FC: Library filtering not about free speech -- a libertarian view

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 21:35:38 -0500
From: "Wayne Crews" <wcrews () mail cato org>
To: Declan McCullagh  <declan () well com>

Despite the way this issue is being portrayed, it's not really a free 
speech issue. It's an issue driven by property rights--or lack thereof.

Properly, a library would be funded by private donations and its management 
thus would make its own decisions regarding whether or not to use filtering 
software to block porn or violent.  Under those conditions even if 
non-objectionable material were blocked incidentally, it wouldn't 
matter.  No entity paying its own way or receiving voluntary donations has 
to worry about pleasing either Donna Rice or the ACLU.

Free speech means you enjoy the right to say, publish or Web-post what your 
choose, using your own microphone, printing press or computer.  But when 
you're using other people's property--taxpayers' property--you're subject 
to "democracy" in its worst, unlimited form.

That is, once government funding enters the picture, the fight leaves the 
realm of decisions over one's own property.  Now rather than library 
management setting the terms, it becomes the "right" of taxpayers who 
prefer to view anything they want vs. the "right" of the taxpayers who 
favor filtering.  This is a battle that will always leave one side 
unsatisfied, because one side or the other is being forced to pay to 
support views that are to it objectionable. But end the government funding 
and the library can become a strip bar if it wants to. Or a church.

When would it be a free speech issue?  When a libraray totally independent 
of government funding was being told what materials it could make available.

Wayne




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