At 11:04 AM -0700 12/22/97, David Honig wrote:
Note that if the library in question were not arm of the State, noone would have any First Amendment claim.
This is reminiscent of TM's recent (controversial) analysis of the fired county trashworker/author, and suggests a clearer example of the confusion caused by State as Employer:
Yep, I started to write just such an analysis this morning when I saw Declan's report. But I felt the arguments had already been made, in other cases, so I never finished the article. Look, the state-as-employer or the state-as-library has, for ontological reasons, various rules, conditions, etc. which have nothing to do with the state-as-sovereign. If the state-as-employer insists that English be spoken in offices, is this an infringement of First Amendment rights in even remotely the same way as if the state-as-sovereign illegalized the speaking of Portugese in Texas (or anyplace else that was not a state-as-employer office)? When the state-as-sovereign sets up libraries that don't carry Everything (hint: and not even the LOC carries everything), then the choices it makes can be seen by some to be First Amendment violations. That way lies madness. A better solution is to get Government out of the business of running libraries or providing Net access. Again, I see no clearcut First Amendment issues here. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."