Dangerous Libraries?

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

>From News.com

Quote of the article:
"Parents don't understand how dangerous the library has become for
children,"

Given that:

"Kathleen R had sued Livermore after her 12-year-old son repeatedly
downloaded pornographic images to a disk, printed them out at a
relative's house, and then distributed them"

Maybe the 12-year old (or even Kathleen R) is the danger, not the
library.

On to the article:

Library filtering suit dismissed 
By Janet Kornblum
Staff Writer, CNET News.com 
October 21, 1998, 6:15 p.m. PT 
URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,27818,00.html 

In what the ACLU is calling a victory for free speech, a California
superior court judge today threw out a lawsuit that called for
mandatory filters to be installed on library computers used to surf
the Internet.

But the attorney who filed the suit said that the case will not end
here.

A Livermore woman, identified only as Kathleen R., filed a lawsuit
in May calling for the court to force the Livermore library system
to install filtering software on library computers that have
Internet access--or otherwise limit children's unfettered access to
the Net.

Judge George Hernandez of the Pleasanton-Dublin branch of the
Alameda County Superior Court today dismissed the suit and told the
woman that she had 14 days to amend it so that it was not prohibited
by federal law, said Ann Brick, a staff attorney for the Northern
California American Civil Liberties Union.

The judge ruled that the lawsuit is prohibited by a federal law
contained within a portion of the Communications Decency Act that
was not thrown out by the Supreme Court. That provision basically
says that an access provider is not responsible for the content that
is provided through its service by third parties.

That provision has been affirmed in several courts, including the
Supreme Court, which declined to hear an appeal of a case in which a
man tried to hold online service provider America Online legally
accountable for defamatory messages that other members posted on its
system.

Brick called today's case "a victory for Internet access through
libraries. It means that the public is going to have uncensored
access to the Internet through their libraries, which for many
people is their only source of Internet access. And that's a big
victory for freedom of expression."

But Mike Millen, who filed the suit on behalf of Kathleen R and the
Pacific Justice Institute, a Sacramento-based nonprofit legal
defense organization specializing in religious freedom and parents'
rights, said that today's ruling "is just one small step in a very
long journey."

Millen disagreed with the judge's interpretation of the CDA and said
he plans to appeal. "I think the judge was definitely legally in
error. They certainly have won round one of probably what's a three-
or four-round battle. I would say that any sort of lawsuit based on
obscenity, whether criminal or civil, is left untouched by the CDA.
The judge did not agree with that. But I believe the law is clear."

Kathleen R had sued Livermore after her 12-year-old son repeatedly
downloaded pornographic images to a disk, printed them out at a
relative's house, and then distributed them.

Libraries have become a free speech lightening rod for those for and
against filtering, with civil rights groups advocating unfettered
access to the Internet and others calling for mandatory filtering to
protect children from pornography and other adult material.

So far, courts have ruled against the latter.

While civil liberties groups argue that parents should be
responsible for their own children and should not be able to curtail
the access of others based on their own standards, parental rights
groups such as the Pacific Justice Institute, have said that parents
should not have to worry about their children accessing adult
materials in the library.

"Parents don't understand how dangerous the library has become for
children," Millen said.

Along with library fights and lawsuits, the war also is being waged
on other--perhaps more powerful--fronts as well. President Clinton
just signed into law an annual spending bill that includes several
provisions that hold Internet service providers accountable for
information that children obtain over the Internet. Civil liberties
groups tomorrow plan to file suit against one such provision, dubbed
the CDA II: the Child Online Protection Act.

That law requires commercial site operators who offer "harmful"
material to either check visitors' identifications or face up to
$50,000 in fines and six months in prison each time a minor gets
access to the content.

-- 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd@dynamite.com.au