Katie Cheever

LIS 770.50

Issue Paper

5-5-16

Management Decision Making Concerning Internet Filters in Libraries

The Constitution provides no grounds to force a library to filter. It is likely, however,

that the Constitution does provide grounds to challenge a public librarys policy that places filters

on its Internet access terminals. Filtering all terminals, out of a concern for children, amounts to

an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults (Peck, 2000). The issue of

filtering the Internet on library computers is one that doesnt seem to be going away anytime

soon. As long as there are adults concerned with the safety of their children or children in general

there will be an issue with filters. With the First Amendment and the Childrens Internet

Protection Act there can be struggles on how much to filter or if libraries dont have to filter at

all. How do managers, some of whom may not want filters on the computers, decide whether to

filter or not and are there alternatives to filters, including privacy screens and education on the

Internet that the community the library resides in would approve of?

To truly understand how the idea of filtering the Internet came about, we need to look at

how the Internet came about in the first place. Back in the 1960s, a military organization called

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started developing a concept of

networking computers. DARPA and other organizations kept evolving the Internet until the

1990s when it opened to the private sector. Many of the technology companies started to work on

making the Internet usable by more people. Issues arose through this process as the Internet

became more popular. These issues include, acceptable use policies, need to eliminate liability
exposure for network service providers, and the future of commercial Internet and need for more

global network planning (Weiss, 2010). In the mid 1990s, the Internet was in more homes and

many started to voice concern about the Internets unique ability to deliver a broad range of

content to a general audience. Much of the concern involved material that was deemed to be

inappropriate, even dangerous, for children (Sobel, 2003).

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed by Congress in 1996 and it made

the online transmission of any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other

communication which is indecent, and the showing of patently offensive material in a

manner available to anyone who is under eighteen illegal. Someone could avoid violating this

act through good faith, reasonable, effective, and appropriate actions to either not allowing

minor access or by requiring proof of their age to get access. Under the CDA, a parent who sent

his 17-year-old college freshmen information on birth control via e-mail could be incarcerated

even though neither he, his child, nor anyone in their home community, found the material

indecent or patently offensive, if the colleges town community thought otherwise (Peck,

2000). In 1997, the Supreme Court shut down the CDA for violating the First Amendment

through being too broad in its attempt to protect minors and it suppresses a large amount of

speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another (Peck,

2000).

In July of 1997, the White House convened a meeting to discuss the need to develop

content filters and unveiled its Strategy for a Family Friendly Internet (Sobel, 2003). A key

component of this strategy would be the promotion of labeling and screening systems designed

to shield children from inappropriate Internet content (Sobel, 2003). Two of the leading

developers of Web browsers of the time, Netscape and Microsoft, said that they would include
filter technology in their products to help parents choose which sites to block. The Electronic

Privacy Information Center released a report showing that a family-friendly search engine

rendered more than ninety percent of otherwise available content invisible (Sobel, 2003). Other

studies were done on filtering software including SmartFilter, that study found that the product

denied access to more than 500,000 Web sites. Among the blocked materials were the

Declaration of Independence, the Bible, and all of Shakespeares plays (Sobel, 2003).

One year after the Supreme Court struck down the CDA, Congress passed the Child

Online Protection Act (COPA) in 1998, which made it a crime for commercial Web sites to

display material that was harmful to minors to anyone under the age of seventeen (Sobel,

2003). Harmful to minors is any picture, image, graphic image file, or other visual depiction

that taken as a whole and with respect to minors, appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex, or

excretion (Minow, 2003). COPA was invalidated by a federal judge in Philadelphia in 1999,

who commented, perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment

protections, which they will inherit fully with age, are chipped away in the name of protection

(Sobel, 2003). Family Friendly Libraries, an organization dedicated to the protection of minors

from harmful material on the Internet, stated Disappointed patrons can access whats available

on a computer in a private home or business, theirs included. All they have lost is free access to

the missing sites, not the missing sites themselves. For the person who wants everything on the

net, library restrictions may be inconvenient, but not illegal (Sobel, 2003).

In 2000, Congress passed the Childrens Internet Protection Act forcing libraries who

receive discounts through the E-rate program or receive an LSTA state grants for computers or

accessing the Internet, but no E-rate discounts to have Internet safety policies and use filters

(ALA, 2003). The E-rate program was mandated by Congress in 1996 and started being
implemented by the Federal Communications Commission in 1997. It provides discounted

telecommunications, Internet access, and internal connections to eligible schools and libraries,

funded by the Universal Service Fund (FCC, 2016). The Universal Service Fund was originally

meant to provide telephone services to help those in rural or low income areas (FCC, 2016).

In 2001, an alliance of plaintiffs led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and

the American Library Association (ALA) challenged CIPAs constitutionality of its requirement

of filtering in libraries. A special three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia held that CIPA

violated the First Amendment because it restricted substantial amounts of protected speech

whose suppression serves no legitimate government interest (Sobel, 2003). However, in June of

2003, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to reverse the federal judge's decision and uphold the CIPA

as constitutional, stating that a filter set to block pornography may sometimes block other sites

that present neither obscene nor pornographic material and the Court felt that disabling the

filtering software for patrons would be easy as well as being able to unblock any site that was

mistakenly blocked by the filter. The Court ruled that public libraries must have broad

discretion to decide what material to provide to their patrons in order to fulfill their traditional

missions of facilitating learning and cultural development. In this context, the Court did not find

a distinction between a librarys collection decisions regarding print materials or Internet

materials (Sobel, 2003).

The Courts decision had an impact on the public librarys main mission, which is to

provide users access to a diverse amount of information. Even before the Internet, public

libraries had to deal with censorship and funding. Before the 1900s, the field of librarianship

wasnt as developed as it is today. There wasnt an idea that libraries were a neutral and impartial

entity. However, by the 1930s the profession was developing and the ALA started to bring
together resolutions that emphasized the importance of both challenging censorship and

providing different viewpoints of ideas. According to library scholar Richard Rubin and First

Amendment scholar Rodney Smolla, the mission of the public library today is to support the

educational, social and information needs of society to promote self-education, and to satisfy the

tastes of popular culture (Smith, 2013).

The American Library Associations Library Bill of Rights is a professional code of

ethics and talks about Intellectual Freedom, which is the right of every individual to both seek

and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to

all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may

be explored (ALA, 2016). This means, as was evident in their case against the CIPA, that the

ALA is against the Childrens Internet Protection Act. The Bill of Rights from ALA has no

governing authorities and many libraries dont follow it nor anything from the ALA (Minow,

2003). However, many libraries do follow the ALAs ideas and on the topic of protecting children

from obscene materials the ALA states, the primary responsibility for rearing children rests with

parents. If parents want to keep certain ideas or forms of expression away from their children,

they must assume the responsibility for shielding those children. Governmental institutions

cannot be expected to usurp or interfere with parental obligations and responsibilities when it

comes to deciding what a child may read or view (ALA, 2016).

Not every librarian agrees with the American Library Association on their ideas of

Intellectual Freedom or that parents need to be responsible for what children view. At least one

library director, Dean Marney, has been outspoken about how filters in his Washington library is

best practice in his article, The Internet is Not All or Nothing. He writes, a study of our filter by

Paul Resnick at the University of Michigan School of Information revealed that fewer than
1/3000th of patrons searches resulted in incorrect blocks (Marney, 2010). His library district

contains five rural libraries and the filter in those libraries are never turned off. If a patron has a

site they want unblocked, the site is reviewed in relation to their collection development policy

and is usually unblocked in a day. He states near the end of his article that as we migrate our

collections and our entire libraries onto the Internet, we must be responsible to the communities

we serve and make our mark as the profession that intelligently manages and makes usable the

vast stores of information available online. Content matters (Marney, 2010).

The government has no way of enforcing the CIPA except by allowing people to file

complaints to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, 2015). There are many libraries

that dont filter. The Greensboro Library in North Carolina doesnt filter, but instead it uses

filtered search engines that will be default in the childrens room. The library has developed

policies with a community advisory group so that its decisions are not just about what the

librarians think. The library director, Sandy Neerman, said the ultimate solution is education.

Its not that weve had any incidents; its just that parents have been sort of surprised that a child

can walk in and have access to most anything in the world (Rogers, 2000). The San Jose Public

Library had an eighteen month debate over whether to install filters and whether they were

effective. It came down to spending money in a recession and instead the city council passed a

policy that requires users to agree to operate computers responsibly and follow library rules and

reminds them of the illegality of exposing minors to harmful materials (Oder, 2009).

The Sonoma County Public Library in California resisted installing filters. The civil

grand jury pushed for filters to block obscene images. While the grand jury criticized the library

by saying, while both the Library Commission and Library management are properly concerned

about First Amendment issues, they seem to be more concerned with preserving the right to
access these images by consenting adults than protecting our minor children. The Library

Commission, on the other hand, noted about the filter that the grand jury wanted them to use

that while the success rate for text is eighty-five percent, the rate for blocking images is forty-

four to forty-eight percent (Kelley, 2010).

Alberta Davis Comer conducted a study on Indiana usage of Internet filters. Comer found

that many libraries are caught in the financial struggle. As one librarian stated, the $10,000 T-1

line is simply not something we can afford without E-rate. Agreeing another librarian said that

management was concerned about the budgeting implications of not following CIPA

requirements. (Comer, 2005). The libraries in Indiana that did filter said, we decided years ago

that our policies should reflect our community and staff needs. Our library, being tax-based,

reflects the wants and needs of the educational and entertainment requests of our community, not

those of national organizations out of touch with day-to-day functions of community libraries.

And, we have great regard for heavy doses of common sense. On the other side of the coin,

libraries who dont filter said, filtering doesnt work. It cannot discern between information and

titillation. We have not had a problem with unacceptable use of the computers and I dont see any

future problems. I think filtering is intrusive and unnecessary. If parents are concerned about

their childrens use of the Internet it is their responsibility to sit with their child and monitor their

Internet use. Our community is small and rural. We have a large Christian church base, yet I

have not had a single person demand or even ask for our computers to be filtered (Comer,

2005).

A study by Susan B. Hagloch was done in Ohio on Internet access in libraries. Of the

ninety-one responding libraries, which is thirty-six percent of libraries in Ohio, only seventeen

percent of them use filters on at least some of their computers. Seventy-three percent used the
tap on the shoulder method, where a staff member will tap a patron on the shoulder and tell

them to leave a site that is deemed inappropriate. Hagloch found from all the responding libraries

on whether they used additional means in controlling access to the Internet no matter if they

filtered or didnt: Eighty-four percent report placing Internet access stations in high-traffic

locations, where presumably, the awareness of passers-by deters inappropriate use. Seventy-three

percent use the informal tap on the shoulder method. Libraries where staff confer among

themselves before confronting the patron report the highest comfort with this method. Fifty-

seven percent require parental permission for minors, although a few lower the age of consent

to sixteen or even thirteen. Twenty-six percent require all Internet station users to sign an

acceptable use policy statement. Only ten percent of responding libraries have installed privacy

screens that restrict viewing of the monitor to those directly in front of it (Hagloch, 1999).

Hagloch also found that most of the libraries that use filters in Ohio are the larger ones

that have a budget of at least $1.5 million. The most widely used filter product is called The

Library Channel. Instead of blocking sites, The Library Channel allows librarians to limit access

only to sites that they, or other Library Channel subscribers, have preselected. This product was

developed by the Westerville and Columbus Metropolitan Public Libraries. The Library Channel

is referred to as reverse filtering since instead of blocking sites it allows sites and blocks the

rest. Only fourteen percent of the libraries in Ohio have had complaints about Internet content

and of the responding libraries only twenty-three percent have had to permanently ban patrons

from using the Internet for repeated violations and none of the patrons banned have tried to

appeal their ban (Hagloch, 1999).

These are all examples of libraries filtering the Internet and refusing to place filters on

their computers. Even though CIPA passed into law, many libraries arent following it and are
rebelling against censoring the Internet. There is no exact answer of why these libraries arent

filtering, except to think that they arent receiving funds from the government for their Internet

access, but that information wasnt included in any of the reports that were found.

In June of 2014, the American Library Association came out with a report entitled,

Fencing Out Knowledge: Impacts of the Childrens Internet Protection Act 10 Years Later. This

report mentions that the Internet has evolved since CIPA was upheld in 2003, while filters for the

Internet havent evolved and instead are filtering more sites, including social networks and

interactive or collaborative websites. With the help of Google, the Office for Information

Technology Policy and the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the ALA investigated the effects

of internet filtering in public libraries and schools, the effectiveness of CIPA as a policy solution

to protect youth from the proscribed content, and the broader impact of CIPA on achieving

educational and social objectives for the 21st century (Batch, 2014).

A study, mentioned in ALAs report, in 2013 found that libraries were overreaching when

implementing CIPA and this overreach is caused by people misinterpreting CIPA. This

overreaching causes too many sites to be blocked by the software, which limits how much

information children or adults are able to access from the library, especially those who dont

have access at home either through a computer or through a device, like a smartphone (Batch,

2014). This is something that the Family Friendly organization didnt realize when they stated

back in the early 2000s that if people want the missing sites they can retrieve them from their

home or business (Sibel, 2003). They didnt think that there were people who didnt have that

access at work or home. Even in 2016, there are people who dont have computers or Internet

access in their home.

 The ALAs report states that studies and anecdotal evidence provide numerous examples

of blocked online resources dealing with a wide range of topics, from war and genocide to safer

sex and public health. The full extent of the problem is unknown (Batch, 2014). As for filters in

schools, many schools block social networking sites and miss out on opportunities to teach

students about responsible online interactions and their digital footprint. This could also be

hurting the students future, an example the report provides says many college admissions

personnel and employers already make decisions based on social media profiles. Limits on

access to the wide range of internet-based resources during students formative years are closing

doors to future opportunity (Batch, 2014).

Library directors may look at a report like the one from the American Library Association

and wonder what could be done to stop overfiltering. Since as the manager of the library, the

director is the one who would be finding the filter they will install on the computers in their

library. The report has recommendations for ALA to help educate librarians on what is required

through CIPA to avoid overfiltering. These recommendations include, increase awareness of the

spectrum of filtering choices, develop a toolkit for school leaders, establish a digital repository of

Internet filtering studies, and conduct research to explore the educational uses of social media

platforms and assess the impact of filtering in schools (Batch, 2014).

For library directors that are worried about what kinds of things they should look for in a

filter. Trina Magi gives advice on what to do when looking for a filter for your library: Exercise

care in choosing filtering software. Ensure that people, not automated algorithms, regularly

review and analyze the softwares blocking criteria. Exercise care in installing and maintaining

the software. Adjust blacklist criteria to minimize the blocking of constitutionally protected
speech. Develop a well-crafted policy for responsible Internet use. Implement a program to

educate students about online behavior (Magi, 2015).

There are also alternatives to filtering, including the tap on the shoulder method that was

mentioned in the study done on Ohio libraries and installing privacy screens so that only the

person at the computer can view what is on the screen. Some libraries have also posted a warning

about the Internet that usually says something similar to this: The Internet is an unregulated

medium. It offers access to a wealth of material that is personally, professionally, and culturally

enriching. It also enables access to material that may be offensive, disturbing, and/or illegal

(Peck, 2000).

After reviewing all the facts its hard to say that filtering is something that any library

should do, but because of the CIPA many libraries are caught between a rock and a hard place.

They may get their funding for their computers and Internet through the government or through

the E-rate program. Because of this the directors may be worried about losing those funds if they

dont adhere to the law. As technology becomes more and more apart of our daily lives there may

be some pullback on CIPA and the allowance of children to access more of the Internet or as

technology develops maybe filters will become sophisticated enough to block only the sites that

librarians want the software to block instead of blocking websites with actual information.

The other thing to consider about filters is that larger library systems, like the Chicago

Public Library, have filters that arent easily turned off and arent able to unblock a specific site

for a patron at one of the many branches. Being pro-filter may also have to do with whether, as a

librarian, if you follow what the American Library Association says on the issue. As seen with

Dean Marney, the director of a five rural library district in Washington state, not all librarians

think that the ALA has their best interest in mind. I think any library director who is thinking
about changing their filtering software at their library should research which ones are good for

what their library needs are. I dont think there is a filtering software that is a one size fits all, but

rather filtering software, if it is required by law to be placed on library computers, should be able

to be controlled by the librarians and allow them to unblock or block sites as the librarians find

them.

Perhaps as we travel farther into the 21st century, people will change their views on many

different subjects and the topic of filtering the Internet will evolve. The librarian profession is an

ever changing profession because of how technology is developing and I dont see why that

wouldnt change how people view the Internet and its uses in regard to children. However,

librarians should be fighting against Internet filters since as Sarah Bayliss puts it in her article on

ALAs report of CIPA 10 years later, Internet filters, by design, block access to content, not only

are they incompatible with library values, but for many librarians they also constitute

censorship (Bayliss, 2014). Librarians have long been against censorship, except when it comes

to the Internet.
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