outsourcing the internet
Ken Thompson (1998)
The Internet holds at least one great promise: to put the power to publish ideas and distribute them on a grand scale into the hands of many who never had it before. Although the net is by no means egalitarian (it certainly doesn't yet transcend class barriers), it does allow a much broader cross-section of the public to get their ideas out, and engage in conversation with people of like mind, regardless of location. It allows people outside of mainstream thought to build communities and support networks.
Filtering software (also known as 'censorware') works against this ideal, especially as filters are applied in libraries. As we shall see, in addition to pornography (which, incidentally is NOT ILLEGAL), the targets of filters are those concerns close to librarians generally, especially librarians interested in gay/lesbian/bi and feminist issues. More generally, filters eliminate from discussion anything that society might feel even slightly squeamish about, including legal drug use, legal sex education, legal non-Christian religions (and atheism), legal body modification, and legal AIDS education. Given the history of such censorship efforts, one might be surprised that libraries are utilizing filtering services. Although no cases involving filtering in public libraries have been brought before the courts (yet), case law would seem to indicate that filtering can not possibly be upheld as legal. One line of federal cases held that government institutions can not outsource decisions about speech to private groups with vague criteria (these cases were related to municipalities banning films based on MPAA ratings). Another test that filters will have to stand up to is that of "strict scrutiny." This test holds that rules affecting speech must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Most censorware indiscriminately blocks all materials on a server in order to catch a few that it deems inappropriate, and this surely fails the "narrowly tailored" test. The foundation that the courts will no doubt rely on is the 1957 Supreme Court case Butler v. Michigan, where the Court held that banning all books from a library that were in fact unfit for children violated adults constitutional rights. And yet, internet filters are being used today in America's public libraries, at adult terminals as well as in children's sections.
One might also note that the American Library Association itself has been rather direct and forthright on this issue. Aside from directly addressing the issue in its "Resolution on the Use of Filtering Software in Libraries" of 7/2/97, which states in part that "Whereas...The Court found that the Internet 'constitutes a vast platform from which to address and hear from a world-wide audience of millions of readers, viewers, researchers, and buyers,' and that 'any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox" and "Whereas, The use in libraries of software filters which block Constitutionally protected speech is inconsistent with the United States Constitution and federal law and may lead to legal exposure for the library...therefore be it resolved; that the American Library Association affirms that the use of filtering software by libraries to block access to constitutionally protected speech violates the Library Bill of Rights." (www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/filt_res.html)
In addition, many other parts of the Library Bill of Rights (and its interpretations) speak directly to the issue of filtering, as evidenced in ALA's Intellectual Freedom Manual. "Users should not be restricted or denied access for expressing or receiving constitutionally protected speech," (p. 23-4) and "Libraries and Librarians should not deny or limit access to information available via electronic resources because of the librarian's personal beliefs or fear of confrontation," (p. 23-5) and "Libraries...must support access to information on all subjects that serve the needs or interests of each user, regardless of the user's age or the content of the material," (p. 24) and "The provision of access does not imply sponsorship or endorsement. These principles pertain to electronic resources no less than they do to the more traditional sources of information in libraries," (p. 24) are all mentioned in the Access to Electronic Information interpretation. In the Bill itself it is stated, "Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." (Article III) Elsewhere, the Manual makes it clear that children should have total access to all materials in the library's collection, that every library needs to have "a clearly defined selection policy," that there must be diversity in collection fileboy, and that restricted access and labeling is strictly forbidden as "labeling is an attempt to prejudice attitudes and as such, it is a censor's tool." (p. 111) Clearly, the use of a filtering service violates all of these tenets: the censorware's primary purpose is to deny access to children, and to accomplish this goal it uses the most prejudicial of labeling systems.
However, the blocking continues. No doubt, this would be a non-issue if all that was being blocked was self-proclaimed retailers of pornography. However, all the filters block a wide range of subject areas, from Sex Acts to Tobacco, and many web sites are caught in the crossfire, improperly blocked due to the limitations of technology, prudishness, and/or greed. Among the blocked have been the web sites for: The National Organization for Women, The Fileroom (ironically, a database on censorship), the Critical Path AIDS Project, the Queer Resources Directory, the works of poet Ann Sexton and the NASA site www.marsexplorer.com (both contain the word 'sex' in them), the HIV Info Center, Hotwired (online news service of Wired magazine), San Jose Mercury News, the Austin Chronicle classifieds, the Museum of Modern Art, and many others.
Although these site might have some content that would be objectionable to someone, somewhere, somewhat less explicable were some of the blocked sites reported by The Censorware Project (CWP) (www.spectacle.org/cwp/intro.html). They included The MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation, Explore Underwater Magazine online, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Center, and many others, all blocked by CyberPatrol under the categories FullNude and SexActs. Needless to say, none of these sites fell into these categories.
Overbroad blocking is another problem with filtering software: the filterers determine that a small percentage of web sites on a computer have 'objectionable' material, and rather than spend the time and money blocking the individual pages, they apply the whammy to the whole server. In this way, an entire area of Geocities.com, know as West Hollywood, was blocked -- over 23,000 users and 50,000 web pages. When this was brought to CyberPatrol's attention, they still declined to unblock the non-offensive sites. CWP notes that while this primarily gay and lesbian server is blocked, the hetero porn holding members.aol.com site remains unblocked. In addition, CyberPatrol has declined to unblock the following newsgroups, even after they were brought to the company's attention as being erroneously blocked: misc.activism.progressive , misc.headlines, misc.health.aids, misc.health.alternative, soc.bi, soc.feminism, soc.women.lesbian-and-bi, talk.abortion, talk.euthanasia, talk.politics.drugs, alt.aol-sucks.moderated, alt.atheism, alt.censorship, alt.journalism, alt.support.* [220 groups in all], alt.teens, alt.transgendered, and many more.
CyberPatrol and other filtering companies use an automated set of stop words (which if I printed here and posted this article to a website would get it blocked) that eliminate sites and domains from a list of those available on the web to its users. Blocks are only removed when a complaint is made. Other companies, such as N2H2, use human beings to review web sites.
Peter Lewis, in a rather insightful article in the Seattle Times of 12/17/97, lays out how N2H2 develops its Bess filtering system. Three shifts of workers, working four hour shifts, wade through 10,000 sites a day, blocking about 33% of the sites they review. They are paid $7 an hour, and at ages like 18 and 19, are hired on the basis of "being internet and computer savvy, and have a solid resume with good work experience." The average time a worker stays at N2H2 is four to five months, and is given a four page instruction sheet on how to rate sites. One month into his new job, one 19 year old worker admitted that "Since I'm new here, there's lots of stuff I haven't completely learned." N2H2 CEO Peter Nickerson admitted that they were "venturing into uncharted waters, especially when it comes to 'fuzzy' sites that could go either way - naughty or nice. 'It's not a hard science by any stretch of the imagination,' he says." And one shift supervisor said, "It's better to be safe than sorry."
Clearly the arbitrary decision making process inherent in both of these processes for blocking web sites violates the Library Bill of Rights, and probably is unconstitutional when applied to public libraries. However, libraries in many municipalities have signed up with these services: Boston Public, Austin Public, the Loudoun County (VA) Libraries, the Orange County (FL) Library System are but a few. Some libraries block only children's access, others block adult access, some with no option to turn the blocking off.
For those of us invested in protecting the voices of those outside of the mainstream, this is an important fight. Contrary to popular belief, the US was not founded on majority rule, but rather on the opposite: the protection of minorities from the unfair oppression of the majority. The right to have yourself heard in public spaces (which surely an internet terminal in a public library qualifies as) is a fundamental right, one which no private corporation should have the final word on. Yet that is the current case.
One example from CyberPartrol's own web site (www.microsys.com/cyber/) illustrates this well. Their "CyberNOT" committee heard arguments from two groups who tried to explain why they shouldn't be blocked. A group of pagans tried to convince them that paganism was an old and respected religion that had nothing to do with Satanism (they don't even have a Satan figure); at another time a group of naturists (nudists) attempted to explain how theirs was a wholesome family-oriented back to nature lifestyle, one which had nothing to do with sex. The outcome of these meetings: the pagans won, the naturists did not. All naturist sites are still routinely blocked.
How's that for fair?