Sex Work Awareness (SWA) has been named the United States country research partner for the Exploratory Research on Internet & Sexuality (EROTICS) research project, funded by the Association for Progressive Communications. Other research teams are from Brazil, Lebanon-Egypt, South Africa, and India.

We are investigating the use of content filters on public library computers with Internet access. The priority research areas are access to information about sexuality and sexual reproductive health. We need help with this work, and request that people all over the United States visit their local public library and do some simple searches. In places with filters, the items that are filtered are not standard across systems. Filtering today cannot be fine-tuned to exclude only pornographic or violent content rather than health information. For example, in a large east coast city, only the word “anal” seemed to be filtered, which prevented people from gaining access to information about anal cancer as well as any potential sexual content.

If you have any questions or comments about our research project please email us at research@sexworkawareness.org

We need the help of people who live (or visit places) all over the United States to complete this study. We’re asking folks to stop by their local public library and attempt to visit five different websites, and then search five different terms – and report your experience back to us. We have a simple survey with instructions at infoandthelibrary.org, a nice, easy to remember domain. That way, you can access our form and enter your results while you’re at the library.

Why Is This Important?
In the United States, access to the Internet is controlled by both governments and corporations. The right to information may exist, but no corporation is responsible for fulfilling this right and can restrict the ways its software, programs, and platforms are used. Private corporations simply have no obligation to offer free access to information. As a result, information about sexual health and reproductive rights is frequently curtailed.

People in the United States enjoy freedom of speech and access to information at a level that is not found in many other places. However, people who access the Internet through public computer terminals at libraries may have their ability to access information about sexuality limited.

Policies regulating funds granted to public libraries require libraries to adhere to technology protection measures, as part of the mandate in the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The stated goal of CIPA is to prevent minor’s access to “harmful content.” In libraries this is done through use of filtering software designed by corporations. Access to certain websites is denied based on blacklists or lists of prohibited keywords created by the corporations that design the software. Because no concrete definition of “harmful content” has been established and agreed upon, varying interpretations have lead to unequal access to online sexuality information. The ways in which access is implemented varies among individual libraries and differ based on city, county, and state.

By understanding how content filtering systems limit access to information about sexuality, we hope to create a national and international dialogue about public access to online sexual health information.

Please help us spread the word about this study!

Credit for the photo above:

Many servers and forums are based in the US, therefore the US research team’s description of context is relevant to each of Erotics Project research countries. Sex Work Awareness is the US organization, and co-founderAudacia Ray pointed out to me that Ning, the networking site used for the Erotics Project, instituted a policy excluding ‘adult’ groups on the site. The research project information is not ‘adult’ but this is part of the context that we will include, which we discuss on Ning, bringing this exercise to a meta-level. The real question is how this plays out and affects users.

Ning’s blog points out that the adult groups were the subject of more complaints than others and required more work for the company than other groups because of this. This is reasonable. However, if complaints are the criteria, such justification could be used to shut down forums about any topic, including non-adult themes like our research project discussion, if enough people complain. In other realms, this fear leads people to over-censor their speech and actions. The lack of clarity about what constitutes adult content and groups could contribute to exactly this kind of self-censorship. For example, the US requires an “anti-prostitution pledge”: grant recipients must have a policy “explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking”. No aid agency promotes prostitution, but because there is no clarity or guidance on what this means in practice, organizations have become hyper-vigilant and in some places, this has led to excluding sex workers from services, including health clinics.

Ning has not eliminated sex workers’ groups and hosts groups like ours that address sexual issues. But where is the line where these groups become ‘adult’? It is imperative not to let complaints be the only criteria because then complaints become a tool that could be used politically to censor ideas and discussions that some people don’t want to happen. Sensitive topics could include sexual harassment, breast health, reproductive health, and many more.