission slip to read it. This is a major literary work by a major American writer, and like so many other great works of literature, it is frequently used – and frequently challenged – in educational institutions.

While I think the objecting parents deserve a certain amount of criticism, the school boards in these cases are far more blameworthy. I don’t understand why anyone would actually try to ban a book, but I understand that the opinions of parents will vary, and that many have no training in or awareness of the ethics or legalities of Free Speech. But when it comes to principals, superintendents, and school boards, it’s part of their job to understand those things. Those in charge of education ought to understand the educational value of literature, are supposed to value expanded horizons and giving a voice to the voiceless. The ethics of their profession demands a deep respect for Freedom of Expression. Above all, school administrators need to understand the basics – just the basics – of those parts of the law that address censorship and Free Speech in public schools. Book challenges happen constantly, yet each one seems to be treated as if it were something new, as if nobody understood the law, as if nobody knew that most book challenges fail. Is that a failure to learn, or a refusal to learn?

Technology Groups Critique Australia's Internet Censorship Plan

2010-03-23T00:42:00.000-05:00

It's been slow to organize, but opposition to Australia's proposed internet filtering scheme is finally firming up, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald reported on March 23rd. The Herald reports that "Australia's biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique" of the plan. The article went on to say:

"[M]any reiterated their concerns that the policy is fundamentally unsound and would do little to make the internet a safer place for children. Many said the scope of blocked content was too broad and would render legitimate sites inaccessible, while the process of adding sites to the blacklist could be subject to abuse by bureaucrats and politicians."

It is possible, just possible, that logic might win out in the end in this debate. Only time will tell.

Another Pesky Library Exception

2010-03-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

Back in November I posted an article pointing out that the obscenity laws of some states specifically exempt libraries, and sometimes other institutions of learning, from some of their restrictions. In states with such laws it is sometimes legal for a library to carry materials that would be illegal to sell at a convenience store (just as an example). I quoted a section of Wisconsin state law (W.S.A. 948.1) that beautifully described the special functions of libraries and schools as it protected Free Speech in those institutions. Of course, I did not have the luxury of delving into the laws of all the states.

A recent news item raised a similar question about obscenity laws in Washington State. The article implied that only Child Pornography (which is defined in Federal law) is illegal there, at least in terms of what can be viewed on a computer in a public library. So I did the best I can, as a non-lawyer, to look into that law.

While the Wisconsin exemption is longer and more protective of the mission of libraries, the Washington law is impressively concise. Referring to much of Washington's obscenity law as "RCW 9.68.050 through 9.68.120," that law limits its own applicability:

Nothing in RCW 9.68.050 through 9.68.120 shall apply to the circulation of any such material by any recognized historical society or museum, the state law library, any county law library, the state library, the public library, any library of any college or university, or to any archive or library under the supervision and control of the state, county, municipality, or other political subdivision.

One of the things that causes confusion in debates about library censorship is that there is no nationwide standard for defining what is illegally obscene, let alone who can or cannot distribute, display, or receive such materials. When it comes to obscenity and public libraries, it is quite possible, even common, that a specific item that is illegal in one jurisdiction is perfectly legal in another. The notable exception is Child Pornography - material that depicts real minors in a sexual way - which is illegal everywhere, controlled by Federal law rather than states, counties, or municipalities.

Filters: Two Insider's Views

2010-03-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

A pair of articles on Internet Filtering in public schools appeared this morning (3/21) in the Miami Herald. The “pro” article (click here) points out the problems caused by filters in a school setting, while the “con” article (click here) points out the benefits of filters. What makes these interesting is that they’re written by insiders, high school students who are directly affected by the filters.

The “con” article, praising the benefits of internet filters in schools, makes no mention of pornography. It focuses entirely on the distractions and problems of social networking sites like “MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.” The student writer points out that these distract from school work and can provide an opening for cyberbullies and online predators, all of which students are better off without.

The “pro” article makes no mention of the social networking issues. It focuses instead on the difficulty in obtaining educational information in a filtered environment, and on the weakness of the filters. The writer points out that “a search for websites on sexually transmitted diseases is practically futile. Even some sites on breast cancer are restricted,” and that important resources “like Google Images are completely blocked off.” The article also points out that some students are finding ways to bypass the filters, relying on computers outside of school, installing proxies inside the school, or using outside computers to search the web and deliver the resultant screen images to a school computer.

The State of Censorship

2010-03-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

Book challenges continue in Wisconsin's public schools, according to an article in this morning's Fond Du Lac Reporter. Paint Me Like I Am is an anthology of poems written as part of a writing project for at-risk teens. One poem in the anthology, Diary of an Abusive Stepfather, raised the hackles of a parent who found its "vulgar language" objectionable. This is the same poem that a Vineland, NJ, school principal physically ripped out of his school's copy of the anthology last year (an undamaged copy has since been placed in that school's library). In the North Fond du Lac school district, a committee has been formed to review the book and make a recommendation to the school district.

In the nearby Fond du Lac school district, another challenge is further along. A parent who brought a challenge to seven books is now appealing the decision of a review committee to keep a copy of One of those Hideous Books where the Mother Dies. The other six books in this challenge are still under consideration, the parent having added them later to the initial challenge. An archived article from the Fond Du Lac Reporter shows that the late additions included Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know, Julie Halpern's Get Well Soon, and four books by Ann Brashares: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood, and Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood.

One must, of course, allow a parent to make choices about what his or her own child may read. It remains mystery, however, why such personal choices are so often translated into removing or restricting access to a book, thus imposing one individual's opinions on everyone else. A deeper mystery is the refusal of the challengers to learn from the challenge process. More often than not, a committee reviews the challenged book and votes to retain it. This should make it clear to the challenger that perceptions of the book's suitability vary. A challenger could, at this point, acknowledge the diversity of opinions and take personal responsibility for managing her or his own choices about reading material. But what happens is often the opposite, with the challenger becoming indignant and continuing the challenge. What is revealed here is the challenger's presumption that his or her opinion is somehow privileged over the opinions of others, that it represents a moral absolute. It is a failure of civility.

The Australian Reich

2010-03-15T14:18:00.000-05:00

The Minister of Propaganda . . . er, sorry . . . Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has gotten a bit miffed about the recent Enemies of The Internet report published by Reporters without Borders. That report notes that nationwide filtering rules now under consideration could place Australia in the same category as China and Iran in terms of internet censorship. In a March 15th article on iTWire, Minister Conroy is described as saying that Reporters Without Borders has been misled about what the government is actually trying to do, and that the comparison with oppressive regimes is unfair. While making this characterization, the Minister offered no details explaining how the Australian plan he is backing is actually different from, say, China's. The iTWire article also notes:

Senator Conroy said the Refused Classification material targeted by the filter could not be distributed through books, on TV, cinemas or DVD – a ban that is supported by "each and everyone in this chamber. But apparently this new distribution platform otherwise known as the Internet should be something sacred. It should not have to play by the rules of Australia," Senator Conroy said.

Minister Conroy is quite right, and here is an object lesson against censorship by government. Australia having a well-established history of censorship of books and movies, the extension of that censorship to the internet seems only logical. I'm not sure, though, that the censorship of books and movies in Australia has anything like the stealth that their proposed censorship of the Internet has. The plan allows the national government, in secret, to develop a blacklist of websites to which all Australians will be denied access, and allows that the contents of the blacklist remain a secret. A government website about the plan backhandedly acknowledges this secrecy problem by promising that "The Government will immediately undertake public consultation . . . on additional measures to improve the accountability and transparency of processes that lead to Refused Classification-rated material being placed on the RC Content list." The public is here being told to allow a secret process to go into effect and trust that the government will make the process more transparent in the future.

The category of materials that the plan would block, everything that Australian law already terms "Refused Classification," is shockingly broad and vague. A government website on the plan summarizes (only summarizes) the material in this category as including: "child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act." In the U.S., censorship is based mostly on obscenity, a concept that is notoriously difficult to define. The established system of Australian censorship adds at least four categories (crime, violence, drug use, terrorism) that are equally difficult to pin down. Sadly, Australian law has long allowed government suppression of all such content in print and other media, and that suppression is now being extended to the internet.

It seems never to have occurred to Minister Conroy that Australia's problem is not that that it now censors the internet too little, but that it already censors books and other media too much.

Are we in the same situation in the U.S.? Not yet. Far from it in fact. While the censorship of print and other media was once commonplace, courts have been whittling away at it for decades. The federal government is almost entirely out of the censorship business, and even state governments rarely attempt to censor anything, with the exception of pornographic materials that are sufficiently hard core to meet the legal definition of obscenity. Censorship of other materials continues to happen on a very small scale, a school district here, a public library there. These instances of censorship are often illegal, and are easily overturned in court, if anybody has the presence of mind to challenge them.

But the internet is frightening to governments. Since websites are hosted on computers around the world, no national government can legislate content restrictions that work. The uncontrollability of the internet seems to raise the hackles of governments everywhere, even in the U.S. Leaping ahead of its historical respect for Freedom of Expression, the U.S. government tried to extend censorious control over the internet. Its first two attempts, the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) were quickly overturned in the courts. The third and greatly reduced attempt, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), is currently in effect, applying only in schools and libraries that accept certain government monies, and allowed by the courts only because the law permits adults to have the required filter turned off if they want to surf the web without it.

These trends should be as disturbing to North Americans as they are to at least some Australians. Within the U.S. government, the legislative branch demonstrated, by attempting to implement the CDA and COPA, that it was willing to ignore traditional respect for Free Speech and to trample basic civil liberties underfoot. We were spared this by an alert judicial branch, not by legislative competence. In Australia, in a legal system only a little different from our own, the national government is poised to take control of internet content to a degree that U.S. legislators never dared to dream possible. Except now they have an example to follow.

USC 254(h)(6)(D)

2010-03-14T14:41:00.003-05:00

My title probably scares some readers away, and well it should, because this post involves a detailed look at one paragraph of legal code.

SafeLibraries has made a number of groundless claims about libraries perpetrating fraud in claiming compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). His idea is that some libraries are claiming to be CIPA-compliant in order to receive government funds, but are lying in claiming that compliance. His evidence is the assertion by some library patrons that other patrons are viewing online pornography at these CIPA-compliant libraries. I accept as fact that this is happening. How that is evidence of fraud on the part of the library is hard to follow, however, and Safelibraries is vague and evasive about the logical steps involved.

This vagueness gained a small degree of clarity in a recent exchange of comments between SafeLibraries and me regarding his post of March 11th (yes, we're almost speaking again). Central to his claim of fraud is that, under the CIPA, libraries cannot allow an adult patron to disable the filter on a computer he or she is using, without the intervention of library staff. He has made this claim in other posts as well, asserting that the patron must ask a library employee to disable the filter, and asserting that allowing adult patrons to disable their own filters makes the libraries' claims of CIPA-compliance fraudulent.

SafeLibraries has indicated that he might explain this in a post on his blog. I certainly look forward to seeing how he manages to explain his particular interpretation of the law. But I also want to be proactive here, explaining what the CIPA actually says, and what the FCC has said about interpreting the CIPA.

The relevant paragraph from the CIPA is U.S.C. 254(h)(6)(d), which reads:

(D) Disabling during adult use
An administrator, supervisor, or other person authorized by the certifying authority under subparagraph (A)(i) may disable the technology protection measure concerned, during use by an adult, to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purpose.
 This can be rendered into plainer English by substituting some of the terms.  The "certifying authority under subparagraph (A)(i)" is,  simply, the  "library," meaning a library that is certifying that it is in compliance with the CIPA.  The "technology protection measure concerned" is the "filter," meaning the hardware and software that filters internet content on a particular library computer.  Rewriting the paragraph with those substitutions makes the meaning clearer, without changing that meaning:


An administrator, supervisor, or other person authorized by the library may disable the filter, during use by an adult, to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purpose.  
Now some legal experts have argued that this implies that the patron and the person who actually does the disabling of the filter must be two different persons.  Other legal experts have argued that this paragraph says no such thing.  Personally, I don't see any validity in arguing that two people have to be involved.  What the law says is that a library can authorize some "other person" to disable the filter.  The law could have gone on to narrow the definition of  "other person," could have stated that the "other person" had to be in some kind of official relationship with the library, could have specified some kind of process for designating official "filter disablers," or simply could have said explicitly that the patron could not be such an "other person."  But the law says none of these things.  Remember, too,  that this clause does not just apply to the library-patron relationship, but also applies to library employees who are using computers in some office that is not accessible to the public. In that situation, the "adult" who is using the computer and the "person authorized" to disable the filter are one and the same individual.  This clause makes no distinction between that transaction and a transaction between a librarian and a patron.  A library can, therefore, authorize a patron to disable the filter on his or her own behalf.

Maybe the issue, then, is what "authorized" means. Maybe it doesn't just mean "permitted." Maybe there has to be a formal authorization process, even though the law makes no mention of such.  Then all the library has to do is put up a sign saying "we authorize adult patrons to disable the internet filter on library computers they are using."  This would comply fully with the law.

Even if my own logic here is faulty, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which administers compliances with the CIPA, has pointedly refused to require that a patron go to a library employee to request disabling of the filter.  In 2001, in order 01-120, the FCC acknowledged the many problems such an interpretation could involve, since librarians are not really in a position to to judge the lawfulness of a patron's intended use of the internet, and will be bothered with constant requests for disabling.  Referring specifically to 254(h)(6)(d), the FCC states:


"We decline to promulgate rules mandating how entities should implement these provisions. Federally-imposed rules directing school and library staff when to disable technology protection measures would likely be overbroad and imprecise, potentially chilling speech, or otherwise confusing schools and libraries about the requirements of the statute. We leave such determinations to the local communities, whom we believe to be most knowledgeable about the varying circumstances of schools or libraries within those communities."
In essence, the FCC has given CIPA-compliant libraries written permission to make their own decisions about whether an adult patron must go to a library employee to request that the filter be disabled or can disable the filter without any staff intervention. Regardless of the "correct" interpretation of the legal code, then, the FCC is not going to proceed against a library for allowing patrons to disable their own filters. If one insists that the law requires library staff to intervene in disabling the filter, then you could also insist that allowing a patron to disable the filter without staff intervention constitutes fraud under the CIPA.  It would be a fraud without consequence, however, since the FCC is not going to demand the return of any government funds or de-certify a library's statement of compliance on this basis.




Suppose I'm just entirely wrong about all of this. Suppose that a patron cannot be allowed to disable the filter without the involvement of library staff.  Then we are left in a situation of pure idiocy. An adult patron who wants to surf the web unfiltered has to go to a library employee to request the filter be disabled. Per the Supreme Court's US v. ALA decision, the library employee cannot ask the patron for a reason, but must disable the filter upon demand.The staff are reduced to mere robots, automatically disabling the filter without thought or analysis anytime an adult patron so demands. Such staff intervention adds no value and is thus a complete waste of time. While some libraries might make their own choice to waste their labor resources this way, it is perfectly ridiculous for the law to require them to do so against their will.  




Which brings us right back to square zero with SafeLibraries' claims of fraud. If he's right and I'm wrong, then we'll have the FCC proceeding against libraries for CIPA fraud over a ridiculous technicality, the claim that the library allowed the patrons to unblock filters without staff intervention, even though said staff intervention would make absolutely no difference to the outcome. Whether library staff disable the filter or the patron disables the filter without staff intervention, the filter is still disabled. And a patron surfing the web without the filter might view materials that the filter would have blocked. The mere fact that a patron was viewing material that the filter would have blocked is in no way evidence of fraud on the part of the library, since the library could simply have disabled the filter when the patron so demanded, and the law requires the library to do so.



Perhaps SafeLibraries' analytical muddle arises from a failure to distinguish two separate areas of law: the CIPA and Obscenity.  If it is criminal in a given library to view certain kinds of pornographic images, that is the result of the applicable state and local Obscenity laws, and has nothing at all to do with the CIPA. If a patron requests that the filter be disabled, and then uses that unfiltered library computer to view images that are illegally obscene in the jurisdiction in which the library operates, that is matter for local or state police (under some circumstance even the FBI), but any prosecution of that matter has nothing to do with the CIPA.  



Sound logic is eventually inescapable. Increasingly, it appears that SafeLibraries' deafness and blindness to what the law actually says is entirely deliberate.

Enemies of the Internet 2010

2010-03-13T12:34:00.000-06:00

An international press group, Reporters Without Borders, has recently published a report on internet freedom around the world. Considering factors such as national content filters, user anonymity, and government monitoring of internet use, the group has identified countries that have, or are considering, excessive controls over what their citizens can find on the web.

The group's website provides both a summary and a detailed report on their findings. They note that:

The “Enemies of the Internet” list drawn up again this year by Reporters Without Borders presents the worst violators of freedom of expression on the Net: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.

The report describes these countries as using "massive filtering" to maintain "tight control over the Web’s political and social content."

A second category lists those countries that are "under surveillance." Without changes in thinking and law, these countries seem headed toward stronger controls and a place on the "enemies" list. Russia and Turkey, for example, are in this category, as are some more noticeably democratic countries, such as Australia and South Korea.

Oddly omitted from the report is New Zealand, which is in the process of implementing a government controlled black list of internet sites that are to become invisible to the public So far, Internet Service Providers are complying only on a voluntary basis, and that might be one reason New Zealand has been overlooked. Their implementation of this system is also quite recent, and the omission might be just a question of timing. See a March 14th article in the New Zealand Herald.

Australia's system, also a government-controlled blacklist, has gathered a lot more press coverage and has generated more debate. It has yet to be implemented, but some in the government seem determined to move forward in spite of considerable resistance. See, for example, a March 13th article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

These plans are surprising in countries that are theoretically modern, western, and democratic. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of plans such a Australia's is that the government determines in secret which websites go on the blacklist, and the list itself remains a secret. In some countries, of course, such secrecy would be commonplace. In more open societies, however, it is difficult to comprehend what would motivate government officials to operate in so clandestine a manner. Secrecy and censorship are a dangerous combination, leading inevitably to abuse of power.

Internet Freedom Act of 2010?

2010-03-12T01:00:00.003-06:00

It's just a bill in committee. Far from finalized, it could easily be changed, might die in committee, or otherwise disappear. But it's intriguing nonetheless. Apparently, some congressional representatives feel a need to respond to some of the more egregious forms of internet censorship now going on around the world. They're probably thinking of the well-documented standoff between Google corp. and the government of China, or nearly-as-infamous restrictions in Iran, Tunisia, and some other countries. If they're more aware of the outside world than most Americans, they might also be thinking of government blacklists of selected internet sites already implemented in New Zealand, close to implementation in Australia, and under consideration in some European countries.

The proposed response is H. R. 4784, the Internet Freedom Act of 2010, presently under consideration in the House Committee on Science and Technology. Clearly intended to be international in scope, the bill says, in part, that "findings" of the U.S. Congress include:

"The Internet is a transformative force and stands to become the most powerful engine for citizen empowerment, transparency, and the free exchange of ideas ever invented."

And:

"Any government, or government sanctioned, supported, authorized, or endorsed entity, either explicitly or implicitly, that blocks, restricts, controls, or monitors any person's use of the Internet effectively transforms the Internet into a tool of censorship and surveillance, in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

The short bill gives the following definition of a key term:

"The term 'Internet suppression' means censoring, blocking, monitoring, or restricting access to the Internet, or to content made available via the Internet, by using technologies such as firewalls, filters, and 'black boxes'"

Among the things the bill would suggest that the U.S. Congress "should" do is:

"Support the deployment, at the earliest practicable date, of technologies aimed at defeating state-directed and state-sponsored Internet suppression and the persecution by governments and private entities of those individuals who use the Internet."

This last point would put the U.S. government in the business of funding technologies for bypassing or disabling internet filtering software and/or hardware.

Strong language from government representatives who appear to be laboring under the mythology that censorship is something that happens "over there." As written, at least so far, the bill carves out no exceptions for different types of internet content. Among those governments that this bill would find to be in contravention of various international statements of civil and human rights is that of the United States. The U.S. government still maintains the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), requiring libraries that accept certain government funds to impose internet filters that block access to some kinds of internet content. It will be interesting to see how this contradiction in U.S. law is resolved, assuming the Internet Freedom Act of 2010 goes forward.

Obsession (Again)

2010-03-11T11:01:00.000-06:00

ob·ses·sion (b-sshn, b-) n.

1. Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.

2. A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion.

--American Heritage Dictionary

I've started a post about SafeLibraries this was before, and here we go again. His post today continues his claim that patrons viewing porn at the CIPA-compliant Brooklyn Public Library is evidence that the library is committing fraud. He has now taken this absurdity several steps further, claiming that the library is conspiring to cover up the fraud and has even managed to fool independent auditors who found the library to be fully in compliance with the CIPA.

There is, of course, a far simpler, even obvious, explanation of the observable facts. That is to acknowledge that the CIPA allows a library to permit adult patrons to turn the required internet filter off. Allowing adults to deactivate the filter was part of the original CIPA law, and was expanded and strengthened in the US v. ALA Supreme Court Decision. Since an adult has the legal right to deactivate the required internet filter on demand, the simple fact that an adult patron viewing online pornography is not evidence of any kind of violation of the CIPA. The auditors, unlike SafeLibraries, understood that, and so were correct in their conclusion that the library was in full compliance with CIPA requirements. No conspiracy required. SafeLibraries' obsession blinds him to the simple facts of the matter.

And is it a fact, rather than just my interpretation, that adults have the legal right to deactivate the filter? I close with a quote from Order 03-188 from the Federal Communications Commission, which administers compliance with the CIPA. The elipses are as in the original:

In upholding CIPA, the Supreme Court emphasized “the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled,” and that a patron who encounters a blocked site … need only ask a librarian to unblock it (or at least in the case of adults) disable the filter.” The plurality also highlighted the government’s acknowledgment at oral argument that “a patron would not ‘have to explain … why he was asking a site to be unblocked or the filtering to be disabled.’”

Educating the Educators

2010-03-10T01:00:00.009-06:00

With apologies to the able and competent school administrators we find in many districts around the country, bumbling censorship attempts such as those that happened recently in Riverside County, California, and Culpeper County, Virginia, call attention to a crying need to educate the educators. Some public school administrators seem just to have a propensity for censorship, perhaps arising from their political alliances, fear of parental displeasure, or an excessive tendency to act as a parent to students who are not really their children. Clearly, a lack of knowledge of Free Speech law and court precedents is a large factor. But whatever the root causes, there always seem to be some administrators who are willing to sneak into the library at night to remove copies of Catcher in the Rye, or tear a page out of a book of poetry, or require parental permission slips to allow students to read Harry Potter books, or remove the dictionary from classrooms because it contains dirty words. All of these have really happened. Courts have intervened in many such cases, forcing school districts to return books to the shelves and remove restrictions. Yet there seems to be a lack of institutional learning, with each new administration repeating the mistakes of their predecessors.

In too many instances it is publicity, not administrative competence, that decides the outcome. We have no way to measure the hidden cases, but it seems that where censorship succeeds, it succeeds by silence. If there is no public outcry, an act of censorship can remain in place, swept quietly under the rug. Courts, after all, cannot intervene in matters that have not been brought before them by somebody with a complaint. On the other hand, When censorship has been averted or overturned, this has almost always resulted from some individual or group 1) noticing that a violation of Free Speech has occurred or is about to occur and 2) raising a ruckus about it.

So notice. And Raise a ruckus.

It is increasingly clear that this is exactly why we need events like Freedom to Read Week and Banned Books Week. It is a natural instinct for at least some public officials to censor whatever they can get away with censoring. Anxious to be seen as proactive, and uncomprehending of the ethical and legal implications, they take rushed and ill-considered action. They'll make ridiculous statements like, "we don't support censorship, we just want to remove this book," without recognizing the depth of their self-contradiction. The inoculation against this disease is an alert and aware public.

When school censorship happens, or is about to happen, it is up to that alert and aware public to educate the educators -- the principals, superintendents and school boards that make the decisions. Many of them NEED to be taught:

While the power of a school district to regulate the content of educational materials is great, that power has its limits.
There are parents and other citizens in the district who are aware of, and opposed to, censorship in their schools.
Censorship will not be allowed to sneak by unnoticed: newspapers will be called and the ACLU will be notified.
Minors have Free Speech rights.
Courts have intervened in many instances of school censorship.

This might sound rather basic, especially to those less censoriously inclined. But this is exactly the little bit of knowledge some school administrators so painfully lack.

Once a Censor, Always a Censor

2010-03-04T01:00:00.001-06:00

In January the Menifee Union School District in Riverside County, California, made itself infamous for pulling copies of the Merriam-Webster's dictionary from elementary school classrooms because the book contained dirty words. A fascinating article that appeared on February 25th in the Press Enterprise puts that attempt at censorship into a broader perspective.

The article recounts the long and sordid history of censorship in parts of Riverside County. Recently, the town of Temecula was criticized by the National Coalition against Censorship for removing a painting of a nude woman from an art exhibit located in a city-owned building. In 2008 some residents complained about a performance of the Vagina Monologues at a city-owned theater. Censorious challenges in the area date back at least to 1994, and have included books like The Kite Runner, Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, a children's book titled The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, and the movie Showgirls.

While censorship of library books is, to those of us who value libraries highly, especially barbaric, censorship itself knows no boundaries. The underlying motivation is the same, whether removing a book from a library or a painting from an art exhibit: one person's certainty that his or her personal values should determine the ideas and expressions that others can and cannot know about.

The article quotes one Temecula resident as aptly summing up the censorious mindset:

'While saying she doesn't support censorship, [she] said "I'm into acting responsibly when an individual's freedom of speech is viewed as potentially harmful and intimidating to another person's belief system."'

We've seen this over and over again, in West Bend, WI, in Leesburg, FL, and countless other towns. First the denial, the claim that what the censor wants is not censorship, requiring us to abandon all logic so we can believe that removing a book or removing a painting or shutting down a performance from public display could possibly be called anything else. This is followed immediately by a two-pronged attack on Free Speech itself. The first prong of that attack is to claim that one person's expression, mere expression, is "potentially harmful and intimidating" to another person's beliefs. The second prong is to assert that a person holding such fragile beliefs has some kind of right never to see or hear anything that questions, challenges, or offends those beliefs.

Freedom of Speech directly entails that some people are going to be offended. Living in a pluralistic democracy requires each of us to accept the fact that we will sometimes see or hear things we don't agree with or don't approve of. As the US Supreme Court wrote in the 1969 case Street v. New York, "It is firmly settled that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers. "

Looking For Alaska

2010-02-28T01:00:00.003-06:00

Although Looking for Alaska is probably not appropriate for younger children, it is not entirely clear why it has become a cause célèbre among the censorious crowd. The book does contain underage smoking and drinking, swearing, and some sex, but also is marketed for, and usually shelved in libraries for, older teens and young adults.

In Depew, New York, in 2008, the book was being used in an 11^th-grade English class, as it is in many English classes across America. Recognizing the book could be controversial, the school administration sent a letter to parents, offering them a choice: parents could choose to allow their children to read Looking for Alaska or an alternative book. This protected parental choice, but that was just not enough for some parents, who wanted to choose for other people’s children and not just their own. They tried, unsuccessfully, to get the school to drop the book entirely. In September of 2009 it showed up on the list of 43 books challenged in Leesburg, Florida. It also figures heavily in SafeLibraries’ ramblings. He quotes extensively from the book on his website, claiming it is “One Example of How the ALA Pushes Porn On Children.” In one blog post, SafeLibraries somehow blames the American Library Association for the accidental placement of the book with children’s literature on a grocery store shelf. The cover is identifiable in the photograph he provides, although he doesn’t name the book, describing it merely as “an ALA-awarded book containing oral sex.”

The best defense of the book comes from the author John Green himself, who reacted with anger and humor in a 4-minute video, available on YouTube and his website.

Looking for Alaska is about Miles Halter, a sixteen-year-old who realizes he is leading a ridiculously uneventful life and so sets off for boarding school. There he meets the crazy yet wonderful Alaska Young. When tragedy strikes, he must come to terms with loss and love. Well written and rich with metaphor and humour, the book enables the reader to relate to the characters and their emotions.

Miles and his friends do engage in smoking and drinking, which are not portrayed as positive behaviors, but as the effects of peer pressure. At one point, the characters watch a pornographic movie pilfered from another student’s room. There are a few sentences giving a very basic description of what is going on in the movie, but the discussion among the characters also points out the minuses of pornography. The biggest controversy seems to arise from a few sexual scenes, including one that describes Miles receiving oral sex from his girlfriend Lara. Honestly, this scene is about as arousing as the back of a shampoo bottle. The scene is, as author John Green intended, awkward, clumsy, and vapid. It is part of the subplot that Miles is dating Lara because having a girlfriend is a part of "fitting in," and that his emotional connection with her is weak. It is meant to contrast with the next scene where there is an intense emotional connection between Miles and Alaska.

[This article was written in collaboration with Meghan of tolerance-megitty.blogspot.com]

The Myth of the Evil ALA

2010-02-22T01:00:00.006-06:00

While not quite universal, it has become commonplace among censorship proponents to portray the American Library Association (ALA) as an evil institution. SafeLibraries, and West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, to name but two, have been vitriolic in their condemnation of the ALA. Typical claims are that the ALA is stealing control of libraries from local tax-payers, that it advises libraries to violate the obscenity laws and the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), or that it promotes pornography for children. When I try to defend the ALA against such ridiculous charges, I'm accused of portraying them as "angels" who can do no wrong. In fact, all I'm saying is that they're not quite the devils the censors portray them to be. I'd be perfectly willing to face the shortcomings of the ALA, given a realistic discussion of them.

The plain fact is that the ALA is just not a power to be reckoned with. Try rummaging through the endless broken links on their website and you'll see that they are consistently understaffed and underfunded. ALA has no bevy of lawyers to devote to local censorship battles, no authority to hire or fire employees in any library, no control over any library's budgets or expenditures, nor a pile of pornographic books to donate. There is exactly one thing that the ALA can offer to libraries beleaguered with censorship attempts, and that is their knowledge and experience. Having dealt with censorship attempts over and over again, the ALA has accumulated knowledge of what the law does and does not say about Free Speech and censorship, and experience in responding to censors. They can explain articulately what the mission of a library really is, and why best practices support inclusiveness and open access to information and ideas. This one thing the ALA has to offer also happens to be the one thing that censors can tolerate the least.

It is tempting to suggest that the censors portray the ALA as evil because it has so often thwarted their efforts. This is not a realistic assessment, however. As hard as the ALA may work against some censorship efforts, and as important as that work is, it's really not the reason that most censorship efforts fail. Most attempts at censorship fail simply because censorship is illegal in these United States. The occasionally successful attempt is almost always one that "flew under the radar," drawing little attention to itself, and escaping the scrutiny of lawyers and the courts. The censors have never been able to face up to the fact that what they want libraries to do is break the law. Their efforts fail over and over again, sometimes spectacularly, but they never seem to learn.

This creates a huge cognitive dissonance in the minds of the censors. They believe in the sanctity of their goals, and can't accept the notion that the law doesn't support them. This leaves them without a reasonable explanation for why their demands are rejected time and time again.

Arising from unreason in the first place, their cognitive dissonance requires a non-realistic, non-rational solution. That irrational solution is to blame the ALA. The censors convince themselves that they were right all along, that a small group of prudish bullies should be able to tell their local library what to shelve and what not to shelve, that removing books somehow isn't censorship, that the slightest mention of sex, sexuality, or profanity qualifies a book as obscene, and that adults can legitimately be restricted to reading only what is fit for young children. They hallucinate that the world would actually work that way if only the evil ALA didn't interfere.

This mythology of the evil ALA is seriously neurotic, but absolutely vital. Without it, the censors would have to face the fact that their own values and actions are antisocial, based in an unwillingness to live with people who have values different from their own.

Kudos to Monroe County School District, FL

2010-02-19T01:00:00.003-06:00

Kudos to the Monroe County School District in the Florida keys! They have a censorship attempt on their hands, and it's too early to tell how it will turn out (I might take back my kudos later). But so far school administrators have had the presence of mind not to overreact. The challenged book is still in the library, and seems likely to stay there, at least until after they've gone through the formal review process. The administrators who removed the dictionary from classrooms in California, and those who (at least temporarily) dropped the definitive edition of Diary of a Young Girl in Virgina, would do well to study how a professional school districts handles book challenges.

The object of parental wrath in the Monroe County School District is Judy Blume's young adult novel Forever, which is not part of any classroom curricula, but is available in the school library. Published in 1975, the book does contain descriptions of sexual activity. The characters in the book act responsibly, discussing their options and planning birth control, and perhaps it is this more than anything else that most offends the parents of young readers. The National Coalition Against Censorship reports on their blog that some parents complained that the book contains “a distorted view of sex, promiscuity, [and is] usurping parental control.” Keysnews.com reports that one parent's complaint was that a student read parts of the book out loud on the bus, although it is far from clear what that has to do with the school library.

The results of the school's review of the book have yet to be announced. The NCAC has sent a letter asking the principal to resist the attempted censorship. Ironically, author Judy Blume lives in Florida near the affected school district. A frequently challenged author, Ms. Blume's Website has several pages dedicated to identifying and resisting censorship. The American Library Association's web page on frequently challenged authors says "Five of Judy Blume’s books are on the list of The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990 to 1999: Forever (7), Blubber (30), Deenie (42), Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (60), and Tiger Eyes (89)."

Just Disconnect?

2010-02-18T01:00:00.005-06:00

In another one of those situations in which you've got to laugh so you don't cry, I recently saw two fascinating comments posted in response to a newspaper story about internet filters and libraries:

"Computer use . . . really isn't a function of a library to begin with."

"I say get rid of the internet at the library, we used to do research with books in the good old days."

It is impossible to guess how serious the two comentators were, or if their tongues were planted firmly in their cheeks as they wrote. Nonetheless, they have aptly crystallized a key point in the internet filtering debate.

The impact of the internet on our society has been immense. It has completely reordered how most of us find information about anything, whether it is for academic research, reading the local news, deciding which restaurant to go to, or finding out what's on TV tonight. For more savvy organizations the internet has become the first place to put up-to-date information on anything, and few businesses can afford not to have a web presence today. I haven't opened a paper telephone directory in years, although these tree-killers are still relentlessly delivered to my door, unsought and unwelcome.

The impact of the internet has also been intense. Most of this reordering of information access has taken place in only 25 years, and is still on-going. Naturally, with any change so pervasive and rapid, there is some struggle to keep up. Some individuals still prefer paper and pencil to computer screen and keyboard, and some organizations still haven't figured out how to use the internet wisely, or at all.

Working on a university campus I see a microcosm of this struggle every day. Almost everything I do as a researcher and instructor is online, and I expect my students and colleagues to work the same way. But at the organizational and bureaucratic levels, universities are amazingly non-adaptive institutions. So many administrative offices still think in terms of pamphlets and paper forms! Their web pages are an afterthought, if they are any thought at all, and the result is the maintenance of an arcane impenetrability surrounding policies and procedures.

This mixture of adaptation and resistance to change complicates how we deal with internet filtering issues in schools and libraries. On the one hand, libraries and librarians tend to be very aware of and well adapted to the internet age. They understand that the internet is a critical component of all kinds of information access. They recognize that the internet is a huge library in and of itself. They realize that the internet has replaced the street corner and public square in terms of presenting and receiving ideas and opinions. But outside the library we quickly run into more resistance by the outdated. Some city and county officials are very internet savvy, but others are not, and their decisions about internet filters at local libraries are often marred by a counter-technological prejudice that could almost be quaint if it didn't cause so many legal and financial headaches. The boards and administrations of public schools are often more like university administrations, preferring the arcane to the open, and thus just instinctively censorious. The gaps and vagaries within the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) show that the legislators who crafted it don't understand what the internet is or how it works, or how the internet is important to the mission of public libraries. The US Supreme Court, erudite but behind the times, showed a similar failure to grasp what the internet is, when it handed own its US v. ALA decision allowing the CIPA to be enforced. That decision repaired only one gap of many in the CIPA, and left the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and already beleaguered libraries without guidance for grappling with the remaining mess.

We are now ten years into the 21st century. It is past time for the comentators mentioned above, and other Luddites among us, to catch up at least to the 1990s. Computer use is an integral and essential part of what libraries are and what libraries do, just as computer use is an integral and essential part of every other aspect of modern living. Those who look back nostalgically to the era of doing research amid stacks of paper books and journals simply have not experienced the huge jump in speed and thoroughness that the internet makes possible, and can't comprehend the impact taking such a tool away would have. Using internet filters judiciously to protect young children from illegal graphics is a practical way of facing the realities of modern life. But hijacking that effort in order to gain control over what adults can and cannot access on the internet is as reprehensible as it is medieval.

Library Comfort?

2010-02-16T01:00:00.001-06:00

While there is no shortage of censors who are quite egregious in their aims, seeking to reduce adults as well as children to reading only the most non-controversial, sanitized pablum, these are thankfully few and are thankfully easy to identify. Opposition naturally arises from the very extremity of their views. What can and does happen, unfortunately, is that more "moderate" public officials sometimes accede to such egregious demands. They mean well, and often think of themselves as being pragmatic, but just haven't thought very long or very carefully about Free Speech and censorship.

I was struck by a particularly cogent example of this kind of "moderate" concession to egregious aims during last October's attempt at censorship in the public library in Leesburg, Florida. I received an email from a county official whom I will not name. The identity of the individual sender is unimportant, since the sentiment expressed is a common one. Defending the would-be censors, the county official wrote to me:

All parents deserve to feel comfortable sending their children to the library to check out books.

It's easy to see the appeal such a position has: it just feels right. But thinking and feeling don't always lead to the same conclusions, and if we do stop to think about it, this is one of those short statements that speaks volumes. To hold this position, one must make a raft of assumptions, all demonstrably misleading.

One assumption embedded in the official's statement is that a public library is some kind of nursery school or day-care center. "Sending their children to the library" implies parents not going with the child, and implies that the library somehow provides adult supervision for unescorted minors. This is a common -- but dangerously wrong -- assumption about what a public library is. Parents should always be aware that library staff have neither the right nor responsibility to act in loco parentis, that is, with temporary parental authority. While there is a general understanding that people in libraries will maintain a reasonable level of quiet and decorum, library staff are not school teachers, nor principals, nor babysitters.

Another embedded assumption is that even if a library isn't a day-care center it is primarily a place for children, rather than for adults. While many citizens may perceive their public library this way, most libraries do not see themselves this way, and are not set up to function this way. Libraries serve entire communities, including adults, teenagers, and young children. Naturally, an entire community includes individuals with many different points of view. Certain materials appropriate for adults may not be appropriate for some children, but given the internal diversity within any community, there is no single standard for deciding which materials are appropriate for whom. While censors want to make this the responsibility of the library staff, the library staff understand that individual patrons get to make those kinds of choices for themselves. Parents with concerns about what their child might find in the library have no choice, then, other than to accompany the child.

And what is this "comfort" that "parents deserve" to feel? In an ideal world we would all like to believe that the library is a safe place to which to send our children, but such a view of the world is not very realistic. A library is, after all, a public place. Any one, familiar or stranger, local or out-of-towner, thoroughly decent or utterly depraved, can walk into the library. If your child is too young to go alone to city hall or the shopping mall or sports stadium, your child is too young to go alone to the library. We might wish the world to be otherwise, but we must also face reality.

In the context of the Leesburg censorship battle, this ideal of parental "comfort" also refers to the contents of books. Here we get to the heart of the tension between censorship and Free Speech. It is too easy for public officials to forget that Free Speech implies the opposite of "comfort." Free Speech guarantees that people can express themselves, even if some are uncomfortable with what is expressed or how it is expressed. Free Speech guarantees that individuals can make their own choices about what entertainment, information, or opinions they access, even if others are uncomfortable with those choices.

And how much Free Speech do we violate to bring about this supposedly deserved parental "comfort"? Libraries rarely hold any materials that violate applicable laws regarding obscenity. Some libraries have a few holdings that, in a given jurisdiction, are legally defined as "harmful to minors," meaning that it is "too racy" for minors, but is clearly legal for adults. In all the reviews of challenged books published on this blog, not a single work qualified as obscene, and exactly one could be considered harmful to minors in some jurisdictions. What is contested, then, is a class of materials that makes some parents uncomfortable, but is not obscene and is rarely too racy for minors in any legal sense. In other words, what is contested is a class of materials that is firmly, unequivocally, within the bounds of protected speech.

No, parents don't deserve to feel comfortable sending their children to the library to check out books. Certainly not if that feeling of comfort requires an infringement upon the First Amendment. In saying this, I am not trying to change the status quo in any way, or take away from anyone something they currently have. On the contrary, I'm trying to snap people out of their delusions about what the status quo is, so they can face the well established legal framework of Free Speech as well as the harsh realities of living in a dangerous world. A library is a public place. It has a serious mission to serve diverse educational and recreational goals for an entire community. And censors have a demonstrated tendency to exaggerate the offensiveness of materials they challenge, which are mostly protected speech.

A library is not a magical land of pop-up books and painted ponies, however much some adults want it to be so.

Has SafeLibraries Gone Too Far?

2010-02-12T19:36:00.001-06:00

I really think SafeLibraries went far too far in his post of 12 Feb. I won't repeat his headline here, because it is nothing less than character assassination. He names two individuals, proclaims one unfit for a particular government job, and accuses the other of committing a crime. He writes, "people who defraud the E-Rate program go to jail. People who conspire to defraud the E-Rate program also go to jail." He then names an individual and writes that she "may be guilty of both, in my opinion."

SafeLibraries' attack on the reputations of these individuals was touched off because one of his victims became "President Obama's choice for the National Museum & Library Services [IMLS] Board." The details of their allegedly inappropriate actions are old news, however. It all goes back to SafeLibraries' post of 19 December, in which he claims that an instance of patron accessing pornography at the Brooklyn Public Library is evidence of some kind of violation of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA).

SafeLibraries does not understand what the CIPA requires and does not require. Even if he did, he doesn't know enough about what happened in the particular incident in question to know whether or not the act was violated. If I were he, I'd want to understand these things before I went around accusing specific individuals of breaking the law.

To be brief, a library could be fully compliant with the CIPA, without committing any kind of fraud or other misdeed, and still have a situation in which a patron manages to access illegal pornography on the web using a library computer. The most likely ways this could happen are:

The internet filter underblocked. All filtering software underblocks to some degree, occasionally allowing an image to pass through to the patron that really should have been blocked. Occasional failures of this type are unavoidable and are not violations of the CIPA.
The patron may have downloaded an image that was attached to an e-mail message, was attached to an Instant Message, or was made available by several different means within an online chat room. While some internet filtering programs try to block inappropriate images in these kinds of communication, no such blocking is required by the CIPA. The library might have a filter that does not try to block such downloads, or the library might have deactivated that particular kind of blocking, if their filter has it. None of that violates the CIPA in the slightest.
The library patron may simply, and quite legally, have requested that the library deactivate the filter while he was using the computer. It is important to bear in mind that the CIPA is the Children's Internet Protection Act. In the US v. ALA decision that allowed the CIPA to be implemented, the Supreme court emphasized the right of adults to have the filter disabled on demand. This was echoed in an order by the Federal Communications Commission, which administers compliance with the act. See my post of Jan. 10th for details on this.

This doesn't mean that nobody ever commits any kind of fraud with regard to the CIPA. SafeLibraries is eagerly searching for such an event, and although he hasn't found what he thinks he found in this particular instance, he might find a valid case, someday. Assuming that a library has received E-Rate or related funds from the federal government and has certified that it is in full compliance with the CIPA, I can only think of three situations that would amount to fraud and would be responsible for allowing a patron to access illegal online pornography. There might be more, but all I could come up with are:

The library could have lied outright, claiming it has internet filters installed when it actually has none.
The library might have some computers that are filtered and some without filters. Whether or not this violates the CIPA is a bit fuzzy, as I've seen some legal opinions asserting that a library could have unfiltered computers, as long as those computers were reserved for use only by adults. These legal opinions don't have broad support, however, and my own suspicion is that this pushes the envelope too far. If I were running a CIPA-compliant library, I'd make sure all the computers have filtering software installed and activated (although I'd also allow adult patrons to disable those filters as they see fit).
A library might have a filtering program that is so bad at blocking illegal pornography that its more like having no filter at all. This is entirely hypothetical, though. I am aware of no such software. Also, the CIPA states no minimum effectiveness level for filtering software, nor even states how such effectiveness would (or could) be measured. This item, then, is far too vague to be of practical importance.

SafeLibraries is entitled to his opinions, however uninformed they may be. He has a lot of homework to do if he wants to be taken seriously.

On the Taxpayer's Dime?

2010-02-11T01:00:00.002-06:00

A common complaint about unrestrained internet access is the claim that taxpayer's are somehow footing the bill for some library patrons to view pornography. This point is often raised by censorship proponents, but not by them alone. Some more neutral commentators take this position as well, often claiming to be injecting a note of practicality into the debate. They feel that by steering the discussion away from anti-pornography alarmism to a discussion of costs and who pays, they're rising above the fray. Unfortunately, they just haven't thought things through very well.

Is the taxpayer subsidizing the use of online porn at the public library? The simple answer is "no."

In an artificial sense, it is possible to come up with a dollar figure. Assuming one could accurately distinguish pornography from what is not pornography -- a difficult assumption at best -- one might be able to determine what percentage of the data (measured in megabytes) that a library received over the internet included pieces of pornographic images. That percentage could be applied to the total burdened cost of internet services to the library for the same time period, and the result would be a dollar amount. That rather theoretical dollar amount would represent the taxpayers' contribution to accessing pornography at the library.

The problem with this view is that it doesn't reflect how a library actually pays for internet service. A library's internet connection is not like cable television at home, where a subscriber might pay one fee for basic cable and an additional fee for "adult" channels, or even a pay-per-view fee for specific programs. Most libraries pay a single fee that provides access to the entire internet, without any divisions or subdivisions of the service. It's either on or it's off, all or nothing. Most libraries pay a flat rate, or a flat rate within a very large range of data traffic, with the result that the internet connection costs the library the same, whether it is used to download research data, is used to download pornography, or goes unused altogether. It doesn't make sense, given that kind of cost structure, to claim that the taxpayer is subsidizing anyone's use of pornography, even if some patrons are viewing such materials. What the taxpayer is buying is the internet connection, end of story.

Those who raise this poorly thought out cost analysis often take the argument a step further, to bring in the issue of selection. They try to draw an analogy between internet filters and the process by which a library selects which books to acquire. The argument is that since a library doesn't have every book, it need not provide access to every website, and that this comparison somehow makes economic sense. This is a very poor analogy indeed.

Libraries have to be selective about traditional holdings like books and recordings because those items have very direct costs. Every library acquisition is an expense, not only in terms of the purchase prices of the acquired materials but also in terms of the labor hours and other burdened expenses that go into the process of selection, acquisition, cataloging, and shelving. On an ongoing basis, every inch of library shelf space is a limited commodity that represents monthly expenses in terms of building, heat, light, maintenance, labor hours, and more. Books consume ongoing labor hours by being checked out, checked in, shelved, and inventoried.

Internet access in a library is not free, but many of the kinds of costs mentioned above just don't apply. One cost that specifically doesn't apply is that of selection, since no library staff are selecting the materials that are available. Another is shelf space. A computer takes up room to be sure, but usually work space, not shelf space. Even if the computer is using up space that could otherwise shelve books, the vast collection of materials that is available online makes the per-unit cost in terms of space a virtual zero. There is no process of checking in, checking out, or inventory verification, so those costs are reduced to zero for internet items. That brings us to what is probably the most important difference, which is the huge Return On Investment that comes from the library's expenditures on internet access. For a flat monthly fee the library can deliver access to innumerable books, news sources, academic articles, research databases, and other materials. Since the cost of internet access is divided out over so vast a number of accessible items, the cost of any one book, article, or anything else on the web is vanishingly small. In fact, viewed in terms of simple cost analysis, any library would want unfettered internet access, because the more materials that are accessible, the higher the Return On Investment. Restricting access can only lower that ROI.

On the other hand, the costs of internet filters do not rely on fuzzy accounting or poor analogies. Internet filters have direct and tangible costs. A library has to purchase the filtering software, will pay some technician to install it, and, depending how that software is configured, may need to purchase additional equipment. The library will pay a subscription fee for regular updates to the internet black lists and white lists that are critical to the filter's functioning. Library staff will be taking some of their labor hours to manage the filter, unblocking sites or disabling filters, or overriding black list and white list settings as needed. If the filters are installed in compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act, staff time and other resources will also be devoted to filing the certification paperwork. In an accounting sense, there is no tangible return from the money expended on internet filters: it is pure expense.

None of this is to argue that libraries should never filter any internet content for any patrons. That is a separate line of reasoning having little to do with financials. But those who try to bring a cost analysis into the argument have just not stopped to think about the structure and true sources of the costs a library must bear. Viewed strictly as an accounting problem, libraries should seek to get the most out of their internet fees by making available to patrons as much internet content as possible, and should seek to reduce the costs associated with internet filters, an expense category that produces no measurable returns.

Books Challenged or Banned (Resource)

2010-02-06T01:00:00.000-06:00

A great resource for tracking censorship is a set of booklets published by the American Library Association, in cooperation with a number of other organization, titled Books Challenged & Banned in 2008-2009. There are presently five booklets in the series, starting with 2004-2005. These tend to cover censorship attempts from May to May, so I'm looking forward to the 2009-2010 edition to come out this summer.

These booklets are based on the ALA's Newsletter for Intellectual Freedom, which is available by subscription. Books Challenged and Banned pulls that information together into a single place, listing works by title and author, and describing the censorship attempts made against each. The documented censorship attempts are serious, describing cases in which "someone has tried to restrict another person’s ability to choose." Of course, as the booklet itself points out, this information is based only on censorship attempts that are reported to the ALA. Estimates indicate that most censorship attempts go unreported.

The 2008-2009 edition includes the earlier stages of the West Bend debacle, before it was extended to scores of books. The Leesburg, FL, upheaval didn't start until well into 2009, and so is not included at all. Producing the 2009-2010 edition, then, will be quite a lot of work, given the number of books challenged just by those two campaigns, let along the many other, smaller acts of censorship that were reported.

The following links will access the PDF files containing each year's edition. These files are on the large side, so might take a few moments to download and open:

Books Challenged & Banned in 2008-2009

Books Challenged & Banned in 2007-2008

Books Challenged & Banned in 2006-2007

Books Challenged & Banned in 2005-2006

Books Challenged & Banned in 2004-2005

When the 2009-2010 edition comes out, a link should be posted at the bottom of the ALA's Free Downloads page related to Banned Books Week.

Why Leesburg and Lake County Got Quiet

2010-02-03T01:00:00.001-06:00

Readers of my blog may recall that around June through October a censorship campaign was underway in Leesburg and Lake County, Florida. Starting with a complaint about Maureen Johnson's The Bermudez Triangle and Cecily Ziegesar's Only in Your Dreams, the undertaking quickly expanded to a challenge against 43 titles. The challengers wanted the books re-shelved from the children's section to the adult section of the library, and to have warning labels attached to them. Pressure was first applied to the Leesburg library, but was rejected. The challengers then took their campaign to the surrounding Lake County. This, too, was shot down, and that seems to have been the end of it.

I think the Leesburg/Lake County situation bears out one lesson I've repeatedly emphasized on this blog: the importance of qualified legal advice. The Lake County commissioners took a wise step that is skipped in far too many censorship debates: they consulted the county attorney, asking for a legal opinion on the requested re-shelving. The value of this step is demonstrated by the abrupt end of the censorship campaign. The commissioners clearly understood that they could not accede to the censors' demands because the county attorney's opinion was unequivocal. It is worth noting a few quotations from the attorney's memo to the commissioners, which is available through Open Records Request:

Courts have generally held that the relocation of a book from a children’s section to the adult section of the public library constitutes a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, unless such publications are deemed obscene as that term is defined by the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida Statutes, or unless such decision is based upon established, regular, and facially unbiased procedures for review of controversial materials.

In other word, just moving the books from one section to another, depending on the motivation for that move, can violate Free Speech rights. Books can certainly be removed if they are obscene, but determining that a book is obscene must be based on court precedents and state statutes, and not merely on personal opinions. Transparent procedures for considering such actions must avoid giving the appearance of bias.

Further:

Therefore, the government cannot limit access to library materials unless the government can demonstrate that the restriction is necessary to achieve a compelling governmental interest and there are no less restrictive means available.

Note that here the attorney has carefully included the important phrase "and there are no less restrictive means available." This phrase is critical to understanding Free Speech law, and is nearly always omitted by would-be censors when they talk about the compelling state interest in protecting children from obscene materials.

And:

However, where the government, in making their decision to remove or relocate a publication, ignores the advice of literary experts, ignores the views of librarians and teachers, and ignores the guidance of literary publications that rate books for students, it faces a challenge that the decision was based upon irregular and ad hoc procedures.

In other words, pandering to public opinion without considering expert advice can cause legal problems.

In rendering this legal opinion, the county attorney repeatedly cited four court precedents:

Board v. Pico

Counts v. Cedarville School District

Right to Read Defense Committee of Chelsea v. School Committee of the City of Chelsea

Sund v. City of Wichita Falls

These are cases I've relied on quite heavily in this blog and my related website when countering the claims of would-be censors. My estimation of the importance of these cases has gone up a notch after seeing how an attorney applied them to a typical censorship campaign.

This brings up a second important point: not every attorney knows about these cases. While every attorney understands the First Amendment in a general sense, a detailed understanding of all the court decisions and their implications is a specialization not every attorney has. It can be useful, then, to provide a list of these cases to any attorney who is not a First Amendment specialist but who is faced with a censorship issue. The attorney will form her or his own opinion, of course, but providing this list of cases can save a lot of time for everybody.

(Click HERE to see information on these and other cases, including formal citations).

Canada's Freedom To Read Week 2010

2010-02-01T01:00:00.010-06:00

Canada's Freedom to Read Week 2010 starts this month, running from Feb. 21st through 27th. Freedom to Read week is "an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom." It is similar to Banned Books Week in the U.S.

There are important differences in the law between the two countries, so the legalities of responding to censorship can't be applied from one to the other. Nonetheless, the patterns of censorship in both countries are similar, and it is illuminating to compare and contrast them. In particular, take note of the Canadian list of Challenged Books and Magazines.

Just to demonstrate how similar censorship efforts are in both countries, check out How To Spot a Would-Be Censor on the Freedom To Read website. It says:

The type of person who challenges books
Invariably denies being in favour of censorship;
Has rarely read the work in whole or often even in part;
Quotes excerpts out of context;
Demonizes the author and his/her other works.

Sound Familiar?

[With thanks to the Fahrenheit 451 Blog, for bringing attention to this event.]

Too Serious To Laugh

2010-01-30T15:46:00.004-06:00

I'm not too sure what happened this week in the Culpeper County Public Schools in Virginia. A book was pulled, or it wasn't. It was done on purpose, or it was a mistake, or it never happened. It was because of sexual explicitness, or was it homosexual themes? The superintendent supports the action, or maybe not.

The book in question is quite a serious matter, Anne Frank's, Diary of A Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, the well-known account of a Jewish family in hiding in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. I remember reading the diary in eighth grade, which is around the age when most Americans read it. That makes sense, since the author was right around the age of 14 as she wrote.

Those of us who read the book prior to 1995 have missed something. The book we read was a little shorter, Anne Frank's father having withheld some details from the published edition. "The definitive edition" was the first time the unabridged diary was published in English, restoring the omitted sections.

And there's the problem. It seems that a few of the restored sections discuss sexual feelings, "including one where the young girl writes about discovering her vagina," as the Culpeper Star-Exponent put it. A parent complained about this, and at least some school officials tripped over themselves rushing to be seen as taking action. One school official, according to newspapers, stated that the book had been pulled. National and international ridicule and condemnation of the administration was swift and merciless. Then administrators tripped over themselves running in the opposite direction.

Removing the dictionary from a California classroom because it contained dirty words was laughably ridiculous. Challenging Buster's Sugartime in Tulsa for daring even to mention a same-sex couple was entertaining buffoonery. But pulling Diary of a Young Girl is not funny at all. It's evil.

Culpeper County School officials now say that pulling the book was a mistake. They have assured the media that the book is still available in the classroom. But it appears there is still going to be a "review" sometime this Spring.

See:

Head of Schools Defends Pulling Version of Anne Frank's Memoir

CCPS: Anne Frank Memoir Will Stay

CCPS Pulls Explicit Text

The Slippery Slope in Australia

2010-01-30T09:05:00.010-06:00

I've said I support, with considerable limitations, the idea of internet filters on computers used by children. I've also been strident in opposing internet filtering for adults, in large part because I see such measures as teetering on the brink of a dangerously slippery slope. The federal government of Australia, in recent months, has taken huge steps in validating my fear: they are showing the world just how slippery that slope really is. The similarities between American and Australian cultures makes this move both surprising and horrifying.

Australian law already prohibits Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in that country from hosting what is called Refused Content (RC). ABC News, that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, describes RC as including "child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual abuse and detailed instructions for crime or drug use." These restrictions are, of course, justified by the aim of "protecting children."

The new twist, the start of the slide down that slippery slope, is in proposed new legislation that would require all ISPs in Australia to block RC that is hosted on servers outside of the country. Apparently, blocking would be done on the basis of a black list, a list of sites that the ISPs are supposed to block, said list to be provided by the federal government. This would not require a piece of software residing on every, or even any, user's computer. The prohibited sites would not be available to anyone, minor or adult, because the ISPs themselves, the companies that connect each individual user's computer(s) to the rest of the planet, will be blocking access to the prohibited sites.

Think about that a minute: the federal government will have the legal authority to create a list of prohibited websites, blocking anything in the world they choose to block, and to force all ISPs in Australia to go along with that blocking. In theory, the government would only place sites containing Refused Content on the black list. But nobody will be able to verify this, since the process of creating the list will be secretive, the actual contents of the list will be an official secret, and nobody will be able to check the list because all the sites on it will be blocked.

Of course, any such black list, even when created with the best of intentions, must have errors in it, sins of both omission and commission. This has already been demonstrated, since a preliminary version of the list was leaked to the press. The media have mocked with gusto the blocking of the websites of a "dentist and a truckshop consultant."

And who in their right mind would assume that any government, given the ability to block internet content with impunity, could resist abusing that power?

Similarly bizarre and totalitarian efforts have been attempted in the United States, such as the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), both resoundingly overturned by the Supreme Court. At the moment we operate under the much tamer Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), binding only on libraries that accept federal funds, plus a patchwork of state-mandated and voluntary internet filtering efforts. None of these is so centralized or chilling as what Australia is now considering.

And yet, there is that same element here in the U.S. There seems to be no shortage of those who would pressure a library to accept government funds just to force that library to comply with the CIPA. Once the library is CIPA-compliant, there's always someone who appoints herself or himself sheriff, looking over other people's shoulders, and raising a ruckus if somebody is looking at a website the self-appointed sheriff doesn't approve of. And once the ruckus has been raised, there's always some dunderheaded councilperson or commissioner or school board member who will try to take advantage of the mess to impose further restrictions on what adults can access on the web. And once those restrictions are added on, there's always an "error," an"oversight," blocking access to something that should never be blocked.

Australian media are quite right to point out that the proposed law puts their country in the same league with China and Iran. And if it can happen in Australia, it can happen in the U.S.

See:

ABC News, 15 Dec 2009

ABC News, 26 Jan 2010

Electronic Frontiers Australia

A Global Embarrassment

2010-01-29T00:10:00.000-06:00

I suspect the administrators of the Menifee Union School District had no idea what they were stepping into. It's not their fault that the authors of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary included a definition of the term "oral sex." It's not their fault that nobody seemed to notice this for years on end, or that nobody made an issue of any of the other "racy" terms the dictionary manages to define. It's not their fault that some parent finally decided to make an issue of it. In fact, the district is to be commended for giving the parent's challenge careful consideration, and is to be commended for making the correct decision to retain the dictionary.

In spite of these commendable actions, the school district is now a laughing stock. And not just in Riverside County or in California, it's now a laughing stock nation wide and even planet wide. This whole flap could have amounted to no more than an amusing anecdote about American culture, except for one little thing: the thick-witted yokels running the school actually pulled copies of the DICTIONARY from fourth and fifth grade classrooms. Bad enough, but at least they made up for it by eventually getting some smarts and putting the books back, right?. Well, not quite. They had to add in accommodation for stupidity and insanity: parents can now decide whether or not their children will have access to the DICTIONARY in SCHOOL.

I've now seen news reports and scathing commentary about this in three languages and dozens of news outlets around the world. Picked up by every major news outlet in the US, the story has since moved on to Canada, Australia, the UK, Spain, Mexico, and more. A few commentators support pulling the dictionary. Most, however, see nothing more than confirmation of their belief that the US is a very strange place.

A Very Busy Censorship Day

2010-01-28T22:22:00.000-06:00

Is there some unusual alignment of the planets this week? Is general IQ in the US taking a sudden nosedive? It's certainly a bizarre week for those of us monitoring censorship issues. The Volusia County Council in Florida overreacts to an uptight library patron by trying to revoke every adult's right to demand that internet filters be disabled, as if the council never heard of the First Amendment. Deranged school administrators in Riverside County, California, actually pulled copies of Miriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. That was only temporary, thank goodness, but is still pretty shocking (Dudes! It's a DICTIONARY!). And then . . . ?

The Tulsa World reported today that a children's book known as Buster's Sugartime has been challenged at the Union School District in Oklahoma. The problem was that the book mentions (MENTIONS!) same-sex couples. I'm not going to read the book, but I will quote here from the Tulsa World article, which contains quotes from the book:

Of the book's 31 pages of text and pictures, two short passages mention the same-sex couple: "Buster went to visit his mom's friends Karen and Gillian. They had three children ..." and "Lily's moms, Tracy and Gina, were very good cooks."

According to the article, the parents of one elementary school student formally challenged the book. A review committee recommended 6-1 that the book be retained. Undeterred, the parents took their complaint to the school board, arguing at least in part that the book advocates same-sex marriage, and such marriages are not allowed under Oklahoma law. What that line of argument could possibly have to do with the book was not explained, at least not in the news article. The school board voted 3-1 to retain the book, and that has ended the issue, at least for now.

I realize some parents will object to even so innocuous a text as this. But to challenge the book's availability, denying other parents the right to make a different choice, is harder to understand. The review process seems to have worked in this case, but shame on the one member of the review committee and one member of the school board who voted to remove the book.

How Low Can Censorship Go?

2010-01-28T13:45:00.002-06:00

You have to laugh, otherwise you'll cry. A January 27th story on MSNBC.com relates how a school district in Riverside County, California, actually pulled the Miriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary after a parent complained that it defined the term "oral sex." A review committee decided to return the dictionaries to use, but allowed parents to choose a different dictionary for their children!! I can just picture it, "oh, no, Johnny, you can't use the book all the other kids are using, here's the dictionary your mother said you can use."

About Internet Filters in Volusia County, FL

2010-01-28T01:00:00.000-06:00

SafeLibraries was happy, in his post of 22 Jan, to proclaim that Volusia County (FL) officials had tightened up rules about disabling internet filters on computers within the Volusia County Public Library system. It's taken me some time to figure out in more detail what this is about. Having done that, I have to express my doubts about the new restrictions in that county. This will be up to the lawyers to decide (hopefully before it goes to a judge), but I suspect these new restrictions will not stand.

What happened, according to the News Journal Online (14 Jan 2010), is that one adult patron complained about what another adult patron was looking at online. It is not clear that any minors saw the offending material, nor is it clear whether or not the offending material was actually obscene or otherwise illegal. Eventually, the complaint led to the county council, with input from at least some library personal, to restrict the rights of adult patrons to unblock filtered sites or disable the internet filter on request.

According to a presentation made to the County Council, and available from their online agenda of the meeting of 21 Jan, the new policy requires that a patron wishing to unblock a site or disable a filter must file a request in writing. The form requires the patron to identify himself or herself by name and library card number, requires the patron to state a reason for the request, and allows the library up to 72 hours to respond.

One of the things that this presentation makes clear is that the library accepts federal funds to help defray telecommunications and internet access charges, and is therefore subject to the terms of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). I'm no lawyer, but I believe that establishes a legal framework that makes the new policy highly questionable. My (non-expert) concerns are:

The new policy defines an adult as someone 18 or older, but the CIPA states a cutoff age of 17.
The new policy requires an adult to state a reason for disabling the internet filter, but the US v. ALA Supreme Court decision (echoed in FCC Order 03-188), appears to require that an adult be able to disable a filter without stating a reason.
The new policy creates a privacy concern by requiring an adult requesting unblocking or disabling to identify himself or herself by name, in writing, and to state the planned internet access. The CIPA appears not to permit this kind of record keeping.
The allowance of 72 hours for consideration of the request is far too long. The US v. ALA decision assumed that disabling could be done in a timely manner. Excessive delays may place an undue burden the right to access protected speech.

It will be very interesting and educational to watch how this plays out. (More detailed information and additional links are available HERE.)

Can the CIPA be fixed?

2010-01-27T01:00:00.001-06:00

The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is a rather badly written law. I don't say that just because I disapprove of it. I say that because it is vague and impractical in places, and creates an administrative headache for many while accomplishing little.

The question is, can it be fixed? And in a word, the answer is NO.

Of course, there are many conflicting ideas of what it would mean to "fix" the CIPA. Many would like to make it more restrictive, while others want it done away with altogether. My personal opinion is that some kind of filters for computer users who are minors is inevitable, so my list of fixes is somewhere in between: I just want the law to be more practical and manageable.

Why can't it be fixed? That comes down to the fact that the CIPA is just barely legal. It must be kept in mind that the CIPA was found unconstitutional by a US District Court, and that in overruling that decision and upholding the CIPA, the US Supreme Court itself was badly fragmented. Three out of the nine justices that made that decision in 2003 have since been replaced, and presumably all of the justices now have a better understanding of what the internet really is. It is far from clear how the Supreme Court would rule today if presented with the same, or a closely related, issue.

Given the controversial nature of the Act, any significant change in its scope will be tested quite vigorously in court. For this reason, legislators tend to shy away from making anything other than very minor adjustments. Some tweaks have been discussed, but nothing has come of them. In 2006, for example, a bill was proposed to require internet filters (in libraries complying with the CIPA) to restrict access to potentially dangerous chat rooms. This bill never made it into law, and in part that might just be due to which parties controlled which committees and when. But also, legislators feared that their changes might not pass judicial scrutiny, and worse, could get the entire CIPA reviewed by a court that might not be as accepting as in the past.

In spite of this rather sizable difficulty, I think there are some things that could be done to improve the CIPA:

Clarify that libraries must unblock or disable a filter on demand by any adult patron without delay or question. At a practical level, this is how things work now, because the US v. ALA (2003) decision imposed this requirement. But the language of the Act itself has not been updated to reflect that decision. The Act still says that libraries may unblock or disable on demand by an adult patron, and censorship proponents try to make far too much out of the difference between may and must. Changing that one word would have little or no practical impact, but would cut down on a lot of rhetorical nonsense.
The FCC could get clearer on what kinds of violations of CIPA terms will cause a school or library to loose the related federal funds and what kinds will not. The law itself being rather vague, the FCC is in a difficult position, and one result is that they sometimes avoid getting specific. Will the FCC actively pursue a return of funds if a library has computers that have no filters installed, even if those computers can only be used by adults? How about if the library refuses to unblock or disable on demand by an adult patron? What if the library tries to create an application and review process for unblocking or disabling, or just takes too long to unblock or disable on demand? Each of these situations appears to violate the terms of the CIPA, but which the FCC will take action on is less than clear.
Some kind of standard measure for the effectiveness of Internet Filters, in terms of both underblocking and overblocking, is needed. The law requires that CIPA-compliant libraries have internet filters, but says nothing about how to measure their effectiveness or what effectiveness levels are minimally required. On the one hand, it is clear that an internet filter program could be so ineffective that a library using it would be out of compliance with the CIPA. On the other hand, it was well known when the CIPA was written that all filtering programs both overblock and underblock content, so some degree of ineffectiveness must be acceptable. Between these two extremes, nobody knows where the line is to be drawn, or even how to go about drawing it. It may someday be up to some unfortunate library with poorly designed software (deliberately or accidentally) to test this in court.
The CIPA probably needs to include language that requires age-grading of access to materials, allowing a 16-year-old (for example) to access material that might be blocked for a 6-year-old. Some filtering software provides this capability, but not all. The CIPA makes no statement about requiring such grading, lumping all minors under the age of 17 into a single category. This is a difficult area of Free Speech law, but court precedent indicates that a 6-year-old and a 16-year-old are not the same with regard to what kinds of images might be too sexually explicit. Failing to address this in the CIPA leaves libraries open to "as applied" challenges from all sides.

If we must deal with something like the Children's Internet Protection Act, at least it could be well written enough to clarify practical requirements. Legislators are, after all, supposed to write law that works, meaning that a reasonable person can interpret what is and is not in compliance, and the probability of drawn-out court battles is minimal. That's what we pay them to do.

Open Letter to the Volusia County Council

2010-01-25T09:39:00.001-06:00

Dear Councilperson:

It appears that the Council is considering changes in policy about unblocking and/or disabling internet filters at the Volusia County Public Library. While my understanding of that proposal is limited to what I’ve read in news reports, and is therefore incomplete, I wish to bring to your attention the possibility that the proposed changes could result in the revocation of federal funds the library currently receives, as well as embroil the county in a costly lawsuit. I urge the council to seek the advice of an attorney before proceeding with the proposal.

If I understand the situation correctly, the Volusia County Public Library receives certain federal funds that make the library subject to the terms of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The CIPA requires that libraries receiving those funds have filtering software on all computers with internet access. You should be aware, however, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which administers certification and compliance under the CIPA, requires that adult library patrons be able to disable the internet filter without explaining their intended use. The FCC clarified this in order 03-188, in response to the US Supreme Court decision US v. ALA. The order says, in part:

The Supreme Court found that CIPA does not induce libraries to violate the Constitution because public libraries’ Internet filtering software can be disabled at the request of any adult user and, therefore, does not violate their patrons’ First Amendment rights. In upholding CIPA, the Supreme Court emphasized “the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled,” and that a patron who encounters a blocked site … need only ask a librarian to unblock it (or at least in the case of adults) disable the filter.” The plurality also highlighted the government’s acknowledgment at oral argument that “a patron would not ‘have to explain … why he was asking a site to be unblocked or the filtering to be disabled.’”

I am given to understand that the library can develop a policy about internet use that reduces the discomfort some patrons might feel in reaction to what other patrons are viewing on a library computer. However, inserting library or other county staff into the process of deciding which adults get to view which internet sites is, in addition to being extremely impractical, fraught the legal and financial implications for the county.

Again, please seek the advice of an attorney before proceeding with the proposed policy changes.

Thank You For Your Consideration.

News Coverage: http://www.wesh.com/news/22308295/detail.html

FCC Summary of the CIPA: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html

FCC Order 03-188: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-188A1.pdf

US v. ALA Decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=539&invol=194

A Response To Ms. Maziarka

2010-01-22T18:31:00.003-06:00

I was honored and surprised to find that Ginny Maziarka actually paid any attention at all to my blog on hers, a rare event indeed. But as usual, her thinking is a hopeless muddle. She seems to think I'm using a quote of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to support my position against her brand of censorship in public libraries. What she's doing there is creating a strawman: she claims I said something I never said, attacks what I never said, and then claims victory, hoping nobody is paying any attention at all.

My quotation of Justice Stewart was posted on my blog in isolation, without any comments of my own, offered as an indication of judicial attitudes toward censorship in general. It is quite a poignant quote that way, but I have not used it as evidence or support for anything else. As to my arguments about removing, re-shelving, or labeling books, or otherwise restricting access to books in public libraries, they are all carefully constructed from many other legal sources, all of which she ignores, and all of which are far beyond Ms. Maziarka's limited comprehension of Free Speech law.

Her complaint about my post would make at least a minimum of sense if the books she objected to in West Bend could legally by restricted by ANY law ANYWHERE. But they can't. The books she objected to, like Geography Club, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Heather Has Two Mommies, and (many) others, may annoy some, but come nowhere close to meeting any legal definition of obscene, pornographic, or harmful to minors. Ms. Maziarka has every right to prevent her own children from reading those books, but her attempt to take away the rights of other parents to make a different decision about that is a flat out violation of the First Amendment, censorship as the term has been used in any number of court cases.

It doesn't bother me that she disagrees with me. But I am appalled by her resolute unwillingness to learn. Her attempts at censorship in West Bend were an abject failure. A lot of time and energy went in to analyzing and responding to her complaint, and the books are still on the same shelves, without warning stickers, and without restrictions. She failed because what she was insisting that the library do was break the law. She can complain about my quotations all she wants, and she continue to try to convince would-be censors in other towns that they have the same dictatorial authority over library contents that she tried to assert for herself. But as long as censorship opponents are organized enough to get lawyers and judges involved, she will continue to accomplish nothing.

Howl On Trial

2010-01-21T01:00:00.001-06:00

While hardly a "beatnik" myself, I've always had an appreciation for the Beat Generation writers of the 1950s, especially Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. These were the artists and intellectuals who started the youth and counter-culture movements that would become pop-culture (neither intellectual nor artistic) in the 1960s and 70s.

One crystallization of the Beat aesthetic was Allen Ginsberg's short poem Howl, an iconoclastic, counter-cultural canticle, considered a masterpiece by many literary pundits, and panned as trash by defenders of the status quo.

So I read with interest Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression, published by City Lights Books as a 50th anniversary retrospective. The book includes the text of Ginsberg's famous poem, letters about the poem that Ginsberg exchanged with friends, family, writers, and his publisher, excerpts from and commentary on the 1957 obscenity trial, and reactions to the trial by the press and public. The collection of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle is especially interesting, some of it eerily similar to opinions on censorship expressed in 2009.

Of course there had to be a trial. Howl mentions sex with indelicacy. It raises the profane to the level of the sacred. It glorifies inconformity. And it was the 1950s. Obscenity laws were expansive and allowed much more censorship than courts would permit today. In fact the Roth v. United States case, the beginning of today's legal understanding of obscenity, was decided in 1957, amid the court proceedings against Howl.

The censorship carried out against Howl would be almost unimaginable today. This was a case of prior restraint by government, an act of censorship by anybody's definition. The first printing had created a literary stir, and customs agents seized part of the second printing, which had been shipped from the UK to San Francisco. While the Customs office dithered, public debate about the seizure raised demand. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books had a third printing done, this time within the US, specifically to keep the booklet out of Customs jurisdiction. The US Attorney in San Francisco refused to proceed against the book, and the overzealous Customs office was forced to release the copies they had seized.

In spite of the public ridicule heaped on the Customs office, the San Francisco Police department then undertook their own suppression of the work. They sent undercover (!) officers to City Lights Bookstore to purchase a copy, and on completing the transaction, they arrested the store clerk and issued a warrant for Ferlinghetti. At the trial in a San Francisco Municipal court, the Judge dismissed the charges against the clerk, but the trial continued against Ferlinghetti as the publisher. The court found, of course, that Howl had serious value and therefore could not be classified as obscene. The controversy over the attempted suppression of the work guaranteed its fame, and City Lights immediately ordered a fourth printing of 5,000 copies.

While quite different situations, there are surprising similarities between censorship in 1957 and censorship in 2010. As the 1957 letters to the editor make clear, there are always some citizens who support the censorship of "smut," even if they've never read the supposedly smutty book and have no idea what it actually contains. More importantly, it is clear that in any era those most likely to practice censorship are also those who are least qualified to evaluate the value of literature or any other art. Censorship is, by its very nature, the refuge of the undiscerning.

A Society's Confidence in Itself?

2010-01-20T01:00:00.001-06:00

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free. In the realm of expression they put their faith, for better or for worse, in the enlightened choice of the people, free from the interference of a policeman's intrusive thumb or a judge's heavy hand. So it is that the Constitution protects coarse expression as well as refined, and vulgarity no less than elegance. A book worthless to me may convey something of value to my neighbor. In the free society to which our Constitution has committed us, it is for each to choose for himself."

US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

In his dissenting opinion, Ginzburg v. United States

383 US 463 (1965)

The Destruction of Knowledge

2010-01-17T01:00:00.004-06:00

Sometimes it's important to step back and look at the big picture. While a topic like censorship in libraries is expansive enough, it is not an isolated phenomenon. It takes place within broader social trends that I'll call "The Destruction of Knowledge." By destruction I mean a deliberate, planned effort to limit what others know, an intent to narrow the available range of information and opinion.. By knowledge I certainly mean factual information, but also social perspective, an understanding that human societies are diverse, that opinions vary. By knowledge I also mean an aesthetic appreciation, an understanding of human experience as expressed art and literature. Knowledge, after all, is not just a collection of facts.

The many(!) attempts in recent years to remove or limit access to books in schools and libraries is a serious problem. Such efforts fail far more often than they succeed, but few censors seem ever to learn that. They mount campaign after campaign, dividing communities, wasting the time of public officials, and exhausting activists on both sides, mostly in efforts that accomplish nothing. It is difficult to comprehend such relentless futility without taking note of the deep distrust that political and religious conservatives have of an informed public, their fear of knowledge itself.

A brief overview of anti-knowledge trends includes:

Further reducing already limited public spending on education at all levels.
Vouchers and other methods for shifting tax dollars out of public education and into private hands.
Sanitizing great literature into mind-numbing pap, as is too often done in the classroom with the writings of Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, and other masters.
Attempts to remove education about basic human sexuality from public school curricula, including removing information about abortion, birth control methods, and prevention of disease, or replacing medically sound curricula with abstinence-only "education."
Attempts to remove education about human evolution from public school curricula by watering down information on evolutionary theory, injecting unscientific doubt, or adding materials on the pseudoscience sometimes called Creationism or Intelligent Design.
Lawsuits and other pressure by private schools that teach Creationism to force accrediting agencies or universities to accept the notion that their students are adequately educated.
Pressuring school and public libraries to reduce or eliminate books that portray homosexuality in a positive, or even neutral, light, or that give factual information about variation in human sexual expression.
Pressuring school and public libraries to carry more books on pseudo-scientific "ex-gay" therapies.
Demanding that schools and libraries impose internet filters that go far beyond protecting children from sexually explicit material, blocking access to information that both adults and minors have a constitutional right to access.
Pressure to keep worldview-challenging curricula out of the public schools, including courses on comparative religion, comparative political systems, and many aspects of history.

The motivations behind these attempts to narrow the range of available knowledge also motivate the more mundane processes of:

Attempting to remove or restrict access to books in school curricula.
Attempting to remove or restrict access to books in school libraries.
Attempting to remove or restrict access to books in public libraries.

It is often in these mundane book challenges that the true political and religious motivations are most honestly revealed. Some book challengers are genuinely concerned with protecting children from obscene materials, but these are few. Too often, a book challenger makes claims about a book he or she has never read, and relies on the ignorance of others not to get caught. If they have read the book, they grossly exaggerate the objectionable aspects of it, either taking quotes out of context or outright lying about the contents (like calling The Bluest Eye the "bestiality book" or calling Heather Has Two Mommies "sexually explicit"). From time to time the challengers are more honest, clearly stating that they object to a book because they see it as un-American, anti-religious, challenging to authority, glorifying criminality, promoting homosexuality, or any of a long litany of complaints that are excruciatingly documented in endless letters to library directors, school boards, and city councils (and all of which mark a work as constitutionally protected speech).

Underlying it all is the inability or unwillingness of the censorious to live in a modern, pluralistic democracy. They are unwilling to acknowledge that one society can include multiple values and opinions. They are unable to understand that democracy implies that others have a right to make choices different from their own. They fail to grasp that the mechanisms of the state do not exist for the purpose of promoting a single worldview, and assume that the single worldview that should be promoted is their won. They want to force everyone else to live within the same narrow range of knowledge to which they restrict themselves.

It is only in this light that any sense at all can be made of the claims asserted by People Against Bad Books In Schools, Family Friendly Libraries, Know Your Library, SafeLibraries, PFOX, West Bend Citizens For Safe Libraries, and others. Their claims that what they're trying to do is anything other than censorship is rational only within a worldview that does not comprehend a difference between private choices and public policy. Their claim that opposing them undermines democracy itself can only be counted as sensible in the absence of a commitment to pluralism. And to promote those views in a pluralistic democracy that limits what is controlled by public policy in favor of private choices they must drag everyone else down to their level. To make their logic work we must all become unlettered, become ignorant of history and doomed to repeat it, to know nothing that might undermine a cherished political position or article of religious faith.

What the CIPA does (not) Require

2010-01-10T01:00:00.017-06:00

The rhetoric of censorship proponents makes it clear that they look with nearly religious awe upon Internet Filters and the CIPA, a law that requires some libraries to implement such filters. They expect nothing less than miracles, and so can only be disappointed. I tried to inject some reality into the understanding of Internet Filters in a series of five recent articles (starting HERE), and would now like to do the same for the CIPA (in just one article, albeit long).

The CIPA, or Children’s Internet Protection Act, is a US law that went into effect in 2001. It was quickly challenged in court on constitutional grounds, and at one point was overturned by a US District court as an unconstitutional infringement on Free Speech. On appeal, however, the US Supreme Court overruled the District Court, holding that the CIPA was constitutional (US v. ALA, 2003). As a result, the CIPA became enforceable and remains in effect today.

The CIPA imposes a set of conditions on the acceptance of government funds under federal programs known as E-rate and LSTA, which are designed to help schools and libraries pay for telecommunications, especially internet access. Because this reduces the costs to schools and libraries, the benefit is called a discount. In order to receive this discount, schools and libraries have to certify that they comply fully with the conditions imposed by the CIPA.

The CIPA requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to administer the certification process. The FCC must interpret the CIPA and come up with administrative rules that inform schools and libraries of the requirements and define the process of certification. If it happens that a library certifies it is in compliance but then the FCC finds that the library is has not met all the conditions, the FCC might demand reimbursement of the discount.

Some of the conditions required by the CIPA are:

Schools and libraries must implement Internet Filtering programs that block online access to visual images that contain child pornography or obscenity.
For users who are minors under 17, the Internet Filtering programs must also block online access to visual images that are Harmful to Minors.
Schools and libraries must have an “Internet safety policy” that addresses “the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications.”

Perhaps more interesting than what the CIPA requires are some of the things the CIPA does NOT require. Here is a partial list:

The CIPA does not require all schools and libraries to comply with its terms. Only libraries that accept E-rate and LSTA funds to reduce their expenses for telecommunications are bound by the terms of the CIPA. Libraries that don’t participate in those programs are free to ignore the CIPA. Complying with the terms of the CIPA costs money, and each library must evaluate the costs and benefits based on its own financial circumstances before deciding whether or not to participate.
The CIPA does not require Internet Filters that block access to any text. This surprises many, in part because blocking objectionable text is a feature of many Internet Filtering programs. A library might happen to implement a filter that blocks text as well as images, but that is not a requirement. What the CIPA requires is a filter that blocks access to visual images that are a) child pornography or b) obscene, and for computer users who are minors, c) are harmful to minors. So far as text is concerned, the CIPA allows an 8-year-old to read the writings of the Marquis de Sade.
The CIPA does not require that adult users be blocked from viewing material that is harmful to minors. Such material must be blocked from access only by users who are themselves minors. Adults need be blocked only from material that meets the legal definitions of obscenity or child pornography.
The CIPA does not require Internet Filters that block access to Email messages, Instant Messages, or Chat Rooms. Some filtering programs have an ability to monitor these forms of communication while others do not, but no such blocking or monitoring is required by the CIPA. What is required is a policy, not an Internet Filter, that addresses the safety of Email, chat rooms, and the like.
The CIPA does not require that Internet Filter programs meet any specific standards of effectiveness. Although it is well understood that all Internet Filtering products both underblock and overblock access to internet materials, and that the degree to which these errors happen varies from program to program, there is no standard or process for certifying which commercially available filtering products comply or fail to comply with the intent of the CIPA.
The CIPA does not require that Internet Filters remain in place for adult users. The CIPA requires filters to be installed on all library-owned computers, but allows an adult user to request that a specific site be unblocked or the entire filter be disabled "for lawful purposes."
The CIPA does not require that Internet Filters be installed on patron-owned computers. Increasingly, public libraries allow patrons to connect their personal computers to the internet through the library's communications network. This is allowed even if the patron's computer has no filtering program installed. Some libraries may have a filter that resides partially or completely on the network itself, rather than on each individual computer, and in that situation the patron's computer will be subject to some degree of filtering. Other libraries may be using a filter that resides separately on each individual computer, and in this scenario the patron's computer would not be subject to any filtering. The CIPA leaves it up to each library to choose the structure of the filters it installs, so there is no requirement one way or the other.

In addition to what the CIPA requires or does not require, there are two restrictions that come from outside the Act itself. These are:

A library can establish its own policy as to whether or not the intervention of library staff is required to unblock a site or disable the filter on a computer being used by an adult patron. Some libraries configure the filtering system to allow adult patrons to unblock the filter themselves, without staff intervention. Other libraries allow only library employees to perform those functions, requiring adult patrons to request staff help if they want to unblock or disable the filter. Legal experts differ in their opinions as to what the exact requirements of the CIPA are in this regard. In its administrative orders, the FCC acknowledges that this debate exists, and declines to issue a clarifying ruling. That leaves the matter up to each library.
Adult patrons do not have to state a reason for requesting unblocking of a site or disabling of the filter, and the unblocking or disabling must be done without significant delay. This was indicated by the Supreme Court in the US v. ALA decision that allowed enforcement of the CIPA, which decision was echoed by the FCC in its administrative order of 2003 (below).

It is no doubt surprising to many to learn what the CIPA actually requires and does not require. Considerable confusion arises when individuals learn that CIPA requires Internet Filters and then jump to the mistaken conclusion that the filters required by the CIPA in schools and libraries must block the same material as is typically blocked by an Internet Filter installed in a private home. Internet Filtering programs are designed to serve multiple markets, of which schools and libraries are just one of many. The result is that many Internet Filtering programs have features and functions simply not required by the CIPA.

This is, of course, my own (non-expert) analysis, based on orders and summaries published by the FCC and other sources. Here are the links to those sources:

FCC Consumer Summary on the CIPA

FCC Order 01-120 of 2001
FCC Order 03-188 of 2003

U.S. Code, Title 47, Section 254

CIPA Toolkit on LibraryJournal.com

CIPA FAQ by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

I close with some excerpts from FCC orders of 2001 and 2003:

From FCC 01-120:

In order to receive discounts for Internet access and internal connections services under the universal service support mechanism, school and library authorities must certify that they are enforcing a policy of Internet safety that includes measures to block or filter Internet access for both minors and adults to certain visual depictions. These include visual depictions that are (1) obscene, or (2) child pornography, or, with respect to use of computers with Internet access by minors, (3) harmful to minors. An authorized person may disable the blocking or filtering measure during any use by an adult to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purpose.

From FCC 01-120:

In order to receive discounts, school and library authorities must also certify that they have adopted and implemented an Internet safety policy addressing (i) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet and World Wide Web; (ii) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications; (iii) unauthorized access, including so-called “hacking,” and other unlawful activities by minors online; (iv) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and (v) measures designed to restrict minors’ access to materials harmful to minors.

From FCC 01-120:

Section 254(h)(5)(D) and (6)(D) permits a school or library administrator, supervisor, or other person authorized by the certifying authority, to disable an entity’s technology protection measure in order to allow bona fide research or other lawful use by an adult. A number of commenters, particularly libraries, express concern that each time an adult user requests that the blocking or filtering software be disabled pursuant to these provisions, school or library staff would be required to make a determination that the user was engaging only in bona fide research or other lawful purposes, and staff would then be required to disable the technology protection measure. Many commenters caution that staff would be unable to satisfactorily make such determinations, and that the requirement would render moot existing policies, have a chilling effect on adults’ Internet use, and significantly impinge on staff time and resources. We decline to promulgate rules mandating how entities should implement these provisions. Federally-imposed rules directing school and library staff when to disable technology protection measures would likely be overbroad and imprecise, potentially chilling speech, or otherwise confusing schools and libraries about the requirements of the statute. We leave such determinations to the local communities, whom we believe to be most knowledgeable about the varying circumstances of schools or libraries within those communities.

From FCC 03-188 (elipses in the original):

Internet Filters: The Constitutional Headache

2010-01-09T01:00:00.004-06:00

(Last in a series of five articles on Internet Filters)

While Internet Filters, in spite of the imperfections documented in this series of articles, can be effective at preventing minors from accessing sexually explicit materials, they can also create a constitutional headache. Specifically, they can create situations in which the Free Speech provisions of the First Amendment are violated. These problems can arise because of differences in 1) WHERE a filter is implemented and 2) WHAT a filter blocks.

The problem of WHERE a filter is implemented is relatively straight forward. Many filters are designed for use in a private setting, either a home or a corporation, in which Free Speech issues are minimal. A parent has a legal right to block the internet content of which he or she disapproves. In a corporate workplace Free Speech concerns are a little more significant, but the company still has broad authority to control its employees’ use of the internet, at least where the company owns the computers and internet connection being used. Many Internet Filtering programs, then, are designed for environments where private decisions can legally take precedence over Free Speech concerns.

The problem of WHAT filters block is a little more subtle, but still critically important. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the manufacturers of filtering programs design their products to satisfy their customers, who are mostly parents and business managers, not librarians or lawyers. Filters tend, then, to block the kinds of things parents and managers want blocked, not just what the law says can be blocked. In general terms, what the law says can be blocked without creating First Amendment entanglements is:

Child pornography – images of real minors depicting them in a sexual or sexualized manner.

Obscenity – depictions or descriptions of bodies or bodily functions that are, from the standpoint of community standards, prurient and patently offensive, and are, by the standards of a reasonable person, without serious value. Within limits, the exact definition of obscenity can vary from state to state and locality to locality.

Harmful to Minors – parallels the definition of obscenity, but is evaluated by the standards that apply to minors. This is material that is too racy for children but not too racy for adults. For adults, material that is Harmful to Minors is protected speech, and interfering with an adult’s access to such materials may violate the First Amendment. It is generally legal, though, to block a minor’s access to such materials. Since the exact definition of obscenity varies from state to state and locality to locality, so does the category of Harmful to Minors, at least in theory. There is an exception, however, and that is that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) contains a nation-wide definition that applies to filtering requirements in all libraries that are bound by the Act (i.e., that accept the government funds that bind them to the Act).

Depending on the product used and the configuration settings chosen by the purchaser, Internet Filters often block a great deal more than these three categories of expressive materials. Frequently blocked expressive materials include those containing foul language, depicting drug use, glorifying criminality, demeaning a particular religion or religion in general, sex education materials, and information on birth control or abortion. None of these materials fall within the categories of child pornography, obscenity, or harmful to minors.

Note that this problem of WHAT a filter blocks is not just a question of overblocking. The reader might recall that overblocking is essentially a programming failure, an inability of the software to make a blocking decision the same way a trained human being would. That is part of the problem of WHAT filters block, but not all of it. What’s been described above is overzealous blocking that also happens by deliberate design, when the program is working as intended.

The problems of WHERE filters are implemented and WHAT they block interact with each other. In a private setting it matters little what the filter blocks, as long as the purchaser of the filter is satisfied. In other words, the WHERE makes the WHAT irrelevant. In a public setting, however, the WHERE makes the WHAT absolutely critical. In a public library above all, legal precedents have established that protections of Free Speech are quite strict. In a public library the purchaser of the filtering program is a government agency, which has a constitutionally limited authority to dictate to private citizens what they may read or look at. In a public setting, blocking needs to be more carefully tailored to filter out only materials that are Child Pornography, Obscenity, and material that is Harmful to Minors (if accessed by a minor). Blocking access to more than this – for either adults or minors – may violate the First Amendment and may result in a Free Speech lawsuit against the library and its city or county.

Again, none of this is to claim that Internet Filters don’t work at all or shouldn’t be employed. The purpose of this series of articles has simply been to raise awareness of some of the real-world limitations of Internet Filters. Filters don’t control all the means of communication a computer user has, are sometimes designed to restrict access more broadly than the law requires or allows in the context of a public library, and are known to fail to meet their own design objectives some of the time. It is especially important for censorship proponents to learn that Internet Filters are NOT magic. Even with the best filtering products available, some library patrons are going to be able to gain access to pornographic materials, and minors may not be protected from all the means of communication an internet predator might use. Filters could possibly be made more restrictive, but this will accomplish nothing if a court orders the filters deactivated because they infringed excessively on someone's Free Speech rights. They keys to accomplishing a modicum of protection with Internet Filters are balance and realistic expectations.

Previous articles in this series:

What are Internet Filters?

Internet Filters Underblock and Overblock.

Can Internet Filters Identify Obscene Images?

Internet Filters and Email, Chats, and Attachments.

CIPA Compliance in Brownsville, Texas?

2010-01-08T01:00:00.010-06:00

In his January 6th post, SafeLibraries takes to task the Brownsville Public Library, which he accuses of falsely claiming to be in compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA).

I am in no position to verify the details of the situation in Brownsville, but if they are as SafeLibraries claims, he could have a valid point. That is, IF the Brownsville Public Library has certified to the FCC that it is in compliance with the CIPA, and IF it is also true that the library has computers that are permanently unfiltered (as SafeLibraries indicates), then the library might actually be violating the terms of the CIPA, and could be subject to an FCC demand for return of the federal funds it has received from programs related to the CIPA.

So far as I understand the requirements of the CIPA, a compliant library must have internet filters installed on every computer, even computers in a back office that is not open to the public. While any adult patron (or employee) can request that the filter be disabled, the filter would have to be re-enabled once that individual finishes using the computer.

Part of SafeLibraries' post is about an adult patron who was able to download child pornography on a library computer (the patron was convicted and jailed, according to news reports). It is important to point out that such an incident, by itself, is not evidence that a library is out of compliance with the CIPA, and can be difficult to evaluate without a lot more details about how the illegal pornography was obtained. In a library that is complying fully with the CIPA, a patron might still be able to download illegal pornography because a) the filtering program underblocked, meaning that it failed to live up to its intended design, b) the pornography was transfered as an attachment to an email or instant message that was not monitored by the filter or could not be identified as containing illegal images, c) the patron simply had requested that the filter be disabled while he was using the computer. Downloading child pornography is a crime regardless of how it is accomplished. But even in a library that is fully CIPA-compliant, it is possible for such a crime to take place.

A recent post by the American Library Association documents a somewhat similar situation at the public library in Groton, Connecticut. Police are investigating the possibility that an adult patron downloaded child pornography on a computer in the library, in spite of internet filtering. In Groton, however, there has yet to be any accusations that the library failed to comply in any way with the CIPA.

Internet Filters and Email, Chats, and Attachments

2010-01-07T01:00:00.003-06:00

(Fourth in a series of five articles on Internet Filters)

In spite of the problems of overblocking and underblocking, Internet Filters can be reasonably effective at preventing minors from accessing sexually explicit websites. It is important to recognize, however, that computer users often do more than just surf the web. Computer users also communicate with each other by a variety of means that are not as well controlled by filtering programs. The most important of these are:

Email. Users can exchange electronic mail messages with each other using a variety of programs. Most email systems allow files to be attached to messages, including files that contain photographic images.

Instant Messaging (IM). While email is asynchronous, meaning that the sender and receiver don’t have to be connected at the same time, IM (online chatting) takes place in real time: the sender and receiver have to be logged on at the same time. Increasingly, the various programs that provide IM abilities allow file attachments, meaning that files containing photographic images can be transfer from one user to another this way.

File Transfer Services (Uploads and Downloads). There are websites that exist solely for the purpose of allowing a computer user to store one or more files online, with the option of keeping those files private or making them available to selected users or to any user. Any user knowing the web address of an accessible file or list of accessible files can download (copy) the files to her or his own computer.

Different Internet Filtering programs handle these kinds of computer-based communications differently. They’re all limited to the same kind of Black List, White List, and Text Pattern checking used to decide whether or not to allow access to basic websites, but the ad hoc nature of these other forms of communication makes the filter program less effective. It is clear, then, that users can sometimes transfer pornographic images directly through the filtering programs without the program ever noticing a problem. As long as there are no clues in plain text – in a message, in the name of the file being transferred, or in text tags that might be embedded within the file -- the file will be passed through to the user. Remember that without the clues in plain text the Filtering Program has no way of knowing what an image file might be about.

In a library setting there is often another – much larger – gap in what Internet Filters can control: the patron-owned computer. Increasingly, public libraries provide free network connections, allowing library patrons to bring their own laptop computers from home to connect to the internet while at the library. In some libraries, patrons can use an Ethernet cable to plug in to the network. Increasingly, libraries provide wireless networking, allowing patron-owned computers to connect just be being inside the library building. The gap, of course, is that there may be no filtering program at all on the patron-owned computer, so the patron can use her or his computer to access any internet materials whatsoever.

The point of all this is not to claim that Internet Filters don’t work. Rather, the point is to inject some realism into a subject that is often treated with a great deal of wishful thinking and at times outright fantasy. Internet Filters can be reasonably effective at preventing children from accessing sexually explicit materials available on websites. They are significantly less effective at controlling communication that takes place by Email, Instant Messaging, or file transfers. A patron-owned computer may have no Internet Filter installed at all, and can be used to display any internet content the user wishes to display.

Previous articles in this series:

What are Internet Filters?

Internet Filters Underblock and Overblock.

Can Internet Filters Identify Obscene Images?

Future article in this series:

Internet Filters: The Constitutional Headache

Boy Meets Boy

2010-01-06T01:00:00.001-06:00

Boy Meets Boy is an LGBT-themed young adult novel written by David Levithan. It stands out from other novels in its genre because rather than dealing with the difficulties of being an LGBT teen, it's set in a "gaytopia". It's set in a town where the Gay-Straight Alliance has more members than the PTA, the homecoming queen is also the star quarterback, and it's truly okay to be who you want to be. The conflict in the story arises from mixed signals, causing the main character Paul to be caught in a love triangle while his friend Joni is dating a guy he thinks is bad news. Boy Meets Boy is a well-written and wonderful little story about love and tolerance. I think it would be extremely beneficial and comforting to teens struggling with their sexuality and looking for a little hope.

The book is rarely challenged because there simply is no objectionable content aside from LGBT themes without condemnation. There is no coarse language, sexual content, drug use, or anything else that tends to cause controversy. There is kissing, but it is Disney-esque and completely G-rated. There is one mild sexual reference: Paul is visiting a friend of his who is gay and his parents disapprove. The friend's mother keeps coming into the room and Paul privately wonders if she thinks he'll begin "ravishing her son on the table if she doesn't come in the kitchen every ten minutes for a glass of water." That's it. David Levithan mentioned that he specifically wrote it to be as clean as possible. The only reason Boy Meets Boy would be challenged is because of the oh-so-scary "homosexual themes."

In spite of its G rating, challenges to Boy Meet Boy crop up. It was challenged in 2009 at the West Bend (Wisconsin) public library, after the library put in on a gay-themed reading list. The Oklahoma Library Association noted a challenge in 2003. Neither of these direct challenges was successful, although an article in Random House Inc. magazine indicates that the book is stolen from libraries with some frequency.

[This article was written in collaboration with Meghan of tolerance-megitty.blogspot.com]

Can Internet Filters Identify Obscene Images?

2010-01-05T01:00:00.003-06:00

(Third in a series of five articles on Internet Filters)

A common misunderstanding about Internet Filters is the belief that such programs examine photographs or similar computer images and decide whether the content of the image is pornographic. This is not a capability that filtering programs have, nor is it reasonable to expect that they can.

At a technical level, computers think quite differently from the way humans think. Recognizing patterns, even imperfect ones, is easy for human minds, but extremely difficult for computers. A person, for example, can read the wildly varying handwriting of many others, while computers can decipher very few of these. Humans can understand spoken language with many different accents, while computers are easily confused by even slight differences in pronunciation (think about the last time you spoke your account number into one of those automated telephone banking or airline reservation systems).

Character Recognition is a good example. Most of has have seen an image like the one depicted on the right when creating some kind of online account. The whole point of this kind of image is to make sure that it’s a human being, and not a computer program, that is creating the account. This is effective because the distortion of the letters makes it almost impossible for a computer program to recognize them, even though humans can usually identify the letters quite easily.

While recognizing letters is more complicated than most people realize, it is vastly simpler than identifying the thematic contents of an image. Consider the picture on the left. Try to image how difficult it is for a computer – challenged by recognizing just letters – to determine what is going on in this picture. Are there human bodies or body parts in the picture? What are they doing? Is it pornographic? Such questions are probably beyond any computer program.

Some confusion arises because Internet Filtering programs sometimes do make choices about whether to allow or prohibit access to image files. In most cases, though, the filtering program is making this choice on the basis of text, not the image contents of a file. For one thing, the program can look at the text surrounding a link on a web page, and, assuming that the text gives some idea of the contents of the image to which the link leads, can prohibit access if that text contains tabooed terms. The name of the file itself is also text that can be checked for tabooed terms. In addition, the image file may contain text that is hidden from most viewers. Depending on the format of the image file (gif, jpeg, png, etc.), there may be “tags” inside the file, text that describes the file contents. These tags are not visible when displaying the image in the file, but they are present behind the scenes, and the filtering program can find them and check them for tabooed terms.

Beyond the technical issues lies a much more important and entirely human one: people can’t agree on a definition of pornography. A precise legal definition has evaded lawyers and judges for decades, and today the determination is left up to juries using “community standards” as to what is prurient or patently offensive, and a “reasonable person’s” definition as to whether a work has “serious value.” Such vagueness is something humans may be able to grapple with, but it is quite outside the pale of computational logic.

Progress is being made in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but we’re not there yet. For the foreseeable future, computers will have to be told in great detail what to do and how to do it, and that makes it impossible for them to accomplish the nearly instantaneous pattern-recognition that is natural for the human brain. For now, Internet Filters will have to rely on Black Lists and White Lists determined by human review of websites, and on recognizing keywords that indicate possibly objectionable content.

Previous articles in this series:

What are Internet Filters?

Internet Filters Underblock and Overblock.

Future articles in this series:

Internet Filters and Email, Chats, and Attachments.

Internet Filters: The Constitutional Headache

Unblocking on Demand?

2010-01-04T11:10:00.000-06:00

In today's post, SafeLibraries continues to harp on an imaginary illegality being committed by the Brooklyn Public Library. According to him, the library is violating the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) by allowing adult patrons to disable Internet Filters on the library computers they are using.

First, let us be clear that both the CIPA and the US v. ALA court decision upholding it require that filters can be disabled for adult patrons (see, for example, Julie Hilden's review of the decision on FindLaw). The fine point raised by SafeLibraries is whether the law requires that library staff do the disabling or an adult patron can disable the filter without staff intervention.

It is fair to point out that in this post SafeLibraries demonstrates a significant change from his previous positions. He seems to have a learned something about what the law really says: for the first time he has admitted, clearly and unequivocally, that the CIPA and US v. ALA do require that filters can be disabled for adult patrons. This is real progress.

The fine point raised by SafeLibraries is legally interesting, but is in any practical sense a triviality. The law requires that library staff disable Internet Filters for an adult user wanting to use the internet for "lawful" purposes. Since library staff are not lawyers or judges, they are not in any position to render a legal opinion as to whether a particular patron's intended use of the internet is "lawful" or not. The result is that library staff have little choice but to disable the filter anytime an adult patron requests it. As Hilden writes:

The stakes of the American Library Ass'n case were significantly lowered when the government promised, in the course of litigation, that the libraries could, and would, remove the filters if users asked them to do so. It also promised that users would not have to explain why they were making the request.

SafeLibraries' fine point, then, is a difference that makes no difference. Regardless of whether library staff disable the filter or an adult patron can disable the filter without staff intervention, the endpoint is that the filter is disabled anytime an adult patron demands it. Insisting that library staff have to do the disabling makes the process pointlessly bureaucratic, since the staff are not making any evaluations or decisions about the patron's request.

In his post SafeLibraries claims to have "confirmed with the federal agency responsible for awarding E-rate grants under the CIPA program that CIPA-compliant filters are not CIPA compliant if they are disabled by the patrons themselves." I doubt this, and challenge SafeLibraries to explain adequately what form this conformation took.

In his post SafeLibraries also requested a meeting with the director of the Brooklyn Public Library. I'm not sure that the director is willing to waste her time that way, but in a way I hope that meeting takes place. I hope that the director has an attorney present to explain things, since I think this is one way SafeLibraries' understanding of the CIPA will continue to progress.

Internet Filters Underblock and Overblock.

2010-01-03T01:00:00.008-06:00

(Second in a series of five articles on Internet Filters)

Internet Filters can be a highly effective means of protecting children from pornographic materials they might find on the internet. However, filters are not perfect, having several kinds of problems that impact effectiveness and can result in legal entanglements. One of the better documented of these problems is that Internet Filtering programs both underblock and overblock access to websites.

Underblocking occurs when a filter incorrectly allows a computer user to display text or images that should be blocked. Allowing a child to access a pornographic picture would be an example of underblocking.

Overblocking occurs when a filter incorrectly prevents a user from displaying legitimate text or images. Preventing an adult from accessing information on birth control methods would be an example of overblocking.

One can measure the rate of underblocking and overblocking experimentally, and the rates of one filtering program can be compared with the rates of other filtering programs. One way to do this would be for human beings to pick a finite set of existing web pages and to review these manually, identifying which should and should not be blocked. A computer with a particular filtering program can then be used to attempt access to each of those identified websites, keeping count of the successes and failures of the filtering program compared to the manual decisions. If the filter allows access to 6 out of 100 pages that the humans said should be blocked, that would be an underblocking rate of 6%. If the filter denies access to 9 out of 100 pages that humans said should be allowed, the overblocking rate would be 9%. The two rates operate independently, so they won't add up to 100%, and a change in one number doesn't automatically change the other.

Although overblocking and underblocking operate independently, and all filtering programs have some of both, there is a general tendency for filtering programs to do better by one measure and worse by the other. This results from design considerations that tend to make one filtering program more restrictive or more permissive compared to another filtering program. A filtering program designed for parental controls on a home computer will usually be more restrictive, underblocking less and overblocking more, in large part because the user whose access will be filtered is presumed to be a minor. A filtering program designed for corporate use, in an environment in which most computer users are adults, will tend to be more permissive, underblocking more and overblocking less.

Such experiments have been done, and the results of some of those studies were entered into evidence in a court case known as ACLU v. Gonzales, decided in 2007 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Censorship proponents are fond of citing this case as indicating that filters are "95% effective." The 95% figure is probably accurate in an abstract sense, but glosses over some important details (see especially page 37 of the decision).

Reading the court decision with some attentiveness, it is clear that the 95% figure is an inverted measure of the underblocking rate. In other words, the evidence given to the court was that filters prevented access to sexually explicit webpages 95% of the time, which means that the filters incorrectly let the sexually explicit images through -- they underblocked -- 5% of the time. Some individual filtering products were better than this, while some were less accurate, but most were close to this figure.

The overblocking figures cited in the court decision were quite different. Overblocking varied greatly, from 2.9% to 22% to has high as 32.8%. In other words, filtering products varied widely with regard to how often they incorrectly blocked access to legitimate websites.

While rating an Internet Filtering program as "95% effective" may sound great, it is important to remember that such a number is only useful for comparing one product with another, and has no meaning in any absolute sense. There is no "good" number for the overblocking or underblocking rates, other than zero. Given that the internet is made up of billions of pages, always increasing and always changing, an error of only 1% can mean millions of pages to which access is incorrectly permitted or incorrectly denied.

In a private setting, the consequences of filtering errors are minimal. A parent who installs an Internet Filter on a home computer is unlikely ever to notice, let alone complain about, overblocking of the children's internet access. A parent who believes the installed filter is underblocking, letting the children see inappropriate materials, has little recourse other than to return the product for a refund.

The stakes are higher in a public setting, above all in a public library. The library must struggle to meet the needs of both adult and minor patrons, while scrupulously protecting the Free Speech rights of both. A parent may become irate if a child gains access to pornographic images through a filtered library computer that underblocks. On the other hand, a filter that overblocks, preventing adult access to legal websites, can easily put a library (and thereby the city or county of which it is a part) in a costly lawsuit.

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that overblocking can violate the First Amendment. The government's authority to prevent adult access to protected speech, especially inside a public library, is extremely limited. Internet filters, by their nature, discriminate on the basis of expressive content. At one point in time on one computer, one webpage will be accessible while another will not, so it is quite difficult to argue that the filter is just a restriction in time, place or manner of receiving protected information. Overblocking, then, begs for strict scrutiny, the most stringent analysis a court can give to potential infringements on Free Speech.

For an adult patron, the simplest way for a library to fix an overblocking problem when one crops up is to disable the filter completely for that one patron on that one computer at that one time. Both the CIPA itself and the US v. ALA decision that legitimated it allow this option. Whether this can be done in a timely manner depends on the design of a particular filtering program. Some products might allow a registered adult patron to disable the filter without staff intervention, while other products might require a library employee with sufficient privileges to enter commands on a central computer. Regardless of what is involved, time is of the essence. A library that reacts too slowly to a complaint of overblocking is likely to wind up in court.

In a situation in which a minor is being blocked from a legitimate site, the procedures will necessarily be more complicated. Disabling the filter on the minor's computer could allow that minor to access sexually explicit materials (intentionally or accidentally), and in a library bound by the Child Internet Protection Act, might violate that act. Adding the blocked site to the White List (of always permitted site) might be feasible, but only if the requested site is appropriate for minors of all ages, and not just for the patron complaining of overblocking. The one option the library does not have is to ignore the problem. Minors do have Free Speech rights, and blocking access to sites a minor should be allowed to access can result in a lawsuit just as surely as blocking and adult's access.

To sum up, Internet Filters can be an effective, but not perfect, means for protecting younger children from inappropriate materials on the internet. In public settings, especially in a public library, overblocking can have Free Speech entanglements that result in costly lawsuits. For adults patrons, it is often most practical simply to disable the Internet Filters on demand. For older minors, however, overblocking may become a time-consumptive administrative headache, as well as a lawsuit risk.

Previous article in this series:

What Are Internet Filters?

Future articles in this series:
Can Internet Filters Identify Obscene Images?
Internet Filters and Email, Chats, and Attachments.
Internet Filters: The Constitutional Headache