SPECIAL REPORT: Censorware in the Stacks

[Colin Rafferty]

Tim May writes:
> 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)?

If it is legal for employers to insist on a particular language being
spoken, then it is legal for the government, as an employer to do so.

> 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.

This is not a First Amendment violation.

The government is not required to promote all speech, but only to not
restrict it.  Selection of books for a library does not abdridge freedom
of speech, since the act of not selecting does not reduce speech.

Modifying the content of the selected books would be an infriging act,
since that is a reduction.

They cannot subscribe to Playboy and then put pasties on the nipples.
Nor can they subscribe to the Internet and then filter it.

> That way lies madness.

> A better solution is to get Government out of the business of running
> libraries or providing Net access.

I fail to see how this will solve anything.

Right now, we can fight censoring the Internet in libraries because this 
is the State acting as Sovereign.  In private libraries, fighting this
would be 



> Again, I see no clearcut First Amendment issues here.

It is very seldom that any Constitutional issue is clearcut.  That
doesn't mean that we should throw it out, though.

-- 
Colin Rafferty
-- 
"In our society, you can state your views, but they have to be correct."
 --Ernie Hai, co-ordinator of the Singapore Government Internet Project