A group of heartland parents concerned that their children might see sexually explicit material while Web surfing in Ohio public libraries were hoping Tuesday to get some tight virtual shutters bolted onto library Net terminals.
But with state Finance Committee action Tuesday, the terminals were still shutter-free as a bill that would have required the state's 245 public libraries to install blocking software was amended to allow local boards to create their own software policies.
"Apart from the issue of local control, our main concern was the effectiveness of the technology," said Mike Mooney, aide to state Senator Roy Ray, the Republican chairman of the panel that passed the bill.
The bill's original provisions, passed in March, stipulated that the Ohio Public Library Information Network create guidelines including the "use of technological systems to select or block, and the requirement that public libraries obtain Internet access exclusively through the OPLIN" by mid-August.
But in spite of testimony by members of the Medina-based Citizens for the Protection of Children, which descended on the state legislature bearing lurid color images of sex acts downloaded from a computer terminal at the Medina Public Library, senators in the Finance Committee could not see their way clear to requiring statewide use of blocking software.
"After some research, the difficulty of finding software that doesn't also cut off access to valuable information became clear," Mooney said. The budget bill containing the provisions is expected to go before the full floor on 29 May.
Attempts Tuesday to locate members of the citizens' group for comment were unsuccessful.
Debate over the bill took place amid a national debate over the use of blocking software to limit kids' access to online pornography. In the past year, censorware skirmishes have emerged in libraries from Florida to Massachusetts to Texas. Last month, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, a plaintiff in the suit against the Communications Decency Act, issued guidelines that emphasize software-free approaches to keeping children safe online.
