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- - - - - - - - - - E D I T O R ' S_N O T E Look for excerpts from Anne Lamott's new book, "Traveling Mercies," on Fridays; Word by Word, Lamott's biweekly Thursday column, will return March 4. - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_T A L K How do you teach your child to deal with a culture of sex, violence and Senate trials? Swap coping strategies in the Mothers area of Table Talk ___________________ Love Sallie Tisdale's "Second Thoughts"? Buy her books at BarnesandNoble.com! R E C E N T L Y Hot Flash: The cruelest cutback? A sense of threat Raging hormones Momcat Girly girl BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto - - - - - - - - - -
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| [ SECOND THOUGHTS | BY SALLIE TISDALE ] ________"I've got homework, Ma"
I belong to several organizations concerned with free speech and censorship --the National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN International, Feminists forFree Expression -- all of which have labored mightily to protect unpopularspeech of all kinds from civil and criminal penalties. I'm a card-carryingfree-speech advocate myself, but there are subtleties in the issues of thisparticular case that I believe the courts will be addressing again and again.The experience of the Livermore library is only the beginning, and I don'tthink librarians are ready. Livermore library was sued by the mother of a 12-year-old boy whoused apublic library Internet terminal to download a number of sexually explicitpictures. The boy was a savvy little surfer. He spent 10 or so libraryvisits downloading porn onto a disk, which he then took elsewhere to print outto show friends at school. The suit was filed twice. The initial suit contended that openInternetterminals in a public place were "an attractive nuisance." A few years ago,conservatives passed an abominable piece of legislation called theCommunications Decency Act, which applied the concept of "community standards"to the homeless Internet and held Internet servers and Web site publishersresponsible for any material that violated any local standards. The SupremeCourt found this law to be unconstitutional -- for a lot of different reasons.But the Alameda County judge who found for the city of Livermore based hisopinion in part on the intent of the CDA: that the library itself wasblameless for what comes through the screen. The lawsuit was then amended and refiled to claim that children have a"constitutionalright" to be protected from danger, and pornography was dangerous. (Theexistence of such a right, like the purported danger of pornography, has notbeen established, needless to say.) The suit held that the library shouldhave foreseen the danger and installed a blocking filter. Ann Beeson, an ACLUattorney who worked a recent case in Virginia, believes that the use ofblocking software "creates, rather than solves, constitutional problems,"because it blocks access to legally protected speech as well as what someconsider obscenity. In the Virginia case, an Internet content provider suedthe Loudoun County library in order to get filters removed. The provider won,because the software was so crude it even blocked a Web site for the AmericanAssociation of University Women. This time, the Livermore case was dismissed without comment Jan. 14 byAlameda CountySuperior Court -- dismissed "with prejudice," meaning it can't be amended andfiled again. I'm glad; I'm on the ACLU's side here without hesitation. But Ihave otherdoubts. While I'm not exactly arguing the devil's case here, I believe theentire public library system doesn't look good in the faint glow of theInternet screen. The American Library Association and its thousands of representedlibrarieshave not even begun to understand what they bought when they bought theInternet. The ALA and libraries across the country bit the Internet hook likeeager little guppies, and suits like these are just a sign of all the dampthrashing around that follows. There is a certain starry-eyed quality underthe tattered free-speech banner many libraries hold up. The Livermore deputycity attorney said, "Our position is that a public library should offereverything under the sun to the public." Part of the problem is that librarians, just like other Webboosters, can'tdecide whether the Internet is just like other communication or not like anyother communication we've ever seen. Both arguments appear, depending on thecase. It's the same: information and opinion from many sources, some weak andsome strong, some of it reliable and some of it not, and the library's job issimply to make it available. OK. If the Internet is the same as printmaterial, then it's illegal for anyone to offer me sexually explicit materialwithout being solicited, but I receive such offers electronically. It is illegal for Internet magazine services to sell mystolen stories, but they do sell them all the time, and my local library knowingly sells them in return to their patrons. But more to the point, no library ever has offered "everything underthe sun." When was the last time you saw Hustler or Back End Babes or Barely 18 at yourlocal branch? Or one of Loompanic's handy little books on building pipe bombsand robbing banks? Libraries have always filtered information and knowledge.This is not simply a matter of limited budgets. I don't for a moment believethat if I gave my public library a big grant dedicated to pipe bomb andbestiality materials that it would be welcome. Once upon a time -- in BenFranklin's time, that is -- libraries controlled everything their patrons read,and well into this century it was standard policy to direct the readingchoices of most clients. Closed stacks, locked cases and limited access arenothing new to libraries. Libraries do not buyevery book published or stock every magazine or pamphlet or video made, oreven provide every kind of reference book available. They routinely decide howto catalog and where to shelve books, which books patrons are likely to want. They buy extra copies of books likely to popular and no copies at all of books fewpeople want. Professional library journals do a lot of serious book reviewsfor a reason. This kind of judgment call is part of what librarians aretrained to do. One of the ironies is that the more it provides the Internet,the fewer of all "hard" materials the library offers. More on this in amoment. I've lost count of the number of times librarians at my own publiclibraryhave told me to go elsewhere to find the material I wanted -- go to auniversity library, to inter-library loan, to the medical school library, evento bookstores, because they weren't "in the business" of out-of-print books oracademic research or obscure historical materials. For libraries to defendInternet services as an extension of their traditional methods isinconsistent. The distinct mandate of public libraries in this country is toprovide patrons a free range and variety of information, and to an extent,many patrons count on them to do a bit of sorting when 50,000 books arepublished every year. You can't reasonably apply this mandate to the Internet. Then there's the other argument: It's different. In no way is the Internet like a book, or even a stack of books.Books areslow-growing products, and whether good or bad represent both time andcollaboration. It's relatively easy to find the source for most books, tocontact the publisher or author and challenge the facts and opinions withwhich you disagree. Books can be bought, stacked, cataloged, read andchecked out individually -- there's no other way to do it. When a library buysthe Internet it buys a growing stew of anonymous, rapidly shifting ideas andopinions that often cannot be challenged or confirmed. Access to well-managedand reliable sites like those run by CNN and Encyclopedia Britannica meansaccess to Anal Pleasure World and Girls Who Love Dogs. When you buy theInternet, you buy the whole thing; in a way, instead of a stack, the Internetis a book -- one single book full of pages, one we all share. A few years ago, I wrote a long essay for Harper's criticizing themodernpublic library, which has become a noisy entertainment center in cities acrossthe country. (Cappuccino, cameras, Nintendo games, talking CD-ROMs, giftshops and live music have all found their place there.) I was partly lamentingthe loss of the silent world of contemplation I loved as a child, a publicspace set aside for thought and imagination and respected by all. I was alsopartly questioning the use of large portions of library budgets to buyelectronic information at the sacrifice of printed knowledge. Part of my pointwas, in fact, how few people note this difference between information andknowledge, which the Internet brings to a sharp focus. I received hundreds of letters about that essay, critical andsupportive.(Many of the supportive letters came from librarians who requested anonymity,fearing they'd lose their jobs if they criticized new policies.) I wasroundly denounced as a Luddite for daring to question the uses of technology; a lot of people seem to think only the ignorant could see problems with thewide embrace of new, untested tools. So I feel the need to state the obvious, which is that I'm notafraid ofcomputers or the Net, which I use regularly. But I use it with the sameskepticism and care I bring to library books, Newsweek, the newspaper andposters on bulletin boards. I'm opposed to filters on the Internet for thesame reason I'm opposed to closed stacks of books. I think free-rovingbrowsing in all kinds of stacks, virtual and otherwise, is good for us. Ilike serendipity and not being sure what I'm looking to find, and one of themost positive aspects of the Internet is its very openness. I think theInternet at least holds the potential for revolutionary change and leaps ofimagination, even as it holds an infinite quantity of spam. Back to the money. For now, a good portion of it is Bill Gates' money:almost $40 million worth of computers, software and technical assistance inthe last few years to get the nation's libraries wired up. Altruism,largesse or a great tax deduction? Depends on your point of view. But manylibrarians immediately felt the need for expensive remodeling and trainingprograms. In the last few decades, the steady trend has been growing librarybudgets, with a stagnant portion spent on acquisition -- in other words, as hardmaterials get more expensive, less are bought. The amount spent on electronicsclimbs ever higher, and the percentage of library materials that are junkclimbs too. I'm really curious why library professionals eagerly acceptedGates' moneyand vision without questioning his motives or what would follow. I wonder ifany of them have gone to the dictionary to look up the meaning of built-inobsolescence. Neither national library policy-makers nor local librarians have begun to answer the many questions theInternet asks of us all. My library has open Internet terminals. We have a modem at home. Myparental policy is that my teenage daughter doesn't get on the Internet athome unless I'm sitting nearby. If I'm worried about what she'll find at thelibrary, I'll go with her. But I want to see her browsing and sorting throughthe world as she grows; the alternative is a dangerous naiveté and a dullbrain. As for community policy, I don't have an answer. Government-sponsoredcomputer centers with free access? Or permanent filters? Should librariesrequire written permission from parents to allow children on the Web? Filtersome computers and leave others alone? Stand over children's shoulders whilethey read? Who would you have stand over yours? Part Two: A Portland lawsuit pits a Planned Parenthood clinic against a Web site that exercises its right to free speech by publishing an "anti-abortion hit list." Coming Feb. 11 in Sallie Tisdale's "Second Thoughts." |
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