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Library Filtering Update
Following the Internet filter vote in our hometown this week, Jamie McCarthy stopped by the geek compound to rap with us for a bit, and so we recorded a special update to this week's show and have posted it at TheSync.
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I've already e-mailed Jamie to hear what he has to say, but FYI, the AFA has landed in Birmingham, MI , my hometown. Apparently a man was spotted by library officials downloading pornography and escorted from the building, and the AFA is using it as a pretense to fight for censorship here. It's an extremely wealthy, Republican, conservative area, so I expect another difficult struggle. I'll try to keep you all updated.
Also, apparently a bill for library filtering has passed the MI state senate, which may very well nullify Jamie's gains if it is not stopped soon. All slashdotters in MI, write Engler and your local Reps.
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If you're sort of behind on the issue your talking about, here are Jamie's earlier stories:
Victory in Holland
Lightning Crashes, An Old Freedom Dies
Censorware and Memetic Warfare
Filtering Internet in Public Libraries
View from the Censorware Trenches
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Then it would still be someone else making decisions about my children for me; wrap it in any kind of rhetoric you want, I find that unacceptable.
When did right-wing Republications take over the word "family"? Every bloody wacko anti-free-speech organizations out there has "family" in their name.
I think that they want us to figure that, heck, they're pro-family. And who could be *anti* family? Therefore, opposing them means that you're...what...pro-orphan?
Bah. If pro-family means pro-censorware, chalk me up in the Norwegan bachelor male category.
I live in Calgary, Alberta. Within the last few days our city library board recently voted on content filtering for public libraries. When I first read about it i was concerned that it was happening, but after looking into it, the way it works should be pleasing to everyone but the two extremes.
It works such that everyone will have access to unrestricted content, however parents will be able to specify if their child should have the full access or the restricted access. It would also be possible for anyone to use the restricted access if they felt that the internet was to scary without it.
I understand that many people will see it as test prior to full scale blocking, however i have faith in the library board that they will not do this. The vote was eight in favor and two opposed, with one of the opposed saying that it was to restrictive, and the other(from a feminist group) saying it was not restrictive enough. This makes me believe that this is the way that it will stay.
Just for those that do not know, Calgary is a fairly wealthy city that is moderate to conservative, but we tend to be quite liberal when it comes to our rights. Our economy is still somewhat based on oil also have the highest number of university graduates per capita, if that means anything to you.
I personally would restrict my children's access, simply because of how easy it is to stumble across content that is not good for children(you know what I'm talking about), but when they are older i would remove it so that they will not have to deal with the stupidity of the companies that control the filtering. At home I do not use filtering, but instead supervision, it is far more effective than anything else, although it is not practical at a library.
I decided not to mod this comment down, but rather post this comment . . . . otherwise, nobody would understand.
This is propaganda. There is no basis, no links, no hard evidience. Punch the CDA and McCain through your favorite search engine and see what it finds.
In FACT, McCain was reported to say any new measure that resembled the Communications Decency Act probably would not survive his committee, which oversees telecommunications. Furthermore, he's quoted as saying:
"I'm the father of small children, they all are far more computer literate than I am, and I've seen some of the stuff that they see and it disturbs me terribly. But I didn't know how you would implement that [law]. I didn't know who would decide what's decent."
McCain did endorse a bill that required schools and libraries with federally funded internet access, which I won't debate here. A bit more info on that bill is located here
In reality, the original sponsor behind the 1996 CDA was Senator Pressler. More information on authors of specific portions of the CDA are here.
McCain did add a lot of amendments to the bill, but so did everyone in the Senate. How else did the thing pass?? I'm not sure exactly what his changes entailed, but you can find out here.
Somebody mod the parent comment down into the flamebait category. It's nothing more than a sweeping piece political propaganda without backing at all.
MCCARTHY HEARINGS CONTINUE IN HOLLAND
"We Will Root Out Right-Wing Zealotry," Vows Community Leader
HOLLAND, MI (UPI) - Community leader Jamie McCarthy continued his set of hearings to uncover and uproot a clandestine right-wing conspiracy to outlaw "objectionable" books, movies, and Internet material. "We are pleased with the progress that we've made so far," explained McCarthy, "and we know that given enough time, we'll chase these loonies back down to Bumpkin, Arkansas, where they belong." McCarthy's Holland Un-Internetarian Activities Committee has already exposed several right-wing individuals and organizations and has forced them to flee in shame.
On the stand today was former presidential contender Gary Bauer, a social conservative who dropped out of the race following the New Hampshire Republican primary. McCarthy's line of questioning, as usual, was direct and to the point: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Family Research Council?" asked McCarthy. Bauer, after consulting with his attorney, took a sip of water and hoarsely whispered "Yes, I am."
"Are you a part of the self-righteous group of people that believes it has the right to impose its narrow-minded view of morality on all children and parents?" thundered McCarthy from the front of the room. "Yes, I am," admitted Bauer, to a raucous audience reaction and a flurry of popping flashbulbs that could only be silenced by the steady beat of the chairman's gavel. Bauer later left the hearings, never to be seen in Holland again.
Such has been the pattern established by McCarthy's committee over the past couple of weeks. Right-wingers, bravely turned in by community leaders and readers of the Slashdot Web site, are quickly processed by the committee and banished forever from decent society. "We are proud of the work we are doing," beamed McCarthy. "Each night when I go to bed, I do it knowing that I've accomplished something worthwhile. Ensuring that our children can grow up at a safe distance from the clutches of the religious fundamentalists and ultra-right-wing zealots is definitely worthwhile."
Scheduled to appear before the committee next week are Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, political strategist Ralph Reed, NRA president Charlton Heston, former United States president George Bush, and former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan.
Richard Gephardt contributed to this story.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Listen, it's not cool with me to assign "-1" to an expression of somebody's religion, however moronic it may be (and believe me, when I wrote that troll I made it as moronic as I was able). What we need is +1: Troll, +1: Flooding (for the copy'n'paste shitheads, who are not trolls), +1: Religious Fanatic (why leave the moslems out?), +1 Insightful, yadda yadda you name it. Bear with me!
Then we allow the user to set thresholds for each category, and make the thresholds switchable between minimum or maximum: I could decide to ignore everything by default, and display only posts with at least one point of Troll, Funny, or Christian. I could also allow everything by default, while filtering out the Trolls etc. Or I could filter out everything but posts with at least two points of Insightful, Redundant, or Stentorian. This would make everybody happy. Each one of us would get exactly the Slashdot s/he deserves!
The best way to do this would be to let us enter filter expressions in SQL in an edit box in the user preferences thing. Hey, why not? Have fields in the db for each mod category and let us filter by 'em as we please. This would be the most flexible and powerful way, and also the least work for Rob with the UI
Since this seems to be the main annoyance with porn sites you didn't intend to visit, take a minute to vote for mozilla bug 29346, a request that mozilla do something about the problem. Or better yet, comment on it (preferably on bugzilla instead of slashdot) in a constructive way, such as suggesting a better solution than the one I proposed.
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The shareholder is always right.
The following quote is from the url: http://www.eff.org/pub/Censorship/Internet_censors hip_bills/1998_bills/HTML/19980721_eff_s tatement.html
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION REACTS TO SENATE PASSAGE OF TWO INTERNET CENSORSHIP BILLS
Statement of Barry Steinhardt President of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
This afternoon the Senate passed two draconian bills that would ultimately prevent access to a wide array of content on the Internet. The two bills were passed as amendments to an appropriations bill for the Commerce, Justice and State Department. They were brought up without any notice to those members of the Senate who opposed them and without any opportunity for meaningful debate. In effect, free speech on the Internet was the victim of an ambush.
The initial amendment offered by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Patty Murray (D-WA) would require schools and libraries that receive federal funds for Internet connections to install filtering software to block "inappropriate" material. The second, "the CDA II" bill sponsored by Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) would enact a wide ranging ban on Web posting of material deemed "harmful to minors."
The two bills represent a real and present danger to free speech on the Internet. The McCain/Murray amendment will force libraries and schools to use all-too-frequently crude and overbroad filters that block out a wide array of non-"harmful" speech -- everything from the Quaker home page to the American Association of University Women has been blocked by these programs.
Indeed, you can no more create a computer program to block out one community's view of "indecency" or "obscenity" than you can devise a filtering program to block out misguided proposals by members of Congress. Both may be desirable, but neither are possible.
At first glance, the Coats' CDA II bill appears to be a relatively benign provision that purportedly applies only to commercial pornographers who market to minors. But it is a Trojan horse. Beneath the veneer, it covers any Web site that has a commercial component and which has material that some community will consider "harmful to minors", even if that is not the material for sale. This ranges from the electronic bookseller Amazon.com to EFF's site, which sells books and T-Shirts.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the leading civil liberties organizations devoted to ensuring that the Internet remains the world's first truly global vehicle for free speech, and that the privacy and security of all on-line communication is preserved. Founded in 1990 as a nonprofit, public interest organization, EFF is based in San Francisco, California. EFF maintains an extensive archive of information on encryption policy, privacy, and free speech at http://www.eff.org.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.