Grr. The Supremes (I still think the term \"SCOTUS\" sounds vaguely obscene) have upheld the \"Children's Internet Protection Act\" (with a name like that, who could oppose it?), allowing Congress to require public libraries to install ineffective porn filters on their computers. (Can you tell that I am completely objective about this, 100% unbiased in any way?) Apparently the fact that patrons can request that the filter be disabled was enough for the Supremes.<\/p>\n
I heard a great piece on NPR a few years ago featuring a public librarian giving an impassioned defense of keeping public-library computers free of filters. A parent phoned in to object to letting our kids see that horrible smut stuff, and the librarian noted that her library did in fact have copies of X-rated magazines. But the New York Times<\/cite> article about the CIPA decision<\/a> notes:<\/p>\n The government had argued that libraries don't have X-rated movies and magazines on their shelves and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n (That's a marvel of phrasing. \"Shouldn't have to offer access to pornography\"—because without the CIPA, all public libraries will be forced to shove smut down the throats of all their patrons! Especially the children!)<\/p>\n So now I'm curious: do most public libraries provide other forms of smut? I imagine all of them have explicitly sexual prose books, but what about photo magazines?<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grr. The Supremes (I still think the term “SCOTUS” sounds vaguely obscene) have upheld the “Children’s Internet Protection Act” (with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n