Survey Shows Censorware Support

Bret writes: "According to the NY Times, a recent survey shows broad support for censorware in U.S. schools. Even scarier: "the survey did find that 74% of individuals said the government should ban online pornography altogether and 75% supported a government ban of online hate speech." Read all about it at http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/10/18/technology/18EDUCATION.html while you still can." This leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Comments

Not too suprising

[Zerth]

I hope the survey they mention is really as skewed as it sounds. I mean, 75% want online porn outlawed. They just ask ppl who don't realize the internet doesn't end at US borders, or those who have a lifetime subscription to Porn Digest?

However the bit about most people who have recently gotten online access wanting filtering is unsuprising. First thing my GF mother did when she got online was ask how to find porn. Second was how to find stuff that wasn't porn.

Abestos: She's into dolls and likes making clothes for her granddaughters so the first thing she looked for was little or girls or clothes. I cringed.

not an fp!!

[jbridge21]

... how refreshing.

You basically stole the words out of my mouth, though! Here's what I was going to say:

Did you know that 87% of all statistics are meaningless? Furthermore, 47% of them are made up anyways.

Still..... between this and the totally lopsided presidential debates (as in, no mention of anybody else besides the "major party" candidates...), I'm not feeling particularly good about my country. (The US.)

The one thing I can do is have a little fun with it, though. Take for instance this joke:

Anyone descrambling my e-mail address and using it without my permission will be liable for circumvention under the DMCA and will be prosecuted for damages to the full extent of the law.

Sick wicked, isn't it?


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The ignorance of the public..

[Weezul]

Th funniest thing about the whole censorware debate is that censorware is nearly useless for libraries and school. Think about it:

(1) A library or a school wants to catch the people DLing porn. How will installing easy to circumvent protections which mearly train the porn user to circumvent these protections help? Now, some censorware for libraries dose use an alarm, but the bad block rate means that about once a week some little girl is tramatized by screaming alarms and kicked out of the library for looking at a feminist website.

(2) No reasonable adult really carres about another adult viewing porn onlie. they mearly want to prevent people from leaving open netscape windows containing porn and to prevent kids from changing the background as a prank. No censorware dose anything to prevent these sort of mistakes and/or pranks.

What is the solution? Place the computers in a realitivly poblic place and have librarians walk past them periodically. If the problem persists then have a computer which only the librarians see do a slide show of the JPGs in the netscape cache directories. The librarians can go have a look at all the various computer users when they see porn flash past.

These systems are cheap, simple, discreate, adaptable, adhears to community standards, and will produce almost no bad blocks. Why do we not see the AFA spending many thousands of dollars advocating these sorts of more effective blocking procedures? Simple, the AFA & friends do not give a shit about porn. They are only interested in blocking access of young people to feminist, gay, AIDS, safe-sex, liberal web sites.

Questions to bias a Poll

[luckykaa]

I don't trust public opinion as reported in the newspapers.

This is just an example. Other people are much better at this than me. This is based on an idea from the BBC comedy series Yes, Prime Minister.

1. Do you feel that children should be subjected to pornography?
2. Do you feel that children are affected by hate speech?
3. Do you feel that schools have a responsibility to protect children?
4. Are you in favour of schools using pornography filtering software?

Or alternatively

1. Are you in favour of freedom of speech?
2. Do you feel that children should be allowed to learn without restriction?
3. Should we rely on buggy computer software to tell us what our rights are?
4. Are you in favour of Censorship software in schools?

Simply publish the last result. It says whatever you want it to say.

You can even bias it by asking one question. People will be more in favour of schools installing filtering software to protect children that installing censorship software to restrict access to the internet.

Not ban it, just restrict access

[CMU_Nort]

From the paragraph right after mentioning support for "banning":

"If young people are seen as adversely affected, people see a need to step in," Shah said. "They want to restrict some forms of content and they want to do it at the point of access and not at the point of production. The strongest support is for restricting access of children to this kind of content."

All they are saying is that 74% of people support restricting access to pornography at access points. I support this as well. I don't want my son or daughter to be able to surf for porn at the library or at school. Slashdotter's make a big deal about how its the parent's responsibility to supervise their children. I agree. But when it is impossible for me to be supervising my child away from the home, I support this sort fo initiative. Just like I support the laws prohibiting my son from buying playboy at the local convenience store.

Re:Not ban it, just restrict access

[Sloppy]

I don't want my son or daughter to be able to surf for porn at the library or at school.

[snip]

I support this sort fo initiative.

I read the article, but I didn't see a single thing that suggests that there has recently been a technological breakthrough that will make it possible for a filter to restrict your child's access to things that you don't want them to see.

When they say filters, they are talking about things like Cybersitter, Net Nanny, etc. These things will still allow your child you view all the porn they want, and they will arbitrarily restrict your child from ??? things you don't even know.

You do not have, nor will you ever have, any way of influencing how such a filter works. How it works is not even documented, so you will never be able to check it. At least with Playboy Magazine, you can look at it once, decide it's not appropriate, and be fairly confident that banning Playboy makes sense. How can you do that with a millions of web pages?

Why do you support an initiative that will spend your tax money, while being guaranteed to not accomplish your objective, while at the same time having mysterious side-effects which you might not like (but also can't predict)?

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What happens when an unworkable law is passed?

[Kris_J]

When libraries have to prevent kids from seeing porn, and the similarly have to provide Internet access to the community, what do they do? It's impossible.

I ask because while I admire the base sentiment, the technology does not exist to do what the lawmakers want. The censorware debate is as much a discussion about luddites making technology decisions as it is anything else. What do you do?

Re:What happens when an unworkable law is passed?

[PhilHibbs]

Didn't one of the states try to pass a law decreeing that the value of PI was henceforth to be 3, for the furtherment of the study of mathematics within the state?

Re:What happens when an unworkable law is passed?

[L-Train8]

The reasons why libraries are given contradictory mandates is that in a democracy with diverse constituents, there are frequently competing legislative priorities. We have the courts and the constitution to sort out which ones trump the other, though it can be a long and messy process. Hey, kinda like what we are seeing now.

As for PI, I don't know of any serious attempt to pass a law about this.

The biblical passage used to support the claim that pi==3.0 does not use a degree of accuracy that warrants that allegation. In 1 Kings 7:23, a circumference of a circular object (the basin in front of the Jerusalem Temple) is given as 30 cubits while the diameter is given as 10 cubits. Therefore, PI==3. But the bible does not give the measurements as 30.00000000000... and 10.000000000000..., so I'm not sure why this level of accuracy would be assumed. The bible does not say the basin is perfectly circular, either.

There is plenty of room for even hard core fundamentalists to find flaw with the argument, besides the obvious one about the observed value of PI.

Open source censorware?

[sanemind]

I know it sounds at the front of it like a horrific and contradictory idea, and in a way it would be... But if the instance should occur wherein the government mandates the use of filtering software. (The validity of which is not a question this post concerns itself with... I am against it, of course), then what is the best pragmatic road to minimize censorship and maximize good? Open source blocking software.

Think about it... otherwise, countless public libraries would be spending large quantities of tax dollars on per-machine installations, with periodic, costly, upgrades of fresh new evil to protect the kiddies from. Also, the 'kill-files' of commercial censor-wear are considered confidential and protected corporate information, so there is no real oversite as to what of value might be being unjustly blocked.

An open censor-wear package would be free, save lots of money, and have a transparently open and democratically maintained (which should be quite amusing, in the debates it would bring up) list of objectionable content. Currently, [at least where I live] when a local school library refuses to carry some desired book, the choice, being locally made, can be reacted to locally... and these bans have usually been overturned due to the minor controversy. If the decision is made by a remote and central authority, there is less opportunity for grass roots debate and pressure to resolve the issue.

I would feel much more comfortable with all that money not going to CyberPatrol and the like. Wouldn't you?


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man sig

Doesn't mean much

[RandomPeon]

Why do people do surveys on issues like this? They're never accurate, people hang up and people lie, to the point that the data is meaningless.

First of all, people hang up a hell of a lot on pollsters any more - thank telemarketing. But is hanging up independent of response? We don't know what the hangup callers think, whether they're answers would be the same as non-hangup folks, or whether they would be more likely to answer yes or no to any particular question. I would think hangups would come from people who value their privacy, which might be people who would support free speech (There's no proven connection of course, that's a wild guess, but there's no way to prove/disprove it. It seems reasonable.)

A bigger problem is that people who do answer give the "right" answer no matter how unbiasedly the question is phrased. No one wants to say to a stranger "I support porn, as a matter of fact, I enjoy many pornographic products." There's no benefit to giving a truthful "incorrect" answer and no penalty for a false "correct" answer. This problem doesn't crop up in more vanilla-type polls, like "who ya gonna vote for?" because there is no socially incorrect response. To do this type of survey with any confidence, you need to use some confidentiality techniques that aren't possible via telephone...