July 18, 2003
Walt Crawford on CIPA and web-filtering
In the summer issue of Cites and Insights: Crawford at Large, library digitization expert and all-around-iconoclast Walt Crawford of the Research Libraries Group has published a richly detailed 20-page guide Coping with CIPA: A Censorware Special to help US libraries understand and deal with the requirements for filtering web access in public libraries.
CIPA is the Childrens Information Protection Act, which forbids public libraries to receive federal assistance for Internet access unless they install software to block obscene or pornographic images and to prevent minors from accessing material harmful to them.
Like many library leaders, Crawford doesn't like filtering (his choice of the term censorware is telling) Nevertheless, this important document provides managers with the background of recent US Supreme Court decisions, quotes from several print and web publications, critical notes on software and blacklist solutions, and his own suggestions on possible actions and responses. Crawford is careful to state that this is his very personal though informed opinion, so readers will have to weigh his views with those of others, particularly the recommendations and advice provided through the American Library Association's CIPA Update Page
April 11, 2003
Google's SafeSearch
Benjamin Edelman of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society has just released an empirical study of Google's SafeSearch options. Google's SafeSearch is a checkbox enabled from the Advanced Search screen in Google to eliminate sexually explicit results. Edelman's study demonstrates clearly that SafeSearch omitted thousands of pages without any explicit sexual content, substantial amounts of valuable web content, including teacher lesson plans, educational institutions, and political content.
March 15, 2003
Internet Filtering Facts and Fiction
If you're interested in hearing how Internet filtering works, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg is your man.
Nunberg is a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University and before that, worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. He also served as an expert witness in the case against the Children's Internet Protection Act, which required US schools and libraries to install software filters to screen out obscene sites as a condition for receiving various federal subsidies.
Herewith two articles on the topic: the first, "The Internet Filter Farce" and a shorter, softer take on the topic in "Computers in Libraries Make Moral Judgments, Selectively" from last week's New York Times.