Censorship

All the comments I’ve read about using filtering software on internet-connected computers at local libraries is wrong. This is not a free speech issue! This is a personal-accountability-and-responsibility issue. Unfortunately, that’s a very unpopular notion these days.

No one on either side of this issue is telling people that they can’t produce porn. No one. It is still the Constitutional right of Heff and Flynt, et. al., to continue to produce their magazines. And, no matter how much I hate it, it’s still the Constitutional right for any number of faceless pornographers to put their smut on the internet. But don’t get confused: The legal freedom to produce this garbage doesn’t equate to a legal guarantee to have it consumed.

The First Amendment guaranteed the right to spew filth all over the internet, but nothing in the Constitution guarantees my right to be able to hear or see said filth. All it said was that Congress shall make no law restricting speech. Installing filtering software at the local library doesn’t restrict speech, it restricts hearing. It is censorship, and I’m not afraid of the word.

Don’t get so self-righteous about the concept, either. Libraries always censor what they carry. Every last one of them. Always have, and I hope they always will. The popular strawman argument is that you won’t be able to find good information about, say, breast and testicular cancer on library computers because of the filter. Well, I’m quite certain that there will be books on the shelves dealing with these topics. Grab one of those. To say that there aren’t relevant books to most any legitimate topic already sitting on the shelf is to spread FUD. By using these as examples, you’re trying to make me think that the internet is the only source of information on such topics. Hello? It’s a library.

I think you’ll also notice that Playboy and Hustler magazines are not on the shelves. Curiously, I don’t see anyone in this argument saying that local libraries need to stock those magazines. (For the articles, of course.) Clearly, then, the censorship went in up front. And if the folks who run the libraries at the vast majority of the counties in this country don’t want to be out of a job, they’ll continue to make these kinds of decisions.

I do not want my tax dollars spent on guaranteeing that libraries provide unfettered internet access for every Tom, Dick, and Harry who walks in off the street. People howl that it is unfair for those on the other side of the “digital divide.” No one said it was. Nothing in the Constitution said we needed to make it so. Local libraries don’t carry objectionable material because local communities won’t stand for it. That’s just a fact. If objectionable material can’t be blocked without blocking legitimate content, then just don’t have any access at all.

If you want unfettered access to the internet, buy a computer and get an ISP. The Declaration of Independence stated that the government was designed to provide 1) life, 2) liberty, and 3) the pursuit of happiness. It’s out there if you want it. No one is born with the inalienable right to look at porn. You want it? Go earn it. It’s not the job of the government to provide you with internet access, any more than it is to provide you a car or a big-screen TV.

Or maybe it is… what with government-sponsored handouts of digital cable boxes to grease the wheels of the elimination of analog television…