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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (134823)	4/2/2001 7:45:46 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Do you support stores which keep porn behind the check-out counter, instead of in open view? After all, kids are going to see it anyway. I agree with all the examples you cite. They have in common two things that are not the case for the library law. First of all, they are effective. A store has a gatekeeper between the kids and the porn, one who will be arrested if he doesn't do his job. Blocking software is not an effective gatekeeper, at least not yet. If we want to arrest adults for displaying porn on the screen of a library computer where kids can easily see it, I think that would be fine. Second, they don't hurt anyone else. Any adult can just ask for the magazine behind the counter. Blocking software can keep adults away from medical information they need. If the blocking software in the library can be turned off by the librarian, as suggested in the article from USNews you posted, this would not be a consideration. Too often we get caught up in arguing over design of a solution and lose track of the problem we're trying to solve. I want to minimize the access of kids to porn, too, I just think this is a lousy way to do it. It affronts the long-standing and important tradition of libraries not censoring, it inserts the Federal government where it doesn't need to be, it is difficult to administer, it doesn't accomplish what it intends, and it is unnecessarily burdensome on adults. Karen