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

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

What if he had been looking at a "teen" site where all the models were over 18?

From her description, they were obviously underaged. Of course we only have her account to go on.

What if he wore bottle glasses and drafted a large-print e-mail full of death threats against his enemies that he had no intention of sending?

What if he was reading about how to make a bomb?

What if he was sitting at a table writing fan fiction that may or may not infringe copyrights?

What if he was in a chat room discussing prices and markets with a competitor? ("Sir, this is your first warning. Please don't use our library to restrain trade?")

Etc.

What if he had been dictating death threats out loud (though not too loud for a library, of course) into a tape recorder?

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

There is obviously a gray area where judgement is involved, but I don't see anything wrong with someone seeing someone doing something that is reasonably obviously illegal in a public place reporting it to the police.

[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.

[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.

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

I hate all the jumping to conclusions that because some deaf guy likes to get off on photos of little blond boys, he must be a sexual predator in the real world. I'm especially unfond of the good-nazi-citizens' conclusion that he must have committed a crime if he was arrested.

As far as I know, a great deal of child porn involves kids being forced to perform sexual acts. Even if it's just a naked kid, said child had no way to consent to his/her picture being put online for some creep to beat off to. Child porn is a predatory act regardless of whether you are the one looking at it or the one making it.

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

What if he had been looking at a "teen" site where all the models were over 18?

If all the models were over eighteen and mentally capable then they would have given their consent to be in porn.

Originally Posted by Alex

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.

I think maybe librarians have good cause to be hyper-aware of suspicious behavior. I've heard loads of stories about people beating off in the aisles or following other patrons around and whatnot. What is it about places where books are that cause the nuts to come out? When I worked at a used bookstore here in Phoenix we always had people jerking off, walking in with socks on their penis and nothing else, pooping in chairs, etc.

If she got fired for disobeying a superiors order then that is fvcked up, considering the fact that her superior's order was illegal. If she got fired for deliberately looking at what a patron was viewing on the computer then I can see the library's point.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

I think maybe librarians have good cause to be hyper-aware of suspicious behavior. I've heard loads of stories about people beating off in the aisles or following other patrons around and whatnot. What is it about places where books are that cause the nuts to come out? When I worked at a used bookstore here in Phoenix we always had people jerking off, walking in with socks on their penis and nothing else, pooping in chairs, etc.

Sure, I've dealt with more than my share of library masturbators in my time (a library that doesn't close until midnight really seems to attract them and I spent 4 years closing it). I've dealt with a patron that crapped in his own hand and he smeared it over 15 years worth of The Princeton Review before he was noticed. Book defacers and thieves. Graffiti artists.

I'd not say that a library patron should be able to hide themselves, but I think they are certainly entitled to hide the exact nature of the library resources they are using.

But again, she didn't go out of her way to observe him, she went out of her way to observe what he was looking at. I can imagine all sorts of ways she might have incidentally seen what he was looking at. Except she, in giving her own story, says she was trying to see what he was looking at so all of those theories and hypotheticals are moot.

I also have no idea if the reason I would fire her is the reason the library actually fired her. It may very well have been "bitch went over our heads" retaliation. In which case the only appropriate thing for whoever is in charge of that library to do is say "we apologize, we respectfully offer her job back so that we can fire her for the correct reason."

[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.

[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.