6/23/2003 12:00:34 PM|||Brian Fending|||

Gigs and Teaching
Whew - just finished a run on Sunday. I'm at liberty for a lot of July and August. I also have a lot of teaching studio time available for the summer. Check my calendar and give me a call!

Childrens' Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling in Supreme Court
Read the narrow 4-2 ruling for yourself, all 56 pages:
-> http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02pdf/02-361.pdf

I don't mean to stir up a lot of email dialog on this subject, but a recent US Supreme Court ruling just ruined my day. It allows Congress to enact legislation forcing libraries - in the face of losing Federal funding - to use "filtering software" with the intent of protecting patrons, including children, from pornography.

I've spent some time - a good chuck of time, actually - looking at the filtering products that are the panacea proposed by Congress. The logic is not yet in place to enable software to discern a pornographic image from, say, one of yours truly. Instead, current software relies upon exclusionary filtering, basically a list of sites which users of the software (like patrons at library computer terminals) cannot visit. This grail of a list is compiled by humans. A handful of humans, at that. A handful of humans to catalog, catch up with, and maintain a proprietary list increasing by 1.5 million pages per day.

Not to get too Neo on you, but is the math 'baking your noodle?' Don't put away your sliderules just yet.

Vendors of most filtering software make the bulk of their money not from software sales, but from subscription to their lists, or at least via agreements whereby the lists may be updated. So the bulk of real intellectual property being sold/leased/rented is not the software, but lists composed according to criteria not established by any governing body.

In 2002, I had the good fortune of being on a committee for the local public library system evaluating the implementation of said filters. The recommendations were passed on to the Board of Trustees, and a P.C. "wait & see" statement was released stating that policies will continue to be reviewed, and all was well as CIPA continued to be overruled.

My personal opinion was something like, "This is bad legislation based on the assumption that the supporting technology exists. If it ever gets to the US Supreme Court, the motion will be defeated. We should stick to usage policies." Actually, it was exactly that. How disheartened was I? Oh, to be the failed prognosticator.

So let's break down the fundamentals:

Common argument: We have a Moral Obligation to protect our children from pornography.
Common definition: A Moral Imperitive (to meet our Moral Obligation) is something we, as a collected group, need to do to maintain social order and preserve our society (via its values) through future generations.
Another common definition: "Pornography is..." For the purposes of this argument, it doesn't matter - the determination isn't governed, remember?
The Moral Imperative is not something we can, because of the medium, legislate across the entire Internet, in essence trying to make it a purely ethical issue. (Compliance v. non-compliance, etc... I'm sure that some legal eyes are taking a dim view of my reduction, but bear with me.) Our Moral Imperative is to sustain our society as a whole, in part by protecting our children from influences detrimental to their development and which may impede their capacity to sustain societal values.

One would be hard-pressed to find a simple majority of Americans that would agree, given all of the facts, that this merits a technical, "fix it and forget it" solution. In fact, it cannot be addressed in this fashion and should be a responsibility spread across more than your local library and a few private entities (software vendors).

That said, the Moral Imperative still exists and current filters, installed or not, cannot do the job. Let's throw down some more to attempt a possible solution.

The parties involved:

Children. Parents. Libraries.
The Feds. State and local governments.
ISPs. Content providers.
Of the first group, children are just beginning to form their sense of right and wrong, and as such can be removed as decision makers in this context. What of parents? Don't they have an overriding Moral Obligation? And what of most libraries' stance not to act "in loco parentis?" (Remember, only libraries are being legislated.) In effect it is assumed that libraries are acting "in loco parentis" and as such need new guidelines to follow.

Of the second, the Feds hold some purse strings and would like to exercise their power through that vehicle. State and local government (SLG), in some instances, cannot exercise such power, at least not uniformally. In this sense, the Feds are the logical authority to regulate what they see as a national problem and priority. SLG, of course, will be funding the prescribed solution, but that's another argument dating back to at least 1862.

Lastly are the infrastructure for delivering the content and the content providers themselves. The Feds know better than to try taking a stab at this, mostly because First Amendment advocates would jump on the chance to defend and, well, a lot of porn comes from outside American borders. No dice. Back to the large body of liberals: the libraries.

As we can see from the above, libraries and parents are really at the core of this issue, surrounded by curious children looking over shoulders trying to see what's so gosh darned interesting about these pictures. The solution, however, does not lie in any one of these groups; it lies with all of us, the people who would be paying the taxes to subsidize a technological solution, anyway. Believe it or not, I'm about to suggest another set of legislation.

Some suggestions:

Make it a crime to expose your child to pornography. Existing laws may be on the books at the SLG level, too.
Make it a felony to expose a child that not yours to pornography. Each incident is a separate offense. Same SLG implications as above.
Require libraries to adopt and enforce usage policies that discourage the viewing of potentially offensive materials in public areas, and offer accomodating facilities (like privacy screens with a narrow viewable field) upon request. Designating workstations (e.g.: workstations which face walls or have very high dividing walls) which can be used for viewing *any* materials is an allowable sustitution or additional constraint and is already done in many library systems. This should be Federally funded. Tell Senator Hatch to porkbarrel it; do whatever we have to.
Violation of policies conforming to these guidelines by librarians will be followed by sanctions both against the library and the individual. Loss of Federal funding, but not a waiver of the requirement, comes to mind.
Violations by individuals (patrons) will result in actions against the individual, taking measures to ensure that a criminal event may be averted.
What these avoid:

The false sense of security that parents will no doubt adopt if assured that filters will protect their children from offensive materials.
The library in turn acting "in loco parentis."
Potentially greater expense to libraries than the Federal funding they would lose as a result of non-compliance with CIPA.
Further waste of taxpayers' dollars.
If I were really in charge:

A national registry of adult content sites, regulated by the FCC or the Library of Congress. (The latter would be fitting, don't you think?)
Libraries would have access to this list for more effective exclusionary filtering.
Attempting to subvert the registry with the intent of slipping past a filter would be a Federal offense.
The US system could act as a model for other nations, and should be opened up as such to other countries, much like domain registrations are doled out by country code, and certain level of responsibility would lie with each government that chose to join the consortium.
As you can probably tell from this rather lengthy entry, I am livid about the ruling, compounded by the fact that it passed so narrowly (two justices agreed with the ruling, but not with Renquist's position) and that I will continue to pay for this decision via my taxes. All of this so the Feds can exercise a little muscle, feeling like they've done what they can, and letting them sleep a little better at their luxurious Capitol and Beltway estates. I would lay money that none of these men have been in a public library for some years; I'm in mine every day, and maybe I'll start going in on the weekends, too. After all, I'll be paying more for it.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
This fifth entry into the Harry Potter series recently shipped to bookstores and libraries for a timed release on 21 June 2003. The boxes arrived and were promptly stowed away. In passing by a stack of these boxes (empty) the day before the release, I found a small one - it must have held two or three units - with a biohazard-orange-red sticker labeled, "HPV," with the subheadings, "ONE-DAY LAYDOWN :: 6/21/03 :: ON SALE VIOLATIONS CALL :: 1-800..."

So I took the box with the same acronym as Human Papilloma Virus (AKA: genital warts) and carried it around for a day. A day which I themed, "It Matters What You Call Things Day - 2003."

Well, nobody ever said my humor was very good. I shoot for the numbers, man.

Things That Bug Me About You
Nothing there. Sorry. I'm pretty laid back during the summer. (See above.)

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