Slashdot Mirror

Why people would think its anythign else is beyond me. Every time I read these articles I tend to shiver, and then sigh. Shiver because this stuff is popular, and sigh because most people are clueless about the true motives.

You don't want your kid looking at smut? Turn off MTV. You don't want your daughter becoming a devil worshiper? Try instilling a religion You don't want your son smoking pot? Teach him what it does to you.

Something is seriously wrong when you allow technology to be the parent. Nuff said.

My girlfriends calls the world that you and I want Utopia. I agree with you all the way, idiots can ruin great things without a moment's notice.

Humans CAN'T get along, people are impaired from helping each other, one would rather kill his friend to get the big bag of money than save his friend and get a lesser bag. I came across a site yesterday that talks about The Prisoner's Dilemma - very intresting reading about human nature. This Geekflavor incident is a clear demonstration of this, script kiddiots and e-tards working together to blast "A Good Thing"(tm) clear out of the water.

Well, on the other hand, it did come out on Slashdot...

Allowing the police/school to do this would absolutely crush free speech on the net.

There is a very blurry line between what this kid did, and just simple criticism. Throwing someone in jail for criticizing government officials is downright scary. I think we should always err on the side of freedom in these cases.

Something like this is especially troubling for me, because I run a website(Free PHS) criticizing my own school administration, and at times I get downright vitriolic. And yet, I don't think anything I'm doing is illegal. If criticizing the government is not protected by the First Amendment, then what is?

Anyway, I think that there are a lot of people who don't understand the internet and are therefore much more scared of sites on the net than they would be of other forms of speech. It's important to ask yourself, in all these cases, whether you'd treat the student any differently if, instead of publishing on the net, he had said the same thing to some friends(or put it in an underground newspaper)

BTW, a good book on this topic is "Sex, Laws and Cyberspace", by Jonathan Wallace(who also runs The Ethical Spectacle)

First hit, a critical essay:

Sex, Lies and Censorware

... Sex, Lies and Censorware By James S. Tyre..

Also referenced on the third hit, and later.

Turn on "SafeSearch".

You can't find the essay anywhere in the returned results.

Similar results with: lies censorware tyre

Apparently it's safety from criticism too ...

- the Boston Lunatic

First of, there is nothing new in censorware malfunctioning like this. There is nothing new that censorware block sites they shouldn't. Take a look at peacefire.org for lots of examples.

beaver.com should pursue every maker of censorware that blocks their pages. They block legitimate pages, legitimate universities .. and so forth.

Furthermore, I read that the inquerier article "promoted" cybersitter from solid oak software. Well, take a look at the aforementioned peacefire site. Solid Oak software don't want criticism. They block every page that critizises their software. Like www.spectacle.org which has delivered quite a lot of criticism.

Not to mention. I wrote to solid oak once, and told them my opinion about them blocking peacefire, and that I would NOT buy any form of product from them, as long as they had that kind of attitude. You know what the jerks did? Heck, they mailed my abuse@department. The funny thing is .. I *am* my abuse department. When I answered to their complaint that they were being childish, and that they should stop sending *fake* abuse-messages (complaining about SPAM? When I send them opinions and feedback?). The freaking head of solidoak answered that they had sent the case to the "FPI" for investigation (I have a feeling that the nutcase have some problems with writing "fbi" or something ;)

Ohwell. Enough ranting.


--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet

THE X-STOP FILES: The Truth Isn't Out There

Call me a tight-assed conservative, but I don't think that the government ought to be subsidising the erotic arousal of others. Unless I'm missing a large part of the situation, these groups are calling for blocking software to be put on government libraries' computers. This is not a call to block private transmissions on the Internet.

(I already made this argument in a reply to a reply of this message, but I think it's a particularly good one, so I'l repeat it...)

This argument makes no sense. You're not willing to subsidize my looking at online porn, but you are willing to subsidize my NOT looking at it? Blocking software isn't free. There'll be the obligatory upgrades, etc. Add to that the costs of the legal challenges (and remember, this is probably unconstitutional to begin with... see this article), and very soon my arousal is cheap in comparison.

A bit off-topic, but still related: If you want to know the real costs (both financial & societal) of enforcing these sorts of "Moral Laws", check out Peter McWilliams book "Ain't nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in our Free Country." The full text is available online at www.mcwilliams.com, but the printed book is well worth the price ($8). In particular check out the chapter "It's very expensive" which talks about the financial costs of enforcing laws against consensual crimes (Gambling, drugs, pornography, etc.)

And instead it's got people's knickers in a twist.

I'd like to see how techies could conspire to reorganise things from the ground up. Sort of along the lines of Bruce Sterling's Manifesto of January 3, 2000 .