EdCone.com

LA grapples with online porn in its libraries (thnx to TB for the pointer):

At a Los Angeles City Council committee meeting Tuesday, city librarian Martin Gomez said making computer use as private as possible is the best solution.

Gomez said all of the nearly 3,000 computers in the L.A. Public Library system are outfitted with screens that make it hard for bystanders to see the content, and librarians are working to reorient terminals so screens are less visible.

He said that library officials considered installing an Internet filter that would keep out obscene websites but that licensing fees are costly and the system is imperfect.

Way deep in a Rhino article (as yet unposted) about NC Senate candidate Jeff Hyde and a botched raffle to benefit his campaign comes this: "But what is disturbing about the situation is Hyde's reaction to a difficult situation, which was to cover it up and refuse to release information."

Curious omission in this week's paper: Nothing about the sacking of ABC boss Katie Alley.

Not yet online: a report on the downtown hotel project, which has yet to file paperwork to appear before the LGC as the last meeting before deadline approaches.

More on the Steve Arnold Full Employment Act of 2010.

And a sorry front-pager on library filters that, a few details aside, could have been mailed in by Trudy Wade directly after Danny Thompson's original, over-the-top presentation on the subject.

Video of last night's Council meeting, library filtering discussion starts around 41:55.

"It would have been easy for council to bend to fear mongering and demagoguery on this one."

Yes it would. Credit the electeds for studying the issue in some depth, and staff for earning their confidence.

Substitute motion by Zack Matheny carries 8-1 at City Council meeting (which is still ongoing), with Dr. Wade the sole dissenting vote; Greensboro libraries will filter computers used by children, as well as wifi connections, with bandwidth shaping remaining in place for other computers.

This incident was cited as an example of the limitations of filtering software.

Info discussed in this column was part of the discussion.

Strong work tonight by Matheny.

True story: Kid walks into a GSO library branch, does a computer search for vampires, up pops the image at left (click to enlarge; NSFW, probably).

Parent is unhappy. 

Time to filter? Maybe not. The image is from Flickr, not something a filter would catch, unless you filter out Flickr or all mentions of vampires.

The debacle comes as Australia's government, led by newly elected Prime Minister Julia Gillard, pursues a law to censor the Internet. Critics of the hotly debated Australian proposal believe the latest episode demonstrates exactly why Web censorship is unworkable.

I'm sure it would work better at a local library.

Thnx to TB for the pointer.

Many of the items identified were clearly pornographic, such as websites that help people meet with the intention of having sex, sites with graphic images or Craigslist personals.

This sent me to the Craigslist personals. I found a few small, low-quality racy images among the text-heavy posts, along with entries like this one; describing the whole section as "clearly pornographic" seems like a stretch to me.

Roch says Danny Thompson got it wrong on GPL web traffic during last night's Council meeting.

Some data about what GPL bandwidth throttling actually throttles.

You can stop the mealy-mouthing about access to information, folks, because now we know that questioning library filters is evidence that you are "someone who rejects all theories of morality or religious belief." 

Next thing you know we'll be letting members of the First Presbyterian Church hold public office.

Some useful info here on discounting inflated porn-viewing stats.

It may be possible to get a more accurate number, but I'm not sure if that would show pages loaded successfully or still include a number of frustrated attempts.

It may be that we're talking about a problem centered on a handful of hardcores who keep trying to load porn, possibly on multiple tabs at once, despite getting through only occasionally due to bandwidth shaping.

That seems like a manageable problem under some version of the current procedures. Stiffer penalties might be part of the solution.

If we want to remove any chance of anyone ever loading inappropriate content on a library computer, that will mean blocking email and Facebook, or disconnecting computers from the net altogether.

Short of advocating for those solutions, we're all negotiating the best compromise in a clash between legitimate principles of access to information and a safe, welcoming library environment.

Tony Wilkins claims there were 700 visits to porn websites per day over the last month at the GPL.

This claim seems to be inaccurate.

As I understand it, the number tracked by library software is attempted visits, not pages successfully loaded.

And the number of attempts can include multiple hits for a single page, depending on the contents of that page -- as many as 50 hits on one page tested by library staff.

The number of inappropriate pages visited (or, more precisely, pages flagged as inappropriate by software that even supporters acknowledge misreads some sites) would thus be lower, and perhaps much, much lower, than the number advanced.

This is why the incident reports are important. On their own, they offer an incomplete view of the problem. Combined with other data, including accurate software-tracking numbers, they help us triangulate to reach a reasonable estimate of the problem's scope, and the efficiency of solutions in place.

Also: I asked Sandy Neerman about the filtering module included in the library's existing software. The answer was what I suspected -- users pay for the modules they use, so adding the filtering module included in the package would incur cost to the library.

N&R says librarians should manage libraries.

Sometimes GSO seems to be running in circles on this issue, but I think we're actually making progress.

Thanks to reader TC for forwarding this study; Dave Carr did a nice job of bringing things up to date here.

I'd guess that PP is correct that more porn makes it to computer screens at the GPL than is documented by incident reports. I would expect the usage numbers to support this supposition when we see them this fall. 

I'd also guess that people fall asleep in the library and get in fights at the library and whack off in the stacks without getting caught  or reported, too.

If you think that any instances of anyone ever viewing porn on a library computer justify any method of response, however flawed it might be, then you're going to end up voting to block email and Facebook.

Short of that, you're looking for some balance that keeps libraries safe and welcoming. Or you're playing politics. 

Alert reader R emails to say that library board chair Steve Allen, a former superior court judge, is currently a seminary student.

Is this really the kind of person we want overseeing our public library?

Council discussion of library filters begins around 1:33:40 here.

Steve Allen (3:38:30) does not strike me as a guy who takes lightly the issue of inappropriate content, or any other problems at the library.

Rakestraw (3:46:10): "We want our children protected. I think everybody in this room wants it. There's not anybody who's going to disagree with that...Having been involved with the library as a former county commissioner and as a city councilperson, I think that you [board and staff] will address the problem, I really do."

Also mentioned last night: sites like Facebook, as well as email, can be robust porn-transmission vectors. Yet these would remain available even under filters.

UPDATE: N&R coverage.

So it turns out that our public library system actually employs a team of conscientious professionals, and is overseen by a board of dedicated community folk, and these people take their jobs seriously, and they have been working to address the issue of computer porn.

Who knew?

Tonight's City Council vote to maintain current computer usage policies and to get more data about usage over the next 90 days seems like a sensible decision.

Good on Mary Rakestraw, who actually works with the library staff and board and knows something about what they do, for speaking up on their behalf. Library trustee chair Steven Allen was a gently dominating presence, too. 

The upcoming report on sites accessed from library computers, not to mention the interpretations of that data, should be interesting to see.

Library board backs limited filtering plan.

Of course we all know that these board members dance to their meetings on goat hooves and then chant heavy metal lyrics backwards while plotting  porn-infliction strategies straight out of A Clockwork Orange.

Or not:

“We have taken actions, and they’ve worked,” library trustee Donna Anderson said.

Anderson, who home-schools her children and takes them to public libraries once or twice a week, said she wouldn’t trust just a filter.

“It’s a false sense of security,” she said.

Meanwhile, we added a little more detail to this article about library filters and how they work and don't work.

Banned in Charlotte: some of the websites filtered at Mecklenburg libraries.

An underinformed council thus voted to impose a solution that may not work very well on a problem that may not be very big...

...The report on existing policies and possible alternatives that Neerman delivered to the city manager and council members last week should have been solicited before the vote. Let’s hope the council plays catchup as well as it plays politics.

My newspaper column starts with the library fiasco, meanders past a college-bound kid and the not-quite-at-Ground-Zero Islamic center, and ends with a quick remembrance of a friend.

“I think I would use Internet filtering to some extent, at least in the children’s department – knowing full well that I would wind up blocking some stuff that should not be blocked,” says Lori Bowen Ayre, a technology consultant to libraries. “In my opinion, these filters are only 85% effective, at best.” 

...Elsewhere, some libraries have managed to provide adult patrons with unfiltered access, and do it with little controversy.

I assigned an article on the issue of library filtering. Dave Carr is a veteran technology reporter and a thoughtful guy (he found Neerman on his own, fwiw). No great surprises in his findings: Filters are not perfect, and other methods, perhaps used in conjunction with filtering, might offer a workable solution.

Roch's got the library's filter report to Council:

GPL respectfully asks the Council to consider a total computer management program which will filter Internet access for all children and for those adults who choose filtering, but will allow the possibility of appropriate, legally-mandated access for responsible adult customers who choose unfiltered access.

Filters simply do not work on multimedia content, which is usually what people think the filters are for (naughty videos and photos). The accuracy in filtering images, audio, video, RSS feeds, and social networking content is embarrassingly low: about 40%.

A librarian posts about some research on filters. Via Roch.

UPDATE: Stats that reflect more positively on filters.

One point of comparison: "According to my calculator, the percentage of inappropriate incidents logged this year is 0.000157571301."

"Library already polices porn viewers," says the N&R's A1 above the fold headline (no link; online version filtered by N&R). 

The news from Mecklenburg seems to be that filters work well, except when they don't, and that it's easy to say what should be blocked, except when it's not. (Two of the four images here -- the medical illustration and the ad -- might have been blocked in Charlotte). 

A2 above-the-fold includes a version of this Scoop post, headlined "Incidents at Central Library not all porn-related."

Want to know more about filtering technology and how it actually works? Read this.

In defense of filters.

More detail on those incident reports: "Of the 200 reports mentioned at the City Council meeting last week, only one involved a child possibly seeing an offensive image on a computer screen." Further stack analysis. Libraries unplugged.

I think there's something approaching consensus that Greensboro doesn't want people looking at porn on its library computers.

Are filters the best way to block access to porn? 

To answer that question, you have to know how well the filtering software works at blocking unwanted sites, and also how the software's performance compares against other possible methods of controlling content, and the comparative costs of different methods. (There may be legal questions too, although my unthorough research indicates that filtering has fared pretty well in the courts.)

The costs to be gauged include dollars, but also the potential impact on two of the library's essential goals: providing access to information, and maintaining a safe, welcoming environment for the public.

One good question would seem to be this: What, exactly, do filters filter?

Earlier generations of filtering software were said to block information of a sort that many of us would regard as suitable and even desirable for library viewing. I'm told the software has improved to the point that some former opponents now accept the possibility of using it.

I'm curious about the amount of collateral damage to information flow, if any, caused by state-of-the-art filters.

If filters do limit access to content beyond straight-up porn sites, what other content would people be willing to sacrifice, if it meant effectively shutting off the flow of smut?

What do we see as too important, or too ubiquitous, to filter out, if such things are in fact hidden by filters? What is not filtered that might be almost as problematic as filtered content?

Technology is easy, culture is hard.

I see that all the time in a business context, and I've seen it as a parent and a school volunteer. Now we're seeing it at our public libraries.

I guess we should find out how these filters work, huh?

If you saw Danny Thompson brandishing this thick stack of papers at the recent City Council meeting, and heard him say the papers represent incident reports from the first six months of 2010, and then refer to "more than a hundred incidences...some of them too lewd and too despicable" to discuss in public, and then say "many of them, a great majority of them..." before concluding that "a number of them involve people viewing pornographic websites," well, would you be surprised after all that to learn that the library director says there were just 18 incident reports of improper computer use at the Central library in the first six months of the year?

Trudy Wade said at the meeting that nothing ever gets done about this issue, but the library has implemented throttling software and proactive staff policies that seem to be having a dramatic effect.

How big a problem are we actually talking about here?

Maybe somebody should have had more than a "courtesy call" with the library director five minutes before the meeting.

Discussion starts at 1:46 of the video.

Does your City Council rep know how you feel about our libraries, and our excellent library staff, and the risks of overkill on this admittedly serious topic?

I spoke this morning with GSO library director Sandy Neerman, who provided the following numbers:

Total visits to Central branch, first six months of 2010: 696,179

Total computer users/sessions in that period: 114,234

Incidents logged in that time as inappropriate for public computer viewing: 18

Incidents logged at the same branch in the first six months of 2009: 89

Neerman attributes the sharp decline in reported incidents to the bandwidth shaping software implemented over the past year, as well as increased vigilance and on-floor presence by library staff.

I asked Neerman how much conversation she had with Danny Thompson prior to the City Council meeting at which he proposed filtering. She says he called her at 5:25 PM. The meeting began at 5:30 PM.

Neerman lays out an extensive timeline of evolving policies on computer usage policies, and reiterates her willingness to consider other methods if careful analysis of both the problem and possible solutions show that to be a wise course. Her report is due to Rashad Young next week.

If you want this issue to be considered carefully and not just on hearsay and emotion, it might help to let your Councilman know how you feel.

Joe is incorrect that Sandy Neerman is adamantly opposed to all filtering of content on library computers, as I learned when I spoke with our highly-competent library director last year.

Librarians tend to be reluctant to filter, but believe it or not they don't want creepy people looking at porn in the library (they didn't like creeps whacking off in the stacks in the days before the net, either -- this is not a new or unique problem).

Filtering technology has improved, even as the centrality of the internet to the library's mission continues to grow. The bandwidth-throttling pilot project started last year is now in full effect, and incident reports about misuse of computers at the central branch are down sharply.

Which reminds me, I really would like to see those incident reports brandished by Danny Thompson. 

The City Council has a legitimate role in this discussion, but it should not involve grandstanding about a complex issue, or micromanaging the work that we employ professionals to do.

A counterpoint to that last thought, from an earlier post at Joe's blog: "[C]ouncil members cannot trust, even for one minute, anything that the city staff says, or anything that the city staff produces.  Council members simply cannot rely upon staff.  As they do their work, council members need to presume that everything the city staff does is wrong, or agenda-driven; or that their work is intended to satisfy the demands of our local machine politics."

That's nuts, but if Danny Thompson believes it then he should move to fire the City Manager at once, and bring in someone new to clean house.

Libraries have always filtered print content -- they don't stock Hustler in the magazine section, for example. The internet makes this job much more difficult. Filtering technology is improving; if the software has evolved to a certain point, then our library should carefully consider using it.

From one of my previous posts on filters for library computers, a topic back in the news. More here and here.

What we don't need is the kind of panic reflected in some of the comments beneath those earlier posts.

The N&R reports that Danny Thompson "waved a thick stack of incident reports from this year for the central library," and said, "I don’t want to mention some of the acts that are going on."

Go ahead and mention them, Councilman, I'm sure you can find acceptable language.

We're adults, and we need real information to make this kind of decision. Scare stories aren't good enough.

And let's hear what experts on libraries and internets have to say, too.

N&R covers library filtering story. One issue raised: "[A] large part of objectionable material derives from popular social networking sites such as YouTube or Facebook, or even attachments to e-mail, which would not be practical for the library to block."

I'm going to close comments at this post to keep the conversation concentrated here, where the current question is: "What are our community standards? What should we allow, and on which computers? Who decides?" To which I would add, should we block Facebook?

A local mom is upset because she saw a man sitting at a computer in a Greensboro public library branch, looking at "an unclothed woman in a pornographic image." She says in an email, distributed to dozens of people, that she was at the Kathleen Clay Edwards library with her daughters, aged 9 and 11, and that she previously encountered young men looking at porn at the Hemphill branch.

Along with some recipients of the email, she demands to know what the library is doing about porn.

It's important for the library to address the needs parents and kids, and to take concerns about content seriously. It's also important not to panic and make emotional decisions about a vital public asset and the free flow of information. We need numbers and facts about how serious and widespread this problem is, and what the best solutions to it might be.

One thing the library has not done so far is install content filters. That's because, after extensive review of the options and periodic reevaluations of the technology, the filtering software has been found inadequate -- it blocks stuff that a library should let through, and misses some stuff that it shouldn't.

The library does use a technique called bandwidth shaping to throttle download speeds on material that might be problematic. It also requires anyone using a computer to have a library card, and to agree to terms of use. Adults can only use computers in a kids' area if they're with a child.

I'm not an anti-filtering absolutist. Libraries have always filtered print content -- they don't stock Hustler in the magazine section, for example. The internet makes this job much more difficult. Filtering technology is improving; if the software has evolved to a certain point, then our library should carefully consider using it. 

If not, it should continue its regular evaluations of the software, and work to strengthen its existing program, and to communicate with families and other users about expectations and realities of life in the internet age.

Previous discussion of this issue in this post, and in the comments beneath it.

UPDATE: Shell posts some answers at his site. Pretty thin gruel -- he admits he didn't really research the topic, or talk to library staff about it. He defines "porn" as "nudity," which I guess means the link below to Botticelli's Birth of Venus (and any site that includes the image) might be blocked. But give him credit for saying the idea can "evolve," with the goal of dealing with the problem of porn-surfing at the library...

...although that raises another question for Shell: How much of a problem is this? You've cited some anecdotal evidence -- what research have you done on this topic?

City Council candidate Ryan Shell says the Greensboro Public Library should filter porn on its computers.

Here are my questions for Ryan Shell:

1. What research have you done on this issue? (Please be specific)
2. How well do porn filters work, both at filtering porn and at not filtering other stuff?
3. What is your definition of porn? That is to say, what exactly should be filtered? (See question 2). Any nudity? Extreme violence? Who decides?
4. What did the library staff say when you discussed this with them before publishing your suggestion?