A Livermore, California, parent is hoping that a lawsuit she filed against the
city will legally persuade it to install filtering software on its
library computers that have Internet access--or otherwise limit children's
unfettered access to the Net.
But the Livermore city librarian said the library board already weighed in
on the controversial issue of library filtering, and decided against it.
An unnamed woman sued the library
yesterday 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, according to the suit and the Pacific
Justice Institute, a Sacramento-based nonprofit legal defense
organization specializing in religious freedom and parents' rights.
"We're filing this lawsuit because the fact that the Livermore
Public Library as a matter of policy knowingly and willfully allows
small, young children to have full access to harmful, obscene, and
pornographic materials on the Internet," said Brad Dacus, president of
the institute.
The institute is calling for Livermore find a way to keep children from
gaining access via the Net to "sexual and other material harmful to minors."
The suit does not specify how this would be accomplished, but Michael
Millen, the woman's attorney, said the library could filter access on some
computers and not others or limit access to unfiltered computers by
age, using a device such as a color-coded library card.
"What we're asking for is that the library stop allowing minors to access this
extreme pornography," Millen said.
Library director Susan Gallinger said the library already considered
filtering access to the Internet from its ten terminals in three branches
and in February 1997, like many other libraries across the country, it decided
against doing so.
All terminals are in the adult areas and are
open to everyone. Most people,
she said, use them to do basic research. But pornography is accessible.
This is the first formal complaint the library has had about unfiltered
access since it started offering Net access four years ago, she said.
"Our concern with filtering is they filter out the good stuff as well as
the bad," Gallinger said. "We don't feel we're in the position to tell
anybody what they can or cannot look at in the library. Our policy is open
access and we believe it is the responsibility of the parent to know what
the child is doing.
"We're not arbiters of what people can and can't do and
cannot read," she added. "It flies in the face of our entire library
philosophy. We
don't do that with books. We don't do that with cassettes. We don't do that
with anything."
In other cases, the courts have weighed in on her side, so far.
Last summer the Supreme Court threw out the parts of the Communications Decency
Act that made it a felony to send "indecent" content to minors over
the Net. And last month a federal judge issued a decision
decrying filtering at the Loudoun County Public Library in Virginia.
While civil liberties groups such as the ACLU have made a practice of suing
libraries over their
policies to implement filters, cases of citizens suing to get libraries to install
them are more unusual.
"There would be serious constitutional problems if they were to install
filters," said Northern California ACLU attorney Ann Brick. "The
presumption in the library is open access."
The suit claims, among other things, that "it is a waste of public funds
for minors to access obscene material, allowing the computers to access
obscene material is a public nuisance, and the library premises are unsafe for
children because of the presence of this material which is harmful to
minors and because the City of Livermore refuses to take steps to
prevent children from being so harmed while on their premises," according
to the Pacific Justice Institute.
"I think it's a groundless lawsuit," said Barry Steinhardt, president of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "No
one has a right to deprive someone else of their constitutional rights and
that's what the introduction of filtering programs into libraries does. It
restricts the speech available to public library patrons. If this woman
objects to her child or children being able to access the Internet at the
library, she should stop sending them to the library."
But Millen countered that while children have some constitutional rights,
they don't have the same ones as adults.
"Children do not have a constitutional right to view obscene pornography,"
Millen said. "The library that was a traditionally safe place now is unsafe
in the name of free speech."
While Millen acknowledges that filtering programs are imperfect, he said
that for now, they are the best tools around to prevent children from
viewing pornography. Let's use a very fine surgical knife and solve the
problem as best we can."