I agree with Peter: it's another of these cases where an outraged parent is
outraged because "they" let their child do something it really shouldn't
have done. We can put all the filters, warnings and policies in the world in
place but if someone really, really wants to go looking for this type of
stuff they'll find it. The only possible weakness in the library's position
is that having warned the child off the first time they didn't get the URL
of the site involved and put the blocks on it. Depending on the size,
circumstances or workload of the library concerned this may be more or less
understandable (I'm dreading putting some of our small libraries onto the
People's Network because the staff there may be run ragged) .
The danger with this type of nonsense is that it always brings up calls for
public internet access to be uniformly "child-friendly" which is practically
impossible unless you limit access to a list of "acceptable" sites and/or
just certificated sites, which rather hobbles the whole idea of providing
internet access in the first place. Or else not let children use internet
workstations, which opens a whole new can of worms.
In the end it's all down to vigilance and enforcement. My own inclination
would be to have a "two warnings and your off-line forever" stricture (cue
outraged parent complaining that innocent child "accidentally" downloaded
porn repeatedly and is being punished unfairly by the library).
Steven Heywood
> ----------
> From: Peter Edwards[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To: Peter Edwards
> Sent: 27 February 2001 11:53
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Child accesses porn on the web in a library
>
> This kind of thing happened regularly in a library I worked in two years
> ago. All I can see from the article is an outraged parent who should have
> known better. With the amount of hype about levels of pornography on the
> Internet, shouldn't people with children be a little more wary when they
> sign consent forms to allow their children to use the internet in their
> school or library? We had consent forms in our library which parents
> signed
> without reading, and information leaflets which were likewise ignored. If
> parents then came in to complain about their children accessing
> pornographic
> or violent websites, they could withdraw their consent and their child
> would
> not have access to the service any more. The service at the time was
> unfiltered and uncensored, but for the majority of the time, you have to
> actively seek out this type of material, and users were regularly thrown
> out
> of the building for flaunting the guidelines (our acceptable use policy).
> If
> the child in the article had been accessing this material regularly (which
> he had) he should have been closely supervised by staff and the parents
> informed of his offensive behaviour (this formed part of our acceptable
> use
> policy).
>
> Peter Edwards
> (Newham)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hanstock, Terry [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 27 February 2001 10:50
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Child accesses porn on the web in a library
>
>
> There's a story in the Ipswich Evening Star about a 10 year old Suffolk
> boy
> accessing "porn" websites at his local library. Full details at:
>
>
> http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/Content/news/htm/010226porn.asp
>
> Terry Hanstock
>
> Nottingham
>
>
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