Monroe Cty. Adopts Tough Net Policy

After budget threat, filter unblocking only after staff review

By Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 06/15/2007

In response to a threat from Monroe County executive Maggie Brooks, the Monroe County Library System board, NY, last month agreed to make its Internet filter policy more restrictive, setting up a potential legal challenge. Brooks had threatened to deny $6.6 million to the Rochester Public Library (RPL) Central Library, NY—which is funded by the county and serves both systems—if Internet pornography were not banned (see News, LJ 4/1/07, p. 15).

Previously, the filter would be disabled on request for adults, no questions asked, as per the common (and American Library Association–recommended) interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) decision.

Now, the library would block sites identified by its filtering vendor as pornographic until a designated library staffer, upon written request, determines, “after reviewing the site against the criteria contained in the Library Collection Development Policy, that the site should be unblocked.” The new policy raises significant questions for CIPA implementation nationally.

The recommendation for change came from the Joint Monroe County Library System and Rochester Public Library Internet Task Force. (For task force findings, see tinyurl.com/3x8k2y.) The Rochester library had stopped disabling the filter after Brooks sent her February 21 letter to the library, prompted by a TV news report about “porn in the library.”

While the policy states that the unblocking determination “should be made without undue delay,” library spokeswoman Patricia Uttaro told LJ that “we haven’t talked yet about the procedural implementation.” The policy would cover all libraries in the county, some of which also have been disabling the filter on request.

The task force pointed out that while filtering software has improved, all systems overblock and underblock. Because the library filter from the company 8e6 filters web sites, not web pages, it blocks articles and reviews from Playboy’s web site that are not sexual content.

The task force, formed after Brooks made her threat, acknowledged that the recommended policy “represents a departure from prior considered opinion regarding the obligation of a public library to remove filtering 'without undue delay’ [for] sites of legal constitutionally protected (not illegal) material...might subject the implementing entity to a suit from a group such as the ACLU.” Such a suit is pending in Eastern Washington (see News, LJ 1/07, p. 18ff.).

The task force report also acknowledges that any protocol that requires library staff (other than the director and assistant director) to view sites deemed “pornographic” while considering unblocking requests could subject the library to a “hostile environment” discrimination complaint.

While the RPL board has no oversight of city and county library Internet access, board president John Lovenheim called the proposed policy “censorship pure and simple,” according to the Democrat and Chronicle. Lovenheim suggested that the recommended policy be approved only through September 30, 2007, Uttaro told LJ, and challenged his board to recommend that the county legislature pass a law that prohibits viewing pornography in public places, thus taking the onus off the library.

In an editorial, the Democrat and Chronicle called the task force’s solution “a responsible compromise,” pointing out that the approach is “still not in concert with the Supreme Court ruling.” It recommended that Congress should “allow for community standards and community policies in providing access to sites on the Internet.”