What is your Opinion of Pornography in Public Libraries?

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If I'm allowed to display pornographic imagery on the computer screen at a public library am I also allowed to whip my d**k out?

My opinion: If the government is providing a service, protecting it from the fickle public opinion of the moment should be the implicit directive underlying that service.

To put it another way: I don't care if people watch porn at libraries or not. So long as they aren't having orgies at the library or trying to seduce children there - which is, of course, where worry should properly rest.

This is the internet we're talking about here. Porn is like the primary artery of it. How can one separate the internet from porn? It's not possible.

That's what I was just wondering. There are public decency laws, and I really don't see how pornography on a public library computer doesn't break those laws.

Someone made the argument that there's some very good literature out there that is pornographic in nature. Fine, I'll give you that but we don't see a woman full-spread getting pounded just walking past these books.

... and now "The Internet is for Porn" is stuck in my head.

Hi 91,

It sounds like you support a policy where what you regard as "smut" plays second fiddle to religious cults, or that Michelangelo is less efficient use of bandwidth than da Vinci. Using the notion of "limited resources" for censorship purposes is back to a "they should keep them barefoot and pregnant" faulty logic again. "Promoting manhood while protecting womanhood" rants easily become obscene pornographic smut too, while pornography itself provides subject matter with the best utilization of bandwidth. That's why art is so valuable to humanity. If you are so concerned about knowledge & bandwidth, stick to print yourself with a 56k phone modem, and maybe read Shakespeare instead of the pornographic watching of, or the listening to, the plays at the greater bandwidth expense.

Then the proffered stance of the best determining efficient utilization of anything for everybody else, after all of those WLC cult video links!! !! !! !! !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astISOttCQ0
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astISOttCQ0[/youtube]

Tadzio

Ha.. I had the same problem almost as soon as I typed that message.

I used to work in a college library and we used to block porn.

Despite this students would still find unfiltered sites to view porn on and masturbate in the library.

Porn sites also tend to be full of all sorts of nasty scripts that want to infect your pc so massively increase the work load for IT techs needing to continually reinstall the machine.

Even if the machine doesn't get infected, the history and auto complete still remembers the porn and it is not pleasant for 80 year old granny that comes in to study only to find a load of goatse like images on the pc as soon as she opens a web browser.

Ban it.

Edit to add: There were a couple of occasions where the filtering was blocking students from doing legitimate research, we let the students use an unfiltered computer in the office where there were always staff to keep an eye on them. From my experience you will find students bypassing filters and masturbating in public more than you will find students who can't do genuine research.

I'm not sure why platforms like Deep Freeze aren't routine in libraries everywhere. That'd solve the spyware/malware issue without requiring the banning of any web content. Unless of course these are "malware/shovel-ready jobs" we're talking about.

Now, people masturbating in the library might be a more delicate issue to approach. With the price of computers so low, I can't understand why anyone would do such a thing in this day and age, unless they have some voyeristic fetish.

Last edited by kestrel on 12 Feb 2012, 7:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hmnn porn seems useless for a public library. But then again, some magazines may be seen as records for interviews and pictures.

I would rather they focused on more informative things, but explicitely prohibiting porn sounds a lot like book burning though.

There is also the question as to what these people find to be porn. Knowing conservatives, even a photo album of artistic nudes made by professional photographer would be deemed as porn by those freaks.

This is why you should actually have people looking over at the computer section. And don't worry just about students masturbating. Worry about any possible damage to the computers. It needs eyes...


This is why you don't block porn sites, but malicious sites. This way you will encourage people to use the benign porn sites (don't come tell me they don't exist).



This is a BIG problem... with the IT crew behind the library. History should auto-clear (duh). Not only for porn but for to protect the privacy of granny herself.

Edit: In fact, seriously, use Deep Freeze

..

I don't get it, if you know from a priori experience that porn can't be blocked, I don't get why you should be in support of blocking it...

What's wrong with porn in public? Seems silly.

What about this is offensive?

Why do we think someone who’s gone through 80 years of life...could possibly be offended by a little porn? They've probably done more kinkier stuff than we'd like to imagine...they have decades, plural, of active sex lives...your granny got down, don't pretend otherwise because it's embarrassing or something.


Anyway, I don't think anything justifies censorship. If you let someone convince you otherwise, you are one step closer to being censored. Open access to everything, by everyone, real freedom of content, information exchange...without that, I don't know, it feels like if you willingly give that up....

Your freedom is precious, stop selling it off piecemeal for illusions of protection.

Only if it is privately owned.

ruveyn

A library could be privately owned or endowed, but still open to the public.

you should distinguish between public access and public ownership.

ruveyn

Symantec's list of the 100 most dangerous and malware-infected websites includes sites on ice skating, deer hunting, sports, catering and legal services. Which means that a porn filter doesn't do much to protect a PC from malware, unlike decent antivirus software (some of which is free, such as AVG and Avira).

Personally, I haven't come across any porn site that tried to infect my PC as of yet. When NOD32 springs into action and bellows "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!", I'm usually trying to access some harmless looking freeware download site or something in the lines of ebaumsworld.

I'm against censorship and think library computers shouldn't be censored but maybe they should have an 18+ computer room where they are uncensored and the rest censored? In my public library they have a room with computers and a lot of computers right out in the open where people walk by them and can see the screens.

Even if they filter certain sites you can always find something that isn't in the filter.

I know my library wasn't filtering several years ago. I did a search on Google, clicked a link, and became trapped in porn sites that took over the entire browser. That was before I got my first computer so I didn't know what to do. I had to tell the library worker so they could restart it or whatever.

I covered that with the last sentence. I'd appreciate it if you didn't correct me when I've not done or said anything wrong.

What a perfect idea... provide people with a private room so they can also w*k to the porn.