Here's news from UCLA:
Initially unaware of this policy, Nick Rowe, a former student employee at YRL, responded to a complaint about a man viewing pornography with swift action that turned out to be against library policy.
“I got a complaint from a woman who was really freaked out about what this man was looking at, so I went to go deal with the situation immediately,” Rowe said. “I tapped the guy on the shoulder and told him he needed to leave.”
The man eventually did leave, but Rowe was later approached by his supervisor and reprimanded.
I don't understand how one person wins and one loses in this battle for privacy. If the building is a public place and anyone is allowed in, then at what point do their activities in this public place become private. If I use a computer to look at pictures of penises that can be seen by anyone who passes behind me, and that's okay, then why is it against the rules to expose my own penis to be seen by passers-by? What if the images displayed on the computer were taken of my penis? Is it against the rules only if they can prove it's my penis and not a stranger's? So I can expose my own penis to others as long as it's a digital image displayed on a screen in the library and one can't prove that it's mine? What if I print out the image? What if I print the image on a tee-shirt and wear it into the library? What if I take the page with the image and place it in front of my crotch? Is it okay only if my pants are zipped? What if my penis is outside of my pants but concealed behind the printed image? Are these things okay in the library?
That's what drives me crazy about all this access to viewing pornography on computers in the library: if all of this other stuff is wrong, then why is this one thing right?
