Slashdot Mirror
View from the Censorware Trenches
The conservative community isn't the only reason that the AFA has chosen the Holland area, in my home state, to be one of its important fronts in the library blocking-software war.
There is an unusual law in the city of Holland that allows any measure to be brought to a ballot vote by petition. This is good in that it brings democracy directly to the people. Unfortunately, if a couple thousand people signed a petition demanding that the mayor must part Lake Michigan or forfeit his salary, that issue would go on the ballot. Democracy doesn't always make sense.
You may have seen press about the Republication presidential candidates campaigning in our fair state. This is because our governor pushed the primary ahead this year, so that we are now one of the first states to cast a ballot for the nominees. Registered Republicans will be going to the polls on Feb.22 to decide which candidate they like best.
Registered Democrats don't get to vote on GOP candidates and largely don't care. But in the city of Holland, thanks to a last-minute petition drive spearheaded by the AFA, there will be one additional issue on the ballot: mandatory blocking software in the city library.
Ironically, the surrounding townships help pay for the same library, but because the petition-to-ballot law applies only in the city, they won't be voting on how their money will be spent.
Holland Republicans, already at the polls to nominate a candidate, will merely have to check one more box. Holland Democrats, assuming for the sake of argument that they exist, will first have to learn that they can vote on Feb.22, and then take the trouble to drive down to the polls for the sole purpose of, as the AFA will surely characterize it, forcing children to look at pornography.
Not that it's quite that simple - the issue surely doesn't break precisely across party lines - but: Ouch! Putting the issue on the ballot on the same day as the Republican primary was a brilliant strategic move. If this is what local politics are all about, maybe I'm glad I haven't gotten involved before.
But if last night's meeting at the library is any indicator, it's not over yet.
The meeting was sponsored by Families for Internet Access, a small Holland group working to oppose library blocking software. Roughly 200 people showed up in the basement of the library to discuss the issue, including at least three Slashdot readers. The large majority were clearly opposed to filters. Luckily, the minority was vocal enough that at least some of their views could be heard, so it wasn't too one-sided.
Don Wildmon, president of the Tupelo, Mississippi-based AFA, says "a community's taxpayers own the local library," and it's going to be interesting to see if that's true. The Holland library has had few problems with inappropriate material to date. The computers in the children's section are not on the net. The internet terminals in the adult section are clustered closely in a well-lit area; patron sessions are limited to 30minutes once per day, and library staff walk through the area frequently to enforce this rule. Even with access restricted to brief sessions, there is almost always a line waiting to use the next computer.
In the four years they've offered internet access, there have been a total of six incidents where a patron had to be removed for causing a disturbance. Of these, only one involved viewing of inappropriate material (it was unclear whether or not this was pornography). To put this in perspective, there were 26,000 patrons who used the internet last year alone.
It seems a bustling, crowded public area in a public library, in front of a big window facing a busy street, is not an environment where people commonly go to look at porn. Imagine that. As one of last night's presenters said, "there is an effective filter in place already, and that is the good people of Holland." It seems clear that censorware is a solution in search of a problem - at least in this community.
But the AFA knows how to look for a problem. The pamphlet that they circulate on library "safety" suggests some ways to determine whether a library has "come under the influence of the American Library Association." The "citizen activist" is urged to "use these helps to learn if your library is a community friend or foe":
"Inquire if your library ... celebrates ALA's 'Banned Books Week.'"
"Search for classic scholarly books. A healthy selection should be available. Suggested titles... Principia Mathematica by Sir Issac Newton." [sic]
"On your library's computer, go to www.yahoo.com or any of the popular Internet search engines. In the search field enter the following: XXX,hardcore,nude"
Are those really the best ways to determine whether a library has a problem with pornography?
Incidentally, I've not gotten confirmation, but the rumor is that the local AFA will be recommending SurfWatch as their filter of choice. In which case, that last suggestion is an interesting one. I purchased and installed SurfWatch on my home computer this weekend, and it blocks me from accessing Yahoo. I still can't figure that out, considering the company that sells it partners with Yahoo.
The AFA has also been claiming support from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). But at Monday night's meeting, he said he can't specifically support the local initiative because he doesn't know what it's all about. In fact, when the AFA's position was described to him, he interrupted to ask what "AFA" stood for.
In the end, it may not matter whether the problem of inappropriate library material exists or is manufactured. The AFA also recommends that its activists "take [their] concerns through the library chain of command," but in Holland, they refused to meet with the library and went straight to the ballot instead. The voters will decide whether censorware gets installed, and the public's chance to learn about the issues may be limited at best.
In the next six weeks I hope to get a "view from the trenches" of Holland's First Amendment struggle, and to bring it to Slashdot. I'll make no bones about the position I take on the issue. I'll try to focus less on why blocking software is a bad idea in libraries - I'll leave it to other websites to explain that - and more on how the memeticwarfare [*] is being conducted. I'll be reading all your comments. Check the YRO section, too, for updates not quite important enough for the Slashdot homepage.
Because this month, mandatory library censorware is a hot topic in Holland. Next month, it may be in my home town. And the month after that - yours.
Furp
To err is human,
To really screw up, you need a computer!
SECOND POST, SUCKAZ!!!
Oh yeah, first rant^H^H^H^Hpost...
Sig broken, watch for
... aren't conservatives for LESS government?
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
This is more than mildly worrying- I have no objections iff censorware is applied by parents to their own computer- I see that comes under free choice- but if it is enforced as a knee jerk reaction, it can only increase the need for such sites as peacefire www.peacefire.org.
He who is prepared to give up liberty for security shall loose both, and deserves neither
Johnson
--You say it best when you say nothing at all
-Ronan Keating--
--Only the intellectually lost ever argue-
I don't suffer from insanity- I enjoy it immensly!
. .Mayberry USA www.mbusa.net
_________________________
I'm very interested to hear how this turns out. Please continue to keep us updated.
According to junkbusters(IIRC) my town of Billerica, MA already has this software in place at the school. The library is being rebuilt, so I'm not sure what will happen there. Any Billerica people out there that know?
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
This seems like something that an "association" has no time bringing up at all. Where does that AFA think the city libraries get their money from. The public? Hmm I think so. I hope that there is someone actually fighting on the side of the Constitution on this. What does this censorware supposedly censor? Just porn? Or political sites as well and the such? I'm thinking it censors whatever the people who make the software want it to censor. Come on now that rather a smelly pile of bullshit. Long Live The Constitution.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Wow - that pamphlet is scary! It makes the ALA seem like some big bad agency that your library shouldn't be affiliated with, and if it is, the ALA can have a lot of influence over them (Section 5 is entitled "ALA influence"). Also, why is having books about homosexual lifestyles bad? And so is taking part in "Banned Books Week"?? I hope the citizens of Holland realize that the AFA is promoting plain and simple censorship...
Check out Greg's Bridge Page!
Trust is a powerful thing. With the exception of true sociopaths, we all like it. And we all want to earn it and keep it. We want it most from people we respect. And such is our psychological make-up that we tend to reciprocate trust and respect, or their lack. Censorware, whether it is limiting access to the Web or blocking cable channels is showing the censored portion of the population that they aren't trusted or respected. They aren't likely to trust and respect the people doing it to them. This is part of the recipe for alienating our children.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
OK, so the computers are in a public area, and apparently the user can be kicked off for viewing "inappropriate" material...how is that different than using Surfwatch?
Q.
I remember back when I was in University studying, the philisophy course I had had a slightly biased bent. The focus was on Socrates and how he was the founding father of free thought. I didn't think that this was anywhere near the truth since he believed that in order to have a strong army to defend your state you must (to paraphrase) "only promote good things about our literature, our G_ds," etc. so that the army would believe that the state's cause was good and just and worth dying for. That's not free thought, that is censorship. :)
How does this relate to the topic at hand? Internet censorship will always be relative, because it works under the premise of what the masses believe is good and just. Reno, I am certain, believes she is doing "The Right Thing" but this issue will always be thorny, because what I consider "right and just" is NOT neccesarily YOUR point of view. Therefore any mandate when it does come out will probably please many and anger many others. One good thing the entire Internet framework is for, is a forum. An open slate to place your views. Socrates may very well be smiling right now
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
Ok. Standard disclaimers apply (IANAL). I would imagine that if it comes down to it and the filtering software measure passes, that you could get someone in the neighboring communities who help pay for the library to file a suit that they were not able to vote on the measure. IMO, its wrong to censor and its just as bad to make someone pay for something and then give them no say in how its run. I apologize for the lack of cohesiveness of this post, but I've had a crappy day and shouldn't be taking the time to post this.
Skippy
"False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
then how come in in an article on the AFA site, he has introduced a bill that would help put filters in place in schools and libraries? Methinks a rat I smell.
GIHM -The light at the end of the tunnel is only the oncoming train.
Truth is fiction, black is white, freedom is slavery...need I continue?
Hiss.
Windows is the Acme of computing -- in the Wile E. Coyote sense.
Sorry, it's AC for me, but I suggest that we all hope the move goes through, and then sick the ACLU on 'em. The truth is that full-on library use of censorware in this manner needs to get tested in real courts, and not the measly local kind where it's had its day so far.
I work in a public library. The only thing library boards and regional politicians hate more than being attacked locally is being held up as a bunch of know-nothing book-burning hicks by the rest of the world. Hope the measure goes through, and then really go after them where civil liberties will be enforced. I'll bet the ACLU is looking for a good test case - one they can win. Just make sure the law gets written so harshly that they can't lose!
Uh, Abe Lincoln was a Republican, dude. Maybe you're thinking of Jimmy Carter?
- Have a picture
your best bet is to get involved in the democratic process and the educational process as well. first up, vote. vote often. vote early. secondly, campaign for someone if you can, or at least contribute and fund those that can. thirdly, share your education and views on the issues with as many people, elected officials and neighbors, as you can. have you considered looking at the reccomendations of the EFF (www.eff.org), setting up meetings with their reps and your local government?
you can't complain if you didn't vote! and since this is a democratic process, you get wha tyou put in.
jose nazario jose@biocserver.cwru.edu
It is interesting to note that those founding fathers who founded the Jeffersonian-Democratic party were not advocates of referendum-style democracy. Rather, they were big fans of establishing an Intellectual Elite to rule over the masses. I would suspect that it is exactly just this kind of referendum that this Intellectual Elite would be responsible for screening out(at least in the minds of the original Democrats). The irony is that Representative Democracy does not actually represent the ideals of the masses. This can be both constructive and destructive. Of course...Morbo thinks humans do not yet KNOW the meaning of suffering!...but that may be beside the point.
Our school has surfwatch running on it. It is just plain annoying. Anyone who would look at porn in their community library is a freak, and should just be arrested. Make an example out of someone rather than punish everyone for no reason at all.
I find it amusing that the AFA's pamphlet essentially encourages people to try to find porn on the internet in public libraries, the very act that they say shouldn't be permitted. Essentially, they're saying that in order to ensure that everyone else is being required to follow they law, they should break it to make sure the cops come get them. If this were an actual criminal offense, I doubt that a defense consisting of "we were just testing you" would work. I don't see why it should be tolerated here.
I was reading their panthlet. And from it I found something very disturbing. The AFA literature seems to indicate that they want to band books that they do not agree with, and which conflict with some political agenda. Any organization who supports Democracy in America as classic but demands that we ban books need to learn something. How can we hope to keep the internet free of censorship when people are still demanding tyranical censorship laws on more 'main stream' media.
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
Damn, I haven't seen an old-school troll like this since I was moderating the local abortion debate FidoNet echo in the Deep South, back in the early '90s.
Kudos, for giving me a good laugh!
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Hey, umm...,
Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
"They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier" -dfw
Your so-called "mind" is in thrall to the so-called "ACLU". I can see that clearly. If the subtleties of my reasoning strike you as paradoxes, that's because your grasp of epistemology is as weak as your so-called will. A Free Man is not threatened by the effeminate, socialized liberal-conformist yammerings of degraded monstrosities like yourself.
I don't have a problem with public resources like libraries having restricted internet access. If you're dying to look at kiddie porn, regular porn, etc... you can do so from the comfort of your own home.
If you're coming to the library to do research, then unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups, you'll probably enjoy the fact that there's not someone on the computer across from you staring at women in all sorts of unnatural positions.
It'll be violating our "free speech" if the government mandates that porn sites are no longer allowed to operate in the US. It's a completely other thing to say it's okay to look at those and other "objectionable" sites in a public place, where kids can be near by.
Just like that whole fiasco in New York with the elephant feces or whatever... Just because it's art doesn't mean the government has to give you a grant.
Unfortunately, we can't just blame the Replicans on this one. Sure, they're all putzes, but The Father of the Internet and leading Democratic candidate is married to the woman who labels records for you. Thanks, Tipper! Who would have known that NIN cd contains words like fuck, damn, and pussy.
Waste your vote on a Libertarian. It's important.
I have to say, Im concerned about what content my child may be accessing thru the public library, and the ACLU scares me a bit.. (they seem to take an almost rabid view of what should be "okay" by strange veiled references to the Constitution) but now that I know that Don "Wildman" Wildmon (the man who rallied for Mighty Mouse to be banned, because the scene in which MM sniffs a flower was OBVIOUSLY a drug reference and therefore horrible for our children) my view changes somewhat.
.o2 kroeners.
Im sure that an issue like this must be decided on a NATIONAL level, not a local level.. someone from Holland, MI, may live under a rock compared to someone living in Times Square NY.. and community standards definately apply.. but there is something scary about Wildmon et.al deciding that "banned books" are ok because they feature certain words.
Dont get me wrong.. I dont want my 7 year old being taught "heather has two mommies" in school.. this is something I will deal with with him at home, on MY level, not at a state mandated school level, but I DO want him reading Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, and the Scarlet Letter in high school..
I just think common sense should be used.. if you have a childrens section at a library, give me one good reason there SHOULDNT be porn filters on the machines? what are 10 year olds looking for that this would harm?
In an adult section? if the library carries hustler, etc, then yes, anything legal in the US should be legal on the adult computer screens, but in other cases, community standards should apply (my "national level" again.. make it community standards, much as radio and local TV are).
well..t hats my
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Let me first state that I'm a libertarian (not a librarian). I believe that the government should not interfere with the rights of anybody, so long as that individual's "rights" don't impugn upon another individual's rights. Basically, I'm for absolute freedom (as long as you don't screw up other people).
Should the government be allowed to block porn at the library? Of course. Why? THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANY LIBRARIES IN THE FIRST PLACE!
A library is not a right, it is a privilege. The fact that you're getting FREE internet access is an extended privilege! You aren't allowed to read Playboy at school; you aren't allowed to look at sublimedirectory.com at the library. It's that simple.
If you want to exercise your right to freedom, buy internet access. Do with it as you would like. If you're in the mood to protest a library's policies, you may as well protest the fact that the libraries ask for the books back!
Another way to point out the absurdity of this: Does the library carry the Karma Sutra? Hustler? It could be argued, just as logically as the argument being made above, that if the library does not carry every single book ever published they are violating your rights.
What a joke...fight for something worth fighting for. Porn is a great and glorious thing; you don't need to be able to view it from the library.
Andy
There is an unusual law in the city of Holland that allows any measure to be brought to a ballot vote by petition. This is good in that it brings democracy directly to the people. Unfortunately, if a couple thousand people signed a petition demanding that the mayor must part Lake Michigan or forfeit his salary, that issue would go on the ballot
Sounds like you want it both ways... I guess you would perfer it if only things that you agreed with were brought to vote. (Acutally, given the sanctimonious tone of most of these YRO articles, I bet you would prefer it).
I wonder if we could convince Holland to have the vote early, so we don't have to hear 6 weeks of "updates" on this.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
who cares? I don't think I've ever used a library computer for anything besides looking up a book. Why would you be looking at porn on a library computer anyway? Are there librarys out there you can sit in your undies and beat off to some porn that pushes the 'gotta beat off now' button? When you are in public, keep it clean. When you are at home, do WHAT you want WHEN you want.
This sounds like a fundamentalist power play, with the advantage of technical ignorance on their side. How many of the people who will vote on this topic actually get on the Web on a regular basis? My guess is that many who vote won't know much about the real issue beyond the spin the AFA puts on it. They've basically got a captive audience, especially with the vote going on the ballot.
My prediction on the outcome is the AFA will win this first round. Then the issue will come to the attention of the ALCU, who will raise a big ruckus as they are prone to doing. They will throw the federal ruling in the face of the AFA, and Holland will become big in the news. Then, after a lengthy court battle, it will again be ruled unconstitutional and the whole thing will be for naught.
It sounds like the library is already doing plenty to control what the Internet users are doing. I wonder what the library staff thinks of all this. I sure wouldn't want my library to be in the middle of this obviously political showdown that can only end up in a bad way.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
I'm not sure if this AC is flame-baiting or really believes what he says.
While I'll be the first to say that anyone who sits in a public library and reads porn is whacked. I don't see how it is, "an act of war". Somehow, a lonley pervert doesn't seem a threat to anyone except maybe little johnny (who's parents should be watching him anyways.)
>> this is the greatest blow for freedom and
>> individual rights that your town has seen in
>> decades
Two words: Ha Ha!
When I read the last line again, I realized, this has to be either a pure flame-bait or a moron.
/* CDM */
Isn't this a community on establishing what their community standard is?
We have blocking software at work, and I can't say that its blocked me from anywhere I wanted to or needed to visit on the internet.
Maybe I phrased it badly. Lincoln was the first and only Republican presidential candidate not to win the majority of votes from Holland.
At least, that's what a reliable source told me.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
You may very well be a troll. But I'm going to respond anyway.
First of all, why do people such as you find the need to post anonymously? If you're going to say things such as that, accusing people who actually value freedom, unlike you, of destroying the country, I would imagine the least you can do is own up to it. Or are you too scared?
That aside, I think what you said is reprehensible. This country was founded by a bunch of religious zealots. And only recently have we managed to make steps at removing ourselves from this legacy and growing up as a nation. Mark my words, our religous attitudes and irrational taboos gainst normal bodily functions are damaging this country, and have prevented it from maturing past the wishes and desires of a bunch of overly moralistic religious zealots.
The history of the Unites States, while all done and over with, is reprehensible, and I am ashamed to look back at some of the things that my ancestors and the founding fathers of this country have done. It is wrong. And although I will not apologize for the actions of my forefathers, because I had nothing to do with it, I am ashamed. And it's time we learned from our mistakes, shed our propensity for restricting the freedoms of people just because they don't believe the same things that people like you think we should, and grew up as a people.
What you tout as good and right is actually dangerous, morally wrong, in the sense that you are trying to force people to fit into your little mold by law just cause you're scared of a little freedom, and should be opposed by anyone who has the best interests of the nation and its people at stake.
Sorry, dude, there are lots of us, and we won't shut up.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
No other country bans more books than the US. In some states textbooks can be removed if they are considered communist. Peter Rabbit gets banned because the bunnies are too bourguoise. Goosebumps gets tossed because it's "evil and satanic". In fact, "witchcraft" is the number one reason why books are banned. Sick, sad world. If you are not vigilant in protecting your freedom to read, others will take it from you.
When you go to a library, you don't expect to find back issues of Penthouse sitting in the magazine section, do you? I can clearly understand the need for some sort of surveilence, but I don't think this needs to come in the form of traditional censorware. My school's library has installed a program on the machines that allows the librarian to see a live screen capture of any computer while sitting on her computer in her office. Signs are posted that "You may be observed," and this usually is enough to deter any wrong-doers. Instead of installing software which may prevent access to the NRA website because the AFA does not agree with them, just post a set of rules that clearly spell out what users can and can't do. If you are observed breaking a rule, then your internet privileges will be suspended if not revoked permanently. In addition, the sysadmin can block any violating websites taht are visited.
In order to enforce privileges and/or time restraints, use the bar code or magnetic strip on the library card, and attach the appropriate reader to the computers, so to log on you scan your card, and your 30 mins/day or whatever begins counting down. When you get to 5 minutes and 1 minute left, a warning tells you to hurry up and finish. Then, when you quit or your time expires, the system automatically logs out and the next person can scan their card in.
---------------
Yes! That guy!
I doubt the rest of the library's budget (or
the city's, for that matter) will get this
much attention.
George Lee
I haven't thought this one through to the inevitable legal cases over the first ammendment, but a really simple solution to porn on the net would have been to require all 'adult' sites to have the same domain name. I.e. www.porn.sex, www.freshandjuicy.sex, www.comeandgetit.sex. Or it could be something like .adu for 'adult' sites only, or .porn or anything.
.sex (or whatever).
Just how easy would filtering become? Browsers wouldn't need extra-bundled filtering software, it would just allow or disallow all connections to anything
I'm particularly annoyed because I wanted some clipart once, clipart.org WASN'T what it should have been, I really wanted clipart.com. I wanted to find out about Descent III - descent.com wasn't what I wanted, but descent-3.com was. I guess everyone's been caught out like this, often with a newbie in the room at the same time.
insignificant sig
In one of their issues a few months ago, AFA complained about their webpage being blocked by Cyber Patrol (and others) under the category Bigotry/Intolerance.
I find it rather ironic that they are working so hard to, in many cases, have their own web pages censored.
Also, I find it laughable that they work to keep the library internet terminals totally free of pornography when in fact the libraries have many softcover "erotica" books. [Those trashy romance novels you see prominently displayed in libraries, or at least the one in my town.]
AFA has sunk to new heights of stupidity. They are misinformed and very afraid of a new medium, and they're very politically active. Keep an eye on them.
Valur
Hosting for Creators: http://rpg-works.net
With a religious agenda. It is unconstitutional
for congress to implement religious agendas.
This is unconstitutional.
Any congressman that even gives these jokers
a hearing is not faithfully serving the country.
What a delightfully evil way to execute unconstitutional censorship. Mandate censorware. Let the programmers and company execs decide what the software will censor. Who is really in the position of power here? "It seems to me" that it is the programmers, who intrestingly enough, are not answerable to the voters in any way. How can these programmers sleep at night knowing what they do?
most of the computers I've seen in libraries were hosed anyway. People dick around them, deleting files and so forth.
As the article says, do libraries really have a porn problem anyway? I doubt it.
This is nothing more than feel-good politics. See, we're doing something, however ineffective and irrelevant, about internet porn.
The internet has been fun up until now. Once all the jack-booted christians, splashy porn sites and company stores got on, things went downhill.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Well as a local member of the ACLU I am not going to complain. You have the right to say what ever the hell you want and we have the right to read it, or ignore it, our choice. All we are asking is that everyone be given the choice to decide for themselves.
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
Alright, here's my proposal for sensible porn-blocking... open fire, please, and flame it as much as you want.
1) I approve of kids (18 and under) being "sheltered" by public libraries, but censorware should have an OFF button. If library card numbers were used as login ID's, your age would be known when you logged on.
2) Censorware (if/when it's used) MUST have an open-source black list. Under no circumstances should any political, ethnic, religious, or national group be "blacklisted" for their platform, even if that platform includes so-called "hate" speech, which is still protected under the 1st Amendment until it becomes a justifiable threat. I loathe the KKK, the Aryan Nation, and other racist groups, but I'll die to defend their right to be wrong.
3) A set of standards, similar to the ones we have for TV & Cable, should be adopted to decide and update the blacklist. The "Big 7" (the words you can't say in public media, thanx to the FCC) would be an okay starting point. A browser that "bleeps" these out of the HTML (as well as scrambling any *.jpg with a certain proportion of "skin" tones) would be helpful...
4) Most importantly, I feel that too little censorship is better than too much. There should be quick and easy ways for a librarian to override the blacklist so Johnny can do a project on syphillis for his high-school health class. Photos of genitalia may be important to the project. Oh well.
I feel the harm that is done from a little unrestricted "pornography" is far outweighed by the good done by unrestricted information.
I know I'm drawing a thin line on a slippery slope... but there is a happy medium somewhere, right?
--Jurph
I'm glad to hear that Slashdot is covering this story. Michigan public radio had a good piece on it about a week ago. It pointed out that the library has already taken faithful measures, such as using filter software, montoring all public net terminals and keep them out of the children's section. Makes you wonder where some of these people are getting their information.
On another note, I'm rather dismayed to read slashdot ulfailrly pinning the american republican party as responsible for this. This petition is isn't the child of the michigan republican party, its a grassroot campaign by local conservative christians. Don't blame republicans for the efforts of a small misguided group. It's not like the democratic party is a bastion of net-savvyness, either *cough* Al Gore, Clipper chip, inventor of the Internet *cough*.
Is that something like Orwell? My brain is a little cluttered from trying to replicate the "guinness bubbles effect", giving up and then drinking the stuff...
He's the man that sued Playboy back in the late Eighties.
He said that Playboy was dealing in Kiddie P0rn. If I remeber correctly, no women actually exsist in the mesurements of the average Playmate. What Playboy was doing is this - they got collages of kiddie p0rn, feed it through a computer and "made" a Playmate...it was a dastardly plot to enslave children and so on.
I'll have to look back in some of my 87-90 Playboys...theres alot about Rev Wildmon in em.
most likely a y2k issue but i noticed this on the afa's page: DAILY NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 100 100 seems to be the century they're stuck in
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
As a taxpayer, if I want to go to the library and look at naked asses or even pictures of Newt Gingrich, that's simply my business. I've paid for it.
$ .02 worth (i just had to go on record)
I went and surfed the AFA website, and I found something shocking. Not also do they promote censorship of books, as well as the internet, but they have NEVER read the books they read, reffering to reviews on Amazon.com. Saddly there are many people in america who think like this, that they have the right to suffocate the views of others, even when they don't know what those views are.
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
You're flat out retarded. Children don't feel a rush of "wow, adults trust me" when they sit down at a computer in a library and access porn. They instead get erections and make sure nobody is watching while they look at as much porn possible in the shortest amount of time.
You cannot rely on trust for anything. Ask any security expert if you don't believe me.
The more we trust children the more they abuse that trust. It's simple.
Andy
Read it again. He said that they voted for every Republican candidate with one exception: Abe Lincoln. Lincoln was a GOP candidate for whom they did not vote. It seems clear to me. And I'd bet that the reason he mentioned Lincoln was something to do with the political ideas that Lincoln was associated with, um, like, gee, whaddya think?
My family had a lot to do with this, since they are also all registered Republicans who regularly voice their opinions. My family is Cuban, and they came from a country that has silenced its populace and eliminated all forms of freedom.
I do not believe in forced censorship, but I do believe in self-censorship. There's a huge difference for those who do not understand. Self-censorship means there are things I will not do or say by my own choice. When we begin to talk about forced censorship, I can hear our Founding Fathers spinning in their grave. The first amendment was created to give every belligerent, drunk, and general miscreant a voice, a way to speak freely without fear of punishment. The thinking was surprisingly simple. If even the most obscene and inappropiate thoughts are allowed to exist without punishment, then the articulate, moral, and correct thoughts will also make themselves heard.
Of course, with this freedom comes responsibility, but it's not the gov't's responsibility to tell us what we can and cannot say/do, it falls to each of us. I would think it hard to find someone for pornography is public schools and libraries, but that doesn't mean we should block out webpages with the word 'sex' in it, otherwise we lose a lot of educational sites that SHOULD be in public schools and libraries. We, each one of us, should make sure that people do not view inappropiate actions, but we should also make sure we're not the ones doing it, and we should further make sure to tell the gov't to keep their hands off our rights and responsibilities as U.S. Citizens.
This is one of the many lessons I've learned from conservatives over the years...that if you allow the people to choose for themselves, the overwhelming majority will be in the right. Remember the old saying which the Founding Fathers used to form this gov't: Laissez Faire. Roughly translated, it means 'hands off', which is what the gov't was meant to be like.
I hope one day we can go back to the eras were people were able to choose for themselves what was right and wrong for them. You'd be surprised how many people agreed with each other.
other ideas for Holland, MI signmakers and graffiti artists, add some punctuation and pluralization to liven up the material, some suggestions:
"Yes, 2 King Jesuses" - Life of Brian?
"Yes, 2 Kings!, Jesus!" - Jesus learns that his pair of eights is a losing hand.
"Yes 2 King, Jesus" - Martin, Rodney and Don all receive billing with the Big Guy
"Yes: 2 King Jesus" - The new album from everyone's favorite syntho-pop band.
You say destroying religious underpinnings is an act of war against the people of the USA? Have you any evidence to back up such an absurd claim? I would argue that religious influences are the last and greatest hurdle we as a nation need to overcome before we are truly free.
The day I can turn on the television and not have to hear all the presidential candidates brag about their little god is the day we will finally be starting to reverse the religious bias in U.S. government.
________________________________
this jamie guy is an unmitigated prick. i flamed him and he didn't even respond. what nerve.
Well, It sounds like the library has a policy on "no internet useage for erotic use" anyway...
If there was good "censorware: out there that would do an effective job of kepping out goat pron and such I wouldn't mind.(This is what happens with magazines, as libraries won't carry penthouse or such)
However, all censorware I have seen so far censors much more then your friendly neighborhood goat pron, they often filter breast feeding info and such educational stuff to (not to mention that some block out quite a lot of sites for "radical views" or anti-censorware sites or whatever kind of crap they pull.. that's just plain wrong.)
If the library wants to keep out "smut" there are better ways to do it then with current censorware.
librarians stationed close, peer watch, and other monitoring devices (logged dns lookups if need be) are some more viable solutions for now without censoring too much..
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
IF you want to get government to buy you goodies like libraries, then you need to be prepared to have the government set the policies in those libraries.
When the governemt sets policies, those policies are based on politics. If you don't want "censorware" in the library, then you have 2 choices: win the political battle, or build your own PRIVATE libraries.
The same choices go to EVERY other issue the government sticks it's nose in. If you don't like political fights over schools, the solution is private schools. If you don't like political fights over libraries, then the solution is private libraries. Replace schools with : the Internet, art, roads, health care, parks, or anything else.
Short of some kind of "purges" of conservatives these are the sad realities. Now, do you ever wonder why conservatives want the government to do less? This is why.
(-3, Disagrees with me)
They always have been, and they always will be. They favor censorship, nativism, theocracy, xenophobia, the whole nine yards. They push ignorance because they benefit from it. They attack education and free speech because educated and informed people are harder to goad into mob action. It's not impossible, God knows, but it's harder.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
We have met the enemy, and they is us. -- Pogo
Hmmm, where to begin with this? I think the definition will do:Main Entry: tyranny : oppressive power tyranny over the mind of man -- Thomas Jefferson>; especially : oppressive power exerted by government tyranny of a police state> : a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler; especially : one characteristic of an ancient Greek city-state b : the office, authority, and administration of a tyrant : a rigorous condition imposed by some outside agency or force tyranny of the clock -- Dixon Wecter> : a tyrannical act
Pronunciation: 'tir-&-nE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -nies
Etymology: Middle English tyrannie, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin tyrannia, from Latin tyrannus tyrant
Date: 14th century
1
2 a
3
4
He can't get the definition right, he can't even spell the word right... I don't think I can beat that today!
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Those who check out www.peacefire.org may find that some decidedly odd sites are blocked, including:
The biggest problem with this is that, in the effort to "protect children" by purchasing blocking software, libraries have to submit to the censorship of a company... one whose ownership might have an axe to grind or a particular agenda to advance.
Hopefully a state judge can declare the filtering software violates the "open meetings law" that is passed in most states, as there is no public input to determine the sites to be blocked.
Meanwhile, wake up the neighbors, sound the alarms, and man the barricades!
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Just a thought.....
When the founding fathers wrote the constitution, they truly intended for free speech at that time and in the future. However, at that point in time there was a societal constraint that prevented people from taking about extremely vulgar and inappropriate material. Also, the sick people who think they need to speak and show ever vulgar act they can think of to other people, had no way to send their incidious garbage to others. Our founding father could not even fathom a world liek we have today. Thats why the constitution was given flexiblity. So it could adapt to the future world. Censorware is not an attack on the constitution. It stems from the constitution's flexiblity when it comes to unforseen matters.
The situtation in Holland, Michigan where the town may vote for censorship on the equipment they pay for, is totally supported under the constitution.
.... just my two cents....
-------
provolt
RE: "This country was founded by a bunch of religious zealots."
Please check out http://www.infidels.org in the church-state separation section. It is a myth, pure and simple, that the founding fathers were Christian, and I'd hesitate to even call them zealous Deists.
No offense, but when I think of Slashdot, I don't think of Holland, MI, and the position you're bringing up isn't exactly unique in America. Many small communities have already initiated censorware projects, and many more already have public petition ballot laws.
I know Slashdot likes to take on the Causes of the Geek(tm), but I think there comes a time when one has to step back and take a look at exactly what is going on. We have a small community in America, typical of many, I'll assume. Through the workings of democracy, they manage to get a controversial issue on the ballot. A large group of people think this is an initiative that should be enacted. Another large group of people think this is an initiative that shouldn't even be considered. We're not talking about anything groundbreaking here. Moreover, this whole issue isn't even being determined by lawmakers; it's being determined by the people. That's the way it should be.
The United States Supreme Court has been very consistent in its decisions that pornography and how to regulate it should be determined by the local community, and not by the state or Federal governments. If the US elections had this initiative on the ballot, I would say that this article would be entirely appropriate because a) it affects a large percentage of Slashdot readers and b) it's not being determined by a community, but by a nation.
But let's get back to Holland, MI. Does you library carry Hustler? Can any adult go into the adult section and pick up a copy of Hustler? Or maybe Penthouse? Has anyone ever asked the library to carry these magazines? I know my local library doesn't carry these, despite their very large circulation. If you want some porn, get it at a newsstand. Same with the library. If you expect unrestricted Internet access at a public library, you're expecting the wrong thing. Get Internet access at home and you can have it. When you get it for free from the government, you play by their rules. Their rules, of course, you can help make, but if the people are going to vote it in, then that's what they want, or they think they want, which is just as valid, IMHO. Censorship is alive and well in American communities. Just like Slashdot, though, it's community censorship, especially when the people get to vote.
So my kneejerk reacion? I don't give a rat's ass what happens in Holland, MI. If the local library here tries to censor Internet access, I'll take up whatever cause I feel is right. I'll vote. I'll play whatever political games I feel to to support my cause. What I won't do is complain to Slashdot, write up an article that won't apply to 99% of the readers. I won't say that even deciding this issue is wrong. I won't complain about the date of the ballot.
If the people are deciding this issue on a public ballot, that is certainly the absolute right way to handle the issue. I don't care which side is the best side, it's being done the absolute right way. Just like any other vote, the word about the ballot will have to be disseminated. This article makes it sound like this is a Bad Thing(tm), but I would rather see more of this, of communities putting this issue to a vote, rather than having some state legislature passing a law that makes it mandatory.
Holland, MI is not Slashdot and a library's computer is not my computer. Let the community decide.
Yes but trust and respect goes with age and wisdom. Would you trust a twelve year old to drive a car? Or with a loaded gun? Even if you thought that child was a good kid he/she still has the judgement of a twelve year old. With the typical twelve year old having little wisdom to temper there choices they are bound to make decisions that could have an adverse effect in the long run that only adults who have gone through being twelve would be easy to spot. With your logic any time a child wants something you would have to say yes because they would just ask you if you didn't trust them, and you would cave.
First of all, why do people such as you find the need to post anonymously?
Because my karma's up to 26 from posting sensible stuff under my real name
This country was founded by a bunch of religious zealots.
My ass, it was. It was founded by affluent (even elitist, in most cases) East-Coast intellectuals who were steeped in French Enlightenment thought. Not one of the big names was an Evangelical Christian, and few of them were conventional Christians at all. Most were what we call "deists": They believed that God created the world and then just sat back to watch, more or less. Had they been religious zealots, they'd have created a zealously religious government. But they didn't do that. They went so far as to put the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights just so nobody got the wrong idea.
The pseudo-Christian wingnuts now running around loose have nothing to do with Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, et al. Nothing whatsoever. They can yammer all they like about the word "God" appearing in the Declaration of Independence, but that's really irrelevant. There was never any good reason for this country to be a theocracy (which is not to say that it wasn't, I'm sad to say).
Yes! The bill of rights was added to the constitution for that very reason. To protect the minority from the majority (who decide who rules). Everyone from *-Americans, to computer geeks, to everyone!
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
Republicans are not conservatives.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think it is importand to point out that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican! Therefore, according to the argument, the town has always gone for Republicans.
The taxpayers paid for the Holland library, and if someone wants to get a copy of the Kama Sutra by inter-library loan or look up a picture of a naked ass (aren't they all naked? since when do donkeys wear clothes?), government has no right to discriminate against their tastes.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Libraries--especially public libraries--are places where intellectual freedom needs to be protected at all costs.
Did you not even read my post, for God's sake?! I SAID that we need to protect individual liberties. The first step in doing this is to make our libraries fountains of FREEDOM, rather than distributors of free pornography at public expense. The American Library Association is the most monstrously conceived and diabological organization active in the United States today. They demand that we devote public funds to help them force children to read pornography! I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP, that is their platform. They are devoted to the Homosexual Agenda as well. Your taxes pay for this. Wake up and smell the coffee. You're being taken for a ride by a gang of lesbian feminazis who would throw you, a man, in a concentration camp in a minute if they had the chance. As far as their concerned, you're just a walking wallet, a cow to be milked. They despise you. And you enslave yourself to their agenda. The more I think about it, the more I despise you myself. Your condition of slavery is well-earned.
If you want to find people who support the First Amendment, you will rarely find them among conservatives. This is why I don't consider Libertarians conservative, we brook no attacks on the Bill of Rights, no matter what the reason the tyrant pushing them gives.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The AFA, is one of those people friend. Check out their web site. They are lobbying amazon to censor out books that don't fit to their agenda. How do they decide what to ban? Amazon.com book reviews, how do I know? They say so
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
Perl returns the year as X where is X is the current year in 4 digit format -1900. Why they chose to do this I do not know, but you have to add 1900 to get the correct date.
Alternatively, I guess they could subtract 100 now that we are in the 100s.
101-100 = '01
110-100 = '10
etc.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
This [viz. normal parental oversight] is part of the recipe for alienating our children.
Far from it. Blocking access to internet porn or to offensive cable channels shows my children that our family has a particular set of values. Far from alienating them, this gives them a better sense of the kind of community they belong to (viz. one that doesn't waste its time and attention on such trash). Your proposal is far more likely to alienate them, since it tells them that they live in a loose association of independent individuals with "freely" chosen values, rather than in a family with an established identity and set of commitments.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
At least you folks don't have to live in the same town with them...
I happen to live in Tupelo, MS. Home of the great AFA.
We used to have around 8 video stores in Tupelo,
until the AFA decided that renting out softporn was just god-awful and had to be stopped.
They picketed and rezoned and boycotted until now there are only 4 video stores left in Tupelo
(2 of which are big name chain stores)
Now this wouldn't be too bad, but I just abhor having to pay $5 a night for videos at a chain store when I could rent from one of the smaller stores for a buck a night.
All that to "protect your childern"
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
"Trust, love an respect, the true family values."
-- Me
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
So you think the government should force our free will on us then?
No, no, no, no, no. We are trying to force the government to respect our free will: Our will that the lesbian separatist ALA not force pornography and homosexuality down our childrens' throats. Our will that our taxes will not be spent supporting perverse group sexual activities, bestiality, and socialism.
Is that clear enough?
Oh, and by the way, the ALA is a Feminist organization (all those unmarried librarians who can't get a man, where else will they turn but to lesbianism?). Don't doubt that for a minute. So you should probably stop and consider the fact that you are, in effect, supporting the Feminist agenda. If that doesn't chill your blood, you're deluded, but there's always hope so I'll tell you the truth about Feminism: They are dedicated to exterminating men from the face of the earth, using torture and poisoning if need be. That's what your little heroines are up to in the ALA.
Maybe you should stop and think about which side you're really on before you run off at the mouth about "freedom". It's real hard to be free if you're dead.
Many libraries have children's sections, but even there, censorship is rarely the main motivator (although usually some censorship of content takes place.) Even a rule limiting library Internet access to patrons over 18 would be a better compromise than censorware - at least then grown-ups could decide for themselves what they want to read.
No library worth a hill of beans is free of socially disagreeable texts. A small city library is, IMHO, inadequate if it does not contain key political texts like Mein Kampf. Many, many 19th century American classics were written by racists, sexists and homophobes, not all of whom hide this fact in their books, yet a library that refuses to shelve these classics would be viewed by most people as negligent. No sane person would object to a public library containing a book of papal bulls, even though most rural American communities are overwhelmingly Protestant. I would wonder about a library that didn't have a copy of the Bible, or for that matter the Quran, yet these books contain material that surely offends large numbers of people. The works of many bestselling authors are full of obscene language, violence, and vividly described sex of many kinds. Andrew Vachss books are full of this kind of thing, yet most libraries have at least a few copies of his currently popular novels.
No one doubts that people can judge the contents of books for themselves, why do so many assume that isn't possible on the web? If the intent is to protect children, then an 18 and over rule is far, far more sensible (although still a bad idea in my opinion), yet, these nutters from the religious right all want censorship software.
The American Library Association has repeated, again and again, that librarians should make information available to the public. They are not willing to be censors. I'm with the ALA on this one, not the AFA.
BTW, the Holland Times article on John McCain is at http://www.theholl andsentinel.net/stories/011100/new_mccain.html.
It concludes with the following line:
"There were allegations that I was nuts," McCain said.
A new slogan for the McCain campaign (recycled from Barry Goldwater's '64 run for President):
In your guts, you know he's nuts!
And just what are you going to do when these "children who can't be trusted" when they turn 18 and you're no longer able to control them?
Children who aren't trusted becomes adults you can't be trusted. You can't control your children forever, they become people someday, and if you don't prepare them to be decent people, you're out of luck.
This isn't a flame for dills at all. More of an observation really.
,in line with the the thought that "everything is okay as long as it doesn't step on someone else's right, my legal argument says that it was not morally wrong for me to steal that car. I needed one. You argue that I violated you by stealing that car and it goes against your morals to steal from someone else. Who's morals win out? Who is to say that your morals are better or worse than mine? Don't hand me that crap about society saying that theft is wrong. If society were made up of theives, social conscience would be in my favor. People are naturally biased and thus an UNBIASED outside force has to lay down rules for right and wrong.
I believe that the government should not interfere with the rights of anybody, so long as that individual's "rights" don't impugn upon another individual's rights. Basically, I'm for absolute freedom (as long as you don't screw up other people).
Who is to say what impugnes on another person's rights? If, as everyone wants to believe, that morality is up to the individual, who is to say what is not moral for you IS moral for me? I quite honestly cannot grasp this argument. Let me throw out an example:
I steal your car. (I wouldn't do this but Devil's advocate dictates otherwise.)
You are probably a tad bit upset over this. I go to court. Now
Maybe I'm having a seminary morality apolegetics flashback but to this day the argument that "it's ok as long as it doesn't step on my morals" doesn't hold water with me.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Yes but trust and respect goes with age and wisdom. Would you trust a twelve year old to drive a car? Or with a loaded gun?
Actually, I would...depending on the child.
My fellow adults, though, tend to forget who they were as young people. Usually the liest trust worthy child -- when grown -- ends up with the harshest rules and liest respect for children. Why is that?
Pardon, but who wouldn't?
Personally, I think there's plenty of evidence that ballot initiatives are at best a mixed blessing, and more commonly a device to enforce the so-called "tyranny of the majority." California is a perfect example of the initiative process run amok; witness how many initiatives have been struck down or are tied up in court (Prop 187 is one of the more recent, notorious examples).
The idea of a democratic republic is to buffer the body of law against passing whims of the majority. (I would maintain that this is of increasing importance when said majority is heavily influenced in this day and age by a multitude of media outlets controlled by an already-tiny-and-getting-smaller set of people and interests, but I digress.) Generally speaking, those most in need of protection are the unpopular minority views, not the cause du jour of the majority. Mobs are fickle and easily manipulated; that's why mob rule gets messy very quickly. (cf the Terror following the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution and what sprung from that.)
It seems pretty clear to me that the founding fathers recognized this danger, and incorporated safeguards against it in the very structure of our government.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
You atheist liberals don't know how to spell...
The problem with censorware is not that you can no longer look at porn in public. I doubt sincerely that most people would advocate going into a public library and loading up www.bizar.nl or whatever floats your doughnut. I doubt sincerely that most people would do it even if they did advocate it.
The problem with censorware is that, to date, there are no filtering packages that
SurfWatch, in addition to blocking known pornographic sites, blocks the homepage to the National Organization of Women and most of the major gay/lesbian political groups. Most filtering packages carry not only blocks against sites showing [sic] nudidity, but sites that run contrary to the ideologies of the designers.
That's the real hitch. Suppose I want to go to the library and do some research online about GLAAD or the NGLITF? If they've installed SurfWatch, I can't, not because I'm trying to access smut, but because the people who wrote SurfWatch don't want anyone looking at accurate information about homosexuality.
The extreme version of this is the Scientologists' hacked filter that they mandate their members install. In addition to blocking anti-Scieno sites, it scans incoming packets and edits out any text string that contains the names of published Suppressive Persons or other forbidden information. Somewhere in the guts of www.xenu.net or one of its attached sites is the list of all banned phrases. Most filtering packages are nowhere near this severe, but SurfWatch is working on it, and its design company, Solid Oak, has done a lot of unsavory things to the people that tried to publish some of the odder sites in SurfWatch's banlist.
Ultimately, censorware in the libraries isn't about pornography. If pornography were really a concern, the offenders could likely be arrested under public indecency laws (the same laws that require adult magazines be sold in opaque wrappers if they put explicit material on the cover). Censorware is about who has the authority to tell you what you can and can't see.
First of all I have to say that I get happier everyday that I dont live in America .. I feel deeply sorry for you guys that this sort of thing can so easily be slipped by the public with little debate.
:-) for schools but never have we ever considered advocating our system to Librarys nor would we , even in the schools we have machines with full access (usualy in the librarys of the schools).
Secondly , surely the inclusion of a public referendum on a parties internal candidate balloting system must be against some part of your constitution (it would seem oddd if you were allowed to carry guns and shoot each other, but basic democratic fairness wasn't upheld) as it it is a mass pervision of democracy to favour one group of people over another
And Thirdly , its about time geeks got more political about these things , i sure as hell know that if I wasn't on the other side of the pacific ocean I would be helping out informing the voters of Holland, Michigan about the issue (it shouldn't be hard with the sort of facts that were presented in this article) so maybe anyone who feels strongly about this issue and is able to travel to Holland should go and help out. I would be pretty certain that the AFA will ship in many pious individuals for their campain. (plus if it is a real fight , your national media might pick up on it thus giving the anti-censorware argument a good hearing).
P.S. I work in as an admin in a department called kidsnet of an ISP in New Zealand, We promote a server level censoring service (we actualy are more worried about selling them a cheap satillite connection and a linux gateway box
Whoever controls the present controls the past, whoever controls the past controls the future
But keep up the First Posts, enjoy them now, because there won't be any First Posts in hell.
My cat looks like Pogo sometimes. It's pretty cool. I tell people this and they've never even heard of Pogo! It's terrible, I'm telling you.
he can't even spell [tyranny] right.
Okay, okay, I fucked up and you got me. Damn, that's embarrassing. (I don't think I'm spelling that one so damn well either, by the way
Some days I just can't resist a good non-sequitur.
Whoa, you're just the reader I was trolling for! Non-sequiturs are among my favorite fallacies, though a well-done ad-hominem can always turn my head
So you want the government to force YOUR free will on us, now I see! I guess women shouldn't have free will either?
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
So you want the government to force YOUR free will on us, now I see!
Precisely!
I guess women shouldn't have free will either?
I'm not even sure I know what you mean by that. Woman is Man's helpmeet and companion. I've never heard anyone suggest that women might have free will. What purpose would it serve?
It may choose to also block out sites that contain subject matter that the software manufacturers consider distasteful, such as "feminism" or "gay rights" or "censorship."
An additional problem is that you have no way of determining what the sites are that are being blocked. The software manufacturers claim that their lists of blocked sites and keywords are proprietary, and the lists are encrypted.
In short, the library ends up buying a pig in a poke -- they have no idea as to what exactly is being filtered.
That is where I have trouble. If there is a way for libraries to get a full disclosed list of blocked sites and keywords from the software provider, then I would have no trouble with it. But first, let's make sure we know what we're getting for our money.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
We will now deconstruct the bombast of the religious extremist, showing that you don't need brains or critical thinking to be a prophet, only a mouth.
Ah, yes, invoking America's Founding Fathers as if they were religious icons.
Fact: Nearly all of the Founding Fathers were non-Christians. Washington in particular was a deist (look it up). Many were atheists. Moreover, it was because there were dozens of competing sects on the continent at that time that separation of church and state was written into the Constitution. The reason you're alive today (and not "ethnically cleansed" by a state-sanctioned faith) is because of this principle. Revere it.
I got news for you: There are no religious underpinnings to our nation. The United States is a secular state. Period. The progress we've enjoyed has been the combined work of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Quakers, Puritans, Deists, Mormons, Pagans, and even -- dare I say it? -- Scientologists. No one faith enjoys any particular favor. This is the unique strength of our country. Celebrate it.
As for libraries distributing sexually explicit material, libraries have an obligation to make available all forms of literature and human expression, both base and exalted.
Oh, of course. I guess that's why 250,000 lesbians are massing at the Canadian border, preparing to invade Michigan. And when they do, all the University students who have been brainwashed by subversive "liberals" in the faculty will unwittingly aid in the insurgency, and before you know it, women all over America will be wearing comfortable shoes. Horrors!
Get a grip.
Got more news for you, pal: These "enemies" are responsible for one of the most extraordinary economic upswings in the last 100 years. Weirdos designed and run the digital infrastructure you enjoy today and use to flame us. Are you quite sure you know your audience here?
I'd counter-flame you with a well-reasoned proof as to why this is utter bullshit... If I thought it would do you any good. So I'll simply offer the following axiom, and invite you to try in your furtive way to disprove it:
"Lifestyles" are not contagions. If your neighbor is gay, that doesn't mean you will become gay, too. More generally, the personal preferences and choices of the people around you do not prevent you from making your own choices. You are free to choose whatever you want. Others may choose something else. You may not like it, but who made that any of your business?
Oh, you mean like Rush Limbaugh?
Example: I want to go to the library and check out Catcher in the Rye. I can't find it because some religious extremist had it banned, or outright stole it off the racks and destroyed it. How does this enhance, as you put it, my freedom and individual rights?
Freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes. Perhaps it is a mistake to read Catcher in the Rye. I won't know until I've tried. Who are you to stand in my way? If you truly believe that libraries have become a den of iniquity and a source of society-destroying Commie-pinko propoganda, then forbid your children from ever going there.
You have choices. So do I. I'm not about to use the power of the state to curtail your choices; I'll thank you to return the favor.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
That's right you little buttfucks, The famous Frank Rizzo is going to retire from slashdot.
It just takes too much fucking energy to be a freedom fighter / hero, adn ol Franky is getting tired.
SO LISTERN UP DICKHEADS. FRANK RIZZO IS GIVING AWAY HIS FAMOUS SLASHDOT ACCOUNT.
Thats right. You get the super cool #include account, you get all of my brilliant comments, all of my negative karma(not my fault the moderators are brainless dicks)And you get my password, change it and the account is yours. You are one lucky fuck.
SO EMAIL ME AT frank_rizzo000@hotmail.com AND YOU MIGHT BE THE LUCKY FUCK WHO GETS THE FAMOUS FRANK RIZZO ACCOUNT.
BTW - I was going to sell it on ebay but I thought in the spirit of open source i would give the fucker away.
Yes, finally, your cover is blown!!!
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
My wife works for a heavily-used municipal library. A representative of the AFA came to the library, pamphlets in hand, threatening to picket the library for their refusal to install mandatory filters. The library's response was that their existing policy, crafted when they first acquired computers and Internet public access terminals, was that no child would be able to use the equipment without a parent present (forget inappropriate content - they've got to keep the kids from trashing the machine!). Trusting the parents wasn't enough for the AFA rep, who left promising a boycott, etc, etc. Since this is a well-to-do, liberal-leaning suburb obsessed with education, nothing's materialized...
The library computers do have one type of "filter" - the Windows machines run a special shell that prevents software/viruses from being installed or system configs from being altered. They're more worried about script kiddies than porn, and rightfully so.
--
Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
Isn't the Michigan Democratic primary on the same day as the Republican one? It seems odd that state law would allow local initiatives on the ballots of only one party's primary. Of course, Bradley and Gore agree with each other on the issues much more than the Republican candidates, so the Republicans might be more interested in actually voting in their primary. As a registered Green, I'll probably vote in the CA Republican primary (they are open here) because that is the race where I care most about who wins. You can do that even in states with closed primaries... there is just a little paperwork involved in changing your party registration.
Also, why buy a copy of Surfwatch? You're just supporting their cause. Wasn't there any other way to find what sites it blocks (i.e. by emailing somebody in an already censored area)? I hope you can return it for a refund/exchange!
JMC
The Dutch-American roots of Holland Michigan are usually more frugal than outright politically conservative. Why would the "Republican" population of the city approve this lawsuit-bait? Have they been told that this is going to be a $4-20 or more cost per citizen?
I don't think it is clear that this is a winner in the courts. Government does not have to provide material, such as artwork to the citizenry. When it does so though, it cannot pick and choose the content based on a message. (Unless of course, it is a governmental message, such as the anti-drug ad campaign, or armed forces recruiting ads.) The government can't just run around squelching viewpoints, whether in a public square or on the Internet. It just doesn't have to give you a voice. (Like provide an Internet hookup in the library.)
My bet is that the restriction passes, is challenged in court, and Holland, MI gives up early in the fight.
Remember that this library is funded with tax dollars. That means that you are forcing people to pay for whatever goes on there, even if they don't like it. That's pretty heavy-handed, even though pretty common. I don't think that it's unreasonable for those local folks to put some limits on what is allowed IN THE LIBRARY. I don't think that anyone is suggesting that you should censor the internet, just that you should limit what sort of thing the folks in the area are forced to pay for. Again, this isn't a limit on what you can do with your own, personal resources, just a limit on what you can do with something provided by someone else.
About the American Library Association: I have never heard them say that children should be forced to look at pornography. They are adamant that NO ONE, including the child's parents, should be allowed to keep them from seeing it. That's insane. My understanding of the ALA's view is that censorship is 'failure to buy everything available'. I'm not sure how they distinguish between a limited budget and censorship, if they do. This is along the lines of saying 'not forcing people to pay for art is censoring the arts'.
By the way, I think that bonds is a great keyword to search on if you want nasty porn. Much better than hardcore, nude, I bet. A filter that let me search for info on securities without getting that garbage could be handy. Unfortunately, no automated filter can be perfect. Those filters, even if they're on there, are no substitute for parental supervision and control.
I'm not surprised to hear that you don't have much of a porn problem there. If you did, I don't think that this proposal would cure it. I do think that if the locals want to, they should implement a 'no porn for minors' policy, or a 'no porn at all policy', or even a 'mandatory porn for all users' policy. It's their money. If you don't want these decisions made political, make the library private.
See what I've been reading.
LOL. Gimme a break. The porn industry is not about "normal" sexual behavior, as you proclaim. It is a bunch of old preverts trying to bring their filth to young children's eyes so that they will end up with more money in their own pockets. Go back to your Hustler stack or step out into the light.
finally, your cover is blown!!!
I outed myself long since.
I hope you enjoyed the discussion; I enjoyed your posts a great deal.
--80md
Stop whinning about something that happened 100 years ago. For that matter, stop trying to apply todays' morality to issues of the past. Those same Founding fathers created something that is amazing. It's an on-going experiment in self-government. There is no King, Despot, Tyrant, or Dictator pulling the strings. (Well -with good ol' Clinton getting up there and stealing a million or so acres yesterday.... maybe.. but he won't be the Pres forever.)
Look - our predecessors were people. Some did marvelous things, and some did shameful things. In either case, as you said - you didn't do them, nor did I. Be amazed at how far we have managed to come!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I say that the AFA take the next big step and make it illegal for minors to view human nudity in any form without a permission slip from the parents covering each occasion of nudity. Anything sexual that could be viewed by minors should be illegal too (especially stuff like bananas, bolts and nuts, tunnels, biology classes, etc. Those things are just OBSCENE). And make it illegal for minors to have sex without parental permission. After all, sex can lead to pornography.
-S. Louie
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
perhaps the upgrade of this particular issue to 'important/relevant' status is premature. As others have said above, this is after all a local issue (in every jurisdiction in which it is discussed) and, in the final analysis, the only internet access restriction that is truly effective is disconnection; anything else is just too annoying to last very long at all. The moment that a high school student is denied access to legitimate research material because the censorware could not validate the site will be the moment that the censorware will go the way of all flesh, at the hands of even more enraged taxpayers. Also, the truest statement I have ever read on the subject was apparently repeated at the informational meeting: the other people in the library are the 'porn-check' mechanism...put up a sign that says 'if you are lookin' at butt, you will be out on yours' and wait for the tattle-tales to line up; no software required.
I drink to make other people more interesting
It is a bunch of old preverts trying to bring their filth to young children's eyes so that they will end up with more money in their own pockets.
The Horrible Truth Revealed! Pictures at Eleven! Read All About It In the Weekly World News!
SEVENTY PERCENT of all purchasers of pornography are under the age of five! It's true!
The line of thinking behind that part of the pamphlet (and similar pamphlets issued by Family Friendly Libraries and other such orgs) is that the library *should* have the Principa, Democracy in America, etc., and that if they don't, the reason is because they're spending their acquistions budgets on case lots of Heather Has Two Mommies. The AFA is assuming this would be obvious to any right-thinking reader, but as you pointed out, it could be taken the other way, esp. with the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the list. Dave* BTW, Family Friendly Libraries is at www.fflibraries.org.
...just make them bathe first!
It seems like they are for selling out our country to the corporations. They seem to be about taking away the rights and freedoms of the people. Republicans and Democrats alike, they sold their souls to the corporations. They've sold out the American people. It makes no sense at all. They seem to want less government whenever it gives more power to corporations and more government whenever it strips away the freedoms of the people. Never less government when it gives more freedom to the people or more government when it takes power from the corporations. This isn't always the case, but the majority of the time this is how they operate the system.
Thanks for posting. I am so sick and tired of looking at every one of my hard-earned paychecks and knowing that a lot of the money that the government is taking away from me is being used to teach twelve year-old boys about "fisting" at the local library. It is high time that libraries be made accountable to the people who are, after all, footing the bill. What will the liberals do next? Will they start putting "Starbucks" into public libraries, so that they can turn out a generation of expresso-swilling pansies who are unwilling to stand up for their country and their God? Will they put in hidden liberal brainwashing equipment that hypnotizes children into accepting the damnable liberal agenda of multiculturalism and "tolerance"? These thoughts terrify me.
If I am paying to fund local libraries, I should have a legal right to object to material that is accessible from inside of them. I don't want children to be able to view pornography or have access to anything of a homosexual nature. Decent people should not have any desire to view material of a Muslim, Hindu, or atheist nature. Our libraries are filled with stomach-turning putrid dreck. The people that are paying for them should have the right to demand that they be restocked with wholesome material that get our children off to the right start.
The towel-headed Arabs may have infested our original holy land, but perhaps in another thousand year's time, we will remember Holland, Michigan as a modern-day Bethlehem that gave us a rebirth in the traditional, correct, Christian belief system. I believe that this system will once again usurp the sort of relativism and humanism espoused by the despicable liberal establishment in this country.
'nuff said!!!
...my morals say all car theives should be shot. BANG you're dead, motherf*cker!
...at least I did. I used to work in Holland, (lived in South Haven) and I think I can safely say that I have never seen a community so tightly puckered at both ends as Holland,MI (more so at the Zeeland end). I fled the cold of that area (climatic and social) for Phoenix. The only four things that redeem Holland at all are the beaches, the academic excelence of Hope college, the Industrial Wings at the Prime Time Lounge (over which wings I first learned of Linux), and the work of our friends at the Geek Compound (whom I hope don't get too offended at me dinging their city, but ya gotta' admit...).
I am afraid that a large part of fighting what is going on there will have nothing to do with the danger of porn, (it was pointed out that there doesn't seem to be a problem with that) nor with the danger of censorship. I am afraid that the problem will be a group of people who don't understand what they are doing, rallying around something marketed as "a nobel Christian cause to stop a Bad Thing" (Bad Thing being that nasty internet stuff that can harm our children). Anyone who opposes this nobel cause is then some kind of satanic spawn, and if the godless ACLU (or any "Outsiders") get invlolved, yikes, look out.
My experience with this community is that once the debate becomes the Reformed Church vs. the godless hordes, the original issue gets trampled. Which in this case is too bad, it's an important issue.
Looking forward to the ongoing coverage...
...ROFLOLUIP
As Pat Buchanan said the Republicans and Democrats are two wings on the same bird of prey. The same goes for those two messed up political ideologies. Libertarianism/Reformism (Reform Party) is not compatable with either ideology
Dude, get in touch with your local library school, in Ann Arbor: The School of Information at UMICH. Faculty will be overjoyed to visit Holland, meet with library administrators and townspeople, and share their experiences.
Here at UNC's School of Information and Library Science, the faculty (me included) wrote a long letter to a community considering such censoring software. It helped.
No thank you.
This wave of pseudo-conservatism is as sickening as the halleluhya's proclaimed by the aforementioned candidates. Going back to the past "ideals" when we basically ignored problems/reality and replaced it with an Ozzie+Harriet+2.4 kids just doesn't work. It leads down a slippery slope that far too many of the conservative folks seem to fall down.
In government, you get what you pay for. You pay for internet access, and you get it. You pay for censorship and you will get it. The law of unintended consequences also indicates that when you go down that slippery slope, other very important literary and scientific works get caught up in the fray. Allowing this to proceed to its unnatural and ridiculous conclusion, and you find a Krystalnacht here in the US.
Censorship begets ignorance. Ignorance begets stupidity. Stupidity takes us backwards. That is where these pseudo-conservatives want to take us.
Look with great suspicion at anyone who proclaims themselves as here to help protect you from the evils that are out there. Their evils are likely not your evils. Their religion is likely not your religion, and their politics are likely not your politics. Despite this, they want to control your thought processes: by adjusting your education (ala creationism), by adjusting your reading (ala censorship in libraries/internet), etc.
Just remember precisely who is doing this to you, and do not forget for a second that it is their agenda and needs they are trying to put forth, not yours and your families.
Also remember that you may send these folks a message of GET OUT OF MY BACKYARD by voting down their proposals, their candidates, etc.
Thanks for pointing that out. It seemed to me to be crazy for any organization to bad mouth the classics, and I'm glad that's the case. I don't agree with the AFA, or the FFL for that matter, on a great many of their issues, but I do agree that libraries often spend too much money on books far less worthwhile than Pricipia and others. Books I would prefer libraries spend less money on are not the same as the AFA's list (my reasons are on intellectual grounds, not moral), but the end result is the same: libraries could stand to spend more of their money on quality intellectual material.
Dave
"A Free Man is not threatened by the effeminate, socialized liberal-conformist yammerings of degraded monstrosities like yourself. " You better be scared because guess what, WE ARE THE FUTURE. Your outdated silly system is dying. We don't believe in your past. Your fucked up America that refuses to embrace change. That is what conservatives are, they are people who are opposed to change. We are not opposed to change. We embrace change. We embrace the future. Our minds are open, our souls are free. war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength WE WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS. We will never love Big Brother, no matter how you try to sell him to us.
At this point, both the Democrats and Republicans are largely "conservative" in the sense of supporting the status quo. They don't want any major changes in the nation's political structure because of the risk that change would upset their balance of power and all the perks that come with it. They want the present system of corruption to continue unchallenged, for fear that if it were upset, their gravy train would go away.
What is that present system which the ruling parties support? It is the system of mass public fear. That's what's behind their advocacy of Net censorship. They, like Clinton and Exon before them, foster and then feed on fear of "online pedophiles", "terrorists", "psychotic schoolchildren downloading bomb recipes", or whatever the latest fashionable breed of scary social reject is.
Consistently the targets of this fear fail to exist. Take, for instance, the much-hyped "school shootings" non-issue. It is not a trend in student behavior; it is a trend in reportage (not to say "journalism") and in political speechmaking. That is to say, it is a trend in paranoia: fear which is not rooted in reality. Violent crime in schools, like violent crime in all other areas of American life except for FBI and police operations, has been decreasing for years.
Despite the nonexistence of the objects of fear, the populace is not permitted to feel relief or security. Relief and security don't sell papers, nor do they sell candidates. For instance, despite the decline in violent crime, the count of newspaper articles and TV news segments on the subject of violent crime has increased dramatically over the past severla years. And, of course, the candidates make political hay of all the fear generated, by promising always to assuage the current fear, while building up the next. A populace in fear of bandits is a populace which can be relied upon to support the one big gang of bandits which promises to rid them of all other bandits.
The solution? Quit supporting the fear-and-banditry regime. Vote -- and don't vote for the ruling parties. I happen to be a Libertarian myself, but I'd rather you voted Green, Reform, or even Socialist than voting Democrat or Republican. We have in America a convenient system of carrying out a peaceful revolution whenever the hell we want to: it's called free elections. It's just a matter of getting off our asses and doing it.
Some American Third Parties:
I believe a library should be a place where The People can visit and have free access to any publicly available information that they choose in as comfortable an environment as possible. I do not believe that anyone should tell me, or any other citizen of this country what they should or should not be accessing. If they would like to set up a group of childrens computers which have censorware on them, that is fine with me as long as the list of censored cites is publicly available and is open to change based on popular support.
Yes, from the way I stated this initially, I can see why you might take it that way. I certainly didn't intend to state that all children should be given complete trust. I was trying to make the opposite point and stated it too tersely.
The same level of trust, or lack of it, should not be applied to all children. It is approriate to let a responsible 16 year old surf the net unrestricted looking for material for a school paper. That same liberty shouldn't be applied to a 5 year old. I'm stating extremes here because deciding where to draw the line is a very individual issue. People develop in different ways and at different speeds.
Censorware in a library applies the limited trust appropriate to the 5 year old to the 16 year old as well and to adults. Anyone who would not grant me the full exercise of my rights is unworthy of my respect and trust. They are liars and tyrants. Do I have a right to access any information on the Web from a library? That is hardly an obvious right. But if I have been taxed to pay for the public internet access from the library, I would say that the answer is yes.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Wouldn't it be strange if a community held a vote to stop voting all together?
You say let the community decide on censorship or not -- but censorship clearly restricts the freedoms of some. It is equivelent to allowing the community the right to gag those who think against the standard.
Censorship for Freedom is doublespeak. Voting against the right *for all* to vote is not democracy.
Regards,
Brian Basgen
....sorry, had to say something.
In short, the library ends up buying a pig in a poke -- they have no idea as to what exactly is being filtered.
This is the part where you actually GO to these meetings and TELL people exactly what they're getting. Explain to them the problems with filtering software and give them alternatives (if you can).
It basically comes down to this: Is the loss worth the gain? Only your local community can decide that. Help them.
I'm sure the ultra-conservative religious censors would get very upset if a leftwing group were to take a stand promoting censorware that blocked all sites of a religious nature. And I certainly wouldn't mind not seeing all the proselytizing.
If you paid any attention to the debate you would know that the religious right is NOT pushing censorware to protect your children from pron! They really only care about preventing people from having access to information sources like /., the ACLU, gay rights, evolution, free speech, etc. If you look at the history of censorware it ALWAYS blocks lots of non-porn sites like anti-censorware sites, ACLU, gay rights sites, etc. Do not believe these people when they say they are out to protect the kids.. just look at the censored sites lists.
It is also worth mentioning that this is why the CDA was the comminications *decensy* act instead of a computer *porn* act.. they don't care about the porn.. they care about forcing their religion on all of us.
All you people posting about how you want your kids to be prevented from accessing porn need to get with it and look up the real history of the debate. Unfortunatly, there is currently no porn blocking software which dose not activly assist the religious right in blocking informtation that they do not want people to have.. and this is a real problem for parents who really do wnt to protect there children from porn at home. It appears that the best technological solution is to use a squid proxy to log the sites your child visits and occasionally look at the logs.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I disagree. Certainly, if I gave my children no guidance or supervision, you would be right. But I have placed their computer in the same room with mine. I watch TV with them and help them select the shows or tapes to watch. I think that all parents owe that kind of involvement to their children, although the form it takes will differ. To have taught them the values that I want them to learn and then to turn around and indicate that I don't trust them to live up to my expectations would be to convey my distrust.
I have frequently set limits for my kids. All responsible parents do. My children have earned my trust. They know that they aren't allowed candy before dinner. They don't betray my trust. So the candy is within reach so that they can get some after dinner.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
'nuff said.
Anyone who believes that less information is preferable to more has left the path of wisdom.
I knew there'd be at least one post in here to the effect of, 'Never mind - move along. This isn't an issue that concerns you (and oh yeah, by the way, I agree with them).' And I disagree with that premise to the extent I can decipher its meaning.
For many reasons, Holland, Michigan's public library is important to ALL of us, not the least of which is that it sets focus and precedent.
For one thing, if they weren't sure that a smaller community wasn't more likely to house lunatic elements of the Right than a large city, you'd be reading about this fight down the peninsula in Detroit or Ann Arbor, not Holland. But they wouldn't dare.
For another thing, if this passes, it only encourages Wildmon and his merry bunch of crackers (in the ignant Southern white folk sense) to descend upon other small communities with their patrician, contemptuous message of censorship and hate.
For example, Lon Mabon was and is our local Chief Hater of homosexuals here in Oregon. When the infamous Ballot Measure 9 (a statewide ballot initiative designed to deny homosexuals their civil rights) got soundly defeated here, Mabon went to the smaller communities with the same measure, to pass as city ordinances. He succeeded in a couple of communities, and now those communities don't get tourism revenue like they used to, except from hate groups like Mabon's.
Wildmon learned his lesson from Mabon and others like him. The larger the group you're trying to preach hate to, the less likely it is you'll get converts.
And make no mistake, this is a hate issue, under the premise that because conservatives don't feel they should pay (or pay much) for public services like these, they're only going to support it if they can inject their 50s-era sense of morality into it. Even though, in this case, it COSTS MORE MONEY to do so.
They know full well that public resources such as a library's Internet connection are most likely to be used by folks who can't afford their own personal Internet connections. They're hoping that poor folk (and those who would, in their good consciences, defend the civil liberties of poor folk) are likely to feel too disenfranchised, too often attacked and too often let down by their elected government to think that it's important enough to vote on the measures at the Republican primary, when the good Christian conservatives are out anyway.
In fact, Wildmon and his minions are counting on it. That's why this ballot is not set up for a General, when the Dems would normally vote, too.
I'd add too, that that's why this is rightly pinned on Republicans, Christians and Conservatives as a by-product of their general attitude: If you're poor, we know what's best for you, better than you do.
Groups like Wildmon's attach themselves to parties in their own self-interest, not the parties. It's up to parties to deny these groups access to the platform if they want to shed blame for the ideology. When there's an important Republican, Christian, or conservative who will denounce censorship, and the hatemongering activities of the AFA, on the podium of the Republican National Convention, THAT's when we can all start believing bullshit attempts at sympathy like "Republican != Censor."
You think it's an accident that John Engler staggered his state's Republican primary? Do you think that he didn't know that Nazis like Wildmon would come out of the woodwork to capitalize on *Republican* sympathies at this election time?
THAT's the big benefit. Not that Michigan would get some additional pub and increased candidate attention - that's the innocuous reason he trots forth to the press for doing it. Michigan does fine for the Republican Party already.
But mostly, this hate leads Wildmon and those who think like him to abandon Christian principles of charity and 'what you have done to the least among Me, you have done to Me' and presume to claim the right to make these people's lives a little harder whenever they can.
If they win, they'll point to Holland, MI as an example of their 'good' work, at least until the Michigan Supreme Court comes to its senses and strikes this down for the blatant assault on our First Amendment rights that it is. And then they'll find other small, sympathetic communities, such as Troy, AL; Springfield, OR; or the nearest tight-laced 'Christian town' near you. Count on it.
If you need this in geek terms, try King's Theorem: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Being shared in public, at taxpayer expense, whaddya expect. Good incentive to find a job and buy a PERSONAL computer; that was the whole driving force behind PC's, build one at home so you don't have to share it or go by lots of little picky corporate rules about what you can run, where and why.
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
THE REVOLUTION: Think REALLY different http://www.the-revolution.org
They could work, in theory. Of course, theory is never directly applicable. They could only approach being workable if the following conditions are met:
1) The list of sites censored must be public. Currently I don't know of any censorware that does this.
2) There needs to be someone (in the public) checking all these sites to make sure they are indeed porn and not, say, information for women about their bodies or some anti-establishment political site, and said person(s) must have the power to remove sites that are not porn-related. This leads directly to 3:
3) The definition of porn needs to be be described VERY specifically, something that hasn't been done to date as far as I know, and it will always be somewhat subjective. It wasn't dealt with well at all in the CDA.
Those conditions being listed, it should be obvious that I don't support filters in their proposed form. Condition two requires some sort of beauracracy whether it's public run or not, which is enough to turn off a lot of people to the idea altogether.
Condition three is also a reason a lot of people don't support any type of censoring. Getting to define what is and isn't porn is a big chunck of power. Usually its a small group that gets to define it as well.
It all boils down to accountability. If the government gets to control the list, or even some small software company, and the censor list is not public, the means for asserting indiviual interests is too high. Without accountability, corruption results. Always.
The other question is how dangerous is porn in the first place. I like comparisons of porn to depictions of violence. Parents often say "I don't want my kids to see porn because it will hurt their minds, and it degrades and objectifies women." Well, violence degrades and objectifies life, which is even worse. Yet ask parents what they think about it, they'll usually say "well, I can't do much about it, I can't stop my kids from seeing it...", yet, this is exactly what they are attempting with porn. So if anything, I see this as a manipulation of public opinion, by the media, or other institutions which shall remain nameless. I don't know how else to explain this paradox.
I used to work at a library, and one day I was thinking about censorware. So I asked several librarians: if the library had an infinite budget, would it have everything ever written. I got a few responses: some said yes. Some said no porn, and some said yes, but only non-fictional non-fiction (i.e. no holocaust-denials).
Neat, huh. Of course, it's a direct analogy. Me, I'd go for the "yes" answer.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
An athiest with a conservative political outlook. I thought I was the only one.
Is there a support group for us?
I've heard that some people are suggesting new high level domains for adult sites, like .sex or .adu. If these sites were required to use these domains then they would be trivial to filter and we wouldn't have to worry about censoring Yahoo, etc. I don't think the sites involved would much care about having to change their domain as long as they got a reasonable amount of time to do it.
Granted, sites devoted to KKK, etc. couldn't be filtered out this way but I think the bulk of the argument for filtering is against porn, not hate speech, etc. Conservatives or others who want to protect children from unpopular views wouldn't be able to use the anti-porn argument.
In this way we would know what is being filtered and what isn't. It seems like a workable solution to me.
I would suggest that people visit the AFA (http://www.afa.net/) page to understand where they are coming from. It is a very sad place. There is little to nothing about families, and almost everything about fear of others. Fear of Howard Stern, "Domestic Partners" benefits, 7Up commercial with the "Make 7... Up Yours" bringing down their society.
These people spend their time, effort, and lives working to stop 7Up commercials, and Howard talking about bowel movements. I honestly feel very sorry for the waste of resources, and the unhappiness they must feel. Check out the wide variety of books available in their bookstore.(You can never own too many bibles.)
- I like pudding.
Check out the ALA website.
"It seems a bustling, crowded public area in a public library, in front of a big window facing a busy street, is not an environment where people commonly go to look at porn"
Evidently Rob&co haven't read some stories from large universities. I will keep one such large university anonymous, but I will say that there have been repeated incidents in public computing clusters on campus. Voyeurs, exhibitionists, and perverts have harrassed students in the computing clusters. Are they staffed 24/7? Yes. Are they limited to university access? Yes. However, that doesn't stop some of these people.
Do I condone censorship in any way? No, however just because things are monitored doesn't mean things can't happen.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
it's my free will that the lesbian separtist ALA forces pornography and homosexuality down our childrens throats.
This view is a direct attack on all of our most precious freedoms. You are guilty of high treason. I assume that you are aware of the penalties.
I'm an American, I disagree with you.
Don't be so sure that you're an American. Your crimes constitute a voluntary renunciation of your citizenship. This is a Christian nation. An anti-Christian individual cannot, by definition, be a citizen.
Democracy isn't about dictating the fanaticism of one individual
You are a fanatic. I am not a fanatic. I am a reasonable, decent person trying to restore some simple human decency and honesty to our culture. I wish to restore to us the freedoms that we've lost. That is not fanaticism, that is my simple duty as a Christian and an American.
You haven't convinced the masses yet so stop acting like you speak for The People.
If the majority has been misled, it is our duty to bring them back to their senses. A good start will be putting a stop to the torrent of propaganda in our schools and libraries, propaganda which shamelessly promotes the Feminist, Atheist, and Homosexual Agendas: The whole panoply of Liberalism, the very flowers of evil in full bloom, all being vomited forth by the mouths of innumerable filthy perverts hiding behind the First Amendment.
Since you choose to subject your young sons to aggravated homosexual rape, you are a criminal and will be punished when once again our nation is free. You can run but you can't hide.
Hotdamn, I'm gonna work for the government then! Socialism AND group sex, woohoo!
Enjoy your diseased pursuits while they last. It won't be long now.
Maybe our country isn't as fucked up as I thought
It's typical that you resort to foul language, since you are obviously incapable of saying anything rational.
Do my rights online include a decent *color* for a section like this, maybe so I could read it?
Well, apparently not, so I'm browsing in w3m. But the article didn't get any better.
I'm opposed to censorware in principle, but what do you think is going to happen to the little geek kid who runs into
a censored web browser? Well, I think he's going to find a way around it. And I think that's wonderful. If this
goes through, I'd like to thank Holland, MI, and all the other little towns breeding the next generation of clever
hackers and crackers.
Why? Because censorware software is horrible. It's pretty funny when the adults can't get their work done due to the
"security measures" in place, while the kids go to all the xxx/porn/warez sites--maybe they aren't even interested in
them, maybe it's just the challenge.
Remember, folks. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And people's "intentions" seem to be getting better
all the time...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'm just wondering when he jumped ship...check your history books...
Invicta{HOG}
is a simpler way of stating this topic. This applies everywhere that we engage in actions and speech that are seen by the community. If one is part of a community then one knows what is appropriate within the community. I would venture to go so far as saying even children know what is appropriate. And a simple explanation of what is not appropriate would clarify any questions. So if consequences for inappropriate actions are clearly laid out then mistakes will become simple learning processes.
How can you be certain, nothing is certain?
>Yes but trust and respect goes with age >wisdom. Would you trust a twelve year old to >drive a car? Or with a loaded gun? In my state (Pennsylvania), Hunter's education starts at age 13, I believe, and you can legally hunt at 13 or 14. Yes, I would trust a 12 year old with a gun. FWIW, I don't think there is an age restriction on obtaining pilot's license either. If I can trust a 10 yr. old to fly a plane, I can certainly trust them to drive a car. I drove tractors and motorcycles when I was 8, for cryin' out loud. I was also hacking assembly on my first computer at age 12. Show me people who use computers every day nowadays who can do that? Why aren't they banned from the use of computers b/c they are fscking incompetent?
They just happen to speak very loudly. The average American does not want to nail the Ten Commandments to the school door or burn gays at the stake or imprison evolutionists or outlaw "boobies" on television. Some Americans do. And some Americans voice these views very loudly. They have a right to do so. And I'll defend their right to do so, because these are the same rights that guarantee that we'll never have a theocracy here in America, despite what the zealots want.
Actually, it's a win-win situation. The zealots get an opportunity to voice their Dark Ages views, and normal people get free entertainment from watching them. We can laugh at religious fundies, we can pity them, but we must never silence them. The current trend of nodding politely and ignoring them seems to be working okay. Let's not deviate from that. Live and let live.
Forget about any kind of Internet censorship or the CDA being revived. Just read the Supreme Courts unanimous decision. There is no chance in hell there will be even the slightest suggestion of Internet censorship as long as the Supreme Court remains as it is.
E.
Holland Democrats, assuming for the sake of argument that they exist, will first have to learn that they can vote on Feb. 22
What makes you think the Democrats are any more interested in preserving any of your rights? They seem perfectly content, even eager, to deny us other rights which they seem to think are politically inconvenient.
because this could of been written anonymously by just about any major politician in this country. christian dominated america sucks. jesus was a commie but for some reason all of his followers are fascists!
Wildmon and his merry bunch of crackers (in the ignant Southern white folk sense)...their patrician, contemptuous message of censorship and hate.
Wow. I've always considered racial stereotypes and name-calling pretty hateful. It sounds like the pot is calling the kettle "cracker".
I guess the following would be "religious zellots"
Dr Martin Luther King (Baptist Minister, if you don't know what he did, you need to get basic history)
Dietrich Bonhoffer(German theologian whose writings were exposing the NAZI's, utilmately he was executed by them)
Alan Keyes (Christian who both Democrats and republicans admit is the most Constitutional based
canidate running for president)
Mother Terresa (Nun whose whole life was consumed
in service for God. She helped all the dying people who no one would touch. The people whose
own religion and government would just let die)
Billy Graham (Another person whose whole life was in service to God, has had the respect of every
US president. cited by the George Washington Carver Memorial Institute for his contributions to race relations. He has also been recognized by the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith and the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his efforts to foster a better understanding among all faiths.
Mr. Graham is regularly listed by the Gallup organization as one of the "Ten Most Admired Men in the World" and was described by them as the dominant figure in that poll over the past 45 years. (Got the last 3 sentances from his bio on his web site))
So when you talk about "religious zealots"
are you including them ?
If so then you are the one with freedom problem. You are the one who can not separate your anger
from people are sterotyping. Some of these peopel gave there life so there may be freedom.
Can you make the same claim ?
I have had discussions with born-again christians who honestly believe the planet is just 6,000 years old, who believe that dinosaur bones are a satanic plot to hide the truth, who believe that mentally ill people are actually possessed by demons, and so on. Makes it tough to figure out whether someone here is honestly discussing their beliefs, or just trolling.
Surfing the net and looking at porn does not kill your child. It allows him to make decisions on his own. That's what trust is about. Trust them. If they make a mistake, they learn without you having to tell them, and they love you more for it.
Porn, on the other hand, is only fascinating to them until it becomes easy to get access to it. Does censoring it change this behavior in children? No. So why not trust them to find out on their own? Better yet, why not tell them about sex yourself if you don't want them to get misinformation?
The real issue here, though, is censoring anything else the censorware company happens not to like and adds to the black box blacklist. I don't believe kids or adults are going to go into a public library to look at porn. I do know for a fact that censorware companies have lists that block sites that contain real ideas and should be viewable from a public library.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Offer any opinion that deviates from the party line at Slashdot and you will be censored. I'm not talking about trolls and first posts. Almost any strong point of view at Slashdot will be censored. But hey, just like the library, it's just "filtering". Uh huh.
"There is no chance in hell there will be even the slightest suggestion of Internet censorship as long as the Supreme Court remains as it is."
Several justices have said they are going to be retiring, whoever the next president is gets to pick their replacements.
I spit on the moderator/coward who moderated this to flamebait. You can go to Hell, whoever you are.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I know this is an ignorant question, and its not intended as flame bait (I, predictably, also strongly oppose censorship), but I have to ask.
... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."?
:)
I know a lot of amendments apply to every one in the US (fifth, for instance), but doesn't the first amendment say "Congress shall make no law
I may be wrong, but does this even qualify as censorship? It's not at the federal level - this is a city run library. What does the state consitution say? Because if I read the first amendment correctly, it sounds like states can censor what they want, when they want, as long as it doesn't interfere with rights in that state.
I'm not sure, IANAL... Maybe I should watch The People vs. Larry Flynt again...
Any ideas anyone? Because to me it sounds like all Jamie can do about this is continue to raise awareness and hope more people vote "No".
In case of Rapture, only Anonymous Cowards will remain. God's elect will disappear.
Trust and respect goes with age and wisdom, most of the time. He is not saying that older people are more intelligent. The point is most people gain wisdom over time through their own mistakes but hopefully they learn through other people's mistakes. Sure the smart ones can gain intelligence quicker but many children aren't raised to make intelligent decisions as to what they are ready for.
About getting a hunting license at age 13 that's understandable if the child had to take a test. I just don't think any one really knows what to put in a porn test yet.
Is hope college going to be sensored as well?
drug law enforcement is modern day witch hunting.
I agree with your revised point then about the broad hand of censorware, however perhaps it would be better to have adult and children sections of the computer labs the same way they divide up the books. There is already a lot of censorship going on in libraries with what books are allowed to be bought and on what shelves they should go on, yet a reasonable division of who can access what would appear to leave most library patrons quite satisfied. In the library that I use, magazines that have more mature content are put on the top shelf so that there is at least a user restriction by height. The problem is that this issue is one to be decided by a very large group and I think that most parents would prefer to err on the side of too much censorship rather than too little. I am sure that there are many kids that could be trusted to browse the internet 'appropriately,' however because there would probably be a significant number of users that would spend there time looking at porn, it is reasonable to expect such restrictions. The same way that it would be nice that all libraries stayed open 24 hours a day and you could check yourself out, the potential for abuse is fairly great and must be moderated.
To have taught them the values that I want them to learn and then to turn around and indicate that I don't trust them to live up to my expectations would be to convey my distrust.
Blocking access does not indicate that I don't trust them!
Part of what I want my children to learn is that responsible people take appropriate measures to insure that we don't put ourselves in situations in which a momentary impulse could easily lead us to do something seriously wrong.
For example, I could be trusted to take an extended business trip travelling alone with an attractive female colleague, without having anything untoward transpire. But I would never put myself in that position. I would make sure the situation never arose in the first place.
Taking appropriate measures to make sure that I'm not in that kind of situation is part of what makes me someone who could be trusted if the situation ever arose. My wife trusts me enough to know that I know better than to travel alone with another woman.
So, the short answer to your comments: taking reasonable measures like blocking access is part of the values I want my children to learn. Just because you and I don't share the same values doesn't mean I distrust my children.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
People bat around the word "conservative" quite a lot without having a clue what it means. Mandating the use of filtering software in public libraries is not conservative. True conservative towns don't keep computers in their libraries at all, let alone ones connected to the Internet. The true conservative solution is the one the town is already implementing. When some idiot looks at pornography in the library, the librarian walks by with a stern look.
the wording in the post of this story makes it seem like a "bad thing" that someone would put up a sign that says something about Jesus. is there something wrong with someone expressing themselves in that way? sometimes on /. it seems like there is a huge outcry when something "technical" gets censored, but little concern when the censorship, ignorance, and flamming comments concern something other then free speech on the interenet. IMHO, if you're going to rant and rave about censorship and offensive actions against constitutional/human rights, you should not violate them yourselves.
"We've taken care of everything,
from the words you read to the songs you sing,
the pictures that give pleasure to your eyes."
Yay, Neil! You are truly a seer!
Windows is the Acme of computing -- in the Wile E. Coyote sense.
(What do you bet this post would be blocked by the net filters?)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Really? So all that stuff about Christ we learned in religion class, they were all lying about that? It has nothing to do with that Christ guy? His name sure came up a lot.
Oh wait, I see - only YOU have RIGHT Christ.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I smell a lawsuit. If these townships help to fund the library, but are not able to vote on its policies, I think they have a good chance at overturning this vote. IANAL, but if I *were* suing, I'd start with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution (Equal Protection Clauses). If I were campaigning against this vote, I'd wrap myself in the flag ("No taxation without Representation -- no censorship without our vote!"). Finally I'd call out the members of local alternative political parties, specifically the Libertarians, who are dead set against censorship.
And don't forget -- if this does pass, it will be struck down in court as an example of government-sponsored censorship. It could probably also be viewed as "...establishing a religion..." as well as "...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." in violation of the First Amendment. Ordinance or no, nothing trumps the Constitution.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
The real revolution will not be televised.
The real revolution also will not use animated background images.
Most Catholics are damned to hell. They indulge in pagan rituals and Mary worship. They worship statues and magic trinkets. Chick Publications has a great tract which asks Are Roman Catholics Christian? It is well worth the read in order understand this problem sect.
You're assuming I meant that 'all Southern white folk are ignant,' which is mistaken. My premise is that cracker may be defined in one sense as an ugly name for a white person who isn't very smart, usually from the South. If I'd wanted to perpetrate a racial stereotype, it would have read '(in the Southern White Folk sense).' But it doesn't. Nonetheless, it applies to Wildmon, and believe me, it's not the only term I can think of for him and his ilk that does.
IOW, I didn't coin the phrase, but I'm using it.
So while you're right that I called him names (of which 'cracker' was probably the gentlest - believe me, I hold much more contempt for this man than I could ever find one name for - maybe 'cancer on and traitor to this country' is apt, but that's 7 words, not one.), you didn't read my post thoroughly enough, and I can't be responsible for your mistaken conclusion that I'm stereotyping with that post.
Does it say Anonymous Coward on your Voter Registration Card?
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The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Listen, in all seriousness have you considered getting professional psychiatric help for your condition? Larry Flynt said he used to hear voices too, but with a little lithium it all went away.
You see a reasoned argument is one thing, but when you say:
The American Library Association is the most monstrously conceived and diabological organization active in the United States today.They demand that we devote public funds to help them force children to read pornography!
it appears your reason hast slipped the bounds o'er earth. You've been watching too many Bond movies on TBS. Really, go talk to a counselor about your hatred and homophobia. You might feel better, and then maybe you'll enjoy your time here on this planet instead of telling the rest of us where we're going later.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Wisdom doesn't necessarily depend on age. There are many people 30 or 40 years old who i wouldn't trust with a gun or behind the wheel of a car, while i'm open to the possibility of a 12 year old being responsible enough. Trust and respect should be based on the person, and not just how many years they've been alive.
We make judgements based on age because statistically most people will fit the statistic. But we often forget that there are many who deviate from the norm in either direction.
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
The true problem with censorware is that it asks computers to make a moral judgement, something that right now they happen to not be very good at. Those that support censorware see it as this boon that will allow them to filter out the porn and smut on the Internet, and make sure that no child sees it. They do not understand that censorware not only overblocks sites, but even more disturbing, underblocks them. Censorware often does not even do what it is supposed to do; protect children from pornography.
I think that we can all agree that people should not be allowed to view pornography at public libraries. Therefore, some sort of measure needs to be taken from stopping people from doing so, and in reality not a lot truly needs to be done. I doubt that it is very common place for people to go to their local library and view porn. I think that two things need to happen: censorware proponents need to be educated on how ineffective censorware is, and also we need to pass a law simply making it illegal to view porn at a public library. This would be just as effective as censorware, not to mention cheaper, and would have the added bonus of not drawing us one step closer to the world of Orwell's 1984.
Fortunately those 30 minute time slots that libraries dole out are just about the right time to do a quite redhat install .....
Australia has been copping a fair amount of flak recently for our new broadcast regs that affect our net. Fair enough; we deserve it. Most of us will try to ignore the new rules, though.
But if we're feeling pissed off at our goverment (we laugh at government) or down on ourselves about our stupidity, it always cheers us up to see what new pains you guys are inflicting upon yourselves.
Australians don't think about free speech, because it never occurred to us that we might not have it. If someone wants to take it away, we tell them to bugger off (and that goes for the new rules, too). This makes us complacent about our rights, I think.
Americans, on the other hand, appear to like crusading for free speech, as if your government is so evil that it might prevent you from talking one day. Fair enough; it might too. But I doubt it.
If you feel like a break from your stuggle, come down here. We'll knock off a few beers, swear at some cops, have a few beers with ~them~, and generally get slayed. You're always welcome.
Using the holy grail of OSes...
It showed up in my town, well county. Our library was sued and it went away quick enough. I moved here about a month after but if they try it again ill be more then happy to be the one that sues them. Shhhh, dont tell AFA, the library has books as well as computers, they may want to censor them too.
You are guilty of high treason. I assume that you are aware of the penalties.
Now you're guilty of a terrorstic threat. I assume you're aware of the penalties. I'd hate to see Rob served with a subpoena to give up any evidence possible on identifying you, but one of these days (today?) you'll cross the line and someone will respond. Then you go to jail, which should be a really interesting experience for you, especially when they decide who's bitch you're gonna be.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Jamie's entitled to his opinion, which seems to be that the co-opting of the expression 'Y2K' by Christian marketing groups is lame, and that he would like to prank the signs that have such an expression. I admire his imagination: I wouldn't have the energy to do anything else besides laugh at how completely stupid that is. Besides, whatever happened to "I Found It!"? That was pretty clever.
I suppose it is censorship if someone actually goes out and does it. I doubt that would ever actually *happen* in Holland, Michigan (wink, wink). Actually, it's vandalism, which is punishable by law, if the Holland PD decides to enforce it.
You could argue ignorance, but if anything, it seems that Jamie has all the facts necessary to craft an *informed* take about how he feels.
The morality of a flame depends on its context and content. I'll leave that as an exercise to the informed readership of Slashdot.
But there's a huge difference between 'thinking some signs are stupid and wanting to harm them' and 'forcing government through a rigged public referendum to pay extra money to install crappy commercial censoring software (with an agenda) on the *public* computers at the library, and then forcing everyone who uses the computer to be subject to its decisions over their content choices.'
I think that's the major point, here (the second part). Some of us are against it, like Che Guevara was against rich white people owning most of Cuba.
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The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
ugh, I screwed up one of the links..
The Witches Voice is really here.
When do we get the option of editing our own comments after they've been posted Rob?
-- iCEBaLM
For example, I could be trusted to take an extended business trip travelling alone with an attractive female colleague, without having anything untoward transpire. But I would never put myself in that position. I would make sure the situation never arose in the first place.
How could I or others trust you, when you don't trust yourself ? Maybe your wife should've looked elsewhere...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Why wouldn't this rich combination of procedures produce the evironment that everyone wants - no unsupervised porn for kids, full access to all information for adults and supervised kids.
I'm a sysadmin in charge of PC's in a public library for a city in Texas. Our internet service for the PC's in an "adult" computer lab there is completely unfiltered and no access is logged whatsoever. Children must have a parent or legal guardian present with them before they are allowed to use those PC's. In addition, these PC's have "privacy screens" over the monitors which are pretty effective at stopping shoulder-surfing. We do have a separate children's area with some PC's away from the adult computer lab that can only surf a specially prepared Intranet server so the children can have a "surfing experience" of safe, pre-prepared webpages without needing a parent present looking over their shoulders. Hopefully we will never be ordered to restrict any internet sites on the adult PC's because there's already a law on the books that prohibits "displaying pornographic images in public" (a form of disorderly conduct) and this place is definitely a public place. So far the worst complaints we get are for charging money for laser printing and not allowing users to bring in their own floppy diskettes for downloads: we'll sell them new diskettes at the computer lab front desk and unlock the floppy drive in the PC on a per-session basis. The reason for this is two-fold: 1, we don't want folks bringing in virus-infected floppies and 2, we need the money to help pay for daily operation of the computer lab. It's about the fairest policy we could come up with, what do y'all think?
Why have I yet to hear of one of you complainers actually doing something about the situation in a positive way? ie. writing a "good" filter? If everyone keeps saying "Don't use it because it doesn't work right" then either help fix it or shut up!
Why have I yet to hear of one of you complainers actually doing something about the situation in a positive way? ie. writing a "good" filter?
If everyone keeps saying "Don't use it because it doesn't work right" then either help fix it or shut up!
the ACLU scares me a bit
The religious right has gone to great lengths to damage the ACLU's credibility, but the turth is that many many of our freedoms would not exists today if it was not for the ACLU. Example: It was the ACLU that really put an end to the religious persicution of minority Christian sects by majority ones. Actually, just this year they defended a Christian priest who interprets the no graven image thing the way the moslems do so that he could get a drivers lissence without needing his picture taken. They are also defending people held in prison by INS on secret evidence. The people of the ACLU are not scarry.. they are heros.. look at the real history of the ACLU.
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" Voltaire
This is the essence of the ACLU. I suggest you look at what the ACLU has done this year and read What's a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU? by Shelia Suess Kennedy.
The best kept secret about the ACLU is that most americans would agree with more of what the ACLU dose then with what there own political parties do. You should not accuse them of being evil or scarry just because they happen to defend one or two things that you do not like (or becuase they neglect one or two things that you do.. like gun ownership). Look at what they really do.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
- Private entities must donate censorware to the library that they would like available, enough for one copy on each of the public computers at the library, or it does not get installed. This ensures that the burden of expense belongs to the people who desire the service, and not those who are opposed to it.
- No using the computers with out a card scan.
- Cards should be free to sign up for.
- Booths would be visually separated and monitored to make sure disturbances would not occur, and all laws (public exhibition, disturbing the peace, etc.) would be enforced.
- Upon request, the censorware must be installed on a box if the patron asks for it, or if a minor or other ward's library card is encoded for it.
- Upon request, a computer must be made available that is censorware-free if a non-minor or a minor with permission (or the code) asks that it be done.
- Parents would be able to control the censorware code on their children's library cards at all times.
- Citizens would be able to control their own code at all times.
I think this adequately addresses the concerns adults have the right to have regarding their children and wards, without trampling the rights of free citizens.Thoughts?
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The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
There is an unusual law in the city of Holland that allows any measure to be brought to a ballot vote by petition. This is good in that it brings democracy directly to the people. Unfortunately, if a couple thousand people signed a petition demanding that the mayor must part Lake Michigan or forfeit his salary, that issue would go on the ballot. Democracy doesn't always make sense.
Yes, it does. You`re saying that just because you don`t agree with popular opinion means that it`s wrong. If you want to really live in a democracy, you`ve got to either get rid of that kind of closed-minded opinion, or move to another town. Democracy is about trusting the judgement of the masses more than you`ll trust the judgement of any individual.
<tim><
The Reform Party is still practically brand new, much newer than (say) the Libertarians or Greens. It doesn't yet have much of a handle on what it wants to be. Because the Reform Party's platform is not based on any particular historical or philosophical position -- it's basically just "We don't like the status quo!" -- it's pretty much free for the taking for anyone to move in on. "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
Contrast this with the Libertarian Party, which is founded on very straightforward philosophical principles; or the Green Party, which has a basis in the whole history of the environmental movement, as well as in the Green movement in Europe. If Buchanan had tried to move in on either the Libertarians or the Greens, he'd be booed off the stage, because he clearly doesn't fit in with either. But a party whose own identity is little more than "misfit" isn't going to be able to muster much fuss against a misfit like Buchanan.
As the Reform Party develops a history (which will, of course, only come with time) it will have to grow a more stable political position and philosophy. If it doesn't, it will doom itself to irrelevance as a bunch of malcontents who will follow any candidate who's a bigger malcontent than any of them.
I cannot understand why these people want to go to such great lengths to stop people reading about British mints and Australian beer anyway. Trebor XXX mints are the best and I do not see why they should be censored just because they are good strong mints. Castlemaine XXXX is just another Australian lager and as such I think life will go on without it but I do not see that it is fair to ban it. It is much better than that Bud stuff.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
At least those people tried to make things better - ACROSS religious lines. They may have been zealots... but at least they worked to improve humanity, rather than cause it to come crashing down in the name of their god.
Well, everyone except billy graham. I have NO respect for him. In my opinion, he's singlehandedly responsible for popularizing modern evengelical christianity, which is not only unbiblical, it's just plain wrong, IMO. And he does very little to improve the state of humanity, on the contrary, I feel he is helping to destroy it.
So those people, with the exception of billy graham, are willing to set aside their dogma in order to help unite people, to help make life better for people... I do respect them. And I think I would die for what I believe. Or, more accurately, I would die before I allowed someone to force me to believe differently.
But those who would reconstruct this country in order to force everyone to believe in some strange doctrine bout a guy dying and coming back to life and sin and a book written by god himself and everything... And those who'd force their moral values on others (other than basic humanity)... I have no respect for them at all and will fight them with everything I have.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
What is the definition of Christianity? Christians believe and love God. They trust their life fully in God. Catholics do the same. The only difference I see between Catholism and Christianity is that Catholics believe that in order to reach and attach spirituality, they admit that they need guidance from the Catholic Church. Christians believe that they can attain spirituality solely on their own by just reading the Bible. The pagen rituals that you mentioned are nothing more than little steps (optional) that the Catholic Church "invented" to help the masses learn more about God. Catholics do not worship Mary. Yes, they "pray" to Mary but it is not worship. It is just the way Catholics "talk" to Mary. Why do Catholics bother "talking" to Mary? Because we respect her faith. Similar to the way Christians discuss religious issues with a pastor. We do not worship statues. Yes, we have them in our Church but we do not worship them. They are merely there to aid in "visualizing" Christ. Looking at Catholism from the outside is why you have come up with such inaccurate interpretations of Catholics and the Catholic Church. Besides, you cannot judge all Catholics the same nor can you judge all Christians the same. Every Catholic just like every Christian is different. If you encounter one Catholic who does the above that you mentioned and in your opinion is deemed unspiritual and "damned" to Hell, it is wrong to judge *all* Catholics alike. Such is the cause of prejudice and biases.
Just for kicks i clicked the link to the AFA's Website. What shocks me the most is the blatant disregard for the opinion of anyone but their extremist own. They want to silence anyone who does not agree with them, after all they have no right to speak. Jesus says so. Any group trying to achieve political might (like them, check out some of the site also) really should consider not using biggoted terms like "feminazi". My favorite though is the article on the evils of Disney. If these people really want to protect themselves and their youth from the "evils of satan" that apparently have corrupted our society (and I just don't see it because I'm tainted by those evil homosexuals) then they should just shut up and not spend their money where they don't want to. The thing that shocks me about most of these extremist christian groups is that while their religion is based upon tolerance and love for man, and not judging each other just allowing god to do that, they are the complete opposite. Hypocritical bigots. Oh well. Off my box.
Umm, right... John Locke == Protestantism? The Englightenment == Protestantism? Care to explain this? Can this be explained?
Christianity is part of the warp and woof or American society - if you want to rip it out, you're seeking nothing less than the complete destruction of the American ideals founded on it.
Comments like this would lead a person to believe the reading the bible destroys brain cells
(Disclaimer: I have nothing against Christians per se; just the stupid ones with a penchant for hyperbole). First of all, the drafters of our Constitution assiduously tried to keep the government out of religion, and vice versa. Its the first amendment, by the way: The First one! First! Have you ever even LOOKED at the Constitution? Have you ever even HEARD of it? And the founding fathers weren't even mainline Protestants, for Christ's sake, they were deists! Do you know ANYTHING about history? Aaaagh!
...disciplining the ronkeys since 3/2000...
First off, censorware is unconstitutional in public libraries. Second, it doesn't work, anyway. There is way more porn than can be supressed, while if a useful and relevant site gets blocked, you're pretty much screwed. Third, the censorware companies all have ties to evil organizations trying to impose their false morals on everyone else.
And much more... Censorware.org had a lot of good stuff, last time I checked.
Moo.
You said this was your "knee-jerk reaction" and you were right. Now go back and read the intro.
Personally I have far less objection to the fact that it is on the ballot (even though I disagree with the initiative) than I do to the way that they are trying to make sure that only one side will be voting.
If you are a Republican then you can go vote for your primary and discover this issue. (Probably stated on the ballot in a slanted way.)
If you are a Democrat you have to have heard about this issue and go there only to vote.
Additionally primaries generally attract only the fringe of each party. To win in the primaries Republicans have to take positions far right of where they will portray themselves in the general election, and Democrats have to go left of where they go for the general election.
The result is that the vote was arranged in a way where only the right-wing fringe will realistically vote. Where then are the rights of the majority? If the same ballot were put in November's election, then I would object far less. But it is not, and it is not because the authors don't want this to be a fair election.
An additional, peripheral, issue here is that many whose taxpayer money is being decided don't have a vote. This vote is only open to residents of the city, not to outlying community who use the library and whose taxes help pay for it. This too subverts the principle of democracy, however without evidence that the attitudes in the city and surrounding community differ I would not call it a malicious perversion of the principles of democracy.
But the vote given is a malicious perversion of the principles of democracy. I consider this type of tactic no better than Stalin's using his position as Secretary to hold important votes at which he had arranged that a quorum would get the news of the vote in time to show up, and that quorum was handpicked to vote how he wanted them to vote. Secretary was not originally intended to mean "leader of the USSR" but Stalin made it that.
Sincerely,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Pardon my assumptions, but I would have thought anyone with enough brains to participate on /. would have a built-in "insane nonsense" filter that would allow them to recognize Chick Publications as unintentionally hilarious and grossly inaccurate fundamentalist propaganda. Guess I'll have to revise my estimation of /.-ers downward. Or maybe just ACs.
BTW I collect found tracts. I personally treasure my classic "Last Generation".
no sig please, I'm agnostic
Why not read the relevant section for yourself?
Oh right, and the presiden tial powers bear examining. Particularly the section on treaties. US treaties can override other types of laws. (Which is why the Seattle protests against the WTO happened.)
Just for completeness, I should mention the proper judicial authority. Like it or not, the courts interpret the laws. And if their interpretations don't match the original author's intentions, such is life. (Sometimes this is necessary. For instance the inclusion of women in the Civil Rights Act of 1963 was intended to help sink the bill. It was accidentally left in as the bill was passed in memory of JFK and thus history was made...)
But I agree with you that in the last century the US federal government has stretched its authority well beyond what the Constitution ever intended. Whether this was the wrong thing to do is another question...
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
yea, I wasn't sure who to attribute it to. I thought maybe Duke, but so many of them reminded me, I decided to give it to the whole team (and I never learned the names of the writers of the show)
+&x
The only thing there's (unfortunately) no right to view is obscenity. Is all nudity that is characterized as porn obscene? No, but it all gets lumped together and banned by this software.
And don't forget about "hate speech" -- i.e. politically fringe and unpopular speech which is also banned by this software. This specifically attacks the substance of pure speech (whereas an attempt can be made to classify pornography as low-grade speech not conveying political ideas, an attempt that has typically failed [Booksellers v. Hudnut, etc.]).
All free speech is undermined when any speech is suppressed. Even hideous speech.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Just grade them on what you read in this book. The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich A Hayek.
Good reading... Mod me up for something informative please...
Now on to the Christians.
If they could only realize there are more important things to be doing with our body politic than worrying about the horrors of pornography.
You will probably notice the stunning lack of any kind of respect for any religion when you offer a repocrat enough money.
And a response to all the poor christians complaining that they get some ill will thrown their way. Christianity is big business. And it engages, or has engaged in, practices which make our friend in Redmond look like a kind neighborhood grocer. They have strongarmed their way into institutional control of every government in europe pre-1776 and in this new world have been held in check by the protections in our constitution.
I have respect for Christians who can see this and take this criticism, for those that can't, I vote against you on these issues and with you on certain others. Hopefully there is a shred of power I can wield with other like minded people.
"When I think of Slashdot, I don't think of Holland, MI."
:)
... and this is not a good thing.
... it makes a real mess for the next person, who is probably trying to look for something that isn't porn and probably didn't really want to see several screens of barely-legal lesbian threesomes *heh*).
... and EVERY SINGLE BOOK on the shirt. Let's see ... banned books listed on that shirt ... 1984, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Separate Peace ... you get the idea.
:P
.xxx and .kid domains could be implemented ... terminals in the children's portion of the library could be restricted to .kid-only domains, and terminals in the rest of the library could block .xxx domains. Not a perfect solution, and it'll probably never happen, but it makes an interesting theory. :)
You probably don't think of Rochester, NY either. So what? Geeks live everywhere.
And this small-town library could exist almost anywhere. If the tactic works in Holland, MI, it could work other places as well
Libraries are supposed to be there to provide information. Period. Admittedly, people should have better sense than to look at porn on library Web terminals (not even because it's porn, but because of all those damn extra pages that open up
And this "does your library carry the Banned Books list?" thing makes me absolutely FURIOUS. The best Christmas present I've ever gotten from ANYone (this was one from my dad) was the "Celebrate Freedom -- Read a Banned Book" sweatshirt
In one of the Rochester suburbs, a friend of mine who teaches 11th grade English had to stop teaching Toni Morrison's Beloved because parents complained. Sheesh. If you don't like the book, have your kid opt-out of the assignment -- it's usually allowed. But don't ruin it for the rest of the 11th graders whose parents DIDN'T complain.
And of course, there's the whole problem of the way most censorware is designed, which is another matter entirely.
I suppose, if SafeSurf were more widely used, I could understand the general terminals being set to level 7 (meant for adults but not porn) and the terminals in the children's areas to level 3 (technical references). That would be reasonable.
Or again, if my old idea about creating
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The problem is that gradually, the Public is led to believe that it would also benefit by having no state at all, too.
But who does the State works for? The VOTING public! After all, big corporations/special interest groups don't vote! But if big corporations/special interest groups don't vote, they should not be allowed to subvert the democratic process to cater to their special needs.
As long as the public will swallow the whole hook, line and sinker propaganda about the "state being bad" that is spewed forth by big corporations/special interest groups, they'll only deserve to lose their freedom to those big corporations/special interest groups.
So, one day, they'll wake up to find all their "democratic" representatives appointed by big corporations/special interest groups, and then they'll have no choice but to do what the big corporations/special interest groups have decided that they should do. And since they did not vote for those big corporations/special interest groups, it's not likely that the public will be doing something very good for itself...
Is that freedom?
Freedom wears-out only when you don't use it. (Le Canard Enchaîné, a totally free French weekly)
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
It's an unbiblical lie started by satan.
Unfortunately the events in Holland are not uncommon in West Michigan these days. All over this area these types of debates are raging, although luckily most or none of these towns have ordinances which allow any issue to go to ballot. The major driving force between nearly every political issue in this part of the state is religion, it seems. One can be sure that these are the same people who protested again Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his suicide machine. There will always be some issue around here that, on the surface will seem to be about one topic, but at the core is really about personal moral/religious values. To someone who lives in the area this is not really surprising or shocking, actually it is almost expected and I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll hear about it.
When the government provides a public forum for the dissemination of information, it is consitutionally prohibited from exercising control over the content of the speech heard without a compelling state interest and without the control being narrowly tailored to achieve that proper goal. There is no compelling state interest to exercise prior restraint and prevent adults from viewing nonobscene online material, since the only possible justification -- cost -- actually cuts the other way: it's more expensive to install and maintain this software than it is to have no censorware.
And if your fellow voters vote themselves government-funded magazines, then they cannot prevent you from demanding "White Supremecist Monthly".
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
They were pretty much all 'freethinkers' (i.e. made, and encouraged others to make, their own judgement on religious matters) and many were Deists. I don't think there were many (any?) atheists however. For example, the first third of Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" was attacking Atheism. (The other two thirds were attacking orthodox Christianity. The Bible gave him more material to work with in this section, hence its larger size.)
(I'm not knocking Atheism - I am one myself.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
1. Those who oppose censorship, contrary to the opinion of the AFA or the Republican party, are not Satan-worshipping, porn-loving, children-corrupting heathens. Rather, they are level-headed, free-thinking (not while this shit keeps happening) and intelligent individuals with the (supposed) right to free speech and to view whatever they want. The right for a person to determine (by themselves and unassisted by government, corporations and so-called family groups) what they read, see, hear and say is important not only to the Constitution, but to a soundly functioning republic. Censorware and the measures used to implement it threaten this much-cherished right.
2. The software is inefficient in that it only blocks out sites based on keywords and not on actual site content. This means that many sites that feature keywords but not the inappropriate content (the definition of which is defined only by the software corporations that write the censorware). This means that a large number of sites about homosexuality, reproduction, women's rights, censorware and anti-censorship views and other important topics are blocked for no reason. On top of that, the list sites that are blocked are not made public and the user(s) of the software are meant to just accept that the blocked software is porn or hate propaganda or violence when clearly that is not the case (if you want that then turn on the TV). This clearly fits in with the party line of not only Republicans but also many hate groups in America.
3. The implementation of this software, will actually result in the reduction of performance on computers as the browser will have to consult the censorware in order to verify that the site can be accessed. This only slows down the system dramatically on all but the fastest PCs which most librarys don't have (remember that not all librarys have P3-500s with 128Mb of RAM - not an exact estimate but I'm trying to illustrate a point here).
4. Many of the groups that are pushing to implement censorware and other such measures are largely hypocritical in that they preach tolerance and understanding, while at the same time denying it to those who need it most (such as young people, homosexuals, the poor & disadvantaged).
Unfortunately, the whole idea of the people (what would they know anyway, they say) being able to vote on this is being completely fucked around because a vocal minority (i.e. the people who whinge the most about this bullshit) are in just the right places that they can rush through legislation without any consultation to the community whatsoever. This has already happened in Australia (my country of residence and a damn good one, too) where the government has introduced legislation of this type to require ISPs to remove offensive content (once again, a subjective term) on a by-complaint basis. Which means that the same vocal minority can shut down sites that they deem inappropriate for young children.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is let the people decide what they read, see, hear and say instead of the government, religious right, corporations, hate groups or anyone else. Otherwise George Orwell's vision of a repressed society in 1984 and on the album Obsolete by Fear Factory (a great album for fans of industrial music) will someday become reality. And that will be the greatest shame of all.
"Free-thinkers are dangerous." -System Of A Down
----------
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
Americans, on the other hand, appear to like crusading for free speech, as if your government is so evil that it might prevent you from talking one day. Fair enough; it might too. But I doubt it.
Well, not being an American you can be forgiven for not knowing American History (sadly, most younger Americans these days know little about it as well). However, we are paranoid about free speech because the governments (federal, state and local) over here have a long history of trying to infringe upon it. Ask Larry Flynt.
BTW, if you swear at the wrong cops around most of the US, you are likely to end up in a bad way on some crazy trumped up charges. Highly not recommended, should you ever visit here.
No, I think you're missing the point. The victory you mention was at too low a court to make it broadly applicable, which is why this is still a problem. We need to pick a place where there's already so much national attention that the supporters of the censorware can't afford to back down. They'll keep appealing their losses, and the ACLU will win in a full national (not a district) court. That way, what happens in one state can actually affect what goes on elsewhere. Remember, if you're going to fight in the legal domain, you have to fight by those rules. IANAL, but I don't hate them. The good ones (like some working for the ACLU) really know what they're doing, and can help - but only by picking a battle that will mean something.
under supervision i would also trust said children with said items
in rural areas kids start driving with their parents at the age of 12 or younger. my parents dont like guns, so i dont know if a lot of these young kids started with guns at that age, but it wouldnt surprize me.
there arent many murders out here in the middle of nowhere, and the accident rate is (it seems to me anyway, i dont have any statitisics here) pretty low as well.
you cant say ok 16 years from the day you were born you suddenly become mature enough to drive. it works ok when dealing with large numbers of people (i.e. on a state level) but in most individual cases is simply is dumb. go figure...the day before i turn 16, i cant legally drive...one day later i am suddenly good to go. go figure.
Matt Leese
If you want to get this bill defeated.
1. Label it as a plot to add software that will prevent people from accessing biblical resources on the net.
1.1 A search for "Abraham tied his as to a tree..." will probably get filtered. So 1 is not *technically* a lie.
2. Republican/Conservative != Christian dickhead.
2.1 I'm a conservative republican, and I'm a neo-pagan.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I recommend that you check your TV Guide and watch Jack Van Impe. Why not check out Jack Van Impe Ministries before it's too late? His web site is probably the best for Biblical Prophecy.
Praise Jesus.
No direct offense to you, but I have to make my point known. HOW IS A CHILD AS LIKELY TO BE DAMAGED BY PORNOGRAPHY AS THEY ARE WITH A GUN OR AUTOMOBILE? Thank you for listening.
As the author of the "AMEN" post above, I'm wondering who you're referring to when you talk about "people like this" making you renounce religion. Are you talking about the militant fundamentalist zealots or the satirists that make fun of them? Or both? Just checking. :-)
I don't hold any personal religious beliefs, but I feel that religion can serve a useful individual or family purpose, so long as it doesn't get twisted into the sort of sick fundamentalism displayed in the post above.
its not too hard usually to remove the filters or
censorware, so whats the big deal ?
*As the Reform Party develops a history (which will, of course, only come with time) it will have to grow a more stable political position and philosophy. If it doesn't, it will doom itself to irrelevance as a bunch of malcontents who will follow any candidate who's a bigger malcontent than any of them.* would that not defeat the entire purpose of the party??
Some quotes by "founding fathers" of this country.
Some more
And some more
Yes, they were Christians of one stripe or another, but it was their stepping away from orthodoxy and into a weaker more fuzzy religion that was the springboard for their ideals. They were men of "The Enlightenment", which was the beginning of the end for dogmatic religions. That they didn't drop their religion outright all at once doesn't change the fact that they were slowly losing faith. The irony is that a seperation of church and state actually helps the church. (Keep church and state tied together as was done in Europe, and each successive generation grows up more and more cynical toward religion.)
And finally, as to the more on-topic point: It doesn't matter whether or not you favor censoring porn when there doesn't even exist software that can do it correctly. What we have is software that attempts to filter just porn, but instead filters out non-porn as well (for example, denying access to yahoo altogether because some searches occasionally come up with sex sites). It also lets some porn through. In other words, the means to implement the censorship is flakey and broken, and as such the whole point is moot. Or at least it would be if the voting public had any clue how the internet works.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
A while back I did a research paper on this issue... it's even more scary now. What pro-censorware advocates don't understand is that I partially agree with them: I don't approve of looking at porn (personally) in the library- but I don't support the use of censorware to block it. Or course it shouldn't be done on library terminals. The beauty with the current situation is the librarian can quietly ask the offending patron to leave. Nobody else has to suffer from the inaccuracies and overblocking of censorware.
What many people have mentioned is that the software overblocks. True. Gays/ activist organizations/ sex education/ minority religions/viewpoints have all been blocked by censorware, and will be blocked. But the Constitution is about protecting the minority, not the majority. By installing censorware in libraries we're gagging the minorities, silently. What scares me is this AOL/time warner thing might further influence the future of internet connections in libraries, and maybe someday we'll forget what freedom is. We need to vote this down- a library here, a library there. If we don't, sooner or later, all of the libraries will use censorware, and what will we do then? Fight for freedom while you can now.
Linux: Long live the source code.
I seem to recall one of the biggest rules the government has is the first amendment, which has been used to overturn filtering laws time and time again. When someone does sue, the laws get struck down. What are the chances of anyone in little old Holland sueing though? Not great (I live in Ann arbor, not too far from there. Guess what, AA is considering filtering software now too...)
The worst part about filtering is that the filtering companies are sleazy. Almost sleazier than politicians! I have followed Peacefire, the student run anti-filtering group for a while, and they and other have found a lot of abuses by these companies. They block safe sex info, they block anti-censorship sites, they block YAHOO for gods sake. And they encrypt their list and lie about it so no one will know. Cyberwatch's president has been shown to have a pretty extreme conservative view.
And the worst part is, who ever hears about any of this stuff? I doubt your average voter realizes that they may not be able to access a site that discusses medical issues because the blocking software detected a medical word that sometimes is found on porn sites. One of the filtering products was found to be blocking the site for NOW, among others.
And there aren't any other good options either. I don't want to see the governement try making blocking software, they would probably screw it up worse than private companies.
The bottom line is that the filtering is extremely arbitrary, and it restricts the dissemination of information in a public place. This is simply illegal.
I knew there'd be at least one post in here to the effect of, 'Never mind - move along. This isn't an issue that concerns you (and oh yeah, by the way, I agree with them).'
And i knew it'd get moderated up to 4 or 5. Too bad it wasn't one with more of a point...
No true debate can occur on Slashdot because the moderation system is used to supress opinions at the extereme -- i.e. the immoderate comment.
There is noise on Slashdot to be sure. The "first post" trolls, and so on. But it is shameful when we see someone with a strong (perhaps unpopular) opinion struck down under the label of "troll" or "flamebait". Almost all provocative comments are censored on Slashdot. It is Slashdot's worst flaw. Roblimo, Taco, and Hemos sit on their plump trans-fatty acids all day and ignore this problem. They think that all human discretion and judgement can be embedded in a Perl script. T'aint so, McGee.
BTW, if you swear at the wrong cops around most of the US, you are likely to end up in a bad way on some crazy trumped up charges. Highly not recommended, should you ever visit here.
Really? Fair crack of the whip, I say. If I couldn't tell orificers of the law where to go shove it, I think I'd just die. Bugger. Well, there goes my trip to Grand Rapids...
best to ya,
base2_celtic...
Using the holy grail of OSes...
- Free speech in general
- City ballot vs township taxpayers
- A case study on how to rig a ballot
- How to enforce censorship by yelling porn, Tax money and children in the same sentence.
- (geek) Minority's rights
Holland, MI is not the world, Library computers are not the only way to access the net (well for some it is) and a net without porn would not leave me crying.However, people confusing "What I want to do" with "What other people should be able to do" always pisses me off.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
.
If the libraries are censoring then does this make them 'content liable' ?. If so then all you have to do is use the library's computers to access information which you don't like/find offensive/or is illegal in some way and take action against them. In the end you'll either end up with just about every site blocked or no sites blocked.
I'm a liberal as the next guy, but I've seen the stuff here in NC that you can get thru the library. There are adults here hitting porn sites and printing out pics and porn related articles
at the library while sitting next to children. The children can get to it too.
if I was a parent I'd be goin nuts. If a library isn't safe for a kid, what is? Librarys are funded by MY pocket, the least they can do is not allow porn. at least. as far as "kids right" go, well I've seen that used for everything.. if a hamster wellness group saw a dead hamster they could riot for "hamster's rights" too... thats just a lousy excuse to not do their job right.
porn does not belong in a publically funded place. much less a publically place that is frequented by kids.
Fook
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
I cannot comply with any intention to block any kind of information. If you are an adult you can have access to any information you like, sex or not.
Information is power, so AFA is trying to unempower you.
How they categorize that sites ? They had to enter in the sites to know, so they are exposed to that and need make a concern about. How they are oriented ? A list that you need to search to just put in your exception ? How can you participate ?
They think that just puting away from eyes they can eliminate their pains that they think they have. They are just promoting their particular Hell.
Currently 16 and going to a local high school. They can legally lie to you and get away with it. You can't state anything that you want, and they can manipulate the rules to serve their purposes. Hell, it even says in the handbook "these rulse can change at any time" Students need to have more say in what happens to them. "Student Council" is just another chearleader squad to try and give this illusion. Mabye I just ramble too much.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Bill Weld, formerly the Republican governor of Massachusetts (not known for its strong Republican leanings), was nominated--by a Democratic president--for the position of ambassador to Mexico.
He didn't get it, because fellow Republicans blocked him for not being sufficiently anti-drug for their taste; now he's a novelist and private-practice lawyer.
Yes, but even if the librarians can choose what they want censored, various natural, text pattern recognition, and other content pattern recognition algorithms must be used to decide what constitutes porn, violence, etc. Lets say I was a programmer that wanted to enforce my strict religious views on sex, and I have the opportunity to write the "pattern recognition" algorithms for deciding if a site has porn content. Since I am a fundamentalist Muslim, I decide to make my algorithm look for any existence of the word "sex" on the site, and if it is found, the site is labeled as a pornography site. My filter would appear to work. However, it would, in the least, be considered very strict. There is a shocking truth in that the people, who implement the chosen filtering software, are the people that have control over the censorship.
I've heard that Republicans tend to be against censorware because it labels them as a hate group or something similar to that. So what political parties like it?!?
Haven't you figured out yet that the No Fun Committee will say ANYTHING to gather a mob behind them? I wonder how many Republicans work in marketing...
Kill your television.
.. is the name usually given to those in a given larger community who grant tacit approval to extreme activities in their name by their silence.
Don't want the 'Christian == Racist|Fascist|Bigot' meme to get around? Speak out against the Religious Reich who blatantly tout these agendas in the Holy Name. 'Silence gives consent' has been in common law since rocks.
Check out www.xenu.net
Well, I'm not saying that all police officers over here have no sense of humor, but it only takes one that doesn't to ruin your whole day (or worse). The big problem is that you don't have any reliable way of telling which ones have a sense of humor and which don't. Therefore I recommend a 'better safe than sorry' attitude. In general, it shouldn't be that much of an issue unless you like to party a little too crazy or something. I find it pretty easy to avoid any direct contact with the police almost all of the time.
HOW IS A CHILD AS LIKELY TO BE DAMAGED BY PORNOGRAPHY AS THEY ARE WITH A GUN OR AUTOMOBILE?
Maybe they are damaged becuase people expect them to be damaged. Or maybe the damage isn't caused by viewing porn, but by other people's attitudes to the viewing.
Step 2: Watch for the scene where General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden as a caricature of a paranoid right-wing nut) says that flouridation is "monstrously conceived and diabolical" or words to that effect.
Step 3: Please accept my apology for mistyping "diabolical". My brain must have rolled out of my ear for a moment.
I'm a troll. It's all a joke. I don't believe a word of anything I posted.
Now you're guilty of a terrorstic threat
Whoa, wait a second there. If I accused somebody (however irrationally) of shoplifting and asked if s/he were aware of the penalties, would that be a threat, or a reminder that we have laws around here? Are you making a terroristic threat by telling my that I may have committed a crime, and that I may end up being raped for it? I don't think that I said anything that implied a willingness on my part to apply the "penalties" myself, any more than you did. Treason, like issuing terroristic threats, is a crime under present law. If I did create the impression that I was threatening, then I fucked up pretty badly. Notwithstanding the fact that terroristic threats are in character for the right-wing maniac persona [1] that I was using, I really don't care to go that far when I'm impersonating an RWM. It's just not so much fun any more when people start threatening each other.
Of course, you were probably just rattling my RWM cage, in which case . . . rattle on!
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[1] RWM's and threats: Last week one of them threatened to shoot me in the head after I called him a socialist (because he wasn't as far right as I was
Actually, a twelve year old is probably safer than the average 16 year old. A lot of farm boys know how to drive. Early.
Censorship has no political boundaries. Where I live in Loudoun County, VA, religious right groups and a local chapter of the National Organization of Women joined forces in order to impose censorship in our public libraries. They were able to get our library board of trustees to adopt the most restrictive Internet use policy in the country--mandatory filtering at all times for adults and children alike. This resulted in an expensive First Amendment lawsuit, first of its kind in the nation. The judge ruled the policy unconstitutional, stating that adults do have First Amendments rights in public libraries in America.