No one said fighting censorship was easy. No one knows this better than librarians.
There are many challenges.
Librarians face unprecedented pressures to conform to special interest views and government interference. And , not the least, they deal with strong challenges to their sense of what is right in the name of democracy.
They deal with the constant threats of severe budget cuts, and then the threat of privatization. Consequently, understaffed libraries enter into apparently harmless contracts with private companies to provide services that violate ALA principles.
Unprecedented library closures are happening in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Radostina Pavlova writing for Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) said, "many have likened the federal libraries closures to a book burning." This is more than symbolic. She notes that many books have ended up in landfills or actually burned. Ultimately, ordinary citizens must do their part and fight library closures as a violation of free speech.
Technologies are comparatively better funded in libraries compared to maintaining printed material, but as more people access online information, technologies bring fear on the part of government that can lead to a loss of liberties.
In 1996, reflecting hysteria on the federal level, New York enacted a law that restricted the transmission of material on any computer communication system considered to be harmful to children. That year, the Media Coalition submitted a memo urging Governor George Pataki to veto the bill because it violated First Amendment rights.
In January 1997, the Media Coalition brought a legal challenge, along with ACLU and other plaintiffs, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit challenged the broad-brush law, asserting that given the nature of the Internet, speakers cannot discern the age of people who access their messages, so speakers will be forced to limit what they say to what is appropriate for a minor or risk prosecution. Furthermore, the lawsuit argued that the law violates the Commerce Clause because it attempts to regulate commerce occurring outside New York.
On June 23, 1997, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta A. Preska held [1] that the New York law applied to the Internet violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The judge also ruled that the statute is unconstitutionally overbroad, because it prohibits a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech.
In a speech delivered at the Delivered at a LIBCOM Conference, Russia, Nov 2008, Paul Sturges said,
"Librarians have sometimes been accused of being censors. This is not correct. Librarians certainly respond to censors, when systems of censorship make provision for the control of library collections... [T]hey should not let the universal tendency to self-censorship make them quasi-censors, or unwitting allies of the censor. So that they can resist this tendency they must be able to identify their own prejudices as such and argue out the case for and against particular examples of content from criteria of quality and usefulness. They must learn how to avoid incautiously accepting the kinds of seductive ‘reasons’ to self-censor. Librarians together must take responsibility for their own contributions to freedom of expression and resist doing the censors’ work for them.
Bernard Lukenbill(2007) wrote...all American librarians, including school librarians, will be required in the future to become more assertive in their professional responsibilities to protect the free speech rights of their users. Although not a new responsibility, we must now ask how knowledgeable and prepared are librarians to assume this important task in terms of their judicial knowledge and in collateral sense their understanding of the American Constitution? Coupled with that question is the parallel question of how well prepared are they to undertake this task based on their professional education?
Melissa Morrone,writing for Waging nonviolence (WNV) about the role of librarians in helping library consumers manage surveillance (July 8,2014), observed that librarians have a critical function in managing rapidly changing technologies and promoting digital literacy, even while protecting the privacy rights of consumers. In the face of these challenges, librarians are overworked and under-funded. Pressed for time, big platform resources such as Google can be seductive. Librarians and consumers have to "re-imagine" the role of the library as one of collective action to define library services and expertise in the digital age.
Criminalizing Free Speech? Media Coalition Executive Director, David Horowitz, said, “If booksellers, publishers and librarians can only vindicate their First Amendment rights through a criminal trial, this will cause a profound chilling effect on free speech.”
The Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus case limited the ability of any group, association or individual to challenge a law that violates free speech rights. Given the extent to which the Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus ruling could affect the free speech rights of any individual or group in the future, Ohio's Attorney General MIchael DeWine, while upholding Ohio Law, was also compelled to file an Amicus Brief because of his constitutional concerns over the affect of the case on free speech rights. He said that even as he defended the State's law as the Attorney General, as an officer of the court he also had a special duty to speak out when the government might be wrong.