SPECIAL REPORT: Censorware in the Stacks

[Tim May]

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
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