State Bills Seek To Crack Down on Net Indecency
Staff -- Library Journal, 2/14/2000
The Utah House Public Utilities and Technology Committee has unanimously approved a bill that would block state funding to any public library that does not restrict minors from accessing obscene material, according to an Associated Press report. The bill, H.B. 157, does not specify the use of filters but rather a "policy to restrict minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material." Amy Owen, Utah State Librarian, told the AP that it's possible to maintain unfiltered terminals for research, or a student can ask a librarian "to disable the filter for legitimate research purposes." West Virginia Governor Cecil Underwood plans to introduce legislation aimed at keeping pornography out of the reach of minors as well as an executive order to keep such material off Internet terminals in state offices, schools, and public libraries, according to a January 24 AP report. In Indiana, a filtering bill would require governing bodies of public libraries and schools to meet yearly to determine what material on the Internet is "inappropriate for minors" under a bill pending in the Indiana House of Representatives. The bill would require those institutions to either use filtering software or buy Internet access from a filtered service provider. The South Carolina legislature also will consider S.B. 1031, which would require public, school, and public university libraries to use "software incorporating web filtering technology designed to eliminate or reduce the ability of the computer to access web sites displaying pornographic pictures or text."
