My mother-in-law, who is a librarian, will no doubt be thrilled by the federal judges who tossed out the online pornography law. And two other friends who work in libraries, one of whom works a technology position, will no doubt also be thrilled.
Critics of the law claim that Web sites can get mistakenly categorized as porn by mistake-prone filtering programs -- making information on breast cancer and homosexuality, for example, unavailable to library Internet surfers.I can confirm that this stuff happens. When I worked at St. George's School, we had a number of websites that were filtered by our program that shouldn't have been. Our sports medicine coach asked us why she couldn't get to a site that sold some custom-made sports equipment. Turns out they sold bras for women who'd had mastectomies. Oh no, can't let the kids see BREASTS!
Other sites that were blocked included neo-Nazi sites, which didn't help the kids who were doing reports on Nazis for class.
The list goes on. All I can say is, Go Federal Judges!