Does Internet Filtering Software Violate Intellectual Freedom?

If librarians want to appeal to intellectual freedom in their fight against Internet filtering, they might need to emphasize things other than hardcore pornography. They need to emphasize how filters will block other information that helps people find truth, and they need to emphasize how it can block information on vital social and political issues of the day, such as gay rights, abortion rights, and so on. Thus an effective argument against filters is not to defend pornography, but to attack filters.

The charge is simple: Filters don't work. For example, filters that use keywords to determine which sites to block, would not be effective at blocking pornographic pictures or video.¹⁴ Filters using a pre-selected stoplist of banned sites, chosen by employees of the software company,¹⁵ would likewise be unable to keep up with the growth of the web. Furthermore, parents whose tolerance for explicitness is lower than other parents', would probably still find offensive sites on filtered terminals no matter what. The only way to achieve near-100% success in blocking objectionable sites, according to Filtering Facts, would be to manually create a list of acceptable sites, and block out all others. But this policy would severely restrict patron's access to the vast majority of useful resources on the web. So, if libraries want to provide a relatively broad level of Internet access, filters are no guarantee that patrons will be protected from pornography.

A more forceful argument may be that ineffective filters break the law by censoring constitutionally protected speech. In 1998 the Loudon County Library was taken to court (and the library lost) for having its filters block out the Safer Sex Page, the Books for Gay and Lesbian Teens/Youth page, and the Renaissance Transgender Association page, all pages even the library admitted should not have been blocked.¹⁶ The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation also published a report concluding that most filtering products block out information about gays and lesbians.

Filtering advocates could argue that even if filters block intellectually valuable sites, users can always request that a site be unblocked. But a system in which sites with obviously intellectual content are blocked, or in which patrons need to ask permission to see controversial sites, is unacceptable to many supporters of intellectual freedom.

A July 1999 study published in Nature estimated that only 1.5% of the pages on the world wide web contain pornography at all.¹⁷ So, the frequency with which Internet users will accidentally stumble across pornography is probably smaller than many people expect. The loss of so much intellectually valuable information may not be worth it, to protect us from the pornographic 1.5% of the web. Thus, even if intellectual freedom arguments don't persuade people to accept hardcore pornography, these same arguments might still persuade people to reject Internet filters. Even if hardcore pornography doesn't belong in the library, the cost of getting rid of it through filters may be too high for people to accept.

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Will Filtering Software Ever Be Good Enough?

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