Kids and Porn at the Public Library

News item today got me thinking: a ten year old girl was disturbed because she observed a man a the Seattle public library watching pornography the a library computer. The librarian was apparently sympathetic when the parent complained, but the policy is clear: the library does not “censor” information or limit the what people may access online. In the children’s section, however, there is filtering.

A part of me says, “OK. I get it. Freedom of speech has to mean that people have access to things that you disagree with.”  Put it this way: if you had to choose between some nosy petty tyrant of a librarian deciding what you could and could not read online and one who would champion your open access to information, which would you chose? I have to admit I would probably go with the open information option. The pressures today are pulling very strongly towards censorship, control and information consumption tracking.

Still, while I get that aspect, this is not how it should play out. First I do think that a reasonable distinction can be made based on the notion of information. Is pornography really “information”? Is some shameless guy’s right to watch pornography on a public computer an ideal in line with the lofty notion of improving society through literature, reading and thinking which lies behind the notion of a library? Isn’t this a case of absolutising one principle over all other principles? Over common sense?

This lack of ethical common sense may actually be typical of the postmodern society that we live in, now that I think about it. It’s not so much that people don’t have an ethical code these days – contrary to the exaggerated claims of many a Christian apologist against “moral relativism.” Rather, the problem seems to be that people have a limited ethical palate. Hot button ethics. One or two principles govern all the other ones. In a pluralist society it’s too hard to apply subtle moral distinctions, so you just go for a few really big ones like, “don’t interfere with other people.”

The library is apparently considering how to address the problem and no doubt they will come up with something like an adults only section which, if so, will be kind of pathetic. I imagine the entire issue is ultimately irritating to the vast number of librarians who, one suspects, do what they do for love of knowledge not to guard the right of the internet pornography industry to turn a profit on any possible public screen. Still, what else can our dumbed down version of public morality come up with other than the creation of further fragmentation: the multiplication of private spaces where people may do whatever they want without it hurting others?

Perhaps a better option would be to think this matter through carefully and using public input. I suspect that a principle that goes something like this would be amenable to most ethical people: “Public computers should not be used to view photos or videos that are disturbing to minors or other adults.”  That needs to be tightened up and it needs to allow for exceptions (what about battlefield images? What about art that includes nudity). But I think it’s a good starting place. Can we even draw an analogy between a public park and a public computer screen? Maybe. But in any case I think we can do better than fragmentation. There is something that feels very wrong about investing time and energy in an individuals’ right to access pornography on a public computer. State supported auto eroticism?

Can we go beyond an ethic of fragmentation? What are your suggestions?