“A federal court panel struck down a law requiring libraries to filter the Internet for material harmful to minors yesterday, saying that the technology blocks so much unobjectionable material that it would violate the First Amendment rights of library patrons.” – New York Times article dated June 1.

TeleRead take: The court acted rightly. It isn’t just a case of the filtering technology being less than perfect. We’re talking art rather than science. One family’s child-protection mechanisms may be another family’s Big Brotherish censor. TeleRead would let parents either avoid filters on their children’s reading material or choose the filters that mom and dad wanted. And of course the filters would affect individual TeleReader machines, not library machines. What’s more, the filters could be from nongovernment sources–for example, church groups. Uncle should not be in the censorship business.

For more on the decision, see the comments of Carrie The Rogue Librarian, who also speaks out sensibly on the greater powers that the FBI now has to monitor Americans’ reading habits.

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