Free Speech

We were reading through the material sent home by the school regarding use of their computers. One of the phrases caught our attention. It said, essentially, that if your child finds anything on the internet to which you object, it's not the school's fault. I remarked that I would hope they at least have some filtering software on their PCs, and then thought that given that some people object to having such software on library PCs, they'd likely object to having it on school PCs, too.

My wife pointed out that in a library, a librarian can refuse to shelve certain books, or shelve them only in a restricted location, so it ought to logically follow that a librarian could place limits on what was accessible via other media. I said that I agreed, but that people argued that this was a restriction on their right of free speech. I went on to say that I thought that this right was an abused one, and that it had popularly become a right to say whatever you want, wherever you want, without consequence. Further, I thought that a number of people took it to mean that if you wanted to express yourself in a way that others found offensive, you did not give up the right to be paid -- that is, if your movie is offensive to me, I cannot refuse to show it; if your comedy is offensive to me, I cannot censor it. I said that I thought this was wrong -- that if you have the right to speech, it does not mean the right to unlimited speech.

To my surprise, my wife disagreed, saying that it meant exactly that, and that the owner of a medium -- the television station, the source of funds for the art show, whomever -- could not censor what was shown on their medium.

I'll have to think about that, because I respect her opinion.