Jason Griffey

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past…"

Digital Culture

Post author By griffey
Post date June 23, 2003
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Round-up of Links About SCOTUS Decision to Censor Library Internet Access.

Not too much new to report about the SCOTUS censorship decision yet, but here are more links from around the web. Some librarians are reporting calls from companies selling filtering software already. Oy.

Read the opinion itself at the SCOTUS site or at FindLaw
News.com: Supreme Court Backs Library Net Filters
New York Times: Effort to Equip Libraries With Internet Filters Is Allowed
Washington Post: Supreme Court Upholds Internet Filters
Slashdot: US Supreme Court Upholds CIPA
Yahoo News: Court OKs Anti-Porn Filters in Libraries
TeleRead: Needed: A Mega-PAC to Undo Big Bro's Library Filtering

Look twice at that Yahoo News headline – it refers to the Court approving “anti-porn” filters in libraries. What they fail to mention is that there's a heck of a lot more content than just porn that is also being blocked.

I want to make sure that I note that this ruling currently applies only to those libraries that accept federal e-rate money for technology and telecommunications. Unfortunately, with the funding situation facing most libraries today, many don't have a choice. And as Andrew Mutch implied in his message, it's a good bet that Congress will try to apply this logic to ALL federal funding now, which means pretty much every library everywhere.

It will be interesting to see if this applies to wireless internet within a library, too. What a major step backwards that would be.

[The Shifted Librarian]

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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