To the Editor:
With "Porn Patrol," Dan Kennedy's March 7 attempt to trash opponents of Mayor Thomas A. Menino's directive to install censorware in computers throughout Boston's public libraries, journalistic standards at the Boston Phoenix have hit a new low. Complete with over-the-top graphics and lurid pull-quotes, this is the most egregious piece of alarmist obfuscation on computer porn I have seen anywhere since the notorious July 3, 1995 Time cover story that helped pass the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act.
Since I have, to the best of my recollection, never posted anything to an Internet newsgroup, certainly not in the past several years, Dan Kennedy's depiction of me as the epitome of what he calls "the digerati" or, inaccurately, "cyber libertarians" is very strange indeed. The Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression (BCFE), which I now head, was founded in 1990 by artists and arts administrators. While the organization monitors and addresses freedom of speech issues in all areas, its focus remains on the arts. Although we maintain a Web page (http://world.std.com/~kip/bcfe.html -- blocked by CyberPatrol), few of us spend much time online. If Mr. Kennedy had actually bothered to interview me, this might have been made clear to him. (We talked for about five minutes, during which I was frequently interrupted.) He opted instead to use his willful misapprehension of my positions and those of my organization to smear both cyberspace activists and those who support the policies of the American Library Association (ALA).
Using as evidence an out-of-context fragment of a note to Globe ombudsman Mark Jurkowitz (posted to the Internet without my permission, perhaps by someone I carbon-copied), Kennedy tries to portray me as some sort of conspiracy theorist. In fact, it's a matter of legitimate concern that Globe Publisher William O. Taylor also acts as President of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Public Library, a major public institution toward which one hopes the Globe tries to maintain an objective overview. This fact does not have a high level of public recognition. It's completely appropriate to bring it up in the context of an important First Amendment issue.
On February 11, City Councilor Maureen Feeney said she had been approached by "concerned parents" who claimed their children were accessing porn at the Boston Public Library. (This evidence remains vague and anecdotal.) Within 24 hours, Mayor Menino, by fiat, ordered censoring devices installed in all city computers. Without any public discussion, without the hearings favored by City Councilor Feeney herself, without any study of which censorware might be best or what censorware actually does, the city bought enough CyberPatrol site licenses to cover all computers in the city library system on the following day. This purchase was authorized after the library Board of Trustees, hastily convened by conference call, rubber-stamped the mayor's decree with minimal discussion. The move was editorially endorsed by the Globe with no mention of William O. Taylor's involvement. Then the story was dropped, the matter was portrayed as settled, and an effort appeared to be made to stifle public debate. There was a time, not so very long ago, when the Phoenix would have considered this a story.
Except for an overly cautious Simson Garfinkel column buried in the Business pages, no opposing voice was allowed to be heard at the Globe. As of today, March 9, we are still waiting for the Globe to print a single one of the many letters to the editor we know to have been submitted on the subject. Civil libertarians have been offered the fiction that the Globe prints letters "in the order in which they come in;" the Globe has recently, however, after an interval of one day, published readers' responses to pieces on such urgent topics as the reissue of the Star Wars trilogy. The Herald, meanwhile, has run at least four letters on the Menino/BPL fiasco, including one from a Simmons College librarian opposing the paper's pro-censorship editorial stance. The Herald's coverage has been more extensive than the Globe's and much more informative, with pieces on the purchase of CyberPatrol, CyberPatrol's demonstration of its wares for Boston librarians, and incoming director Bernard Margolis's objections to the installation of this insidious software.
Serious attention to what CyberPatrol actually blocks is in order. This would have been easy to check out, since cyberspace reporter Declan McCullagh posted CyberPatrol's data base, complete with search engine, on Time's "Netly News" page some time ago. (CyberPatrol itself has since countered with a search engine of its own.) Kennedy seems more interested, however, in hyping the availability of graphic depictions of "torture," coprophilia and bestiality, material that constitutes a small percentage of graphics mainly to be found on restricted adult bulletin boards and in Usenet. Along with "smut," which -- like all censoring software -- it blocks unreliably, CyberPatrol blocks an astonishing range of Web sites and Usenet newsgroups, changed and updated weekly, encompassing material that ranges far beyond that which has ever been adjudicated "harmful to minors." In Usenet -- to which, as Kennedy notes, the BPL does not provide access -- it blocks such features as alt.journalism (discussion of articles like "Porn Patrol"), soc.feminism (a feminist discussion group), and clari.news.gay (newsfeeds on gay issues). Among dozens of non-pornographic sites blocked at MIT alone is a Media Lab resource on the films of Luis Bunuel. As of last week, Web pages blocked for violence included one devoted to the City of Hiroshima's proposed Peace Memorial. Web pages blocked for sexual reasons included most of the Web site of the leftist political journal Z Magazine, significant portions of the Village Voice homepage, HIV sites at the Center for Disease Control, and a Harvard student's Madonna archive.
When Kennedy denounces "extremist" rhetoric, one wonders what criteria he uses to define extremism. In the case of Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray, whose background as a pro-life activist Kennedy accuses me of improperly dragging into the discussion, we respect his right to hold his beliefs, defend his right to express them, and find them of little or no interest. We do, however, care about Bray's position on censorship, which has given us frequent cause for concern. When a reporter is advocating the use of censoring software that blocks an array of pro-choice Web sites, including the entire Web page of Planned Parenthood (which CyberPatrol still blocks as of this writing), it is relevant to note his past involvement in a pro-life organization that favors suppression of material with which it disagrees. Joseph Scheidler's Pro-Life Action League, which helped launch Operation Rescue, has not only fought to criminalize both abortion and contraception, it has been stridently pro-censorship in its efforts to curb the availability of information about methods of birth control, family planning, and safer sex.
The BCFE has never advocated exposing children to sexually explicit material. What we do advocate is that parents take responsibility for what their children see. Parents have a perfect right to purchase censorware for their home computers (if they don't mind that since these censorship data bases are kept secret, they don't really know what they're buying). Parents also have an obligation to be informed about what is available to their children in cyberspace, in popular culture, and on the street. (With disinformation being thrown about by zealots like Andrea Dworkin or Ralph Reed, or fearmongers like Dan Kennedy, this is admittedly difficult.) Children who are interested in looking at naked people may act out of natural curiosity. Since children are drawn to whatever makes grownups go ballistic, they may try to find hardcore adult sites for the thrill of the forbidden. It is up to parents to deal level- headedly with whatever direction their children's curiosity may take. Librarians are not nannies.
Parents who are frightened of what their children might encounter at library computer terminals are often just as apprehensive about what they might discover on library shelves. When Internet access is restricted or terminated, many of these people will move on to campaigns against books, using Internet restrictions as a precedent. Control over Internet access also provides the means of control over a growing body of material as more and more information becomes electronic. Propaganda decrying free speech on the Internet has long been pouring out of far-right organizations like Family Friendly Libraries, the Family Research Council, Enough Is Enough, the Christian Coalition, and various manifestations of the anti-sex-ed "parents' rights" movement. Menino's censorship of Internet access at the BPL has to be placed in the context of organized efforts to demolish the influence of the ALA over public libraries nationwide. Banning Demon Porn is only a step away from banning books. Leaving aside issues raised by the images of bondage and bestiality that Kennedy so pantingly describes, it's worth noting that some of the material we've seen challenged as "pornographic" in recent years includes everything from Jane Smiley's prizewinning novel A Thousand Acres to Where's Waldo?
The ALA confirms that Mayor Menino's order to install censorware in libraries does appear to be the first such directive issued by the mayor of an American city. Already it seems to have been emulated in Austin, Texas, Schaumburg, Illinois, and elsewhere. If, as Kennedy says, it "now seems likely" Menino is reconsidering the extension of restricted access to adults, it's news to us. Whether access is to be denied everyone, no one, or a certain age group, what is needed is an accurate presentation of the facts, regular updates on this critically important story, and clear, dispassionate public debate. A good hard look has to be taken at the First Amendment implications of public officials ordering censorship of any material for any reason. Meanwhile, Dan Kennedy has muddied the waters in a way that will insure that clarity of insight based on solid information will be very hard to achieve.
Sincerely,
James D'Entremont
Director
cc: Stephen Mindich; Mark Jurkowitz; The Honorable Thomas A. Menino; Bernard Margolis, Boston Public Library; Commissioner Bruce Rossley; William O. Taylor; Wendy Kaminer; Nan Levinson; Seth Finkelstein; Dan Sheridan; Nancy Garden; Declan McCullagh, Time; Marilyn Arsem, Mobius; Judith Krug, American Library Association; John Roberts, ACLUM; Susan Flannery, Cambridge Public Library; Nina Crowley, Mass. Music Industry Coalition; Reebee Garofalo, New England Free Expression Network; Ann Beeson, ACLU; David Mendoza, National Campaign for Freedom of Expression; Ann Green, People for the American Way; TK, National Coalition Against Censorship; Chris Finan, Media Coalition; others.