A family trip to the local library left an Ottawa woman and her two daughters shaken after they observed a man watching hardcore pornography at a public computer terminal, according to CBC television in Toronto.
When the matter was brought up to the notice of the library staff she was told anyone can access online pornography at the Ottawa Public Library, so long as the material they’re viewing is legal and they’re over 18.
“I was really angry,” said the mother. “It opened up a dialogue I never thought I’d be having with my 11-year-old about what that man was watching. It was not right for me to have to do that at that age”. What her angered even more, however, was to find out that ‘the man was perfectly within his rights’.
She was searching for a book at the library when her daughters aged 13 and 11, told her they’d seen something disturbing on a nearby computer screen. “My 13-year-old came up to me and said, ‘Mom, I think there’s somebody watching something inappropriate over there. I went over and sure enough this man was watching very graphic porn,” the furious mom said. The man was sitting at a public computer terminal in a high-traffic area of the library.
The manager of branch operations for the Ottawa Public Library said library staff aren’t in the business of policing what patrons are viewing on the internet. “When it comes to adults accessing information, whether it be in books or magazines or on the internet or on computers, we do respect their intellectual freedom,” the official said. “Our library has web filters in place to block access to illegal material such as child pornography and hate literature. Otherwise content is not censored because what one person finds offensive, another doesn’t. The definition of pornography is very dependent on your own sensibilities. There are all kinds of things — a scene of violence, for example — that someone might reasonably find offensive.” It’s ultimately the parent’s responsibility to keep an eye on their children in public spaces, according to the official.
It would be up to a court to decide what’s legal or illegal, says lawyer
An Ottawa criminal lawyer warns the matter may be more complicated than drawing a line between what’s legal and what’s not, because the material is being viewed in a public place. It would be up to a court to decide whether a specific incident constitutes an indecent act, he added.
The Ottawa Public Library, since then, has said that it will be stricter with people who openly display explicit content such as pornography on its computers, following public complaints it wasn’t doing enough to protect patrons from seeing offensive material. Library staff will ask people to shut down or turn off material that leads to a complaint, whether it’s explicitly violent, overtly sexual or contains threatening language, a spokesperson for the library said recently. The current policy only has staff direct offending patrons to a more discreet area.
Meanwhile, Florida Gulf Coast University has asked a man accused of watching pornography on a computer in the school’s library not to return to campus, according to FGCU police reports this week. A staff member reported that a student, who also works in the library, alleged she saw the man with his hand in his pants, the report states.
Officials of the New York Public Library stressed that all their computers have filtering software to block any explicit material from minors, and they said that staff carefully monitor use of computers in the adult areas.
