Filters--Can't Live With 'Em

Mistake. Fofo.com is one of those really creepy adult sites that won't let you hit the Back button; it won't leave you alone. The site kept reappearing on my screen, and wouldn't go away until I went Home. It made me mad. Why are those creeps allowed to put up javascript that kept bringing back a site I didn't want to see?

It was a silly question, of course. And thinking about fofo.com reminded me of something I'd read several weeks before: up to three-quarters of all child pornography sites--Web sites that are illegal everywhere in the U.S. and Canada--originate from servers in Russia, and there really isn't much we can do to put them out of business.

In April 1999, Thomas L. Friedman wrote, in an op-ed column for the New York Times, that "precisely because the Internet is such a neutral, free, open, and unregulated technology it means that we are all connected, but no one is in charge. The Internet is a democracy, but with no constitution." And with no Internet Police to stop the creepy javascripters and child pornographers, either.

A majority of school libraries (over 60 percent of them in the surveys I've seen) use filtering software on student-accessible Net stations. Public libraries, however, typically don't, relying instead on what's usually called the "tap on the shoulder method"--staff members watch for the content of the screens in the children's area and approach those looking at "bad" sites, asking offenders to please go elsewhere.

I recently spoke to public librarians in Ohio and Kentucky about kids and the Net, and I asked several of those librarians whether they had experienced any problems with kids accessing "bad sites." Most said no; kids usually weren't interested in such things. One librarian, though, told me about something she had seen in her library that had troubled her. A nine-year-old boy, obviously upset, suddenly spread out his hands in front of him to cover the PC screen and said, "I'm sorry! It was an accident!" He'd typed the URL for a game site incorrectly and a pornography site had appeared--another javascripted monstrosity that wouldn't go away.

Such incidents are rare in libraries, but they happen often enough, and disturb enough people, that we should have some kind of solution. Internet filters have been debated among librarians until we're frankly sick of the topic, while conservatives and some members of the press continue pressing libraries to install filters. For example, Dennis Byrne, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, recently accused the American Library Association of justifying "child abuse" when it tolerates pornography on library Net stations.

But I don't think filters, in their current form, are the best solution. Most of the major filter developers won't let librarians who install their products see the lists of what sites get blocked--and the freedom to responsibly select (or not select) materials is a cornerstone of our profession. The filter developers shouldn't deny librarians this information.

And filters still let too many "bad" sites through, and block too many useful ones, for my comfort level. Yet the "tap on the shoulder" method of keeping the bad stuff away troubles me, too, because I don't like the idea of cruising the Net with someone patrolling over my shoulder. It disregards the privacy that I always thought library users were supposed to have.

So what do we do about kids and the disturbing stuff on the Net? As far as I can tell, nobody seems to have any better ideas than new filters that are less likely to make errors. I like the idea of creating an easy-to-eliminate ".sex" or ".xxx" domain. Then all of the adult sites can move there. But who am I kidding? Would the guys who use the javascript that kept sticking fofo.com in my face meekly move? Ha, ha. Filters or not, we need to teach kids that the Net is like the real world--sometimes fun and sometimes scary--and you need to know when to go Home.