DALLAS, TX – Looming over the surrounding flatlands along the Trinity River, the sprawling, North-Central Texas metropolis of Dallas is known for stereotypical women with big hair, men with big egos, and commercial endeavors with big dreams.Since a recent Dallas Morning News investigation, it’s also becoming known as a city of big appetites — for porn.
What the Morning News described as an “analysis of Web pages accessed on J. Erik Jonsson Central Library public computers and stored on the city’s computer server” uncovered some unsavory surfing habits among the local populace. City fathers said they’re shocked and appalled and plan to address the “tens of thousands of pornographic Web pages each day [that] flash across the screens of public computers in plain view of any passer-by, from unflappable adults to impressionable children — who may freely access pornography themselves,” according to the Morning News.
“It’s certainly concerning to me. It’s surely not appropriate in a public library, and it’s not a signal we want to send,” Mayor Tom Leppert told the paper. “We want people to come to our libraries and use them for traditional reasons. Viewing this material — it’s clearly not what the computers in the library are there for.”
Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway added, “We should look at this situation; we will look at it and we will try to do the necessary things we need to do to ban it as best we can. It makes all the sense in the world that we control access to it — and immediately.”
Other city officials were a bit more forceful in their reactions.
“I’m going to put a stop to this,” District 13 Council Member Mitchell Rasansky told the Morning News. “This is just disgusting. I can’t believe this is happening in our libraries.”
Rasansky said he intends to speak to the city attorney about the matter.
What the men found reprehensible was the volume and type of online porn being consumed in the city’s publicly funded facilities. The Morning News claims to have found 5,200 hardcore pornographic Web pages — including some that billed their contents as “merciless scenes of raw, brutal domination” and “unleashed sexual terror” — accessed by users during a 45-minute period on December 19th. According to the paper, the “figure represents about 7.5-percent of the more than 69,000 Web pages accessed on the central library’s public computers during the time period studied.”
But what to do about it? Both Leppert and Caraway conceded filters probably are warranted, but the city manager — a former librarian — said filters are problematic. That’s why the city’s libraries don’t employ them currently.
“We don’t think filtering is the answer because of the reasons the American Library Association has outlined,” City Manager Mary Suhm told the paper.
Instead of filters, the ALA recommends public libraries limit access to porn by placing internet-connected computers within clear view of library staff or installing privacy screens that limit the view of a computer monitor only to the person using the machine.
Although Dallas municipal code empowers library officials to terminate the access of anyone using library computers to view material that isn’t “compatible with the mission of the library,” the city doesn’t outlaw surfing pornography outright. State laws prohibit the reckless, intentional display of obscene or offensive materials, but the terms are difficult to define. That may be part of the reason the city hasn’t prosecuted any library patrons for their surfing habits, although officials have expelled 36 people for violating library policies, Suhm noted.
Caraway told the Morning News he suspects the city council will address the matter soon, possibly drawing on the experience and practices of surrounding communities and metropolitan areas in other states. Denton, a mid-sized college town to the north of Dallas, installed library filters three years ago after some patrons complained about others viewing explicit images online. Plano, a wealthy Dallas suburb, employs filters on all but one Internet-connected computer in each of its libraries, but library policy clearly states officials “cannot guarantee that access to sites containing adult entertainment, pornography or illegal activities will be blocked.” Phoenix, AZ, uses filters to block porn and other “objectionable material” from its library computers.
