But, again, just imagine that there was no Internet, and that all two-dimensional smut was still on paper, celluloid, or magnetic tape. Now imagine trying to argue before a cash-strapped city council that the local public library must not only provide some porn — free of charge! — to the public, but that it must provide mountains of it free of charge to the public, all because the First Amendment says so.

You’d be laughed out of the room.

Did the First Amendment change with the invention of the Internet? Of course not. What changed is that librarians lost both the “scarce resources” excuse and the backbone to invoke any other rationale — decency, child welfare, hygiene, safety, etc. — for barring porn from public libraries.