themselves before gaining access to a particular Web site, we
believe that it fails adequately to address the overblocking
problem.


In particular, even allowing anonymous requests for
unblocking burdens patrons' access to speech, since such requests
cannot immediately be acted on. Although the Tacoma Public
Library, for example, attempts to review requests for unblocking
within 24 hours, requests sometimes are not reviewed for several
days. And delays are inevitable in libraries with branches that
lack the staff necessary immediately to review patron unblocking
requests. Because many Internet users "surf" the Web, visiting
hundreds of Web sites in a single session and spending only a
short period of time viewing many of the sites, the requirement
that a patron take the time to affirmatively request access to a
blocked Web site and then wait several days until the site is
unblocked will, as a practical matter, impose a significant
burden on library patrons' use of the Internet. Indeed, a
patron's time spent requesting access to an erroneously blocked
Web site and checking to determine whether access was eventually
granted is likely to exceed the amount of time the patron would
have actually spent viewing the site, had the site not been
erroneously blocked. This delay is especially burdensome in view
of many libraries' practice of limiting their patrons to a half
hour or an hour of Internet use per day, given the scarcity of
terminal time in relation to patron demand.


The burden of requiring library patrons to ask permission to