A Utah bill stipulating that public libraries offering Internet access are only eligible for state funding if they have “adopted a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material” won the unanimous approval of the House Public Utilities and Technology Committee February 3. It has moved to the full House for consideration.
The sponsor, Rep. Marlon Snow (R-Orem), told the Associated Press she intended the legislation to keep children from accessing sites containing obscenity. “We’re still learning the rules of the road,” State Librarian Amy Owen remarked, noting that in some libraries “a student can ask a librarian to disable the filter for legitimate research purposes.” An amendment proposed February 4 would exempt students who are 16 or older from filtered searches when they are “engaged in assigned school research.”
Schools in Utah already block sexually graphic content through a proxy server. Last March the Censorware Project, an anti-filtering watchdog group, blasted the setup for also blocking constitutionally protected speech.
Posted February 14, 2000.