Saratoga News

Pornography doesn't just pop up

By Sally J. Towse

I've worked in libraries, and I've worked in high tech. Currently, I'm a writer, writing on subjects such as Web search engines. A few comments: First, because of my interests and my work, I average 10 to 12 hours a day on the Net. I don't encounter pornography that pops up and whacks me in the face unexpectedly, and I surf a lot.

Second, with search engines, the results of a search are shown with article titles and, usually, a brief description. No graphics, no photographs. It takes conscious effort to search, find a reference and pull up the result. If someone is old enough to be using the search engines and the Web unsupervised, they are old enough to be taught how to avoid unwanted sites.

Third, I have various concerns regarding filtering the library's access to the Net. Filtering costs money, for filtering software and staff time, if the library is to get involved in developing the filters. Filtering the World Wide Web is equivalent to the library buying a huge, thorough, comprehensive encyclopedia--an encyclopedia whose articles are reached through the index and from references in other articles. You can't thumb page to page on the World Wide Web and stumble over smut, as you can in a "dirty" magazine.

Filtering assigns someone to cut out pictures or articles in your comprehensive encyclopedia that might be offensive. We already have the resource; cutting out the "offensive" bits costs extra. Who decides what is "offensive"? Where is the line drawn?

If the library offers filtered terminals, it is guaranteeing to parents their children won't encounter offensive graphics or words. This guarantee is impossible to make.

At a meeting I attended, one of the filter proponents said they weren't worried that "their" children would find smut at the library; they were protecting children whose parents hadn't raised them with the proper values: I don't want other people determining what they think are proper values for my children.

Finally, I've been asked by concerned and well-meaning friends why the library can't remove the "pictures" and be text-based.

You can tour the Louvre on the Net. What good would this be text-based? There's a site that allows a virtual "walk-through" of Stonehenge. You can't do that in real life! The visual component of the World Wide Web is part of its wonder.

Turning off the pictures would be a foolish waste of valuable resources and would not eliminate access to written smut.

My suggestion is and always has been to keep the Web access available at the library free of filters. Filters diminish the value of the connection to the World Wide Web and are a faulty crutch, giving a false sense of security to parents and others who worry.

Leave it up to the parents, who have been informed that the connection at the library is filter-free, to decide how much supervision their children need.

Sally Towse is a resident of Saratoga and a member of the Saratoga Library Commission.

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This article appeared in the Saratoga News, April 1, 1998.
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