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No, they really are looking for kids searching for porn. See COPA.

Credit cards are a universally poor way to verify age. Anybody who claims to be using them for such is either stupid, or lying.

Both the Communications Decency Act (before it was overturned for other reasons) and the the Child Online Protection Act spedcified credit card validation was an acceptable age verification tool. I agree that it is a poor way to verify age, but that is the way the laws are written. This means that anyone with mature content can use credit card verification to avoid possible litigation.

Like it or not, credit card verification is common. Here are some links to read up on it.

Age Verification Systems
Yahoo! Credit Card Verification Help
Instructions on verifying age on your AIM account using a credit card
Credit Card Required To View 'M' Rated Information

If you want unbiased, read through the report yourself... If you are basing your opinion on any news station, you are not going to get the real story.

Original Source of the Bill

At the COPA, COPA Commission
Music and fashion were always the passion
At the COPA, they fell in love

People involved with the bill can be found with this press release.

COPA has its own site and a commision that put it together. Interestingly, they link to a bunch of research papers (many pdfs) Hearings and meetings too. Just skimming, it appears they made something of at least an attempt at a balanced inqury.

And what karma whoring post would be complete without a link to the statute?

People involved with the bill can be found with this press release.

COPA has its own site and a commision that put it together. Interestingly, they link to a bunch of research papers (many pdfs) Hearings and meetings too. Just skimming, it appears they made something of at least an attempt at a balanced inqury.

And what karma whoring post would be complete without a link to the statute?

People involved with the bill can be found with this press release.

COPA has its own site and a commision that put it together. Interestingly, they link to a bunch of research papers (many pdfs) Hearings and meetings too. Just skimming, it appears they made something of at least an attempt at a balanced inqury.

And what karma whoring post would be complete without a link to the statute?

As far as I know, they're allowing non-US, non-Canadian users, but Second Life has some problems with keyboards other than "standard" US 101-key ones. It's basically punctuation that's the problem, so you can still use it, but if you want to do scripting, or come across as being more literate than a WebTV user, you'll want a "standard" keyboard. As for the age restriction, they're still working on implementing parental controls. Just part of the hassle of living with the Child Online Protection Act. [copacommission.org] replicate

Don't you think that if you had a high-profile web site, and Hatch was on an anti-pornography tirade (of course that has never happened before), that he wouldn't throw you in jail, or at least make your life hell, if he could?

What this argument boils down to is this: you condone the distribution and viewing of child porn. I do not. I am not going to be able to convince you that I'm right, and you sure as hell aren't going to convince me that you're right.

There is therefore no point in carrying the discussion any further. I am going to stop responding to your posts. Just as a parting salvo, here are a few relevant links to resources on this issue. That last link is part of the US government's site concerning the Child Online Protection Act, a poorly written piece of legislation with its heart in the right place. Still, they've got links there to LOTS of useful materials on all aspects of the debate and representing all positions (Lawrence Lessig and PeaceFire.org appear, for example).

Approximately every fifteen seconds, a child somewhere in the world is sexually abused. Tonight you can go to sleep safe in the knowledge that you have done your part to help perpetuate this state of affairs.

Good bye, and better riddance.

1. although the librarians were required to turn it off they may not want to.
2. this would force everyone to get clearence from a librarian and basically announce to the world at large what they are looking at before they do so, opening them up to censure.
3. Many systems block sites "invisibly" or in ways that will prevent legitimate adults from ever knowing that they exist and thus being unable to ask for the provision to be turned off.

1. If it can be turned off all the time, it can be accidentally left off, hacked or spoofed thus making the system even less effective in the face of determined teenagers.
2. In the face of recent USA Patriot rulings on librarians being forced to divulge recently secret information this is one more thing that librarians can be forced to log and then divulge.

Gee, only a few years ago, it looks like Mr. Ishikawa was hosting some porn sites and contributing to the spam problem...

Received: from out2.ibm.net [165.87.194.229] by in7.ibm.net id 935310503.141204-1 ; Sun, 22 Aug 1999 08:28:23 +0000
Received: from slip202-135-81-145.bg.th.ibm.net (slip202-135-81-145.bg.th.ibm.net [202.135.81.145]) by out2.ibm.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id IAA12758; Sun, 22 Aug 1999 08:28:16 GMT
Message-Id: <199908220828.IAA12758@out2.ibm.net>
From: (victim)
To: "marki@SBUSINESS.NET" <marki@SBUSINESS.NET>
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 99 15:28:12 +0700
Subject: You provide connectivity to criminal marketing fraud

TO: Mark Ishikawa, Coordinator, SuperBusiness

Dear Mark,

According to traceroute below, you provide connectivity to web1000.com, which operates a system of pornographic internet marketing frauds criminalized under the recent Virginia statute on UCE. They even advertise their webhosting service on the same webpage with the pornography. (I have record copies with me for future use.)

You are now on notice that you are a witting accomplice to web1000's criminal actions.

Please shut off connectivity to this fraud. If you continue to provide connectivity, the Virginia Attorney General can have your California corporate registration revoked for operating contrary to your charter (which is to conduct only legal businesses).

Kind regards,

(victim's signature block)

C:\>tracerte 216.49.10.14
0 bang1br1-tok1.ba.th.ibm.net (152.158.213.46) 187 ms 157 ms 187 ms
1 bang1br1-tok1.ba.th.ibm.net (152.158.213.46) 156 ms 157 ms 218 ms
2 sydn1br1.nz.ibm.net (152.158.248.2) 375 ms 313 ms 312 ms
3 lang1sr1-2-0-1.ca.us.ibm.net (165.87.224.14) 594 ms 500 ms 468 ms
4 lang1br2-ge-6-0-0-0.ca.us.ibm.net (165.87.32.181) 594 ms 468 ms 469 ms
5 sfra1br1-so-0-1-2-0.ca.us.ibm.net (165.87.232.41) 531 ms 500 ms 875 ms
6 sfra1sr2-5-0-0.ca.us.ibm.net (165.87.13.13) 531 ms 500 ms 500 ms
7 165.87.160.225 (165.87.160.225) 500 ms 500 ms 500 ms
8 12.123.12.222 (12.123.12.222) 500 ms 593 ms 500 ms
9 ar3-a3120s1.sffca.ip.att.net (12.127.1.149) 500 ms 562 ms 563 ms
10 12.127.196.94 (12.127.196.94) 593 ms 531 ms 532 ms
11 216.49.0.117 (216.49.0.117) 524 ms 532 ms 531 ms
12 www.webjump.com (216.49.10.14) 523 ms 532 ms 500 ms

C:\>whois -h whois.geektools.com 216.49.10.14
SuperBusiness NET, Inc. (NETBLK-SBN)
150 Almaden Blvd, Suite 500
San Jose, CA 95113
US

Netname: SBN
Netblock: 216.49.0.0 - 216.49.63.255
Maintainer: SBIZ

Coordinator:
Ishikawa, Mark (MI70-ARIN) marki@SBUSINESS.NET
+1 (408) 278-4400 (FAX) +1 408 346-0661

Maybe he got burned and that's why he's so anti-pr0n now.

See here for some of his congressional testimony.

I got confused about the 34 part too, though. but after some google searching, I found some things (including a wierdly titled Salvation army page... Anyone care to explain the 34 here?).. but max age for ROTC is 30, but " waiverable to age 34 in certain circumstances"...
most importantly, apparently the max age for enlisting in the army is 34 years old, according to this table (incidentally, it's the same for the navy, but 27 for the AF and Coast guard and 28 for the Marine Corps [a.k.a. Uncle Sam's Misguided Children]/USMC)

Wouldn't it be better called teens.us, per COPA? ;-)

they can declare a particular point was constutionally vague enough to allow mistakes to be made

Letting the judiciary rule on the state of mind of the legislature usurps the prerogative of the electorate.

COPA is a good example of the problem. The Act states that "the protection of the physical and psychological well-being of minors by shielding them from materials that are harmful to them is a compelling governmental interest." If legislators were responding to pressure from their constituents who were more concerned with the well-being of their children than with their freedom of speech, well, that's what legislators do.

The whole point of separation of powers is that different branches of government respond to different pressures. It would defeat the system if the legislature answered both to the electorate and the judiciary.

my point is that are lawmakers are continually passing laws that are obviously unconstitutional...

Continually? Obviously? Occasionally and debatably are more accurate. To maintain that elected representatives are a persistent threat to freedom contradicts the very idea and purpose of democracy.

Election day should be a big enough 2x4 and it constantly has the attention of the elected representatives.

Many more details about the reasons why this isn't as good of an idea as it initially seems are included in the Children's Online Protection Act (COPA) Commission Report. Liza

To quote the ICANN report, which is in turn quoting the COPA commission:

"Privacy and First Amendment concerns may be raised by the clear identification of a 'red light district' and the stigma involved in being found there, and the concern about a 'slippery slope' toward mandatory location in the gTLD."

The evaluation team concluded that at this early "proof of concept" stage with a limited number of new TLDs contemplated, other proposed TLDs without the controversy of an adult TLD would better serve the goals of this initial introduction of new TLDs. If an adult TLD is to be introduced, moreover, it would be beneficial to have a diversity of proposals, with a diversity of possible approaches to the various problems, from which to choose.

Incidentally, wouldn't this discussion have been a lot more useful if Timothy had taken the two minutes necessary to find and include a link to the ICANN report, or maybe even the ten minutes necessary to read the relevant section and add a couple of comments?

Seriously though, there are probably 100+ filters or filtered ISPs on the market. You can get a reasonable list from GetNetWise. But no one has a service that lets you test against multiple products. The COPA Commission recommended that a neutral independent testing authority be created to test these products; if such a thing is ever created, /.ers should let them know that URL testing is a feature we'd like to see.

It isn't too hard to check some of the big ones. SurfControl, which sells CyberPatrol and SurfWatch, and several corporate-oriented products, has links to two test-your-site pages from h ere .

NetNanny provides a list of filtered sites when you buy the program, that is human-readable, so you could buy it and look at it.

N2H2 has such a large share of the school, library & reseller market, and provides a free-download home product, that they are also worth a specific test, even though there isn't a URL test page available.

Liza

Her name was Donna, she was an author, / She's been on daytime TV, got a shiny B.Sc. / She wants to censor - all of the porno / But being the EiE VP, that was not enough for she / She had recieved a sign, to protect kids on-line / With a congressional appointment, who could ask - for - more - 'cause the COPA, ... (etc)