Jefferson Parish Criminalizes
Cybersmut in Libraries
Making good on their pledge to tighten up penalties for viewing cybersmut on library computers, the Jefferson Parish (La.) Council approved an ordinance October 18 that requires Jefferson Parish Library staffers to call the police when they see a patron looking at an obscene or sexually explicit image. If convicted, the patron could be fined $500 or jailed for up to six months.
The action comes a month after the council revised the library’s filtering policy to require that all but one public Internet machine in each branch run blocking software. Despite that revision, however, no machines are currently blocked: Ironically, Bess filter manufacturer N2H2 has backed out of a contract to provide software for the parish because the firm fears lawsuits should an errant site slip past its filter.
Acknowledging that an RFP slated for November 14 is the third since December, Jefferson Parish Chief Administrative Assistant Tim Whitmer said in the October 20 New Orleans Times-Picayune,“Every time this thing has been bid, we have had a problem that has been out of our control.”
Posted October 23, 2000.
|
