Re: (Fwd) Porn and Public Access - Tx Telecom Jrnl (fwd)

[Kate Bradley <kbradley@ctc.ctc.edu>]

Hi - I don't know what the reasoning is of the union rep, but I would 
like to offer a comment simply to invite more discussion.
Our community college library has the WWW available on several 
terminals.  A few students, who dress in black leather jackets with 
insignias on the sleeves, use the WWW to telnet to some sort of Dungeons 
and Dragons game. I was rebooting a machine one day, glanced over at the 
screen next to me where one of these guys was playing D&D, and discovered 
the material was VERY violent and sexual towards women.  I no longer feel 
comfortable around these students.  I'm not a person who is easily scared 
- When I worked at the U of Chicago years ago and had friends who lived 
in the ghetto area south of Hyde Park, I would visit those friends 
whether it was night or day - for the simple reason stated in Bill 
Michtom's e-mail: freedom.  I figured if I couldn't go where I wanted to 
in the city of Chicago, "THEY" had won.
But that was almost thirty years ago, and something is different now.  
Our college is located in a white collar suburb of Seattle.  Three months 
ago a neighboring family was brutally murdered by two teenage boys - who 
dressed in black and played weird video games. I AM affected by this sort 
of occurrence.  And I DO feel harrassed by these guys who are using WWW 
to telnet to their computer games.  I think the reason is there seems to 
me to be some disconnect between these young men and me - and it 
frightens me.  I  don't think this is just my imagination.  An older man 
who is retired now from the college has the misfortune of having a son 
who has lived on the streets of Seattle for most of his adult life - and 
in recent years has been the victim of several attacks - and he says, 
too, that something has changed.  
I think that blindly applying the freedom of the press rules to what's 
available on the Internet is denying the reality of the change in our 
society.  This may seem rude - but my feeling towards these guys is - get 
a job, earn enough to buy a computer of your own, and play your games at 
home, and leave use of the WWW in the library to people who are seriously 
looking for knowledge that won't harm anyone.  Programs that censor the 
Internet but also eliminate useful information can be refined - I don't 
think they should be eliminated. Kate Bradley, Bellevue CC

On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Bill Michtom wrote:

> >>  (One library union rep also warns the Internet could cause 
> >>  sexual harassment of workers.)
> 
> What?!?
> 
> To paraphrase the NRA: The Internet doesn't sexually harass. *People*
> sexually harass.
> Does anyone know what the alleged reasoning is here?
> 
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bill Michtom                  | They that can give up 
> michtom@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu   | essential liberty to obtain 
> Graduate School of Library &  | a little temporary safety 
> Information Science           | deserve neither liberty nor 
> University of Illinois        | safety.    
> Champaign, IL                 |         - Benjamin Franklin
> --------------------------------------------------------------------