Internet filtering software ignites debate on freedoms

By SHELBY SCHROEDER

Librarians find few problems of patrons misusing the Web.

There’s an explanation for why your Internet search at the public library for chicken breast recipes might get blocked from view.

The 2003 U.S. Supreme Court upholding of the Children’s Internet Protection Act required public schools and libraries to use Internet filtering software or have federal funding pulled. For public libraries in the region, the federal funding is so important that freedoms could be limited.

The act requires libraries that receive E-Rate funds, or other federal grants used to purchase internet services or computers that access the Web, to use filtering software. E-Rate is a grant provided through the Federal Communications Commission that is to be used specifically for communication technologies.

Janet Loew, spokeswoman for Youngstown Public Libraries, said its facilities receive about $50,000 in E-Rate money to offset the cost of technology each year, requiring them to follow CIPA stipulations.

“In Ohio, we try to balance [Internet safety] with the constitutional right of freedom to information,” said Loew, whose branch of libraries uses Bess filtering software.

Software such as Bess censors Web use by blocking addresses before users access them. CIPA demands libraries block users from pornographic or obscene visual images, but not text. Filtering software, however, operates by blocking both predetermined Web sites and Web sites using target words, not the images contained on the sites themselves.

The likelihood then rises that pages without “offensive” visuals are improperly blocked. But improperly blocked pages are a rare occurrence, according to Loew.

Post-secondary institutions, like Youngstown State University, are not required by law to use filtering software on their systems. Instead, the university presents its “acceptable use” policy and trusts its users, who are seated within public view to avoid incidents of misuse.

“As a general rule, there’s nothing to really stop someone who wants to view these images,” said Jan Schnall, associate director for Information Services for YSU’s library. She recalled only a couple of instances where users disobeyed the policy. One in particular was a repeat offender, who was barred from the library.

As for regulating what users view on university computers, “I am not an advocate of it,” Schnall said.

Libraries in Trumbull and Mahoning counties provide acceptable use policies, along with filtering software. Users must agree with the policy by accepting it each time they log on.

But the policies omit the fact that users may request that Web sites, or entire computers, be unblocked without stating why. This measure was added to ensure that First Amendment rights weren’t overstepped with the new requirements, but Internet users aren’t made aware of this stipulation unless they ask.

Trumbull County libraries provide a link, within the initial sign on, to the full policy, which includes the unblocking process.

“Most users know our policy and know how to abide,” Loew said. Though users aren’t informed of the clause, Loew said the library doesn’t feel people are restricted in what they want to view.

At the primary and secondary level schools, computers are guarded by programs like Webwasher. Leslie Fitzgerald, the librarian at Harding Elementary in Youngstown, called the software “strange” for its filtering choices.

“We’re well blocked,” Fitzgerald said.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, of the American Library Association, said filtering software is often flawed, and frequently used as substitute for attentive and caring adult presence.

“It’s dumb,” Caldwell-Stone said of blocking programs. “It’s a piece of code. It can’t teach values.”

The ALA doesn’t endorse the use of filtering software. Caldwell-Stone, the deputy director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom for the ALA, said filters sometimes block legitimate information, while still letting in the material meant to be blocked.

She also cited research by Nancy Willard, which connected eight filtering software companies to different conservative religious groups.

Special interest groups having a hand in access to information doesn’t sit well with the ALA, said Caldwell-Stone, who has heard of topics being blacklisted by filtering software because of a political leaning. She said that at the core of any filtering software is a group of individuals, with different tastes and definitions of obscenity, delegating Internet access rights.

While the Youngstown libraries do not track the number of internet users, according to Loew, employees receive only a few requests to unblock Web sites by the thousands of users each year.

Neither the spokesperson for the Youngstown area nor Trumbull county libraries said filtering software posed significant problems for library staff, who were made familiar with the unblocking process.

CIPA was signed in by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and unsuccessfully challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.