Florida, Colorado Proceed with
Filter-Mandate Legislation
Not content to let the CIPA threat of withholding e-rate funds be the only penalty for libraries that fail to install Internet filtering software, some states have other mandates in the hopper.
The Florida House Council on Smarter Government April 18 gave its approval to HB 65, a bill requiring public libraries to install blocking software, despite the derision inspired by a comment from its sponsor Rep. Allen Trovillion (R-Winter Park). “I could tell you stories of people masturbating in libraries in Broward County,” he told the council. Broward County Administrator Roger Desjarlais said in the April 19 Tallahassee Sun-Sentinel that the library’s alleged masturbation problem was “one of the most ludicrous things I’ve heard in a long time.”
The newspaper reported that Trovillion also claimed one youth was running a sex business from the library computers. “I’m not trying to criticize Broward County, but if you don’t filter, you expose children to things that could make them sexual deviants in the future,” he said.
The Colorado House Information and Technology Committee approved by a 6–5 vote filtering-mandate bill HB 1376 after a contentious meeting April 18 in which three of its original cosponsors withdrew their approval. Reps. Joyce Lawrence (R-Pueblo), Alice Madden (D-Boulder), and Rosemary Marshall (D-Denver) voted against the measure after committee chair Rep. Mark Paschall (R-Arvada) shot down efforts to strike a requirement that adult users must request that the filter be turned off. The Denver Post reported April 19 that some legislators foresee an uphill battle for its passage.
Other states that are considering filtering bills include Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Posted April 23, 2001.
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