How burdensome this law actually is will obviously depend entirely on the implementation the library uses. The day of the ruling I was listening to NPR and they were interviewing a librarian. To paraphrase her, "I don't know of a way using our system to turn the filtering off for an individual station." In fact, your libraries practice may not even comply with a strict reading of the legislation. CIPA provides that filtering may be disabled for adults only "to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes." What burden of proof is attached to this is unclear.

Lets step back a second and look at the broader issues at work here. The American Library Association uniformly opposes the act. They, along with the ACLU, brought the challenge to its Constitutionality. The Act portends to act in the interest of libraries, freeing them from having to decide on a solution appropriate to their own community standards and interests. The libraries did not want this. They are perfectly capable of making their own decisions without the federal government requiring them to implement a far from perfect solution. I think the fact that libraries are even considering turning down their federal funding in order to not have to comply with this act is eye-opening. When has a library ever had enough resources to be able to turn away funds? And yet many libraries are considering taking a significant financial hit to escape a law that is fatally flawed.

I trust librarians to run their libraries as they are intended to be run. As a group, the librarians are some of the best proponents our country has for free speech and the liberties that America was founded upon. To see Congress taking control out of their hands is disturbing.