The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Freedom of Speech, Internet Censorship,  and an Interview with Ann K Symons Monika Merkes monika@melbpc.org.au

The Australian Library & Information Association and Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. jointly sponsored a forum on Internet censorship on 9 October 2000 in Melbourne: "Filtering the Internet: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". 
Ann K Symons, one of three speakers at the forum, is a librarian from Alaska. She spoke on "U.S. Libraries and the Internet: The Roller Coaster Years". 

In her presentation, Ann Symons said that there is nothing good about filtering the Internet, except perhaps that it gives parents a choice to use filtering software. The "bad" aspect is that filters are not very effective in filtering out the information they claim to filter, and they also filter out some useful information. The "ugly" side of Internet censorship is that filters are used in publicly funded institutions. 

In 1996, 40% of U.S. public libraries provided Internet access, in 1998 this rose to 98% and 15% of libraries used filters. In 2000, 95% of U.S. public libraries offer Internet access, one in four use filters, and one in ten filter all work stations http://www.nclis.gov/news/pr2000/plis2000.html. Ann noted that this is a legally questionable position, as freedom of speech is protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment1, the only exceptions being obscenity and child pornography. Hate speech, for example, is protected by the First Amendment.
In 1996, the Communications Decency Act was introduced in the U.S. Anybody who provided indecent information would be criminally liable under this legislation. However, the Act was challenged by the American Library Association, and in June 1997 the Supreme Court decided in favour of the ALA http://www.epic.org/cda/. The U.S. Congress has tried to pass laws which tie filtering to funding for public Internet access but has been unsuccessful.

Ann commented that there is great pressure in the U.S. from politicians to protect children, which is in conflict with the value of free speech. She argued in favour of local control, for local communities to make local decisions. To support public libraries and schools in this, the ALA has developed an Internet toolkit with advice and strategies how to manage Internet access in the library http://www.ala.org/pio/internettoolkit/.

I interviewed Ann K Symons after the forum. The following is a condensed version of the interview.

MM: You obviously have a passion about these issues. How did you develop that passion? When did you first get involved with these issues?

AKS: I think that like all librarians the values of intellectual freedom and access to information is something that's very deeply embedded in the library profession and you learn them in library school. If you do a survey of librarians, issues of intellectual freedom always come to the top, and I think that for me it was when we had a challenge to a book in our community. And that book was "Daddy's room mate", a simple picture book with a homosexual theme, about a child who has two fathers. The child is from a divorced family and lives with his father and his father's partner. We bought that book for all of our elementary schools. 

We have an active gay and lesbian population, we have children of gays and lesbians in all of our schools. We just started a fire storm. That was a community event that went on for almost a year, before the school board decided that we would keep the book in our schools, that it had educational value. And at the end of the year I think I was a changed person. Not changed, but certainly it tests your values, and you have to decide where you're really going to fall in this intellectual freedom continuum. I had enough material from this challenge that it was the impetus for me to write a book which was called "Protecting the right to read", a how-to-do-it manual for school and public librarians. So that was really how I got interested in this challenge in our community.

The interesting thing was, well, you challenge books in public schools and in the public library, the public library first. The public library chose to keep the book, and then people said the public library has it so we don't want it in our schools. 

MM: I was going to ask you about the differences and the similarities between Australia and the U.S., and some of that has already been covered by you and the other speakers.

AKS: Well, I'm not positive about an analogy, but it's clear to me that the laws are slightly different, as they are in all countries, that libraries here are providing open access to the Internet without a problem, without some of the problems that we have in the U.S. We have very vocal, very strong mainly Christian fundamentalist groups in the U.S. who feel that their mission is to protect everybody, not just themselves and their own children.

MM: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about, anything you'd like to say to the readers of PC Update?

AKS: I think that where we need to put our energy is in educating people about being good news researchers, and what the Internet is and what it isn't. 

To me it's teaching kids to be critical thinkers, kids and adults to be critical thinkers. This is a new medium, for many of us it has opened the doors to information that we never would have access to, and that's the good part. I think that what we will see more in the future is the provision of content by libraries, of their collections, of their primary resources. Now you can sit anywhere in Australia, in Alaska and go to the Library of Congress, primary source material. I think the Internet has changed the way we live and it's going to change the way we live. Five years from now, you ask a five year old, a six year old, an eight year old, they won't remember a time when there was not an Internet, when there wasn't e-mail.

MM: Is the role of libraries changing now?

AKS: No, I think the role of libraries is not changing, because I think that libraries do what they've always done best, and that's to organise information and to help people navigate through the Internet, particularly if you're a new user. Libraries in the U.S. provide classes. And I think that often also libraries in the U.S. are providing access from home. I think that one of the things that libraries have done very well is provide a starting place for the Internet for people. 

MM: On behalf of the Melbourne PC User Group, thank you.

About the Author:
Monika Merkes, monika@melbpc.org.au has worked in the health and human services sector over the last ten years, and recently "retired" temporarily to work on her doctoral thesis in public health.

Reprinted from the December 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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