What is your Opinion of Pornography in Public Libraries?

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That isn't quite what I meant. I meant an area where random people aren't walking by and seeing everything on your screen. In my library a lot of computers are out in the open and everyone sees what you are looking at. They are right next to the teen book section and not too far from the children's section.

I meant more like the computer room they do have with just computers and have that room be uncensored and no kids allowed but you would still be in a room full of people, just no one underage or randomly walking by.

Hi TeaEarlGreyHot,

IMO, you didn't cover "that" in your last sentence. Court cases over "unclean street-people" in public libraries make distinctions that DO more fully cover "that".

A major set of problems with authoritarians seeking domination at Libraries is that they often believe that they, themselves, are in charge of what is "correct" as available resources in public, and non-public, access to resources. Such practicing authoritarians, & such librarians, often end up "w*king their ego" at the expense of the availability of knowledge for everybody else in society, which such "authoritarian w*king" is being most often contrary to the self-evident truths of society.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H59Py7K ... ure=relmfu

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H59Py7KApU&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

Tadzio

Last edited by Tadzio on 12 Feb 2012, 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Useless without a public wankroom.

This sort of thing would never, ever fly in European public libraries. And in any case, in most of Europe there are sex shops with viewing rooms for those sorts of things.

I don't care. I wouldn't go to a public library to look at porn. If a accidentally came across it, big deal, just click back.

^^^this

also, i've been thinking about about our society's view on porn on and public exposure and such, because i keep running across internet arguments that state that there should be nothing wrong with public sex and the like.

which got me thinking.... it is difficult to think of any culture in the past or present that really truly had public sex. yes, some cultures had orgies, but it's not like people iin those societies would be in the middle of a family dinner and just start screwing like animals on the table next to the gravy boat. *every* human society in known history has had boundaries of one kind or another.

i'm not sure why people feel it's necessary to try to remove those boundaries. do children need to watch explicit sex in a "public" place? will it enhance their lives or broaden their minds in a positive way? are they missing out in their education because they don't get to see BDSM at the library? i'd say HECK NO.

as far as i am concerned nobody has any sort of "right" to watch porn anywhere outside the privacy of their home, and libraries and other institutions should have no obligation to provide access to porn. porn is a luxury that is offensive to a signifcant percentage of people, and i care more about the right of people NOT TO have to watch it than a person's right TO watch it.

An awful lot of public libraries have filtering software anyway, and are extremely public about these matters. So it's best to not even attempt looking at anything dodgy in the first place. Not least because you're usually linked back to it through the user ID/library card you log in with in the first place.

Hey Mr. Wise Guy, the title of the topic already narrowed it down to Pornography in Public Libraries so that's your problem since everyone else was able to figure that out without having it spoonfed to them.

Sex shops? Swingers' clubs?

This is a student behavior problem, not a lack-of-filter problem.


This is the IT people's problem. What is hard about continually reinstalling the OS? If they don't have an automated, easy process for that when they have a bunch of identical computers, then they are being stupid.

Does anyone need to keep anything on the hard drives of these computers? Nope. I'd probably have the computers set up to automatically reinstall the OS on a regular basis, using boot-over-the-network type stuff.


If the browser can't be set not to do this, get rid of the crappy browser.

they are not public.

I would say that anything dependent upon electricity to be seen is not a right!

Exactly. This is nothing to cry censorship over. If porn on a publicly accessible computer is censorship, then so is me not being able to pull my dick out in front of other people.

I agree, there's better things to spend taxpayer money on than making porn accessible in the library.

OH, before i forget. my library used to carry Playboy. you had to show ID to get it, but it was available. not sure when they stopped carrying it, but it's no lonegr showing in the online catalogue. but anyways.... not sure why anybody would want to "borrow" porn like that? (yes, yes i know it has articles, but nonetheless...)

In my view the problem is on of moral accountability. A libertine on public land can claim their right to do just about anything, the question that is never asked, 'is it right?'. The state, as it is presently forumulated, really has little or no right to make that determination and the people are right to be skeptical of a government that is powerful enough to do exactly that. The state of civil society that has no recourse except to legislate is on a fast track to becoming a nanny state. The opposite position is just as uncomfortable for us to live with, where libertines exercise their right to behave badly.

There is an answer to this and it is to let civil society raise its children correctly. To teach people to be considerate rather than exploitative. A properly constructed society that encourages its citizens to be virtuous, need fewer laws because people restrain themselves. The modern political establishment, more-or-less eschewing the idea that people can be made to be accountable to one another, their parents or peers, has no real answer to the question. The conservative, is sufficiently designed defending the status quo that it inevitably sit waiting for the change to inevitably occour.

As a result, there is no proactive development of civil society, all that is really getting bigger at the moment is the government. We have become nanny states because we see allow the government to do for us the things we used to see as our individual responsibilities. We now expect the courts to mediate our disputes because we can no longer communicate. An interconnected world has made us rude and anonymous. The only real answer is to accept some personal responsibility. Once we do that, we won't need to be taught values by the government in school, because we will know it already. We won't need Internet filters in libraries because we will know we ought to br considerate of others. We will actually become free, rather than slaves to our passions insisiting on our right to be thoroughly oppressed by them.

Hi shrox & hyperlexian,

Well, that solves the problem of watching for signs of life from anybody on life-support. Just pull the plug, cause use of electricity nullifies the entire spectrum of Human Rights. That will also stop the presses so all those old fashioned media things can go back to illegal cave paintings.

"Playboy" is porn too??? For sure, just like Darwin's Theory of Evolution, copies of different religious books, general science, literature, and even autistic & other "disabled" people in public are pornographic in the State of Texas.

Tadzio