WASHINGTON - The Loudoun County Library Board in northern Virginia Monday night passed what is thought to be the most restrictive Internet blocking policy in the nation by voting 5-4 to install blocking software on publicly accessible computers with no option of disabling the filtering device.
Even more stunning, the board ruled that those under 18 must have written permission from a parent or guardian to get on the Internet at all.
"That's simply ridiculous," said Kent Willis, director of Virginia's American Civil Liberties Union. "Restricting the use of what is becoming the most valuable research tool we have erodes the whole notion of what a library is supposed to be."
In July, the Loudoun County Library Board voted to install blocking software that would meet the Supreme Court's 1973 Miller v. California obscenity test, which defines obscenity as something that has no redeeming social value, is patently offensive, and is sexual in nature. At the time, the board was planning on allowing adults to request permission to disable the software, and minors to view an unfiltered Internet with a parent or guardian present.
"They were dealing with some very delicate issues in a careful way, and now it's as if they threw it all out the window and decided to block everything," Willis said.
The guidelines, drafted by board member Dick Black, a military lawyer, are titled "Policy on Internet Sexual Harassment." Black has said that a policy of restricting the Internet was vital to protecting women and children from a sexually hostile environment at the library.
"It should be a no-brainer," Black said in July. "It's so obvious that pornography should not be in libraries. It doesn't have anything to do with censorship."
Although the board has not yet chosen a blocking software program, Willis says that Loudoun County's decision is a good target for a lawsuit because no available software blocks only obscene material. He added that barring minors from free access to the Internet in a public space is also problematic as a violation of basic rights to information.
"I feel certain that, if not the ACLU, someone else will file a lawsuit," Willis said.
Mainstream Loudoun, a community group that says the library board has been taken over by the radical right, has sent repeated letters on the issue.
The Loudoun decision comes as the issue of Net content filtering in libraries is taken up in communities all over the United States. Among many other cases, Ohio considered and rejected a proposal for statewide use of censorware in libraries, for instance. Tonight, a northern California community gets to take a crack at the issue as the Santa Clara County Library Joint Powers Authority holds a hearing on filtering.
