I was reading a fairly interesting New York Observer article about the culture of the Netflix queue, of which I am an active participant, when I came across the following passage (bold is mine):

“I hector people to use it, kind of embarrassingly,” said Robert Levine, a former senior editor at Wired, now a freelance writer. “A friend of mine was complaining she was late in returning a DVD to Blockbuster, and I was like, ‘Why would you want someone charging you a late fee?’ It’s not like the late fees are so financially onerous, but they send you a notice that it’s late in the mail. And then you have to go in and pay. If they could just take the fucking late fee from my credit card, it’d be fine. But then you have to go into the store and wait in line again. I mean, it’s like getting in trouble with the library. I don’t understand why anyone puts up with it.”

I’m sure I don’t need to analyze the faults of Mr. Levine’s analogy for you, but his comments raise a compelling point: why don’t more libraries allow patrons to pay their fines online? Why, if we are going to maintain financial penalties, do we not provide all possible means to settle up? Isn’t the burden of having to pay the fine taxing enough?