While Oliver sweats at Christmas Hill Park, helping to set up
the parking lot for the Garlic Festival, I will try to address a
couple of issues raised on the opinion page in the past month.
While Oliver sweats at Christmas Hill Park, helping to set up the parking lot for the Garlic Festival, I will try to address a couple of issues raised on the opinion page in the past month.
Mr. Tom Mulhern’s column of July 3rd speaks of the unreliability of blocking sites by keywords. It may interest you to learn, Mr. Mulhern, that current filtering technology does not rely on “arbitrary” blocking by keywords.
Instead, the filtering company uses on a two-part process. First, the company uses a proprietary program (often with a cute name such as Muck-crawler) to identify sites which are probably pornographic. These programs are indeed partly keyword driven; the filtering manufacturers have discovered that sites with words such as “XXX” and “horny” are often pornographic. Imagine that.
Secondly, a human being, a filtering company employee, views the site to verify whether or not it is pornographic. If the site deals with breast cancer or the Sex Pistols, it is not blocked. If it is in fact pornographic, it is blocked.
Many filters on the market (Websense, n2h2, X-Stop, Surfcontrol) use this automatic-plus-manual approach to deciding which sites should be filtered out. These are the filters which should be considered for library use, as they also tend to be the ones that can easily be unblocked in the rare case of over-blocking. There are also cheaper filters for home use that rely solely on keyword blocking; such filters are inadequate for libraries.
Mr. Mulhern: the Supreme Court spent a year listening to testimony, reviewing technology, and learning about how computers, software, the Internet, and filters work, before arriving at their decision. You might spend a few hours emulating them before you cast aspersions.
* * *
Strange as it may seem, I need to compliment frequent letter writer Mr. Harold Williams. Mr. Williams actually tries to research his topics. His letter of 7/10/03 indicates that he has read the CIPA, or at least portions of it. Well done, Mr. Williams.
However, you have still made some mistakes.
Most egregiously, you said that my paragraph 4, although enclosed in quotation marks, consisted of my own words. Not so. I quoted directly from the Rehnquist opinion.
(I don’t know how your copy of the CIPA decision is formatted. Mine consists of five pages of syllabus, 17 pages of Rehnquist’s majority opinion, two pages of Kennedy’s concurring opinion, six pages of Breyer’s concurring opinion, 12 pages of Stevens’s dissenting opinion, and 14 pages of Souter’s dissenting opinion. The passage I quoted is in a footnote on page 10 of Rehnquist’s opinion.)
Mr. Williams, are you aware that dissenting opinions have no force in law? You need not quote them, in your paragraphs 7 and 11, as though they were Gospel.
You apparently did miss Mrs. Connie Rogers’s comments in The Dispatch article June 24. Did you also miss Ms. Lani Yoshimura’s explanation of how librarians may (that’s may) ask teens and adults to cease viewing porn if it disturbs other patrons? A few paragraphs later, she comments that other patrons have no business looking at what teens are viewing.
You say I repeated an old anecdotal story that was told years ago. Nope, this one happened last year. I never wrote about it before. If it seems similar, perhaps it’s because similar incidents happen, over and over again.
Furthermore, Mr. Williams, I deliberately did not call Ms. Yoshimura a liar. I know that she is in error when she claims only a handful of incidents, but I have no idea if she is telling this untruth with intent to deceive, which would make it a lie, or whether she simply shades the numbers to serve what the ALA deems a greater good: open access to all library resources for all patrons regardless of age. And, Mr. Williams? The ALA has argued vociferously that library resources include the Internet, R-rated movies, and Playboy magazine.
I don’t know Ms. Yoshimura’s intent because I have no powers of telepathy. Neither do you, Mr. Williams. Your view of why I dislike the library is mistaken. I simply no longer think it’s a safe place for my kids to hang out. How about explaining your motives, instead of trying to read my mind?
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and a former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in each Friday.
