Slashdot Mirror
Internet Decency Commission Is Broke
Repton writes, "Another one from CNET's News.com: A commission set up by the government to look into ways to keep youngsters from Internet smut has realized that they have no funding. This is a sad state of affairs, but somehow I don't feel too much sympathy." Perhaps people "charged with evaluating high-tech tools and other methods to keep online pornography away from children," but on a beer budget, should enjoy a few hours reading through the Censorware Project's Web site. At a library in Utah, say.
I think Cary would like to believe that none of us could be influenced unconsiously by what we read or see but unfortunately the evidence is that humans can be uncritical thinkers. There is a "herd" mentality out there. There are lots of examples outside of sex. Why else would violence against women and others be tolerated? Why does one piece of garbage on the street give permission for others to litter? Why do allowing racist or sexist remarks encourage more of the same? When it comes to sex sites or violence site the same thing applies. Sex sites demean women and men in them, they teach that sex is something you can purchase or engage in with out relationships or consequences. I work in a teen clinic and the young people who experience unplanned pregnancy, STDs,infertility,much less hurt feelings would report that the portrayal of sex as something that doesn't need careful thought is stupid. The folks who work in the porno industry are being explointed themselves-- and frequently have a history of physical and sexual abuse in their lives. There is a big difference between erotica and porno... I think this is what the US Gov is trying to get at
Everyone agrees there is material on the Internet that's not appropriate for minors
...verify an adult's age before showing photographs or other material "harmful to minors."
There's material on television and the radio which is not appropriate for children. So? What is censorship expected to accomplish?
At what point did photographs become harmful to minors? What is the fear here?
Bottom line guys -- I've said this before and I'll say it again. If effort is not made to make it easier for parents to filter genuinely offensive content, then the current bunch of censorware will go into wide use. Like it or not, the average person does not endorse the radical (and legally unprecedented) ideas of free speech that many on Slashdot advocate.
If the average consumer is not provided with some way to filter out hard core porn without filtering other (usually marginal) sites, they will say "screw the consequences" and filter them all.
And the stubborn refusal of the technical communities to attempt to provide a good filter list will be to blame. It is perfectly possible to develop a filter list that will filter the really egregious cases without filtering political speech and the like. Its just not possible to do it in a commercial context.
Remember: the Supreme Court can and will remove protected rights when public interest is strong enough. Just look at gun control.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
Of course, if they get a job, then they end up abandoning their children. Leaving them in day care centers, etc. And if you've priced the day care centers, you know that on a minimum wage job THAT can't be afforded, so the job that they get had better pay well, or their kids will be on the street.
Parenting is a part of the answer, but just saying the word is no solution. It needs to be made possible, and not just for the folk who get higher end jobs. (Then there's the question of varying skill levels... but as things stand now, that's very much secondary.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is this the "anything that offends me" standard?
I find your "holier than thow" addatude offensive. I find your stuffing religion in peoples faces offensive. I find your "my way" addatude offensive. Dose your standard still aply?
Or am I exempt becouse I have a diffrent opinion?
He is not amoral just becouse he isn't hypermoral he isn't anti-christan just becouse he dosn't blindly folow your version of the christan religion.
And on religion. Your version of christanity is flawed. Christ himself said "Judge ye not lest ye be judged" yet you have placed yourself in the position of judge...
I myself refer to Christ as an enlightend philosopher. I do not reguard him as a savur or a deity or son of a deity. Thats just how I see it.
As for society... It's not in the gutter yet but thanks to people like you who place imposable standards on socity and thanks to people who go in the other direction realising there is no pleasing your kind.. we are slowly being notched in that direction.
People like you who see anti-christan addatudes in ordenary activitys. People like you who see immorality everywhere... you discust me...
True morality has nothing to do with messing with other peoples lifes. True morality comes from within. To act moral. Not to cram it down everyone elses throats.
I would like to suggest that the most immoral, anti-christan, and indecent of all acts is censorship..
I don't actually exist.
Meth? Crank? Horse? Barbies? Crack? Ludes? Well, personally I'm against 'em, but who am I to judge? Inner city youths need to make a living, too.
:P :)
Tell that to all the nice clean suburban drug users you've just offended
The notion that "drugs" are and "urban" problem stems from uptight suburban middle-class citizens who are either blind to their own surroundings or dismiss it.
As we all know, white middle-class suburban citizens have NO drug or violence problems; it must be a city thing
(good lord, if my tongue was any further in my cheek, I wouldn't be able to chew any more)
From my own experineces living in different areas of a few cities across North America, the suburbs are way more susceptible to softer drugs like Alcohol and Pot simply because the 'burbs are so friggin BORING!
Getting of the entire drug thread, I think half the problem comes from parents who are unwilling to actually discipline their kids themselves, under fear that their kids won't like them anymore. or thinking that THEIR parents were too hard on THEM, so they will treat their kids better.
Anyway, that's just pure speculation on my part. I'm just disgusted that common courtesy has been thrown out the window for an obsessively ego-centric society where anything goes, just because we can.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
>Further back, 'Christians' committed atrocities including rape, pillaging, mass genocide and infanticide against anyone who disagreed with them, under the generic heading of 'The Crusades'.
Yeah, but that's all water under the bridge now. =)
I hear the pope is going to give an apology to the world for all the crap that the church has been 'responsible' for since the beginning (crusades, inquisition, aiding and abeting nazi holocaust, fun stuff like that).
Should be interesting.
Lexis-Nexis.
:)
And the idea of paying $20 a month for super-filtered content is not only reasonable, but it goes on all the time. There are electronic equivalents to old-style clipping services which do nothing but gather, vet, and sort by worth information on topics you want.
Some no-charge search engines employ some variant of this as well, with human experts on particular search categories.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
bons made the excellent point that: "Creating a TLD for porn would go a long way to removing a decent chunk of the problem. Namely, it would make it easy to censor all those who are willing to be censored. Those who aren't willing to be censored will, of course, still be a problem. However, they're a problem regardless of the solution, much like spammers, they "know" that they're right, and that somehow gives them the right to behave as they choose to everyone else.
... when IBM buys / provides for / puts on employees desks Internet service, the end user in question is really IBM, rather than its employees. (Likewise, when the employees go home, and buy service on their dime, IBMs standards oughtn't apply.)
(First, I would amend that last sentence to read "they know they're in the wrong, but that the material gain they make alllows them to remain contemptous of the rights of others." Same difference.)
But this is an important point: the majority of pornographic sites would like to avoid legal liability for their content, and would probably *like* a way to be easily filtered by browsers who specifically don't want to see their content. Just not blocked to someone who specifically wants to. "Someone" in this case, though, really means some end user, even if it's an aggregate
timothy
p.s. Tipper Gore, remember, isn't in favor of "censorship." She wants it all nice n' voluntary. ["Captain, captain! The BS meter's just exploded out of the console! We must have encountered a Black Hole of Honesty!"]
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So true. Parents must learn that can not prevent their kids from seeing, hearing, reading, and learning about "bad" things. You just have to teach them how to deal with these things. Parents should be willing to talk frankly about sex and nudity with children. Kids should not have to figure things like this out on their own. Not talking about these things is what makes a porn site dangerous. Kids who have an open relationship with their parents will either know enough not to care much about a "bad" site or be calm in the fact that they can ask their parents about it later.
This issue is an old one that hits every medium. Some say that sex and violence on tv is warping young kids minds. They point to the shows that glamorize sex and violence as ruining kids. If the WWF's The Rock has more influence on your kids then you do, it is your fault, not TV's. Remember the big talk about Playboy magazines in 7-11 stores? Guess what parents...if a kid wants to get a Playboy, he or she will. Period. There is nothing that you can do about it. All you can do is teach them to handle it and answer their questions honestly. You can't raise kids in a bubble because someday they will have to go into the real world and deal with all of these "bad" things.
-- soldack
Your idea of a public database is a good one except in not noting how sites get in. Who is a valid judge? I think that a voluntary submission system may work for the most part but it may run into problems the same way some films do. Everyone knows that some films are just obvious porn. No one has a problem with those films. People do have a problem with some films that claim to use sex, nudity, and violence for art's sake. All of these things can and should be used in artistic ways. Should we limit artistic expression to avoid offending someone? Where do we draw the line? Who are we to draw one? Why does one need to be drawn anyway?
-- soldack
Now, as to this article: The reason why this organization doesn't have any funding is because the politicians already have people to tell them what's wrong with the Internet. People like Pat Robertson, David Grossman and Donald Wildmon and organizations like th American Family Association, the Christian Coalition, and the Lion and the Lamb Project are more than willing to tell them about the horrors of the Internet. Maybe the reason that the organization set up by the Child Online Protection Act hasn't recieved any funding is because the politicians whose bread and butter is this issue are afraid that they would come up with something reasonable that doesn't tread on anyone's freedoms. Something rational is also not going to bring in those big contributions checks from the "family values" organizations.
Since these organizations and people want to see an end to the First Amendment in this country, they aren't really interested in solutions to the problems. They certainly wouldn't want an organization run by industry people making decisions on these issues.
After all, without controversial issues "for the children" what would politicians have to do all day?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
In real life, people are trying to legislate, sue or pay others to raise their children. Every plastic bag imprinted with "This is Not a Toy" is testament, as is every lawsuit suing heavy metal bands for responsibility for teen suicides.
And how many kids have you raised, buddy? Everybody's an expert until they actually try it.
Well, well, well. I have to say that in my few fleeting moments i've had in this mortal coil myself, I think I know what raising a kid must be like. I've done hundreds of babysitting jobs, many being overnight excursions while parents went too far away to get back before morning and whatnot. I've had to babysit children as young as 6 months; as old as 12 years. No doubt it is a hard thing to do to keep up with them (especially when you've got 4-6 on your hands at one time), but I seriously think that the angle of attack on the statement above is rather askew. For it is not the children's fault most of the time for many things. You must remember, their minds are still developing. This means that they must rely on someone else who is older to help them along. You have to teach them or else they can twist and contort things into weird perceptions. (Of course I'm speaking of smaller children here.)
People definately are attempting to legislate, sue, and pay others to raise their children and it sickens me. Plastic bags and other things that state "this is not a toy" is just a small example of it. "Well let's see, if it's not a toy, why don't I just give it to my son here to play with! While i'm at it, let me go buy him a bow and some arrows too!" Then they go and sue the companies because they were stupid enough to do such a thing and it all becomes a blame game. It's stupid. It's all damned common sense. If parents can't do their job teaching their kids common sense, right from wrong, red from purple, left from right, why do you expect the government to do it? If you're going to leave your child with the responsibility of surfing the internet without either supervising them yourself or teaching them about certain things they might find (depending upon age group), then it's the fault of the parent.
"Well do you think I can keep up with my child 24/7?" If you chose to have the child, you damn well should have thought about that, shouldn't you? Didn't plan on having him/her, it just popped up? Then making as much time as possible with your child should be first priority. Attention and teaching is everything to them. The way you bring them up in their early years of life has a lot to do with how they are in their pre-teens, teens, and beyond.
If you didn't catch the drift of all that for one reason or another (probably due to my irregular thought patterns due to lack of sleep), basically it's saying that Parents are the ones that are responsible for their children. They need to teach them common sense and about things when they ask or when the time is appropriate. If you haven't caught the drift of generations of repitition, trying to block things out totally from the lives of your children can cause irreversible damage to the parent-child relationship and possibly to their psyche. It pisses them off because they don't understand why you didn't just talk to them about it or for the simple fact that you denied them the right to surf freely while millions of other people can. Who knows. Maybe they'd even hit that .001% chance and turn psycho and kill half of the people in a department store when they're 22 because you sheltered them all their lives and they couldn't cope with the real world.
I highly doubt I conveyed my whole opinion there since my train of thought jumps between different things about once every few seconds, but hopefully you got my drift.
You're right, it is just like Real Life, and that's the problem. In real life, people are trying to legislate, sue or pay others to raise their children. Every plastic bag imprinted with "This is Not a Toy" is testament, as is every lawsuit suing heavy metal bands for responsibility for teen suicides.
The difference is the fragility of the internet. In Real Life, you can't wave a magic wand and make the porno shops in the seedy part of town disappear, along with the gay bookstores, abortion clinics, women's resource centers, etc, etc. Unfortunately, this is done very efficiently on places like AOL.
Even more unfortunately, a lot of Americans seem to LIKE IT. I guess this post just turned into a rant. Well, so be it. Some days I think that Margaret Atwood's The HandMaid's Tale is where things are headed.
Mike van Lammeren
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
As stated in a Dilbert Comic strip, the staff of the IDC is pitting their intelligence against the collective sex drive of all the youth of America. I'm pretty sure that teens will find a way to get around anything they try. (NetNanny? Give me a break!) Edge: Teenagers.
The reason they ran out of funding is because they haven't been persuing the proper courses of action in reguard to Internet Decency. Instead of trying to develop new software that blocks sites with certain words, why not just make a law that states that any website that provides adult content requires proof of age in the form of a credit card or similar id.
That raises another point -- people wouldn't like giving out their CC over the internet, especially to pr0n sites. ("Honey, why is there a charge for $29.95 to a company called 'PureSexyTeens.Com' on our credit card bill?") Maybe a new type of adult id could be created -- once you turn 18, you get a card in the mail that has a number on it. It's completely unique, and all it does is state that you're over 18.
Does that make sense?
,-----.----...---..--..-....-
' CitizenC
' "Bug? That's Not A Bug, That's A Feature!"
`-----.----...---..--..-....-
I'm sorry, but you and the U.S government must live under a different definition of 'addiction' than is given in the dictionary. An addiction is that which you are dependant upon. While I can more then picture Paul Reubens or Vincent Van Gogh using graphic pornography as a staple, I can't seem to imagine anyone dependant on it.
Wait. I forgot. Personal responsibility became a write-off back in 1992. It's politically acceptable to be addicted to anything these days. My mistake..
You cannot possibly become addicted to porn. Heroin, yes. Nicotine, yes. Porno, no. You may very well like photos of young women going at each other, but that doesn't mean that you are addicted.
To quote Glen Frye.. Get over it!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
While I think you're pointing to something interesting, I would have to say that your argument is fundamentally flawed. One of the hallmarks of (post- | *-)modern society is that there are profound linkages between diverse issues that constitute our lives. So, most any argument that makes the claim that "foo is the cause of bar problem" is going to run into some very messy ground. I mean, I would bet that I could argue that the cause of most of society's problems today are, say, an ill-supported educational system, but at the end of it, we'd just end up in a pissing match along the lines "well, my foo causes your foo" or "my foo is more of a fundamental problem than your foo."
What we'd really need to do is avoid that problem altogether and articulate a set of problems and things that contribute to them, and admit that they're all interrelated and that there's things on both lists that are we (and by this I've mean society) probably can't/don't/won't see.
On a related note, I have to admit that I'm troubled by these lines in your post:
I've seen women grow up with the only real core value passed down from their parents is to have more children in order to get a bigger check. In defense, I've also known one or two that believed in actually raising their children, but they are a decreasing minority.
If this is a reference to "welfare queens", then I would have to take offense. While I do not deny that there are individuals who do have additional children to gain additional (welfare) money, attributing their actions to "core values" does injustice to the actual experiences of mothers on welfare. Numerous authors have attempted to trace the various interlocking systems of power and thought that lead to such outcomes (for instance, in Rachael and Her Children, Kozol both does the math and interview mothers, case workers and administrators to find out, interestingly enough, that for some mothers on welfare, their aid is so low that they can't afford not to have more children. He also discusses how, importantly, the welfare system punishes nuclear families by considering fathers able to work and therefore the entire family unable to get welfare, thereby leading some families to chose deliberately to become "a single mother with absentee father" in order to survive). As I stated earlier, our problems are complicated and I worry that in our effort fix them we obscure or create others.
The cause is identified, the solution is harder, since this mentality may take generations to correct itself (and heres to hoping it will correct itself).
At least I can do my part and raise my children as best I can and not view them as little more than a financial liability. A few core values passed on, along with a basic sense of decency. Yes, decency, not censorship, something that should be natural and not governed. Difficult in a world where nice people supposedly finish last, but the validity of that statement depends on your viewpoint.
_________________________
I Am Not A Neurologist, but the prevalence of chemical addictions doesn't mean that there's no such thing as psychological addictions.
I think that anything that can produce an emotional response can addict at least somebody.
Fortunately, porn doesn't fry your brain like certain drugs, no matter what the Puritans-In-Charge may tell you.
And if someone does become a rapist or whatnot after sampling porn, it's because of a preexisting, severe psychological disorder, not because they've seen depictions of nudity and sex.
Of course, you don't hear much about any crusades of concerned parents fighting hatred, prejudice, poverty, governmental corruption, corporate rule, cultural stagnation, or rampant Puritanism, for example. That's because real problems get ignores, while manufactured "issues" get all the attention. The death of independence in the mainstream media ensures that Joe Average will never know about most of these problems until they bite him in the ass.
And while I'm talking about "Puritanism", I find it really hard to buy the idea that there could be anything virtuous or "pure" about a society that violently repressed almost all natural human instincts, was openly intolerant of religious and ideological differences, and burned at the stake anybody who didn't conform, out of sheer superstition, fear and ignorance.
Yet even if the "Puritans" per se are fodder for the history books, their virus-meme has spread itself across the US and firmly embedded itself in society's collective psyche.
Welcome to the United Salems of America.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
I fail to see how respecting sex and understanding its role would make modern society "more delirious than sane".
The reason censorious societies are so obsessed with sex is because it's forbidden... it's seen as "dirty", taboo, and that makes it a thousand times more tantalizing than if it were treated as simply something natural.
Unfortunately, two fundamentally broken philosophies still exist in our society: Puritanism, which I'm sure we all know and love (picture particles of sarcasm leaping out of my mouth, condensing in the air and raining to the ground in solid form...), and gnosticism, the belief that "reality" is merely a test, and that all worldly urges and temptations must be avoided at all costs, and if they absolutely must take place (i.e. eating to live, or sex only for procreation) then absolutely no pleasure must be derived from them, for fear of placing one's immortal soul in dire peril.
The latter philosophy has been inducted into several popular religions, and along with the former (its bastard half-brother Puritanism), has, over the centuries, caused no end of pain, suffering, humiliation and torture to denizens of the Western world.
This brings a very serious question to mind:
By "Understood its role", i.e. the role of sex, are you referring to the role of sex as strictly procreation?
One could argue that the purpose of life is strictly procreation, but frankly, I plan on having some fun along the way. And the same goes for sex.
So, as I see it, sex is not just for procreation, but also for recreation.
And a society that takes a, shall we say, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt approach to sex is definitely a Bad Thing, or a symptom of something worse.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
What you are describing is not democracy, but mob rule. We (in the US) live in a *representitive* democracy and we have this thing called a Constitution that contains another something called the Bill of Rights. Perhaps you should try reading them some time. What this means is:
1) that issues are deliberated and thought out before mindlessly enacting laws. Unfortunately, congress seems to be as reactionary as you are at times. Even so, bad law is hopefully vetoed by the president of deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
2) The minority has equal protection under the law. This is *protection* from the tyranny of the majority.
3) We have the right to privacy and to be secure in our homes.
4) We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What I take this to mean is that when I am all alone in my dungeon, if I enjoy tossing off to pictures of transvestites coated in polyurethane (SP?) sucking off goats while being spanked and flogged by midgets, then that is ok.
And from my experience on the net, you really don't see porn unless you really go looking. Sounds to me like you've been venturing into the red light district a bit.
Can anybody tell me why I am seeing so many fakeries on the Net?
I mean, there are so many people who are so publicly anti-porn (See that article on China's attempt of censorship and the author had to put the word "PORN" in it) but on the other hand, their hard drives may have thousands of kiddie-porn pictures and all other smut stuffs.
Isn't the etho of InterNet is LIVE AND LET LIVE - that is, you do your stuffs, I do mine, you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone, so long as what you do do not hurt me and vice versa?
I really long for the past days in the Net where everyone respect each others' privacy, and no one will come to tell you what you can do, what you can't.
Disclaimer: I am NOT for porn, but I am NOT going to ban porn just because I don't find it interesting. Just like I am not going to publicly asking those puritans to go to hell just because I am tired of their holier-than-thou views.
And one more question - just when all these will end?
Will it end when we are not allowed to watch, received, say or _think_ of anything someone, somewhere find disgusting?
What's the freedom of all these, eh?
Live and let live, fellas !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
However, my son will probably go a school, and that school will have to have internet access if he's to have any hope of an education. Now I kow that I will answer any questions he brings home, but I can't say that his teacher will be qualified to answer those questions in school. I can't even say if the teacher will be allowed to answer those questions out of fear of being sued by someone.
Schools, Libraries, and other places where children can log on (mall kiosks, cyber coffee shops, open lan parties) should probably have some sort of method available for filtering. After all, I can't be a parent if I'm not there, and a child does need to be away from his parent every now and then, to explore the world on his own and to expand his boundardaries.
The problem is what to filter and how to filter it. I think we can all agree on three things:
- Current censorware sucks. It just isn't good at doing it's job. It's like a blind man with a shotgun trying to stop a robbery.
- It's easy enough to censor sites that are voluntarily willing to be censored.
- It's also easy enough to censor sites that don't care if they're censored, but who don't want to go to the trouble of tracking down all the censorware sites and identifying themselves.
- It's close to impossible to stop the ones that actively do not want to be censored. (Luckily these are almost always clueless gits who think that Pam Anderson is a porn queen)
The problem is choosing what to censor in a particular area. The standards for Omaha, Ne are puritan compared to the standards for New York City. Add Amsterdam to the mix and you really don't have a standard at all. perhaps the most interesting place to look at community standards would be New Orleans, where the community standards drop once you enter the Quarter and change depending on the time of year and the time of day.I think the answer is to have a standard method of identifying sites that should be blocked, and a number of publicly accessable databases to choose from. These databases should be able to point to one another in the same fashion that web pages do today. For example:
/porn.blk is a well know directory that porn sites can voluntarily add themselves to.
/nudity.blk is a directory of sites that contain nudity. It also points to porn.blk. When you use nudity.blk it automaticly means you're using porn.blk. You could call nudity.blk with a nofollow parameter ond only get the nudity.blk listings. :) .blk in existance. .blk sites thereby preventing your machine from using existing filters.
gay.blk is a religious list that lists all gay sites, including gay rights sites.
pagan.blk is another religious list that lists all wiccan, satanism, santaism, and other cool sites. For some obscure reason it has overlaps with gay.blk
gore.blk is Tipper Gore's personal list to hide all of the sites that should have never made it on her husband's internet. It points to all record lables, lyrics sites, and just about every
cthulhu.blk is a campus list thar lists all the
See, once you get a standard and let us all create .blk lists, much like we all create .htm files with hrefs galore, the internet will return to it's wonderful chaotic state, and everyone will be happy.
This post and the contents thereof are not patented and should be considered prior art if someone tries to patent it. Thank you.
-----
No Zen is good zen
The council spent all their money buying Adult Check IDs so they could "investigate" all the different kinds of porn sites out there, and the best way to get everybody on AOL so they could censor them all from a single point, just like China!
As someone who used to run ISP's for a living, (Yes I used Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, AND NT on occasion :-) ) I am quite used to getting the kind of call/letter/email from a member of the outraged public, along the lines of "I searched through all the newsgroups you carry, looked at all the homepages, did some searches on the search engines you link to, and eventually, after two or three hours, I found some filth!"
The Internet is not a kiddie playground, supervised by social workers and kindly policemen. It is an anarchic meeting ground - different races, different political views, and different business drivers all come together. Sometimes they collaborate, sometimes they fight. However, if we do not encourage the freedom of expression on the Internet, it will cease being the port-of-call that it currently can be, and become just a slower form of Cable TV.
There are things on the Internet I don't want my children to see - this is also true of TV. It's my responsibility as a parent to make those choices, to educate my children and to share with them why I am making those choices.
What I would welcome from a legislative body is a process for me to choose what content I view, control where my personal information is stored (and thereby, how big my data shadow grows) and have the ability to publish my thoughts and express my beliefs without fear of prejudice, reprisal, or bigotry.
It would also be nice if I could be assured that the communications I send and receive remain confidential, retain integrity, and that the channels I communicate over - be it email, web, IRC, telephone, letter, or whatever - undertake to protect those channels, and to maximise their availablity to me.
I know this may sound like a utopian dream, but this is the kind of aspiration most of us share - we are drawn to OS's like Linux and BSD not only because they extend the invitation to directly participate in their development, but also because those who have already participated in that development have chosen to build it as best they can. Focusing on stability and reliabity has given us a stable platform, which assures us that we can use it as a communications base without fear of being let down.
We need the same level of assurance in our communications - we need to have an assurance that our privacy is respected, the integrity and confidentiality of our communications is controlled and measurable, and that those who we trust to carry our messages will do so to the best of their ability.
Part of the answer to this may be strong crypto - certainly things like PGP, Thawte, and so on allow us to set controls on privacy and identity.
It is not the role of the government to protect us from ourselves - we do not want it, or need it.
Thinking alters Thinking.
From the article:
Similar panels in Washington enjoy budgets in excess of $1 million, roughly the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile.
Well, I suppose that's one way of keeping smut off the Internet... just blow up their servers.
NO CARRIER
It sounds like there's a lot of heavy-hitters on the panel (AOL, PSInet). It would be in their best interests to fund the panel to keep Al Gore's baby "self-regulating" and "self-policing". They make enough cash to buy little toys like, say, Time-Warner, why not fund it themselves (tax deduction!) aso they can use it to thump their chests and say "We are the dreamers of dreams, and we care enough about Al Gore's invention to make it free of smut and A-bomb plans and unbiased news... oops, scratch the last one."
Sounds like a big ole' slap in the face (with hot grits and beer). Geez, I'm crazy for not posting this anonymously...
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
This kind of mentality will prevent the formation of a sane society, one that is not afraid of sex and the human body, one in which even a child can tell the difference between images which are art or textbook material and those which are simply in poor taste.
If we continue sheltering our children from everything, they'll never learn how to protect themselves, and they'll never be able to deal with reality. And we're already seeing the effects of this phenomenon: millions who can't cope with the world around them, and in turn are more willing than ever to sell out their freedoms for a dubious-at-best sense of security.
And this decrease of freedoms and increase of governmental hand-holding creates more of these helpless people, which feeds the vicious cycle.
Even if the creation of a sane, healthy society is too "impossible" for lazy and unimaginative politicos to even consider, I think that there's still a quick, simple solution that won't cut our freedoms short:
Encourage parents to guide their kids while using the Internet.
[straw man:]
Of course, thousands of parents cry, "But we can't be there to monitor them 24/7!"
And, of course, the Powers-That-Be agree. Spending time with your kids means less time "working"... might hurt the economy if parents started doing that en masse.
But I'm not advocating that parents monitor children's access. By "guiding", I mean teaching kids how to use the Internet responsibly, and instilling a sense of responsibility in them that will follow them wherever they go. Of course, it might mean that parents might have to learn a thing or two about the Internet themselves, not to mention responsibility.
Overall, however, the benefits to society would be too great to ignore. Children growing up with a sense of responsibility and independence will create adults who aren't afraid to stand up for their freedoms, and who can fend for themselves.
Also, parents who think they need their kids' access "secured" because they "can't be with their kids all the time" need to severely reexamine their assumptions. What many are trying to say is "I can't spend any time with my kids because I'm at work all the time and I want a magic pill to take the burden of parenting off my shoulders."
The damage, if any, caused to kids by seeing a few pornographic images absolutely pales in comparison to growing up with no real parental contact.
Understandibly, there may be situations where this isn't possible, such as single parents (who, btw, have a very tough job and my utmost respect), but children of single parents are usually expected to act with some degree of responsibility and independence in all aspects of life, and these virtues easily translate to the online world. (Not to mention the opposite: that responsibilities in Internet usage can also serve as important lessons for Real Life.)
Treating the Internet as an excuse to take away kids' freedoms (and consequently, their responsibilities), only serves to erode any responsibility and independence they may have learned offline.
By ignoring, rejecting, and fearing the ideas laid out above, American society has become its own dirty little secret. Insisting on living a self-destructive lifestyle and avoiding our real problems with shoddy workarounds is insane. But somehow it's become the "American Way".
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.