This isn’t a new problem, and it’s not even an unexpected one, but it is a difficult one to solve: Do our city’s public libraries need to actively prevent library patrons from using library computers to feast their eyes on internet porn? Dave Levinthal with the News serves up an interesting story about the library, a few of its patrons’ appetites for porn, and what can and can’t be done about it. This is a fairly long and, if you’re interested in civil liberties and free speech issues, complicated story, so I don’t want to synthesize it too much here. The bottom line is that, of course, city councilmen are appalled, librarians aren’t quite sure what to do but don’t want to become babysitters, and internet porn filters either don’t always work or work too well, keeping people from looking at classic art and other potentially racy but not pornographic material. How big is the problem? According to the News story, during a 45-minute period on one day, 7.5% of the pages viewed at the Downtown library contained "identifiably pornographic material, such as photographs depicting full nudity, intercourse and other sex acts."