Library, Child Pornography, Personal Privacy, First Amendment Rights, Bacon? What?

[SacTown Chronic]

Where's Carl Monday when you need him?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

The library is a public place, no porn allowed on computers. Period.

Reading about how to make a bomb is not illegal. The act of looking at child pornography is illegal.

Librarians do not lean in and read everything that you're reading/writing. Images that are viewable to other patrons are another story. I've never heard of someone getting in trouble for text of any kind.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Oh, and in response to Alex - I guess I'm used to our environment, where there is no way to hide your monitor, yet there's plenty of room for you to look at text and no one should see it close enough to tell what you're reading. In my personal opinion, attempts to hide the monitor should be seen as suspicious.

[Alex]

Well, my public library had Playboy and Playgirl in the periodicals section so pornography was most certainly allowed. And you could view porn on the computers which is why they put filters on the screen making sure that you couldn't see the screen unless you were sitting right in front of the computer.

And who is going to define when a pornography line has been crossed? I almost guarantee you have actual books in your collection that contain pictures that would be considered pornographic by a healthy cross section of the public. Hell, growing up, before I learned how to get access to it myself, the public library was the greatest source of pornographic imagery available to me.

If he had been doing this and someone just happened to see it I wouldn't have an issue at all. It is because the employee went out of her way to find out what he was looking at that I have a problem.

[Strangler Lewis]

Composing violent threats is not a crime. Communicating them to the threatened person is. I think there is a crime of attempted criminal threats, and it might consist of typing threats into a draft e-mail as opposed to a word processing program, which is less suggestive of intent to communicate.

Reading about bomb making is not a crime. Taking notes about what you read is not a crime either, but it is suspicious. People generally call the police when they are suspicious about criminal activity being afoot.

What would library policy be if the patron came in and said, "I can't decide what to look at on the internet today. Part of me says hummingbirds. Part of me says kiddie porn. Here's my list of porn URL's if you need one." And he stood there mulling. Would you throw him out? Call the police? Or wait until he had committed the crime.

Copyright infringement, antitrust, money laundering, fraud, etc. are all crimes that could be committed at the library. However, I doubt that librarians--or most people--would feel compelled to report those crimes no matter how strong the evidence was. More to the point, we certainly wouldn't want librarians playing detective with our library usage on the theory that a crime could be afoot.

[SzczerbiakManiac]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Since when is reading about making a bomb an illegal act?

Thought crimes have been illegal since October 26, 2001.

[innerSpaceman]

Gotta say I love SL's comparison of kiddy porn to other crimes. The woman even said she imagined her own son could be the boy the deaf guy was wanting to publically masturbate about.

She was personally offended by kiddy porn. That's why it's the crime she chose to report. Even if she could detect insider trading or money laundering, would she have reported it? Only she can know. But I suspect not.

Therefore I suspect I'm glad she lost her job.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Gotta say I love SL's comparison of kiddy porn to other crimes. The woman even said she imagined her own son could be the boy the deaf guy was wanting to publically masturbate about.

She was personally offended by kiddy porn. That's why it's the crime she chose to report. Even if she could detect insider trading or money laundering, would she have reported it? Only she can know. But I suspect not.

Therefore I suspect I'm glad she lost her job.

You obviously would not report someone for buying or selling drugs. Even so, I'm sure there are some crimes that you would personally be horrified by and would report. Wait - aren't you offended by kiddy porn? Maybe I shouldn't be asking, yeech.

Originally Posted by Alex

And who is going to define when a pornography line has been crossed? I almost guarantee you have actual books in your collection that contain pictures that would be considered pornographic by a healthy cross section of the public. Hell, growing up, before I learned how to get access to it myself, the public library was the greatest source of pornographic imagery available to me.

Same here. I checked out my share of certain books at a certain age. But that doesn't mean that I opened them up and lay them on the table at the library for anyone to see the pictures.

Who is going to define it? The Librarian in Charge, that's who. We get plenty of tattlers patrons who like to complain about things that aren't a big deal. It's up to the LIC to figure out when to take action and when to reassure the complainer and go back to work.

Again, I say that if someone is trying to hide their monitor, they most probably should not be using the computer in the public library. I see no problem with investigating that.

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Again, I say that if someone is trying to hide their monitor, they most probably should not be using the computer in the public library. I see no problem with investigating that.

I can think of a number of embarrassing things someone might legally might want to look up anonymously at a library - but I suppose the real issue here is there is no expectation of privacy in a public library.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Again, I say that if someone is trying to hide their monitor, they most probably should not be using the computer in the public library. I see no problem with investigating that.

And I disagree. No more than I would go up and insist on seeing what someone was reading if they were obviously trying to hide it. Of course, in my opinion, no library should force people to hide what their viewing. It should be inherent in the set up.

If this was a case of "doing it in plain sight" then I'd be more interested in discussing the limits on that. But it wasn't. If going to some lengths to discover and block porn watching beyond "plain sight" is warranted why not just set up mirrors of all the computer displays on a machine in the back room so you can watch what every person is doing? Yes, obviously that is much more extreme, but from my point of view it is only a difference in degree not nature. So, she did the right thing once she saw what she saw. She did the wrong thing in the way she came to see it.

The police should give her a medal. The library should fire her.