Burt Posts Testimony in Loudoun Case
Staff -- Library Journal, 9/14/1998
David Burt of Filtering Facts, who will testify as an unpaid expert for the Loudoun County Public Library Board, Leesburg, VA, in the Internet filtering lawsuit filed against it by the citizens' group Mainstream Loudoun (see previous LJ Digital story), has posted his testimony. He argues that "if the scarce resources of books, magazines and videos are already rationed based on content, which entails excluding pornography, then it is logically consistent to do the same with the scarce resource of Internet access." In his own test of X-Stop, the filter used in Loudoun, and with three other filters commonly used in libraries, CyberPatrol, IGear, and SurfWatch, Burt tried to access 50 "likely to be found obscene" sites and 50 sexually-explicit sites that clearly weren't obscene. He concludes that X-Stop does a better job of distinguishing "hard-core" from "soft-core" sex sites than the others -- blocking 86 percent (43 of 50) of the obscene sites and not blocking 92 percent (46 of 50) of the non-obscene sites. Burt acknowledges that "[f]iltering technology is admittedly limited and imperfect," but he also calls it "the best tool librarians have available for Internet content management." The plaintiffs in the case, however, will emphasize that X-Stop has been shown to block numerous sites that have nothing to do with sex.
