Oral Testimony of National Writers Union

I'm also privileged to serve the National Writers Union as Co-Chair of the Political Issues Committee. I've served as Chair or Co-Chair since March of 1992. The National Writers Union represents 4,500 freelance writers nationwide, and 800 of these belong to the Boston Local. We are journalists, book authors, poets, writers of short fiction, business and technical writers, academics, cartoonists, and workers in all genres. Our membership comprises some of the most distinguished names in American letters. We're a proud affiliate of the United Auto Workers.

We urge the Boston City Council to do all you can to prevent the use of Cyber Patrol, or other censoring software, within the Boston Public Library system for the following 8 reasons:

1. Cyber Patrol is not a good product. It claims to filter out objectionable material, but in fact censors much that is valuable for both children and adults. It's blocking categories are unreliable. And its absurd convention of abbreviating web addresses causes sites to be blocked because their names merely resemble those deemed objectionable. As someone who has written a good deal of software for over three decades, I find Cyber Patrol appalling and believe its manufacturers should be investigated for consumer fraud.

2. Installing Cyber Patrol at the BPL violates the First Amendment rights of adults. Contrary to popular belief, constitutionally unprotected speech is not found on the World Wide Web. Such speech is illegal and anyone making it available via the web would either lose their web site or be arrested.

3. Installing Cyber Patrol at the BPL violates the First Amendment rights of minors. While minors don't have the same First Amendment rights as adults, courts have ruled that they have extensive rights nonetheless. Even if the use of Cyber Patrol were confined to minors, and even if just the sex-acts category were blocked, most of the screened material would still be protected speech - because of Cyber Patrol's gross inefficiency and/or because the screened material would fail the harmful-to-minors test.

4. Installing Cyber Patrol at the BPL is illegal because censoring decisions are made secretly by a private corporation. The manufacturers of Cyber Patrol refuse to make public their blacklist of banned sites - what they call the CyberNOT list.

5. Installing Cyber Patrol at the BPL is illegal because it violates the Library Bill of Rights. Massachusetts law requires that libraries have "a written policy for the selection of library materials and the use of materials and facilities in accordance with standards adopted by the American Library Association."

6. Installing Cyber Patrol is in no way analogous to the BPL making decisions about which books to buy. When buying books or subscribing to journals, libraries operate within the constraints of limited budgets and limited shelf space. But the limited-resource argument is not applicable to the World Wide Web.

7. There is no compelling reason to immediately install censoring software at the BPL. The Boston Herald can sell a lot of newspapers by putting the word porn in screaming headlines. But pornography is just a pejorative word for material with sexual content. And this is what Cyber patrol blocks - not pornography, but material with sexual content. While some parents may be uncomfortable with kids finding out about sex, there is no evidence that exposure to sexual material does kids any harm whatsoever. Sexual material doesn't leap out at you when you sit down at a terminal. You have to look for it. Curious kids can search out sexual material on the World Wide Web. They can also search it out in the stacks of the BPL.

8. Better Solutions exist. Parents and children should decide among themselves what literature, art, entertainment, or information is appropriate without state or third-party intervention. Librarians (and politicians) are poor substitutes for parents. Parents who believe their children need close supervision should provide it and not abdicate their responsibility to librarians or to the government.

   I suggest we stop presuming that children have a relentless desire for sexual material, and that it is our primary duty as adults to throw as many roadblocks as possible in their path. At best we will make what is forbidden more alluring and also make the circumvention of these roadblocks a challenging game. Instead, why not acknowledge that children are curious about all sorts of things, and encourage this curiosity as best we can. Consider the approach taken by the librarians at the Sacramento Public Library,

   Their kid's web page begins with the disclaimer, "Sacramento Public Library makes no attempt to censor or control the content of information available on the Internet. Parents wishing to control the materials to which their children are exposed are expected to provide sufficient supervision of their children to accomplish this." Following this are suggested links for young kids (optical illusions, Sports Illustrated, Dr. Seuss, castles, the nine planets, etc.), for teens (NBA web site, CollegeNet, Drug Free Resource Net, etc.), and links for parents and teachers.

   If a child were making his or her first solo foray into Boston, a parent might mention fun and interesting places to go -- e.g., the museums, the aquarium, the waterfront, Fenway Park. Or a parent might mention none of these and instead say, "There's a terrible sinful place in Boston called the Combat Zone. Whatever you do, don't go there." The Sacramento Library chose the positive strategy; Mayor Menino, the negative. We urge the Boston City Council to do what you can to correct his error.