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8 Responses to “CIPA upheld”

1. 

   Vardibidian

   06-23-2003 12:47 PM

   I just wanted to specify that the article you linked to is, in fact, just an AP story on the NYT site, and that it isn’t written by their Supreme Court reporter. The text of the decision isn’t up yet on the Legal Information Institute site, but when it is, it should include both who voted which way, and the reasoning.

   In other and (imao) more important SCOTUS news, they voted 5-4 to uphold the use of race as a factor in admissions in public colleges and graduate schools. I don’t have the text of that either, but evidently Justice O’Connor wrote the majority decision. The hot money is on her resigning in a few weeks, and of course Our Only President is likely to replace her with somebody far, far worse.

   Please not Ashcroft. Please please please not Ashcroft.

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2. 

   Jacob

   06-23-2003 2:50 PM

   Back in my dissolute college days I spent some procrastination time on day looking for dirty books in the Swarthmore College library; by far the most explicit material I found was the Meese Commission report on pornography. No pictures, though (as I recall, some enterprising adult publisher came out with an illustrated version, but Swat didn’t have it). (Note: no joke — the Meese report is full of actual porn.)

   A quick search of the Philadelphia public library catalog reveals that they have Playboy but not Penthouse, just for example.

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3. 

   Jon

   06-23-2003 3:21 PM

   Altho’ my library work is in university libraries, I can say with some certainty that while libraries do generally have books & magazines with naked folks in them, they’re often kept where you have to ask for them, ie, behind the desk. Is it to keep young folks from getting to them? Partially — but they’re more worried about people cutting them to pieces. Stuff is expensive to replace.

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4. 

   Vardibidian

   06-23-2003 3:49 PM

   Jacob,

   Well, I know for a fact that McCabe had paperback editions of Anais Nin’s stuff, and some other material translated from the French. As it were.

   The information on the CIPA case is now up, if you want the detailed reasoning. It is worthwhile to note that:

   (a) CIPA only requires filters as a condition of accepting government money. Like the late lamented 55mph speed limit, that is effectively a requirement, but legally its a different kettle of horses entirely.

   (2) Justice Breyer, and to an extent Justice Kennedy emphasized in separate concurring opinions that a user who was substantially burdened by the filter-removal stuff would have a good case. That is, the agreement that the filters were OK was dependent on the idea that the filters really are removable easily and quickly, and that librarians would not impose any burdens on people who requested such removal. There could be further cases on this.

   (iii) Rhenquist, supported by O’Connor, Scalia, and Thomas, makes a point of differentiating between the needs of the library, the needs of the patrons, and the needs of other Web publishers. They contend that (I’m quoting here from the syllabus, not the decision itself) “public libraries have no role that pits them against the Government.” That is, unlike defense attorneys (for instance), or even library patrons, the library is essentially on the Government’s side, and therefore having conditions placed on Government funds seems appropriate (to them).

   There are a lot of interesting legal issues here: do libraries really choose to have some things and not others, or do they simply prioritize, and, given limited resources, only get the top several levels of the list? That is, if every town could have a Library with every book in the world in it (and that is, after all, part of the Internet Dream, isn’t it), would it do so, or would it still pick and choose what to make available? Also, is the withholding of money coercive enough to call certain government restrictions into play, or do those restrictions only come into play on positive actions? Also, do filters work? And can they actually be turned on and off to suit a particular patron’s momentary whims?

   Ultimately, the real issue is that it is a bad law, whether it is constitutional or not. I think I would come down with the minority (possibly a majority if you count Breyer) that in order for CIPA to be constitutional, the mechanism has to actually work. I suspect it doesn’t, but I don’t really know. However, even if the filters work, even if (as I suspect) most libraries would choose to use them, it’s still a mistake for Congress to require every library in the country to install them.

   Thank you,
   -V.

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5. 

   Stephen Sample

   06-23-2003 4:22 PM

   The county library I worked at in high school had some textual erotica in the main stacks (in various nonfiction categories, as well as scattered throughout the fiction stacks), and had Playboy (but not Penthouse, Hustler, etc.) at the periodicals desk. [1]

   So there wasn’t any illustrated/pictorial erotica in the publicly accessible stacks, but there also weren’t back issues of newspapers in the publicly accessible stacks–this wasn’t a restriction based on content, but rather on shelving requirements.

   All you had to do to check out a copy of Playboy was to fill out a request slip specifying the issue you wanted, and let us write down your library card number (in case you didn’t bring the magazine back–we destroyed the slips once the magazine was returned). There were no further restrictions: if you were a 5-year-old boy with a library card, we would let you read Playboy[2]. If your parents had a problem with that, they could supervise you in the library.

   Now I will concede that there is material on the net that is much more sexually explicit (and which caters to much less mainstream tastes) than Playboy, but it’s not as if libraries don’t already have pictorial erotica in their paper collections. Or at least, not based on my experience as a paraprofessional at a public library that might be expected to be less open about such things than McCabe or NYPL.

   [1] There were some picture books with naked people in the main stacks, but no pictorial erotica as such.

   [2] This was not a hypothetical situation, by the way: I checked copies of Playboy out to significantly prepubescent boys 3-4 times during the year+ I was on the desk. There usually was a lot of furtive giggling in the fiction stacks (which were nearby), and then the magazine came back within 5-10 minutes.

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6. 

   Nao

   06-23-2003 4:30 PM

   Vardibidian asked:
   That is, if every town could have a Library with every book in the world in it (and that is, after all, part of the Internet Dream, isn’t it), would it do so, or would it still pick and choose what to make available?

   Speaking as a recent MLS, I might be able to shed a little light on this: yes, yes, give us everything (archival purposes). But you also have to hypothesize the perfect cataloging and classification system so that stuff which is actively and harmfully out of date can be clearly categorized as such or maybe kept in a separate room (i.e. all those psychiatry texts which classify homosexuality as a mental disease. Or all those kids’ textbooks in woefully underfunded schools which say so hopefully that someday we will land on the moon). A large part of collection development is weeding–and not just because of lack of space or public interest.

   I am *extremely* annoyed at the Supreme Court. Yes, you can turn the filters off at patron request (but the patron has to know that useful information may be blocked). And yes, federal funding is theoretically optional–but when you consider that local libraries are most prone to having local funding cut during economic times like these, then federal funding seems less optional. Especially when you consider that library use goes up when people are less well-off.

   And no, filters don’t work. They let “undesired” information slip through and block useful information. The… well, this is about to turn into a rant I don’t feel like giving right now. So I’ll stop.

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7. 

   Nao

   06-23-2003 4:40 PM

   Here’s the other part of what I was starting to rant about, but since it was written by someone else, it’s in more moderate language:

   “The decision, however, is very narrow in that Justices Kennedy and Breyer did not join Chief Justice Rehnquist’s opinion, they only joined the judgment,” said Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Justices Kennedy and Breyer joined the judgment because they believe adult patrons need only ask the librarian to ‘please disable the filter’ and need not provide any reason for the request. In light of this, we expect libraries that decide they must accept filters to inform their patrons how easily the filters can be turned off.”

   The American Library Association again calls for full disclosure of what sites filtering companies are blocking, who is deciding what is filtered and what criteria are being used. Findings of fact clearly show that filtering companies are not following legal definitions of “harmful to minors” and “obscenity.” Their practices must change.

   From the ALA’s press release about the Supreme Court’s decision.

   (I don’t always like the ALA’s positions on things, but this one I can agree with).

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8. 

   Vardibidian

   06-24-2003 10:10 AM

   It also appears to be the case that the feds were not, as they clearly ought to have been doing, informing librarians that they could and should turn off filters for any adult who asks.

   Thanks,
   -V.

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