If Libraries Don't Collect Hustler, Then Why Allow Internet Pornography?

According to the pro-filtering organization Filtering Facts, "Filtering proponents are only asking that library Internet policy be made more consistent with book and video policies."⁴ Filtering Facts claims that not one U.S. public library subscribes to Hustler magazine, nor owns a copy of any of the porn videos "Deep Throat" or "Debbie Does Dallas".⁵ Why, then, should libraries allow Internet porn? One answer anti-filtering librarians could give is that limited purchasing budgets and shelf space justified the decision not to buy Hustler in print. Internet porn, on the other hand, is free and uses no shelf space, so librarians are not justified in excluding the Hustler website.

According to the ACLU, the initial installation of filtering software in a library system can cost $8000 plus $3000 a year to maintain.⁶ Thus, budget considerations can drive both the decision not to buy Hustler, and the decision not to filter it.

However, as Filtering Facts rightly points out, budgets alone fail to explain why all public libraries have excluded hardcore pornography from their print collections. The real reason for exclusion, Filtering Facts argues, is that libraries have standards for what is acceptable and appropriate, and libraries' missions include educating, serving families, and enriching lives. Those selection standards explain why neither the magazine Hustler, nor any other representative of the hardcore pornography genre, were allowed in libraries. Filtering proponents could argue that such selection standards should not be dispensed of simply because a new medium is introduced.

Anti-filtering librarians could argue that online content in libraries need not match the library's print selection policies. After all, the web contains many genres not traditionally included in libraries, such as commercial catalogs, political propaganda, and religious recruitment material, in addition to hardcore pornography. Anti-filtering librarians could argue that excluding these materials, even if they do not match the library's selection policy, would amount to censorship, because the Internet is an all-or-nothing deal. The ALA writes:

Selecting the World Wide Web for the library means selecting the entire resource, just as selecting Time means selecting the entire magazine. A library cannot select Time and then decide to redact or rip out the pages constituting 'The American Scene' feature or the 'Washington Diary.' That would be censorship. It is the same with the World Wide Web.⁷

In many ways, however, the web behaves more like a medium of publication than like a single publication. The web does not have a single publisher, nor a unifying topic, theme, or format, and its parts do not depend greatly on one another the way a film's or novel's parts do. Does the blocking of hardcore pornography sites make the web incomplete, or do users pick and choose different websites the way they pick and choose different books?

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Does Blocking Hardcore Internet Pornograpny Violate Intellectual Freedom?

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