Librarians Sound Off

Three soft-spoken, gray-haired librarians fired the opening salvo Monday in a constitutional battle over how far the U.S. government can go to protect children from exposure to pornography on library computers.

As an unusual constitutional trial opened in U.S. District Court, librarians from Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington warned that the Children's Internet Protection Act could undermine the role of American libraries that seek to provide adult patrons with any lawful material regardless of content or viewpoint.

"We really don't ask people why they want to know what they want to know," Ginnie Cooper, 56, director of Multnomah County Public Library in Portland, Oregon, testified in what is expected to be a nine-day trial.

Known by the acronym CIPA, the law is a third attempt by Congress to restrict access to the Internet and its estimated 11 million World Wide Web sites, about 1 percent of which experts say contain some sort of sexually explicit material.

CIPA, signed into law in 2000 by then-President Clinton, would require libraries to install filtering software on computers or risk loosing millions of dollars in subsidies that provide library patrons with Internet access.

Because it does not directly impose limits on Internet access, supporters view CIPA as the government's best shot yet at controlling online smut while avoiding violations of the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and lawyers representing a coalition of libraries, library patrons and Web site operators want a special three-judge panel to impose a permanent injunction against CIPA, saying it violates free speech rights and imposes costly burdens on libraries that would be forced to comply.

The verdict by the judicial panel headed by 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Ed Becker will go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite the free speech issues raised by the trial, Becker ordered the courtroom closed to the public briefly during expert testimony that could divulge trade secrets about specific filtering software products.

The chief judge noted that the courtroom's closure could raise concerns that the law should be overturned on grounds that it could not be defended wholly in a public courtroom.

The first attempt by Congress to control online smut, the 1996 Communications Decency Act, was thrown out by the Supreme Court as an infringement of free speech. A second, the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, remains sidelined by an injunction with the high court due to issue a final opinion by mid-year. Both would impose criminal penalties on violators.

A main objection to CIPA among librarians is a section that would require adult patrons to ask that filtering software be shut off for what the statute calls "bonafide research."

"I really myself have no idea how I would say to someone: 'Why do you want this?' " said Peter Hamon, 56, director of Madison, Wisconsin's South Central Library System.

Plaintiffs in the case, who have named the Federal Communications Commission and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences as defendants, also maintain that filtering software is faulty in two ways - it either blocks Web sites that are not objectionable or allows access to some that are.

"None of the programs currently available can accomplish their stated task of filtering out sexually explicit material," testified Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford University linguistics professor who studied several software products on the market.

Some critics view CIPA as a ploy by social conservatives to restrict access to sites that discuss homosexuality and abortion rights.

Advocates say the law is necessary because an aggressive pornography industry is looking increasingly for ways to lure youngsters to pornographic Web sites.

"I don't think there is a common definition as to what is hard-core pornography," said Candace Morgan, associate director of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library in Washington state, a plaintiffs' witness asked to examine color photos downloaded from a pornographic Web site.

"We have sex education manuals that have sexually explicit pictures similar to some of these," Morgan told the court. "We have books on lesbian sex that could be similar to these, though they don't show teens."

Morgan and Cooper said their library systems provide blocking software on a voluntary basis and hold parents and guardians responsible for their children's activities. Both have also taken steps to protect bystanders from accidental exposure to objectionable material.

Both librarians testified there were few complaints stemming from sexually explicit material viewed on library computers. In Portland, Cooper said, the library system received 11 Internet-related complaints during the year ended last July 1, the same number it received over the library board's decision to participate in the CIPA lawsuit.

But they acknowledged the current system would allow underage children to access pornographic Web sites, and that in one case an adult was discovered looking at sexually explicit material on a computer in a library's children's section.

By David Morgan