Answer truthfully now, if you were walking through a public library with your kids, what emotion would you feel if someone was surfing hardcore pornographic sites where everyone in
place could look over his shoulder and see it? Would you be embarrassed? Outraged? Upset? Shamed?Would you want government to step in?
This is a very thorny and interesting issue. I don't see a clear cut, obvious solution that magically appearing out of nowhere. It's not a new issue by any means (pornography existed long before internet), but placing of computer systems hooked up to web has increased magnitude of problem many times.
Personally, I don't like my taxes going towards methods for children to look at porn in libraries. Pornography is harmful to people in general, but effect on children can have catastrophic consequences. Intelligent parents exercise great control over what their children view until they become able to discern right from wrong and fantasy from reality.
On other hand, we do have freedom of speech and expression and that is very important. Adults must have right to choose what materials they want to view and read. How can anyone else make decision what is correct for me to see, read or be exposed to?
I do not want government telling people what is not and what is acceptable for viewing. This is not proper role for our elected officials, and it is certainly not what a librarian should be doing. Other people may have other beliefs and viewpoints and they should be allowed to make their own choices.
Then again, if I am walking through a library, I really do not appreciate walking by someone who is viewing a hardcore sex site, and I definitely would not want my own children viewing it. This violates my own ethical standard.
Pornography is something that people should be viewing in privacy of their own homes, not in public places. In our society sex is something that is practiced in private (or at least not out in streets, well, at least not by majority of people), and, in my view, an exception should not be made for pornography.
If that were entire issue we could probably all come to an agreement, but unfortunately there is more to it than that. One question is where do you draw line over what's viewable and what's not? Okay, perhaps we could agree not to allow hardcore sex sites to be viewed, but what about softcore? What about a hate site or a site about gay lifestyles or an alternative religion? Perhaps children should not be exposed to those things as well.
The second issue is one of filtering technology. The sad fact is parental filters and controls don't work very well. It's difficult, if not impossible, for a machine to determine if an image is pornographic or not (and it certainly cannot differentiate between filth and art). In fact, machine even has trouble with text. For example, this article mentions pornography and sex several times, and I'll bet that many email filters would simply block it from being received.
