LIBRARIES TO MODIFY NET FILTERS; KERN CONCEDES TO ACLU.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Kern County library patrons will have the choice of filtered or unfiltered: not cigarettes, but the Internet.

Resolving a First Amendment conflict with the American Civil Liberties Union, Kern County officials agreed to remove from one computer at every library the Internet ``filtering'' software intended to block viewing of sexually explicit material.

``We don't want to get into litigation,'' Kern County Board of Supervisors Chairman Pete Parra said Wednesday. ``There are other things we need to be focusing on.''

At the 18 library branches that have only one Internet computer, the filtering software will be removed while the county buys and installs new computers that will have the software. Expected to cost about $40,000, the new computers should be installed in the next seven to 10 days, said Parra.

Libraries also will have staff members oversee minors to ensure they are not viewing sexually explicit material, officials said.

All Internet computers at the county's library branches were equipped with filtering software intended to block patrons from viewing sexually explicit material deemed harmful under the California penal code.

However, the ACLU, saying the filtering software was blocking speech protected by the First Amendment, threatened a lawsuit.

The ACLU sent a letter to the Kern County Board of Supervisors on Jan. 21 threatening litigation if the county did not remove the filtering software in the next 10 days. The ACLU had been negotiating with the county for more than a year on the issue, according to the letter.

``We're pleased they made this announcement,'' Peter Eliasberg, an attorney for the ACLU, said after Tuesday's vote. ``We're pleased to resolve this without costly litigation. The government acted responsibly.''

The county decided in July 1996 to require filtering software after a Rosamond mother became alarmed when she discovered minors were using the Rosamond library computer to view pornography.

The ACLU said the filtering software blocked a wide variety of material, including sites providing information on preventing domestic violence and sexual abuse, sites discussing censorship issues, and sites with U.S. Supreme Court rulings on obscenity.

``The censorship of online resources through the use of filters violates the First Amendment rights of adult and minor patrons of the library, as well as the First Amendment rights of the Internet speakers whose sites are blocked,'' the ACLU said in its letter to the county.

County officials said they worked to try to refine the filtering system, but ultimately concluded that the technology simply isn't available to make distinctions between protected and ``harmful'' material.