Court Says Internet Filtering in Public Libraries Not Censorship. A Washington state supreme court issued a decision yesterday supporting a public library’s decision to fully filter Internet content, stating that such filtering could be considered “collection development”. According to an article in Library Journal, the decision is the first of its kind and “may lead some libraries to adopt more stringent Internet filtering policies.”
The disturbing part of this decision lies in the fact that more than 75 million people rely on the library for Internet access and, as a report by the University of Washington pointed out last March, the public library has become “a critical digital hub”. The decision answers the question of “Whether a public library […] may filter Internet access for all patrons without disabling the filter to allow access to Web sites containing constitutionally-protected speech upon the request of an adult library patron.” Of the nine judges issuing the opinion, only three offered a dissent. request of an adult patron.