Library's porn plan opposed
By JIM DICKINS
27aug02
MORALS campaigner and National Party MP DeAnne Kelly hit out on Monday at plans to set up an internet pornography collection at the National Library of Australia.
Ms Kelly, prominent in efforts to ban controversial French film Baise Moi this year, said public funds should not be diverted to preserve obscene material.
"I thoroughly disapprove of any taxpayer money for anything like that," Ms Kelly said.
"Pornographic web sites are pornographic websites. They're not art and the National Library should be focusing on other things."
NLA digital archiving manager Margaret Phillips confirmed the library was preparing to include pornographic websites on its Internet archive, known as Pandora.
She said it would fail in its mission to record a broad snapshot of contemporary Australian life if it ignored the phenomenon.
"We look at topics at the forefront of debate at the moment and we record for posterity and try to give a bit of a slice of what the Internet is like at a particular point in time," Ms Phillips said.
Pandora includes thousands of other Internet pages devoted to government and society, business and academia.
Ms Phillips said strict precautions would be taken to ensure children and the general public were not exposed to pornographic material
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