L.A. City Council Allow Porn to Be Viewed in All City Libraries
By: Keith Witchka, Staff Writer
Keith@JRLChartsOnline.com
LOS ANGELES, CA — After the Los Angeles City Council stated that it will allow legal Gay and Heterosexual Adult Entertainment to be viewed in the City’s Libraries, it won’t install filtering software to block the Adult content on library computers.
Instead, the Library’s will make the monitors more difficult to be seen by Middle and High school students.
A discussion on balancing a patron’s First Amendment right to look at Adult Entertainment content with other patrons’ rights to shield themselves from such materials in public, came about after a librarian was notified that a man was viewing an Adult XXX movie on a computer at the Chinatown library located at 639 North Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles.
The January 6, 2011 incident led to public meetings at the L.A. City Council on what librarians and city officials can do to limit exposure to Gay and Heterosexual porn. “The community was very upset. This is not the type of thing that generally happens in the Chinatown branch,” said Cheryl Collins, interim director for branch libraries.
At that branch, the computers were moved to a less public area and outfitted with privacy screens, something that is also done at the other 71 branches and Central Library in downtown. Los Angeles’ review of the library system computer policy is one of several that city leaders from across the nation are grappling with these days. The debate about what to do with patrons who want to watch Adult Entertainment continues to be a big issue in Chicago and New York, where city officials there are beating their hands to draw out new plans.
But in Los Angeles, California, libraries are planning to move computers to an area where they cannot easily be seen by someone standing behind the user. The L.A. City Council voted against porn-filtering software for library computers on Tuesday April 26, 2011.
City librarian Martin Gomez told the City Council that “it’s a slippery slope between 1st Amendment rights and shutting off computers.” Martin Gomez testified before the council about an incident at the Chinatown Public Library back in December 2010, when patrons told librarians that adults and children waiting in line to check out books could see an individual viewing Adult Entertainment content on a computer.
L.A. City Councilman Paul Krekorian, at a hearing yesterday, urged his fellow council members to look at filtering software for the city’s libraries. “I think we can use that and have people ask our librarians to unblock it for them,” stated Krekorian. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is constitutional for schools and libraries to have filters on computers to limit access to certain websites.
