librarypunk - 085 - CIPA and Internet Filtering

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

The Children's Internet Protection Act is a good starting point to talk about Internet censorship. E-Rate has become an almost invisible restriction on what you can view on library computers. We cover Section 230 adjustments including FOSTA/SESTA and tie it into current political battles over libraries and access to sexual or queer materials. 

QR code menus are like the stupidest application of technology I have ever seen. Yeah, it's like the bar one worked. It said all the drinks I could order up. But, you know, it says starters, menu item, zero dollars description. Yeah, it's combined everyone's collective ability to make a website, which is about zero. And then turn every, every menu into that. All right. It's good.

I'm Justin. I'm Skullcom Library. My pronouns are he, him. I'm Sadie. I were IT at a public library, and my pronouns are there then. I'm Jay, my music library director who couldn't hear when Justin played the theme music. My pronouns are he him. We're going to be dropless today.

We're just going to be staring at Justin and. In confusion. Confusion. He plays us Joe Biden. And then he could just add in whatever he wants later. It'll be like a green screen, but for podcasting. That's weird. That could be a problem, actually, because if I know his producer is not on all this traffic,

is going to come up. Give me one second. I don't hear anything. Okay. And fuck it. All right, we're doing E-Rate episode. Hooray. Yeah. Bam-woo. Bam-a-bab-bam. I have to do all the noises with my mouth. I've been wanting to do E-Rate for a while. We've been talking about, well, it's a mixture of E-Rate, which is a program in which public libraries get their IT and communication stuff. and in the 2000s, funding for E-Rate was tied to the Children's Internet Protection Act, which is kind of the first internet filtering law that we got and was actually mass-implemented because it was tied to E-Rate funding.

And it's school districts as well. Yeah. I think it's a lot of things. Is it other than school districts and libraries? I don't think so. At least not that I've noticed. It's like, I think community colleges. some of them too. I don't know if they have to abide by the same like filtering requirements as

school districts and libraries do. But I think it goes up to community colleges. Yeah. If you've ever had to deal with internet filter in school, this is what it's from. This is what you can blame. Yeah, it doesn't like many other internet bills, it didn't really explain how to do this. So I was going over, I wanted to tie this into later laws and then tie it into the modern filters in libraries and schools. So we all know about the book challenges. And that has overlapped with some really silly conservative activism on just everything in libraries. They're really just losing their minds. And I actually found some really interesting unhinged organizations that have been around, I think, since the mid-2010s.

which I'll get to in a minute. So when the, well, say, do you work with E-Rate the most? Yeah. What you've talked about it, but give us a rundown on what you have to do with E-Rate. So most of my experience dealing with E-Rate has actually been dealing with an E-Rate consultant who does it professionally for schools and libraries because it's a big bureaucratic, confusing as fuck requirements and the way that they track the funding that they gave you. used to be completely whack and they just overhauled it.

So I never actually had to file E-rate myself, thank God, because that's a giant waste of time. But basically they go, hey, are you, give us proof that you have filters and we'll make sure that you can actually get your money back or get paid. So yeah, I had to procure mostly just screenshots, I think, of our firewall configuration confirming that we were dealing with. that we were blocking pornography. But yeah, it's a lot of money.

It's like upwards of like 70% of your telecommunications costs and hardware costs. So it's not just the internet, but also the equipment that you use to keep the internet. So it's a pretty big deal. When you have to get the firewall configured, is that a filter software that you've applied to the network? Are you doing any of the filtering manually through like, DNS configurations? In what I have done, it has been through kind of both. We don't really do a whole lot.

Nothing manual, but content filters. So most, I think, firewalls or a lot of security systems too, also have content filtering built into them, and then they have content categories, which then you can choose whether or not to allow those categories and normally like pornography is one of them, which the whole. whole concept of the content categories is interesting and I have it later in the notes. But yeah, there are firewall. You can set it up on the firewall. You can pay to have like a proxy system set up. You can have a DNS level set up for your filtering. There are a lot of different

ways to filter. And a lot of this same sort of products also do security filtering. So it's not exactly. It's not always easy to separate the two out. You might be using a filter, a service that can do filtering, but you're using it for security purpose and vice versa. So it can be, unless you're like the IT person who's overseeing it, it can actually be kind of hard to figure out what's, what's actually being used as the content filter itself. Yeah. I think there's also a little bit of a, there's a change in the way that this, that legislators have approached these filters. Like they, I think that blended nature is starting to change because when, when SEPA first happened, the American Library Association sued the government about having to install web filtering software

as a condition for receiving funding. And the basic approach, did I save it exactly? The court explained that the library is simply another, or that the internet is simply another method for making information available in a school or library and is no more than a technological extension of a book stack, which I thought is a very content-focused way of dealing with the internet because we use the internet now for like tons of essential government services. But this mixture of content and security, so I think there's, when we get to like the TikTok bands,

it's on like an internet security measure, but it's also like, I think there's probably a content element to it because they're usually like, there's nothing but naked girls dancing on my TikTok. It's like, yeah, bro. That's, I mean, if you look at it for too long and don't swipe away, that's how it works.

Like I, if I, if I leave my phone open when I'm scrolling Instagram, it's like, oh, are you really into rising grind memes this week? my because I only follow, I only use my Instagram for like, comics, like, uh, comics and bunnies. That's just like all it's for. So I like, I follow, I started following like my internet friends on there.

And then I was like, actually, no, I don't want to see anything about politics on, on like one website. So I've unfollowed everybody on Instagram and a, uh, and, but now it doesn't know what to recommend me. And so I think Poddam America was talking about this where if you look at anything, it's like, oh, this is what you're into this week and you're just stuck with it. Yeah, until it decides to pick something else up and be like, oh, yeah, this is now the thing that you want to look at.

Yeah. So it just decides I'm into volleyball for a week. And it's like, yeah, man, you really like volleyball, right? Which you bring up section 230 later, but that. Yeah. That's the, that really just came up like today because there's a lawsuit going on about section 230, which is saying that algorithms are publishing. Somehow not protected by Section

230 because you're suggesting content. Yeah. And I saw someone on Tumblr saying, like, this isn't like the worst possible lawsuit because like this is a lawsuit against YouTube's algorithm, which led to a terrorist attack. But yeah, they've been, Section 230 has been like a political target, especially since like Trump was obsessed with it. So, It's so, that's kind of what's got me thinking and finally sitting down and getting this episode going because it's such a weird political moment for like what Republicans are mad about with the internet. Yeah. They're mad about a lot. Yeah. It's changing in a lot of ways and I think they don't really have like a clear ideological line on it right now.

So like fucking anything could happen. Yeah. There is, well, not that they're ever regularly coming. But it's particularly uncohesive right now. I was reading an article about the 230 thing earlier today. And I didn't get very far into it. But they were basically like instead of instead of their usual, this is where Republicans are on it. And this is where Democrats are on it. Because it was explicitly about political lines. They were like, everybody's all over the place. So we're just going to group it by who's against it and who's for it. Because we can't actually find a clear party line here. So yeah, it's it's kind of a wild moment in a lot of ways. I'm still muting myself on Sincester. Hang on. Voice mod is just not fucking doing anything. Okay, whatever. Oh, nice. That's so confusing because I used to hear myself to check my audio. Fuck it. It's just fucking close it, I guess. Fuck it. We'll do it live. I'm so confused about how we can just like, you know, hum the theme song. My wife's been walking around doing the Lord of their rings, but like the,

the version, I couldn't repeat it for you. Been on a Lord of the Rings kick lately, and it's been stuck in their head. So they've just been walking or in the house going, I mean, that's why you married them, right? Yeah. Yeah, for their Lord of the Rings knowledge. Yeah, it's, uh, nobody knows this, but Sadie's married to Stephen Colbert.

No. Who's secretly a wife? Secretly a wife. And one of the most knowledgeable people about Lord of the Rings in the entire world. Yeah. Not quite on that level, but no, I know we're not related. Just so everyone's clear on that. Yeah.

I saw something that they want to do Lord of the Rings similar to like Marvel movies shit. And now I'm like, or similar to Star Wars, basically. like they want to pollute the ecosystem. I'm like, I don't, I think you took too long to get in on this. I don't know if that's going to work. Well, Star Wars has been polluted the whole last time because it's had books and all sorts of other. Yeah, but only nerds read those. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I have a nerd friend who wrote one, which is really fucking cool. But. Yeah. Only nerds scare about that shit. It wasn't like a cultural thing. That's true.

I really only read one of those extended universe. books or the Darth Bain one, which is actually pretty cool. I wish they would do. I wish they would play around with like the stuff they've already got, but they're, I don't know, movies. I wish people would come up with new things. Yeah. Disney. I bought a PlayStation. I finally broke. And so now I'm playing all the games that have been exclusives for PlayStation for a while.

And I want to talk about them now. These games that came up five years ago and I need it now. I'm so jealous. So I just been playing ghosts. Shima for like six days straight or whatever or whenever I bought it. But I've been talking to Leon from left page media about what is it? Wait, did I get their fucking. Hereby media and the left page.

The left page. Got it. Yeah. One's a book one and one's a not book one. I search for whichever one I can remember when I need to look up their Twitter for something. But yeah, we've just been talking about like, how do you feel about the storytelling in this game?

Because it's basically you're a Japanese. samurai fighting off Mongol invaders. It's like, how did they handle that? It's very cinematic. It's very like based on Japanese cinema kind of stuff. I watched a Japanese movie this morning. Nice. Well, that's because you, you watch seven samurai every day.

Obviously. It just like jerked off it to Shirimi Finet. Wake up in the morning and automatically starts playing. Yeah. That's what my alarm is. If you were gay enough, it would be your alarm too. Sorry, Justin. Yeah, well.

Yeah, challenge. Gauntlet thrown down. Get on my level, bitches. Exactly. The SEPA filters, which is the Childs Internet Protection Act, that all went into effect in 2002 to 2004. That was kind of an implementation. Interestingly, when the ALA sued them, they said that SEPA only required libraries to install filters, but not to require all patrons to use them. So this was weird because a lot of the news stories about.

it are really old. And there's kind of like not been a whole lot of pushback on SEPA since it passed until like the 2010s when ACLU did the Don't Filter Me campaign, which was basically not to get rid of the filters, but to force them to be better about not filtering queer content. Yeah. Which is good because like, yeah, that's a pragmatic thing to do because like you probably weren't going to get SEPA overturned. But it's just very confusing because with SEPA, the argument of the court was, well, you have to

install it, but you don't have to force every adult to use it. They can just request to turn them off. I feel like that is not how that got implemented, but no one's really written about implementation of SEPA. So it's kind of hard to tell how that works these days. Yeah, I don't know how often academic libraries use this sort of software, but like the session management software where like you sit down at a computer and put in your library card number kind of shit. A lot of them are have I think the reason a lot of it hasn't been, like, talked about or anything is because a lot of library vendors just took this information and integrated it into their products. And that's just been what's available. So I know at least two, including Envisionware, which is a really, really big one.

You could basically set up a filter. So if somebody logs in, it pulls, you know, info from your ILS via API, checks whether or not the patron is under a certain age, gives them filtered or unfiltered. access or like at least in my old library. I'm not sure if this is the way it's set up at my current library. You know, patron sits down and logs in and they could choose whether or not they have filtered or unfiltered. Like there's buttons that they have to pick one of the two before they'll actually drop down to the desktop and get the internet. So I wonder how much of that. I wonder kind of which came first. Was it was it SEPA happened? So these library vendors were like, okay, I'll integrate that into my belief system. Or if, you know, this was or. You know, this was or

existing features and technology. And when SEPA happened, they were just like, oh, look, you don't have to worry about this. We can, you know, this can be easily configured for you. So it didn't get any sort of pushback that way. Yeah, there used to be, there definitely were internet filters. But I don't remember running into them much before 2000. I don't really remember running into them until actually I went to like community college. So I don't know.

I imagine it's all just built into the vendors because of this. But I remember, like, internet filtering was kind of a program that just ran on boot up for a lot of computers. It wasn't session management at the time. But, yeah, that's interesting. I didn't think about session management pulling your age from, yeah, you could totally do that. Yeah, it's super easy and it's a lot of these software. So when they say that, like, not to require all patrons to use them, like, it can be pretty streamlined for whether or not they want filtered internet. One of my old libraries, you had to go up

to the desk and ask for a special code to get on filtered internet, which of course never happened. So it was basically everything was filtered anyways. That's also where you got the cardboard hood. So people can't see what you're looking at. We stand the cardboard hood. Or like the desks that have like the privacy screen built into the top and you have to like hover over the top of it and look down to see your screen. So people can't walk by and inadvertently view some something that may or may not be pornography. Some pornography. But yet I know that there are public libraries who, when this happened, just went, okay, fuck e-rate money then. So I know that there are public library systems which basically forgo the e-rate money so they don't have to worry about filtering. I haven't worked at one of those.

I would love to talk to somebody who did about how that has affected their sort of library environment. But it's not, it's coercive, but it's not unconquerable. I think a lot of the larger library systems that have decent budgets have basically gone, yeah, what we would get out of E-rate doesn't, doesn't count enough for us to not do this, you know, kind of thing. I started looking into Fostasesta, which was the first kind of modification of Section 230 in the Communications Decency Act to exclude enforcement of federal or state trafficking laws from immunity. So basically, if anyone does any sex trafficking on your website, then you can be held liable, which is why a whole lot of stuff shut down. It's, it's why Tumblr ban porn. It's why

Backpage went away. It's why Craigslist classifieds went away. And a lot of sex worker advocacy groups and also anti-trafficking groups were like, this is pretty bad. And also this is just like a basic assault on free expression on the internet. But that led me to a group I haven't heard of before. And I had to, I didn't have time to do a deep dive on them like Bombs for Liberty. But It's the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. And they really hate the ALA. And they also really hate EBSCO for some specific reason. That's kind of hilarious.

Which of like of all the vendors, EBSCO is one of the, like, okay ones. It's a very odd target. Fuck this vendor in particular. Yeah. I think they, they... Like, EFCO uses all open source stuff, like, for a lot of it's, like, non-dabase stuff. They're like, this is open source. But if you pay us, we'll do the hosting for you and, you know, tech support and stuff.

But also, it's just folio. So if you have the means, you can do it. It's like, that's nice. I like that they're, like, making a commitment to actually use open source software. Like, that's good. So there, actually, this website, I don't have, I didn't save all the links because it was something I just ran across today. Because I couldn't go down the rabbit hole.

I didn't have time to figure out, like, Who, like, are these all Florida Republicans again? But they were very, this was a group that was very active around Fostasesta. And it kind of seems like they haven't really been doing a whole lot recently. But they did bring up the- Are these the people who called the ALA pornographers? Probably. Yeah.

They're very, like, porno-focused. Yeah, it's probably that. Are they Mormon? I don't, they use, they use the phrase X, X, X,X, X,X, in their copy a lot. Like, it's very 2000s internet. So it's when it's talking about EBSCO about databases, like these online resources provided by schools that children often use, it's because the databases aren't, because they're not on the open web, the internet filters tend to pick them up. This happened a lot of my last job. So if you wanted to do any research, you literally couldn't really use our open internet because everything was filtered because we didn't have session management.

And our filters were really strict. And so I had to tell students you really do have to use the databases if you're on campus because it will censor. It's a very, very proactive sensor. Like I couldn't go on a college humor or something. Like it was like pornography. No, what was the category? Bad taste or something. Yeah.

I actually, I have a story about that. At my last job, I had somebody, the IT department was in the same building as the biggest library branch. And we would have just front or we would just have public. service people just walk back. We had one, like, one of the, um, one of the shift leads basically walked back and was like, I have this incredibly flustered woman out here who is getting blocked, getting this website blocked and she wants to talk to somebody about why. And I was like, okay, great, I'm going to have to do the whole pornography, free speech thing. No, she was looking. It was like mugshots.com. And, and it was like, it literally looked like the daily, like, oh, God, what's

that? It would literally look like National Inquirer. sort of like style like it was very obviously like school information out and like had people's mugshots so you could look them up and it was being blocked by the taste tasteless category and she was very very upset about it because this is this is for safety purposes and I'm like I don't know if needing to look up people's mugshots is necessarily a safety issue but you do you I guess but yeah I went back and that's what actually got me to go in and look at our firewall categories and see what content categories were being blocked. And I was like, there's literally no reason for half of these. And at the time, I didn't have a boss. So I just unchecked like a whole bunch of them and saved it.

And it was still like that when I left. So but yeah, tasteless. Bad, bad taste is a is a content category that contains things like mugshots and the National Enquirer. And I mean, it's fair. It is. bad taste, but whether or not you need to block that is not your business. What's the John Waters quote that's like, to have good bad taste, you must have good taste. Otherwise, it's just bad taste. It's bad, bad taste or something. I don't know. I don't want to have the big book of John Waters quotes.

You're not like me where you just have random John Waters quotes, like, just at the ready. No, I have that for like folk punk lyrics about politics. God, I don't like folkbook. John Waters lives in your head rent-free. John Waters does live in my head rent-free. So, oh, but this bit of copy is funny. Via a system that bypasses school internet filters, EBSCO brings the dark world of XXX to America's elementary middle and high school children.

This place has got to be LDS, I swear to God. It sounds very LDS, yeah. It's very LDS. They're the ones that actually campaign against porn shit. But other Christians just get mad at it, but don't do anything. Unless you're Catholic, maybe. It's other Catholics or Mormons. It's Mormons.

I can tell you that, at least from the inside, from having been raised Mormon. No, I would actually really like to see what these pornographic results that they are saying come up with are. Because, like, I doubt it's like, you know, porn.com videos or something like that. It's probably like... Anatomy. Anatomy or, like, historical, like, photographs. Like, I can imagine like historical porn, like historical porn being in there somewhere because like that could be a field of study.

Or like, you know, the national geographic stuff that we've all, you know, that everyone like, yeah. Yeah. I would like to know how much of it actually qualifies as porn and how much of it is just a naked body that somebody's throwing a dizzy fit over their childhood. Or like the journal of sexuality or something. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like in my experience, very, very little. Having worked for public libraries, it is more common than not to have it, to have it be something that is ambiguously sexual than somebody that is something

that is like actually explicitly sexual, if that makes sense. I was having a discussion with a friend last week about sort of the definition of obscene in law and the like, what did the obscenity test where it has to like appeal to prurient interest and whatever and was like what what even qualifies as porn because we were talking about book bans a little bit too and I was like I always thought it was something that was explicit created explicitly to cause arousal right like yeah that's that's what you would qualify porn as so if it's under you're working under that definition then like almost all of this stuff that people claim is porn is not going to be even close to that so I just whereas like a lot of advertisements would that be born up for debate yeah yeah

I think that conflation, I don't remember if we brought up last episode or the one before, but there's this conflation of... I don't like the definition. Yeah, there's a conflation of sexuality with pornography now. So it's, it is very much like, if you talk about, like, conalinguist, that is pornography. It's like, if you describe it with text, right? And that's also like why, if you had to remove that from libraries, that would be all the romance section, any discussion of like, making out is like sexual depictions on inappropriate for children. Okay, I have a question for you guys.

You keyworded me here. And Jay, you're from the Midwest. So maybe, uh, maybe, maybe this was a, I assumed this was a Midwest thing, but I was reading this romance book series. And the term making out was used for everything from heavy, heavy kissing session, all the way to actual sex acts was making out. And I was like, I had never like, like just fucking. Like fucking like like like like blow tops like like it was it was smut.

It's straight up like it's the kind of shit you would. And I'm just like, but it was described as making out. And I'm like, is that a regionalism? Because here in the Pacific Northwest, I've only heard it being referred to as like kissing like heavy. I have only ever heard it referred to basically be French kissing. Making out includes tongues. Ah, okay. Okay, so it's not necessarily a Midwest thing.

I just assumed it was a Midwest thing because I think it was set in St. Louis. Where I am now. Where you are right now. St. Louis has its own fucking weird shit. Okay. So it could be just a St. Louis thing. Okay. Let me just completely derail this with a regional question.

But yeah. Yeah. The only thing I can assume is it was making out during sex you would call. Yeah. Yeah, but that's, that's, that's, the context was clearly it was making out referring to the sex act that was happening itself. I don't remember explicitly with a sex. I think maybe the person who wrote that hasn't had sex. Yeah.

She writes a lot of romance novels to somebody. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. Yeah. There's a lot of baseball. Yeah, there's a bunch of baseball lads. I actually wouldn't be supplies if Chuck, if Chuck Tingle was asexual and just thought that sex was kind of hilarious. I've never actually read any Chuck Tingle, but it seems like it would be the thing.

It's very cookie cutter, and then you just make weird characters. It's fine. Yeah. If I was writing porn, it would just be because I thought it was funny, not because I would describe anything that actually roused me. I would be like honking on that bobo, bobo equal dick. I'm good at writing porn. Incredible. See, I'm very upset because there's a bunch of pictures of baseball, reformed men in this hotel room, but it's not any modern baseball uniforms, which are God's gift to homosexuals because they make the ass look so good. These are all old, and I'm upset about it.

St. Louis, get your act together. You mean you don't have pornography on your walls? I don't have pornography in my hotel room. What am I supposed to do with my night? So the in sexual exploitation people, I couldn't figure anything more about them, but yeah, they're really upset with Epsco and ALA. And they keep showing up in the Fostashta era, but they don't really seem to have a whole lot going on. Modern. I think they still update their website with like legal wins, but they're very much, I don't know, I couldn't find anything new. So these things seem to go in very quick hype sites. Like no one's writing about SEPA right now.

And then Fossa Sessa, we're still feeling the impacts because it was only implemented a couple of years ago. So there's still like, you know, these new changes to Section 230. And I think this current lawsuit about Section 230 and any upcoming legislation is also just going to be completely unpredictable. But I did want to bring up kind of current politics, which is the overlap these two things, which is the filters, filtering out queer. content, which is by definition of being about gender, which is a word that's like going to lose its meaning thanks to conservatives, which is going to be pretty sweet, actually. They're doing our work or they're doing our job for us. Yeah. Gender. What is this? Soviet Russia? It's going to, yeah, it's going to be like, like, woke. It just won't mean

anything. Everyone will get sick of saying it. This is the same, these are the same idiots who think that having pronouns is like a conspiracy theory. Like, no, you idiot. It's literally part of every single fucking language. Anyway. Blue hair and pronouns. You have blue hair and pronouns. I'm going to get a coffee mug. It says, don't talk to me about gender.

Don't talk to me until I've had my gender. Yeah. If you find that mug, let me know because I want to trade that out for my work mug. I really want to get those, don't talk to me until I've had my son mugs and it's Saturn devouring his son. So there is still advocacy about fixing these anti-queer issues with web filters, especially so that kids get access to information about being queer and also like basic. Like if you didn't learn about sex in school, you should probably have somewhere to learn it. So library is good place. Book reports and hand jobs.

You know, they go hand in hand. But there's kind of changes in the general internet. And a lot of them are happening in the innovative state of Louisiana. So there was a really fun story that I found, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. But you've got like these TikTok bans in states because people, and so what this Louisiana councilman did is he hired private investigator firm to circumvent the library's filters. And so what they did was they went on the library's website, library's computers, and then went on TikTok to circumvent porn bands.

Also Reddit and DuckDuck Go. So basically stuff that I did in middle school. Yep. It's like, how do you get around the filter? Yeah, Google Images. Yeah. That was actually the first time I noticed Google Safe Search because I wasn't thinking. And I was trying to get images on a paper I was writing.

And I needed to get the Olympic lifts. And so I just typed Snatch into Google Images. but luckily I was on the library's website. So I didn't, I only, it like bugged out Google images. Like it didn't give me anything related to anything, except one thing that the Google Safe Search didn't catch, which was like a hentai of like a mechanical pussy. And I was like, oh, right.

This word has multiple meaning. It must be hard work. Because I'm not the construction worker in the 40s. I don't say the word snatch. That's hilarious. And like the funny thing is like any sort of service that then feeds you content as its service, including like Google image search, TikToks, anything like that, this has always been a thing because filters can't do shit about that. Like I think the whole push for like safe search and stuff came out of this because I remember back. in the day when you would accidentally type something like snatch in and you couldn't filter it back

out again with Safe Search because it didn't fucking exist, right? So there were people like, this person's looking at porn and it's like they have a Google image search open or like, yeah, no, I remember that shit happening in the public library in the late, you know, 2000s, 2010s when I was doing public service. It happened all the fucking time. And like, quote, Safe Search, even though I don't like that terminology is really useful because sometimes it's like it might be similar terms and it's useful to filter stuff out and Boolean can only do so much. Yeah.

Boolean can only take you so far, unfortunately. Yeah. If there was Boolean porn, that'd be fun. But anyway, the Louisiana councilman like told everyone that he hired public investigators to like do this. And what they said was he said they like hacked it. And like if that's true, then that is actually like a felony. I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

No one brought this up, but like, you can't do crime. If you actually did hack the library's system, that would be like illegal entry into a computer system, which is like an old school crime that they always hack on. But anyway, I think they just went on TikTok on the library's website. And they're like, there's a dick, found it. So. Found the dick. Found the internet's dick. Wait, you can get naked on TikTok.

You can get naked on anything. It's just a matter whether or not they catch you naked on it. Yeah, I was on the podcast account and one of the people we follow just reblogged straight up porn. I was like, huh, that's porn, huh? Weird. It was like a three, it was like a four second gif of someone just like having sex. I was like, huh, they just left that up? You don't take it.

It was someone, it was someone advertising their only fans or something. Well, isn't that funny too? Because some of the TikTok filtering that people are like using like on alive and shit, like it doesn't actually, it's not actually. being blocked at all. I haven't verified that. I just heard that on Tumblr. So take that with whatever grain of salt. But like, people are self-censoring things that aren't being censored. And then if you put porn on there, it's not getting caught. So it's, fuck your moderation. It doesn't always take stuff down. Like, basically almost immediately makes it impossible to view algorithmically if you mention sex at all. But if you just show it, yeah. But also if you just like,

yeah, I'm sure there's tons of points. But it just, you know, filters can't keep up because the... Like shadow banning. Yeah. Basically, you'll just have no one will view your video if it gets, if it gets flagged. But it might not get taken down immediately. But this article that you shared about the PI going through the internet, like, hacking the library internet. It just, it cracks me up so much.

And like, particularly this, I think it was, I forget if this is the library director anyway, being like, the investigator found a backdoor to break through the library's firewall and viewed inappropriate content, which if he did find a way to break through the firewall, then yeah, that's probably a felony. Yeah, exactly. Or it could just be the, yeah, the filter's not perfect, so therefore it can't catch everything. And I think that might actually be in SEPA somewhere that it has, it's like a good faith effort thing. Like, I don't think that they expected libraries to actually be able to block every single piece of porn that has ever passed over an Ethernet cable. But then they go on to say these actions are a willful violation of library board of control policies concerning internet usage via library computers. And it's like, do these people just not understand the concept of having a policy for something?

And like there being consequences for breaking a policy, but not necessarily for the immediate, like, you know, like, yeah, we have policies for this, you fucking idiots. It's like you do something wrong in our computers. We're going to kick you off of our computers so you can't use them. Like, it's not to try to actually prevent pornography from being on computers. It's so he can say this behavior is not okay in the library and kick you out. Like, it's just such a weird leap of logic for somebody to make. Like, I don't know. And that's probably why conservatives are trying to get on library boards.

So run for your local library board. Yeah. I mean, it's also this, this, they want, it's kind of the only way that the only thing that would make them happy would be shutting off the internet. internet at the library, basically, because, yeah, they're not worried about, like, policies where you have, like, a consequence. Because, again, like, a lot of this stuff that they're like, you know, like, sex trafficking is already illegal. Like, it's kind of like-

Areles born already illegal. If you see somebody watching that on a library computer, call the fucking cops. It's happened before. Like, you're not the first. Anyways. Yeah, it is kind of the same. You should call your cops to your public library. The conflation of things that aren't illegal.

Like, a child sees porn. Yeah. Happens in the woods, too. Like. Yeah. Who amongst amongst us hasn't woken up accidentally at like 3 a.m. While watching a movie with your parents who also fell asleep and then like porn like Skinimax was on because like the TV channel just like kept going after the movie you watched was over. And so you woke up and then like porn was on the TV even though no one put it on.

That sounds like a very unique experience, Jay. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. before I'd like fall asleep, watching TV as a kid. Yeah, if you had satellite, softcore porn would just come on eventually. Oh, yeah, yeah.

But my neighbor did. And we would just be like, you want to watch two people who are naked, but only filmed from like the shoulders up, make out? Softcore porn is such a funny genre of porn. Yeah, like, yeah, like Showtime and HBO and stuff which shows soft porn, like softcore.

Yeah, it's very fun to watch because it's, it's filmed. like porn. So like the boom mics are always falling into the shot and like the stories never make any sense. But you also, there's like not really any sex. You don't see any penetration. Yeah. So me and my friends would watch it and just be like boom mic, boom mic. So I remember one that was just very much like the mummy's curse. Hell yeah. Take a shot every time you see a boom mic. Yeah. Oh, you'd be wasted. But yeah, it was just very, it's very funny genre. There are titties. the software. But yeah, also like on,

I feel like Comedy Central after like 1 a.m. It would just be Girls Gone Wild ads every 10 minutes. Yeah. Which were, you know, they were digitized boobies, but there's a lot of them. Yeah. So the, yeah, if I just noticed in that article later that the guy went on. Having fun. The guy went on Twitter to say like, it's fake news to suggest to use tacking.

But I think, like, in the transcript of the meeting, they said they hacked it because he wanted to sound cool. I'm a hacker. Unix system. I know this. Yeah, I realize, oopsie. Maybe you don't use that. The federal government will hire hackers to do their hacking for them legally. Yeah.

To test shit. Not your buddy who runs a PI. Right. Finding a loophole is not hacking. I'm sorry. I'm in. That is not. Hacker voice.

It wasn't hacking when we changed my middle school's website to. to say that the principal was Fidel Castro. It's like, no, it just, you were, you could change the website if you were on the school's IP address. Incredible. Go cyclones. No, and like part of, this whole episode just got me thinking earlier, because like with the content categories, they used to be really, really, really bad.

And like in the article that you have about like anti-LGBQ web filters and that kind of thing, it used to be really, really terrible. Like, you couldn't go to, like, the article talks about how, like, couldn't go to, like, the Trevor Project or, you know, these, like, mental health resources that talked about gender and sexual. Galatine's a big one, right? Garletine, that kind of thing, like, being blocked and used to be really, really terrible. But at least the products I have seen that have content, content category filtering, which is probably what almost everybody's using because the Internet is huge. And it's impossible to keep up with that shit manually, right? So most of them now have split up pornography and sexuality, at least in the ones that I have

looked at. They're different content categories. And the sexuality one explicitly says not pornography related to sites about LGBTQ, gender, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I think a lot of the companies that are doing, building these lists have picked up on that split. and in a lot of ways are at least respecting it, at least the ones that I have looked at and explicitly say if you look at it, this does not include websites about, you know, queer shit. But I think it's probably just localized. I think that a lot of libraries or whatever

are just leaving it checked out of caution instead of actually looking to see what that category contains because that can be kind of tricky to find. I don't know. I've really deeply dug into what the content categories covered when I was looking at our firewall at my previous library to see what should and shouldn't actually be checked just simply because like that taste list, it's like even if it is, why is it our business to block it? We only care about blocking porn for SEPA. But I think a lot of a lot of things are out of caution and not out of actual real need, if that makes sense. So I was thinking about this because like we have the test the filters, right? And so, like, I always used to go to ogloff.com because that way, if the filter

didn't work, I wasn't at least showing, like, you know, somebody couldn't walk behind my work desk, like my work monitor and see, like, you know, pussy. It would just be like a cartoon dick, which is why I used Ogloff, which if you're not familiar, Ogloff is a sex comedy comic. It's like the best web comic. Which is just, it's just so fucking hilarious. But the labroth one's my favorite. Yeah. The face. The Cums Ferrit ones were always my favorite. The Dyke Pirates. Yeah.

Anyway, like, so there's no reason, especially if you work in a public library, there's absolutely no reason for you not to test these filters. It'll be probably on the Wi-Fi, because the Wi-Fi has to be filtered. It'll be on your public computers. It'll be on your children's computers. You can just hop on Wi-Fi on your phone and Google a bunch of shit and, you know, pull up a bunch of websites that you know shouldn't be checked and see what that content category filter is. And if it's sexuality and it's the Trevor project, then you should probably

try to raise a stink and be like, why are we blocking this? Because it's probably just some lazy fucking admin who hasn't actually stopped and thought about it and unchecked that box because they don't actually know what libraries are supposed to be doing for public libraries. I have absolutely no advice of your school library. Sorry. My private graduate school has internet filters. And it blocked me the menu of a restaurant because it was included in like bars and alcohol and tobacco. And like does some of the students are my age? And like does your college even take, like it does it even take E rate money? Like what is I don't know because it's private.

Exactly. What is what is legally making them do that? There's probably nothing. It's probably just a cisadmin being like these should probably be blocked. It's an absolute judgment call on somebody's part, and you figure out whose judgment call that was and call them out on it, basically. No, I know. Yeah, like, it's, it's blocked me being able to do stuff for the homoestaurus sometimes

because I have to be able to, like, go to, like, kink websites or, like, you know, like stuff about, like, yeah, like, to do research for the words that I'm trying to write scope notes for. Yeah. I feel like that's definitely. someone in IT department doesn't want to deal with why is there like old lettuce on my desk? This is the bunnies lettuce.

Say thanks rabbits. It's not Taco Bell. That's gross. It's like slimy. They'll still eat it. It's like under my keyboard. What the fuck? Why is there a keyboard lettuce?

Anyway, the other thing I want to talk about. It would be a good band name keyboard lettuce. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to talk about though is the Louisiana Porn Passport. Because this is sort of like another good band name. Yeah. You have to verify your ID to get on the major porn websites, which is interesting because, like, I don't know how they're going to enforce this.

It seems like Porn Hub and UPorn and Red Tube are complying. And basically you have to use this, like, third party that will verify your Louisiana driver's license because you can't make everyone do sessions, right? like your IP, your ISP isn't going to verify your age or whatever before it sends you to a porn website. Although, I think that's probably what they want is that your ISP would completely tie you to an identifier that then it just turns everything into a terminal. Like everything will become a session. Like the open internet will kind of end and you will just log into the internet with your driver's license. This was something I think, I don't know if I wrote about it, but it was something I was reading about to do a chapter like a few years ago.

So it's not clear. It's not like close in my head, but it's kind of the mixture of how are infrastructures changing to cloud-based infrastructure, which is kind of turning our computers back into like dumb terminals instead of these independent computing machines. And I think they're trying to do that with the internet in general. And that makes sense to me. That's how I'm making sense of it. Just a bunch of Bloomberg terminals.

Yeah. I mean, libraries are kind of like having the same problem with single sign on, not single sign on, but with like tracking your sessions to make it easier for people to use library resources, make our work more visible, but it also like tracks, you know, it does have to give you an identifier even if it's not tracked to you, but anything that can be the identified can be reidentified with enough contextual information, which was something I had to explain to my colleagues. work because we were talking about data cartels. And I had to say, like, no, when you go into a database, it gives you a session token. And with enough aggregate information, that can be de-identified by the vendor. I know. It's trends. They're not good. The thing about this porn passport thing, too, is like, it's, again, it's one of those things that's like, it's already in place, just not in a way that you approve of. So it's like, this used to just be like clicking that I'm 13 years old. I'm at least 13 years old to use this website button before you could, like, go to certain websites. You know, it's like, it's already there implicit in, like, the terms of service and shit.

Also, like, let teenagers watch porn. Also, yeah. You know, it's fine. Yeah. Like, I wouldn't have gotten to, like, figure out that I was gay in the first way, the first time, without being able to watch porn and be like, oh, okay, you know. Yeah, it is silly. The idea that, like, you're not sexual until you're 18.

It's just like an insane perspective. Yeah, like there's like, I mean, and don't let the conservatives know this. There is sex in young adult novels. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's the problem. Yeah. That's the porn that's in schools right now.

The good heterosexual sex is in there even, I promise. Yep. That's most of what's in there is heterosexual sex. But like, they should. Like, there should be sex in like stuff for teens. Because guess what? Teenagers have sex. Yeah.

It's, it's, again, it's just that. conservative thing of like it's not actually about what's actually happening it's about what it's about control over what they think is happening it's like I don't know if this happened to either of you but like when you were in like so when did you either of you have to do like sex ed for like the first time I think Washington it's like third ninth and 12th grade I feel like it was every three years maybe fourth grade or second grade. I remember with school I was at and I went to a different school in third grade. So it was second or fourth.

Mine was like seventh or eighth grade depending on like what year it was. But I remember in my sex ed class and they split it off by gender. And so in the girls when I was a girl child back when it was abstinence only sex ed. Like we learned what like a dick and balls was and what a clitoris and all that was. And we were told, you know, don't shave your legs when you go on a date so that you don't fuck someone. And we were all seventh and eighth grade. And there was a pregnant girl in the class, you know?

It was like seventh or eighth grade, right? Just a comedy sketch like, oh, now you tell me. Oh, that's what happened. It's like a good like kids in the hall skit, right? Yeah. Yeah. When I was in 12th grade, actually, I think that might have been an anatomy class. I don't know.

In one of my classes, I think it was, I think it was an anatomy. me class. We actually had a unit on STIs and including pictures. So they just like showed us pictures. Yeah, it was pretty gnarly. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely like a gross you out thing. Because yeah, when I took my my health class that was taught by the wrestling coach. Yeah, I think they would bring in like someone to show us the gross stuff. He was funny. I remember the, the lady who came in to give us a special talk or something. She said, oh, you know, there's lots of myths out there and you have to be careful about what you

believe your friend's telling you because there was a story of one boy who didn't know how condoms worked and his friend told him that he had to poke a hole in the end of the condoms otherwise the pressure would make his balls explode. Oh, God. And our coach went, oh, if you told me that, I'd have to poke three or four holes in it.

Jesus Christ. I always remember that because that was very, She was not amused by his joke. I thought it was funny. She was trying to set a tone. He shot it down immediately. He just thought that was really funny, but it was. It is funny.

It's a funny story. Yeah, they didn't separate us by gender in middle school. It was only in elementary school. Basically, I think it was to teach girls about their periods. I think that was really the only reason they ever split us up. Same here. because like, God forbid, a man ever have to think about, you know, an instration. Yeah.

Otherwise, he might be embarrassed buying tampons. Yeah, but yeah, once it was- My dad is a Chad and would buy me tampons when I was a child. Once it was middle school, it was just, it was just kind of, I think we had the same one several times where they would just like do the stretchy thing on the condom. Like, you know, I can fit my arm in a condom. Here's a female condom. You'll never see it again for us of real life. I don't even know where you can buy it.

I feel I call them. You're going to get them from like an online vendor. Specialty stores. Well, because I know you can get dental dams. Well, yeah, but those are different. Yeah, yeah, those are different. But a diaphragm. Some people do use those, but.

They're bringing it back a little bit and that like for like, there's this thing that you can buy because I've used it before is where instead of like, you know, the concept like a menstrual cup. Yeah. They're like big. Now they make them, you can buy them where it's like, you know, like a ring. Yeah. That's kind of almost got like cling film in it.

Oh, yeah. So that it's like for your period and it just pops right up over your cervix so that you can fuck. Yeah. But also it's just like, just put a towel down. With the love of God. I mean, I've worn them because I just like didn't want to, you know, it was like I was bad at being consistent with my tea and then my period came back for a little bit. And I was like, ah! And then I put that thing in because I didn't want to deal with it or look at it.

It worked. It worked. Bringing endorsement. Or using them to get pregnant, I've heard. Oh, yeah. The blinksters of three people who are not trying to get anyone pregnant. No. The diaphragms? The menstrual cups, yeah. Keep those swimmers in.

Oh. I haven't looked up the specifics on how people are doing it, but I just know it's a thing. That's my assumption. I have never tried to get anyone pregnant on purpose. Yes. Seems like it has. I almost made a very crude joke, but I'm not going to because I am a good Christian boy. But yeah, this is just how I've been trying to think about the E-rate and the modern censorship, and I wanted to finally do an E-Rate episode.

Yeah, I'm really mad about the filtering. It's not just library internet filtering. It's just like all of the internet where I work. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's already like precedent in like UK laws because I feel like their porn laws on the internet are really strict. But I don't really hear about it as much anymore. But it kind of, they already have, I think, like this passport system. I think you pretty much do have to actually verify your age to use porn in the UK. I can't remember. I'm going to double check that. I think I had watched porn in the UK when I was there. I know they have some kind of more strict. I lived there for like six weeks in 20. 2013. It might be newer than that.

Is it? Okay. Because the last time I was in the UK was 2019, but I was not doing any jerking off because I was traveling with a friend. And not in a sexual way, but just I'm not going to jerk off while traveling with my friend. Yeah, it was 2017. Oh, I guess it ended up failing. Oh, good. But it was a system of age checks, and it was, you had to show you.

over 18. So I guess it didn't really go through. But it was as recently as like 2019 when it was in the news. Oh, one other thing I wanted to say, if you go to your IT and you say, why is this blocked? And they tell you that it's for security and it's like fucking the Trevor Project or FetLife or some shit. You call them out on that bullshit right then and there. Every, every filter can tell the difference between malware and any kind of serious security issue than from content. They're never the same thing on those because they know, they know what's going on there. So if you hear the excuse that it's for security, it's not. Don't let them get away with it.

All I want in life right now is French fries. Yeah. No, I just am looking at the internet censorship in the UK. But yeah, it's all done at the ISP level. And that's what I think is probably going to be the next battleground here. But it looks like you can, you basically just tell your ISP to opt you out of these filters. But it's kind of the same content categories. drugs, alcohol, tobacco, file sharing, gambling, games, pornography, nudity, social networking, suicide, self-harm, weapons, violence, obscenity, criminal skills. Cool.

Cyberbullying, hacking, web blocking circumvention. Yep. Just a VPN. Yeah. Oh, the translate, on mine translators are translators and proxies or something. Oh, yeah. Proxies are really. But I also, that means I can't go on Google Translate.

Yeah, no, it's really fucking stupid. And I'm like, I don't know why. But, Sadie, go look in the list that you can look at or whatever and see. And what's the criminal skills, what websites are in there? Hold on. I'll look at them. I'll see if I can find the one from my previous work because I had it bookmarked for a reason. And I'll throw it in the chat.

Yeah, so we can all learn criminal skills. Criminal skills. Or at least what they define is criminal skills anyways. Each of us has to pick a different one to learn. I want to learn lock picking. Web filter categories. Justin, which one do you want to learn? I want to learn how to become the Joker.

Okay, that's a good one. Do Joker's show. Sadie, what about you? Sadie, what kind of criminal skills do you want to learn? I, oh. File sharing. No, I know how to do that already. Yeah.

I'd take lockpicking. I'm locked out of my house the other day and had to break. in. It would have been nice if I didn't have to, like, if I hadn't broken in, I would have had to pay a $100 fee for somebody from the property management to come out and let me in, even though they didn't even know if they had a key to my front door. So. Back when I went to England in 2019 on a, on a vacation, and I had someone come to feed my lizard, this was before I had Arthur. I just had a, I just had coop. And I'm

an idiot who hasn't had two doors before, like, who hasn't had, like, who hasn't had, like, like a garage to get to the car door and a front door. And guess who left the chain on his front door? Oh, no. And so the person who I had coming to feed my animal was like, uh, got an issue. And I like texted my landlord to see if maybe he had an extra garage door opener to open the garage so that then the person looking at my, for my lizard could like get into the door through there.

And he was like, nope. I was like, great. And so she had to look up, how do you undo the chain? She could unlock the door and open it and then the chain. And so how do you take the chain out and stuff? So she had like go in and actually unscrew it. Like she had to break into my house. Like remove the chain.

I don't drive by while you're doing that. Yeah. I had to look it up on her phone, I think. I'd like break it into my house. And it made me realize how fucking easy that is. She just do it. That's why security doors are all like built into the frame of the door so that you can't unscrew the hinges. And that's also why I can't get rid of the security doors on my house because they are,

I would have to rip the door frame out. I don't want to do it. But they're annoying. Yeah, let's see here. I'm looking at this list now. And under adult and mature content, They've got abortion, advocacy organizations, which is interesting. Alcohol, alternative beliefs, dating, gambling, lingerie and swimsuit, marijuana, nudity and risque, nudity, and risque, other adult materials, pornography, sex education, sports hunting and war games, tobacco and weapons sales.

And when I first looked at the filter categories, let's see. Is there no criminal skills? I don't see criminal skills. No. Laundrae and swimsuit, nudity and risque, pornography, and other adult materials were all checked. And I was like literally the only one we need is pornography checked. The rest of it, we don't have a responsibility to do. I'm surprised anti-circumvention isn't in there.

Oh, no, it is. That's just not under the adult mature category. It's under... Because that's what I would do. But my last job is I would go to a proxy website and just put the URL in there. And then that would be how I would get to the website I wanted. But then eventually the anti-circumvention filters started catching some of those. Yeah.

Anyway, that's all. We've already gone long enough. I want French fries. And I'm so mad that instead of a big, big bed, it's... You're talking away from the like. I don't care. I've got two bigger beds. I've got two smaller beds.

And am I supposed to just jump back and forth between them? One is for your clothes. I was just about to say that. One of them is for suitcase. One of them is for sleeping. When I was at Fest, I picked the one that had the few of stains on it because I was in like a rehab motel. Yeah. The floor was both sticky and slippery.

Gross. I don't know how. The magic of substances. I had to wear socks everywhere. It was gross. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, good night.