  Earlier this afternoon, I sat down and had an interesting conversation with Monroe County Library Interim Director Cass Owens. She was kind enough to take some time out of her day and enlighten me on the library's stance on CIPA and the filters they use. As it turns out, the Child Internet Protection Act has been voted down and appealed in every court level until it was upheld in the supreme court in 2003. This being the case with Monroe County Library, libraries that do not comply with CIPA standards and use CIPA internet filters are not given federal funding. According to Owens, the MCL board voted against the filters for several reasons, and they were surprising to me. "The library's position on the current CIPA filters is that they aren't good enough, not because they block too little, but, because they block too much," Owens said. Also, the amount of funding offered by government agencies offered to Monroe County Library to comply with CIPA standards wouldn't cover even half of the cost to install and maintain the filters themselves. Essentially, it would cost the library money to get government assistance. Opposition is so divided that last year, Monroe County Library employees filed a class action harassment suit against the library, claiming that their work forced them to view materials offensive to them.
The employees lost, but I think it illustrates concerns of parents of children and freedom of speech advocates alike. I think Monroe County Library is doing the right thing. According to Owens, one would have to ask for assistance in disabling a filter if doing research on breast cancer, because CIPA filters would flag the word "breast" as pornographic. American Library Association attorney Paul Smith claims that such an action would stigmatize internet users.
"You've got to go up and say 'Please turn off the porn filter.'"(http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57938,00.html). But, the library doesn't just stop there. Instead, they offer programs to teach internet safety and promote, such as T101 does, finding truthful and accurate information online. All in all, it's not the Library's job to keep children or anyone else off pornographic sites. Parents share that task. I, for one, can't imagine children with enough gall to look at adult sites in public, but then again, kids have surprised me before, including when I look back on my own adolescent actions.
This is a classic modern information age struggle. Each side has good points, and each points not so strong. Until the technology can catch up with the industry it so desperately wants to keep from it's country's children, and while the country itself supports the billion dollar porn industry, I think MCL is on the right side of a shaky fence. 
