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Censorware to be Mandatory in Schools, Libraries
The massive spending bill has been passed by the House and Senate, and President Clinton is expected to sign it soon. Despite some noises from the Clinton administration mildly protesting censorware, the small amendment making it mandatory is not considered to be an important enough issue to veto an entire appropriations bill.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime proponent of censorware, introduced the amendment.
As the ACLU says,
Earlier this year, an 18-member commission appointed by Congress rejected the idea of mandating the use of blocking software, which is notoriously clumsy and inevitably restricts access to valuable, protected speech. A wide spectrum of organizations have opposed blocking software mandates, including the American Library Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the conservative Free Congress Foundation and state chapters of the Eagle Forum and the American Family Association.
"There was an Alice in Wonderland quality to this debate," said Marvin Johnson, a Legislative Counsel with the ACLU's Washington National Office. "With its vote, Congress rejected the advice it asked for from the panel it appointed."
The "wide spectrum of organizations" extends from educators to The New York Times to strongly conservative political/religious groups. For more on the COPA Commission and its recommendations, see our stories from July and August.
Essentially it says that any school or library which receives federal funds to build its network must install censorware. Since these funds are the chief way that poor and middle-income areas bring the internet into public institutions, effectively this means that only rich counties will have the option of an uncensored internet.
The text of the self-declared "Children's Internet Protection Act" is available from CDT. It uses the term "technology protection measure" to describe the software.
In related news, Peacefire, an advocacy group for youth free-speech rights, released a tool to provide one-click disabling of some popular censorware programs.
Meanwhile, the ACLU will be suing to stop this bill from taking effect. This is not a slam-dunk like the CDA was. They're in for a tough fight. Here are three reasons why:
1. The CDA's language was very broad. This bill targets its material precisely: obscenity, child pornography, and "harmful to minors" material. Of course there is no "technology protection measure" in existence which can censor only this material, or even claim to censor only this material.
2. The CDA covered speech. This bill addresses the right to read that speech in a public institution.
3. This bill regulates institutions which are taking public money and how they may use it. Legally, and also in many people's minds, it is more permissable to enact regulations which go against the grain of the Constitution if they are tied to acceptance of public funds.
(The classic example is that the Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable search and seizure, but when the government provides public housing, it sometimes tries to say that the 4th Amendment does not apply. Same situation, different Amendment.)
Brock Meeks is more optimistic, saying the bill is "doomed." The key issue, I think, will be whether censorware can work. If it does not work, if it cannot work, then the language of the bill is irrelevant; our Congress might as well have demanded a "technology protection measure" to give all our kids 200 IQs and an lifetime supply of free donuts.
When I get in the mood to be optimistic, I think about all the stories we hear from students who are already forced to use this software. It seems like everyone has an anecdote about how they were blocked from doing legitimate research for school.
So maybe if this legislation survives, in ten years, all the kids who grew up with first-hand experience with censorware will start to vote. That's about the only bright side I can see.
For now, Brown v. Board of Education is the example I'm keeping in mind. The Supreme Court, after a half-century of segregated schools, decided that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" -- the theory might be OK, but it had failed in practice.
The courts should evaluate the "technology protection measures" by what they do, not by what the law demands they do. The theory might be OK, but in practice, all the technology that I've looked at blocks much more than it should. I'll be hoping for a verdict that reads: "technology protection measures are inherently censorship."
And, hopefully, now -- not after a half-century.
If public schools that receive federal money have to censor their net access, it only seems fair that Congressional offices themselves should censor their net access as well. After all, aren't they federally funded too? And if we want to protect our nation's youth, surely we should also protect our nation's leaders.
Gee, it looks to me as though not only does this work as a threat to kill _all_ funding for the library, but also the government will sue the library if it does not go along. I disagree with your analysis...
If it was just down to censoring dirty pictures, or wares trading, it would be creating a shabby little underground basically about trading dirty pictures and warez.
Because it is suppressing access to information and (see the low power radio article) communities' ability to broadcast their own media to themselves, it is creating an underground centered on becoming an information network and community resource- an underground that is so much better for its communities than corporate schlock that even Joe Average has to look at it and go,
And he should be- because those of us who are keeping access to information open, those of us who are supporting community media, we are this country (not our increasingly f**ked up government), WE are Joe's countrymen. And it's both our obligation and our privilege to live up to that.
(OK, end of stirring speech ;) seriously though, I mean it. I donate work, expertise and gear to local community radio. Do you? I don't directly support 'hacking around censorware' because that's not an area where I have expertise. I hope other people take up the slack.)
"The revolution will not be televised" -Gil Scott-Heron (and sure enough- it's being not-televised even as we speak :) )
We need a 'U-Filter-It' type censorware to push on libraries- one that fits the legal requirements- and we need it quick. My local library in Brattleboro puts up signs extolling the ability to read 'dangerous banned books' like, oh, 'Huckleberry Finn' and (not surprising for library people) is _very_ _much_ in favor of freedom of information. They have got to be hitting the roof around about now, and they are not necessarily tech savvy enough to come up with the technical answer to a mandate for censorware. Let's get together a local control censorware package that satisfies the legal requirements, and then go local and start talking to our local libraries and schools, and make sure they know they have that option. I flat guarantee that my local library would rather have that (and, for instance, an opt-in policy like 'If you see someone getting inappropriate material on the library computers, you can fill out this form asking us to block that page, or ask a library staffer to speak to the person for you'). Let's make this happen- forget 'guaranteeing not to censor protected speech', let's talk 'guarantees to put control of the filtering entirely in the hands of the library or school'. This will be particularly appealing to libraries because they can _individually_ approve any filtered item (like maybe a popular hard porn site) and be certain that they have the control and that nothing will be censored without their personal involvement and assent.
This is about _process_, not technology. There is NO REASON to assume a centralised control is neccessary- that is really not our business, if a library in Utah badly wants to block all fleshtone pictures we don't have a right to insist they block only what the Slashdot Filter agrees is 'really porn'.
Again- CIPA does not mandate a centralised list. It mandates that a filtering process be in place on all such computers. It does _not_ say who provides the list, and I suggest that is the business of the library or school, and nobody else's business. It should be possible to ask a library, "please block goatse.cx" because a library is a public service. That, too, is a process that can be seen as being responsive to the community. I see no reason to jump to the conclusion that MY community needs to block things based on what some community in Utah thinks. Keep it local. Keep the block lists locally controlled. Sell the libraries on a federally-compliant censorware system that's _entirely_ locally controlled with no central censor- that's open source so they can trust that the control remains theirs at all times (good selling point- "Nobody can LET THROUGH content that you have decided you don't want to allow! Your blocks can't be overruled!" Think devious ;) ) and we'd better come up with this software, because the commercial suppliers are _not_ going to be selling a decentralised system. They're in the central-control business.
And again, thank goodness CIPA does not mandate use of a commercial centralised censor- it simply mandates that _some_ process be actively in place for _all_ computers of this nature. I think it will be a pretty easy sell, to persuade the hapless libraries and idiot legislators that communities must set their own standards. The thing specifies that libraries and schools can censor as much more as they want- the point to insist on is that libraries and schools must also be allowed to define what _they_ want to censor in line with their own community standards, even if that's "just playboy.com and goatse.cx".
That is what public libraries _are_. They are a public service. Of all the things the government could be doing with the money it gets, I think I like libraries _best_...
- that a software product be present at all times
- that said software product be capable of blocking access to a site
- that said software product be impossible to turn off except for 'specific research uses'.
None of this requires or expects that the software be magically able to determine what is 'obscene', and in fact if you look at what CIPA _says_ you can plainly see that it doesn't require any centralised list be kept, much less specify who keeps the list. I would support this bill because of these extremely big loopholes: again, nothing in it _specifies_ that librarians have to give a rat's ass what _other_ librarians think: if people want censorware that expresses collective opinion they can get a commercial censorware product. CIPA doesn't specify a commercial product. It just specifies, "The _process_ has to be there, no matter what". That is not a totally unreasonable position, so long as one option is, "Our community feels that our library should only block this one particular image on goatse.cx. Anything else, we will just ask the person to not keep browsing those sites in the library. We're a New England library and a small fairly progressive town and it's nobody's business to tell us what we can or can't connect to, so our compulsory blocking filter just blocks a couple images that we all agreed were extremely nasty..."After all, if a nutcase like Perot can do it, so can someone who presents a real alternative (*cough*McCain*cough).
Umm, *cough*McCain*cough* introduced this amendment. He's a real alternative to himself?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
As a network admin you have to accept a certain risk and leave it at that. Porn browsing, inappropriate network use, etc. is a management issue and it should be left to that. The same goes for schools and libraries as well as homes. A computer cannot supervise your children! A TV is not a substitute for good parenting! Somewhere along the line, someone is going to have to get off their ass and monitor these users in order to enforce the policies of your school, library, company, and home.
There is NOTHING stopping you from going up to the proxy's admin and asking that a perfectly valid site be exempted from the filtering. We use a filtering proxy at our site and it works just fine with hardly any complaints. There are perhaps 2 people a week out of 5000 that send in requests for a site to be exempted that they feel was wrongly classified. 98% of the time I agree with them and exempt it without question. Filter lists are not these static lists that Jamie likes to make them out to be. We get a new categorized list every week or so from our vendor with updated URL's and categories. So quit bitching already... if you want to jerk off to porn then go home and do it and stop wasting my tax money and resources.
He's telling you that learning by skimming the internet - which is what people do when they use the internet, skim - is inferior to reading, which is learning in depth.
What a moronic assumption. Maybe you have never read a web page with the same care you read the page of a book, but I have.
FOLLOWING LINKS IS NOT COMMENSURATE TO REAL LEARNING. HYPERLINKS ARE NOT A GOOD LEARNING TOOL. YOU ENGAGE LESS GREY MATTER FOLLOWING A STRUCTURE OF HYPERLINKS THAN YOU DO READING A BOOK.
Following links? How the hell did that become the method that the internet is supposed to teach? It's the content of the page that teaches you, just like it's the content of the page of a book, not the fact that the page numbers increase in ascending order. I mean, you're trying to say you can't learn from the internet by saying clicking a link doesn't teach you things. Well, that's just dumb, a non sequ. Hey, books suck as a learning tool, because you don't engage any grey matter by fondling processed wood pulp!
Though in any event, why you think that the linear structure of a book engages more grey matter than a tree-like structure of a web site is inherently more stimulating is beyond me. But people will say anything (in caps no less) and try to pull it off as scientific fact.
The enemies of Democracy are
And in the Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny he quotes Franz Kafka's "The Penal Colony" when he says "the name of your crime will be carved on your back."
Just throw up your hands. Admit that this is inevitable, recognize the KalibanNet for what it is, filter everything, punish anything, tax what's left, advertising slots are still available so don't delay. Give up give in shut down quit. Perhaps the revolution will eat its own children.
I look forward to a bright shiny world owned and operated by AOLDisney, scrubbed polished with all the unsightly places swept underground. Where the mudpeople toil to give us our illusions in a clean white protestant sanitized trademarked Oprah approved group hugfest. I look forward to the death of hope and thought. I look forward to a sex free world with 6 guns blazing where John Wayne never dies and the Coolies are forever appreciative. Where good never completely vanquishes evil but we know it could if the sponsorship ran out and we had to cancel the series. I want a universe where the coefficient of friction is zero. Where everyone agrees with everyone else and everyone is slightly above average. I want an internet where "Leave it to Beaver" is a webcam documentary. I want a low fat smoke free no phones while driving the SUV toys for tots not in my backyard world where all the men are handsome and the women wear pearls.
This is all because no-one will build a school or
a library or anything else that can't profit.
We get the "government" to do it because nobody
else will, not because that's the first choice.
It's public apathy in the extreme that leads to
government being the party responsible for public
institutions. Local governments and/or small groups of citizens could have done it, but they didn't. Instead, the burden was rested on the
shoulder of the government. It's an excuse for
more taxes so they don't offer to give the obligation back to the regional levels of government (because they'd have to give up the tax money).
Taxes marked for education go to support bureaucracy first, then education. And it gets
applied toward education only grudgingly. This
example is just one of many. They're constantly
looking for excuses to withhold money.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Perhaps this is good. Some political actions, no matter how popular, are still a bad idea. Politicians will work furiously for these short sighted goals to serve a short sighted public.
Remember prohibition? It was a good idea - remove all social ills through the banning of alcohol. This bill has similar good intentions.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
The roots of Western prudishness obviously go back to the tangled warren of late classical monotheistic religions that eventually produced Judaism and Christianity (and Islam). I mentioned the Victorian era only because many present-day attitudes are directly attributable to it.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Based on what I know of the way women are treated in China -- and admitting that I don't know how Taiwan differs from mainland China in this respect -- then I'd have to agree that yes, I think your culture is insane, just as a significant portion of mine is. The treatment of women in the far east is legendarily barbaric. I certainly hope that I've heard wrong and that women over there treated as fully independent equals, or that it is at least a goal towards which your society strives.
And modern Western psychology's are not shared by a good portion of the rest of us. Nor even, it would appear, by a significant portion of your own society.
I can only cite the Western ideal that people have certain inherent, inalienable rights that are not subject to review by popular opinion or government fiat. No one denies that the West has more than its fair share of sexually-stunted misogynistic bigots. We have made great strides in the last century -- well within living memory there was no concept of marital rape but it is now recognized prohibited by law in most places -- and hopefully we will continue to move forward. If your society chooses to take a different course, I understand that such is your society's prerogative, but I can't reasonably be expected to respect a policy of inhumanity as if it were something trivial like driving on the left side of the road.
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
> If anyone forgot about this link, it is the best way to explain to people why censorship software is bad.
No it isn't. This is another "censorware is bad because it's inaccurate" site. The implication of this is then "censorware would be acceptable were it to implement only the mandate of the censor, blocking out only those sites which contained the ideas deemed offensive, the concepts these infallable guardians of all that is good do not smile upon". The very idea needs to be challenged at its root, without compromise. Take control of your own mind.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> Or are you advocating the right of the first-grader to find hard-core porn on publicly-funded computers?
Absolutely, positively, unapolagetically, yes. I don't recall there being a global exception to the first amendment because some kids might see or hear it somewhere sometime somehow. Get a fucking spine and raise your own fucking kids, people.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> For adults, child porn shall be blocked
Child pornography is already illegal. This bill is more jowl-wagging moral posturing and doomed to die like the sacrificial lamb it is. Because when it is struck down, they can gain even more from the backlash against the godless heathen judges and politicians that killed it. Same trick the left does with affirmative action.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Arguing that the technology is finally modern enough to support the implementation of moral strictures from the victorian age?
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Was I the only one that would have modded that warning up as "Funny" if I hadn't already excessively yammered on this topic already? C'mon, he gave detailed instructions on how to get to this site. That took some research!
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> If censorware gets used more often, people will complain about the effectiveness of the software, and the companies making the software will improve their reliability.
The mission and purpose of censorware is to prevent the formation of an idea by restricting access to images and thoughts someone thought was objectionable. I deem this not only ineffective in implementation for the near future, but ineffective in its very concept.
I'm letting religion fight a rear-guard action here. I'm going after religion itself. I'll raise my kids atheist and proud of it.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Here's another possible side effect of this insipid mandate: do any of y'all know of any kind of filtering software for Linux or BSD? If not, then schools will be forced to install WinXX or use Macs until a Linux or BSD version becomes available.
The Free ODMG Project needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
You can find the relevant software here. It's about 135k to download. It also only runs under Win98.
The Free ODMG Project needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
It would apply well especially that government money is bound to the regulations, the constitution especially applies to it.
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Game over, 2000!
When I was a kid, mumble years ago, it was common for boys to carry knives, usually boy scout jackknives or similar designs. Nobody got stabbed and it wasn't considered a dangerous weapon by the school. There wasn't any of this "zero tolerance" crap that mandates draconian punishment for a student who has a bottle of aspirin or a butter knife in their lunch box. We didn't have Internet porn or Hustler, we had to settle for the racier issues of National Geographic.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
very true, and what saddens me...altho the point has been made many times before...is that this type of thing (telling our children what they can/cannot should/should not do) _used_ to be the province of parents, teachers, and adults in general. replacing good parenting with tv addiction, beyond being an exercise in extreme apathy, is bad enough for our kids...but we're beginning to see people (legislators, apparently) ignoring the fact that none of these things works as they are purported to and would theoretically be more damaging to a growing child's psyche by dint of their brokenness (how twisted would a child get if he/she grows up believing that doing research on the topic of breast cancer is evil or something of that sort).
i do, however, have a lot of faith in the current generation of children. even though their parents, teachers, lawmakers, religious leaders, etc. seem to think they're all mildly retarded AND don't seem to think enough of them to take the time to teach them right from wrong themselves, i think they'll turn out all right.
locking the next generation of this country's leaders, teachers, lawmakers, etc. up in a mental cage throughout their formative years isn't going to teach them right from wrong, all it's going to teach them is: parents, teachers, etc. don't want us to see this stuff and we need to develop a skillset that will allow us mental freedom. as a side-effect they will probably also develop a healthy contempt for both those too lazy to teach their kids and the mindset that derives from that laziness
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
why is that some folks insist on labelling any who don't agree with their free-for-all attitude toward sex as "morbid", "deeply afraid of sexuality", "loathing of females", "repressed"/"oppressive", "Victorian", and/or otherwise "mentally ill"?
I think it was Freud. But seriously, did Angst Badger really use the term "free for all"??
Anyhow, I feel that the comment which you dislike,
institutionalized form of mental illness, a phobia of sexuality that manifests itself in the form of political oppression on the grand scale and domestic terror
is not completely out of place. It's our very own western psychology and psychotheraputic studies which have produced insights into our unacknowledged sexual "stuff". And 'terror' and 'oppression' are the sorts of words used in connection with these issues, exactly because 'terror' etc. are typically experienced. Now I'll stop there, as I'm not qualified, but let me add that Angst Badger's post bears some resemblance to the issue of how we go about measuring sanity -- ie. 'the degree to which an individual has adjusted to society'. This definition of sanity raises the issue, as extensively researched by Erich Fromm in "The Sane Society", of whether society itself is sane.
So while I agree with your principle of reserving the right to a "difference of opinion", you may wish to ask yourself just where "your" opinion came from.
It outrages you, it outrages me. Do the right thing.
Find a local ISP willing to donate bandwidth to a non-profit organzation (tax deductible)... find a computer shop in your area willing to sell at or below cost to a non-profit. Buy the computer for the library/school, and install it such that it uses the donated internet access. Voila, you're not using public funds anymore, and the machine need not be filtered.
As much as I dislike the concept, if the school/library is going to suck off the government tit, they're going to get the flavor of milk the government is spewing. Give them good clean fresh milk. :)
D
Thanks for the extraordinarily insightful comment. If there were any sensible way to do it, I'd frame your words on the wall. To say nothing of what I would do if I had moderator points (besides saying nothing ;-)
I think in the long term, a positive view of sex in America will eventually prevail. It was only a few short centuries ago, after all, that blacks were considered less than human. In another hundred or so, this folly will too hopefully be relegated to old history and anthropology books.
iSKUNK!
http://3522329841
cpeterso
One slight flaw in your argument is that although libraries currently do not provide pron (except in rare cases), they do so more due to cost issues. The cost of getting that porn outweighs their benefits that it would bring.
The addition of internet filters actually increases cost, and reduces information. Neither of which are in any libraries goals.
-cpd
That's completely beside the point. You're library might not have smut in the stacks (although I'd double check that before making the assertion. Libraries carry a lot of surprising stuff for research. You just might have to ask for it specifically), but the library doesn't pull The Age of Reason just because it uses some of the same words as Hustler. That's effectively what current censorware does.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I think the next generation is going to grow up even more cynical and distrusting of authority than this one... and that's a problem. More and more people believe the "System" is so broken that there's no point in even trying to fix it. Witness the apathy of the 2000 campaign season (at least before people started complaining about only be able to vote once). When we think the system can't be fixed, it can't be fixed.
/. folks leads me to believe that majority of people here think that children can be given, at an arbitrarily young age, the magical ability to discern what's right and wrong without fail. I hate to break the news to those folks, but kids are as dumb as a sack of hammers, and almost everyone below the age of 18 has the common sense of cabbage. Having an "open mind" won't change this. The process of educating and indoctrinating (in the non-perjorative sense) children to survive in the adult world is an on-going process that really only ends when they are adults.
/., SourceForge, Freshmeat and other math and computer sites, so it doesn't really affect me. However, it sets a dangerous precedent, but I think the people in charge think that a flawed solution is better than no solution and I actually have to agree with them on this one. Something better will come along, eventually, and we should strive to educate people about how truly awful censorware is (from a practical point of view... it _might_ be a valid concept in theory, but it can never be implemented short of having true AI). People in these forums like to rant a lot, but I really haven't heard any good alternatives. There are many restictions in meatspace restricting "adult" material (which usurps a word and completely twists its meaning) and you rarely hear cries of censorship. But the moment someone even considers something similar with respect to the online world everyone gets their pocket protectors all in a bunch. The idea here is not sound you're angry because you can't access http://goatse.cx at your local branch library, but to raise consciousness about the fact that censorware is a bazooka trying to do a scalpel's job. I don't think the public at large realizes this.
So here's what we do: we must strive to find political candidates that understand the issues we believe in. There seemed to be a strong contingent on Slashdot that supported Nader, and aside of the fact that he's a total kook, this was a good thing, and that more and more people want different alternatives than the two slightly different shades of grey we normally get to choose from. I think the time is right in the first decade of the 2000's for an altenative candidate to gain some credibility and perhaps even some electroal votes. After all, if a nutcase like Perot can do it, so can someone who presents a real alternative (*cough*McCain*cough).
Secondly, at the end of the day this censorware issue is not the end of the world. It is a broken solution to a real problem. Everyone complains (rightly) that parents have to take responsibility for their children. Well, I know my child won't find a copy of Hustler at the local library, but if he or she can point-and-click up, say, donkey porn on the public Internet terminal, then I, as a parent, feel the obligation to be there. That was never true in the pre-Internet days, so something had fundamentally changed.
. A lot of conversations I've had in the past with
Personally, I spend all my time on-line in real nerdnests like
If I sound like I can't make up my mind on the issue, it's because I really can't. But I think rather than pigeonholing Congress on this issue as being some kind of medieval Neanderthals (to mix metaphors) for even contemplating something so hideously awful as censorware, rather consider that they are trying to deal with legitimate concerns about a new resource that society really hasn't gotten its mind around. Like I said before, it's a bad solution, but I think it's the best one we have available right now.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Fair enough. But he does represent more of an alternative than the choices we had this time around.
No doubt, McCain is part of the "establishment", but he is also someone who bases his actions on principle and isn't afraid to propose an idea people might not like. No one that high up in politics can not have sold his or her soul, but I think there are poeple who have sold it less than others.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Get the gov't out of the schools and we cease to have these problems. If private individuals wish to censor, who cares? Let 'em be stupid. It's when you let the State in that the real problems start.
As for applying the Bill of Rights to the States, I honestly don't think it does make sense, except where it applies by the language used. `Congress shall' does not effect the states, and should not. But every state should guarantee free speech in its own constitution, as should every town. OTOH, when it says that a right `shall not be infringed,' then it's obvious that no-one may infringe upon it.
Why not allow a portion of society to be as ignorant as it wishes? Why do you attempt to force your version of what is appropriate on them? I do not force you or your children to believe what I believe, even though I find your outlook to be ingorant. Why should you not, then, return the favour (I am certain that you find my outlook equally wrong-headed:-)?
And I do not believe that my intereste should override anyone's. Nor do I wish anyone's to override mine. Live and let live. Quit stealing my labour for your schemes--I promise to do the same. If you want to educate society, go ahead, do it. But don't make me. You may be surprised, though, to find that I will be anyway. You see, I'm quite willing to give. But the key is willing--theft is unacceptable.
I've never been able to figure out why people are so intent on "protecting" people from porn, smut, obscenity, etc. etc. I've never seen anything in my life that I would consider inherently harmful to anyone. Sexually explicit yes, distastful sometimes, disturbing every so often, but harmful? I didn't get it when I was a child, I didn't get it when I was a teenager, and at 28 I still don't get it.
I've come to the conclusion that this "protect the children from things we don't like" mentality is simply one of the ways in which our society is irrational. None of us are completely rational and neither is any society. In some places women are treated as property and even sexually mutilated due to some twisted custom. That doesn't mean the society which does that is as a whole without merit, its simply a little nuts in a few areas, just like every other culture.
Here in america we're afraid of sex and terrified of any little thing that might happen to our children. (We might want to thank the crowd that promotes the idea we're products of our environment for that.) We're afraid to the point that we think simply seeing sex or hearing about it will somehow harm our young. That's pretty messed up but there you have it. There are other examples of ways in which our culture, or one of our subcultures, is pretty messed up. Neo-Liberals (socialists) are some of the looniest people I've ever met, as are many from the right wing. Its no suprise these groups don't understand each other, I can't make sense of either one. Luckily the US government was intentionally designed to keep rival interest groups fighting with each other. The "gridlock" that your double digit IQ types complain about is there for a reason.
There is a good rule of thumb to remember when you encounter one of these areas of irrationality: If something seems crazy, it probably is.
GO PEACEFIRE!!
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Your post is one of the best one's I've read in some time. It's reassuring to read posts from someone capable of rational thought and who possesses a good perspective on history.
What really disappoints me about modern america is how many people are rushing towards tyrrany with open arms. Kind of ironic and all too tragic. I guess this is what happens when a people become too fat, too soft, and too full of themselves. Out of touch with reality and devoid of any understanding of their place within it.
Then again maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe I should trust the government because after all its supposed to have my best interests at heart right? It wouldn't do anything to hurt me or disenfranchise me or anyone I know. Its here to help make the world a better and safter place and if everyone would just stop thinking for themselves Uncle Sam would be able to solve all our problems for us.
My grandparent's generation fought a world war over just that sort of mentality. Three generations of our people fought a cold war over it as well. I hope it wasn't for nothing.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said something like those who would trade freedom for security will have neither. It was true then and its even more true now.
Take care and don't let the double digit IQ types get you down..
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
According to this story at ZDNet, Peacefire has released a "one-click" censorware disabler. (Doesn't say if it will infringe on Amazon's patent ;-). It is supposed to work on Net Nanny, Cyber Patrol, Surfwatch, Cybersitter, X-Stop, PureSight and Cyber Snoop. Currently it works on filters installed on your computer, but a networked version is being developed.
Here is an article on a similar theme
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
That would depend on who defines the filter and the laws - right now it might be porn, and information on making bombs or drugs.
In practice the results of some kind of web spider looking for these. One common problem is that the producers of such programs tend to blatently lie about human examination of blacklists.
So, if the bill specifies obscenity, child pornography, and "harmful to minors"
All three of these are subject to interpretation, but the last one is utterly meaningless.
Is advertising "harmful to minors", is this kind of politics, that kind of politics, this kind of religion, that kind of religion, knowing about this historical event, not knowing about that historical event, etc, etc. How about expression of corporate interests or for that matter is the current "censorware" software itself "harmful to minors".
Why to the people with the tightest asses get to make all the rules?
Because people who arn't are less likely to think ways of forcing their views on others in the first place.
Only extreamists (of one kind or other) actually feel that pushing their views on others is either desirable or practical.
Also how do you lobby a legislature to restrict itself?
Rather than whipping out our thesauri to see how many derisive labels we can slap on our opponents, I suggest a more productive approach would be to start by assuming what we have is a legitimate difference of opinion rather than a conspiracy by psychopathic "domestic terrorists".
Sounds find in theory but all too often people pushing extremist views tend to take a "if you are not with us you are against us".
Question the views (or motives) of an established group and they will have a standard label ready to stick on you.
That reminds me of the story about the censoeware that blocked anything with the word "teen" in it. The people maintaining the list had decided that "teen" was an adult word.
Odds on they also included "ball", "screw", "toys", etc.
I think most people DO think that there's a need for "censorware" in the first place. Or are you advocating the right of the first-grader to find hard-core porn on publicly-funded computers?
In other words "I think there is a need for X, otherwise Y can happen". Problem is that X dosn't do a good job of stopping Y. It also does Z, which may be worst than Y anyway.
The salient point is not that site-blocking software is inherently evil or unconstitutional, it's just that it's ineffective -- and in such a way that it blocks more than it constitutionally should.
The real salient point is that even if people could agree what should be blocked it is currently impossible to write a computer program to do this. Were it to become possible to write a computer program to do this then there are ethical issues, to do with slavery, to consider. i.e. it's unlikely to ever be possible to write a program which is capable of understanding human behaviour well enough without creating a sapient AI.
This is America, where every God Fearing Bible thumper is out to let us know sex is bad.
:)
Sorry as The Bible contains references to murder, genocide, rape, incest, etc its been blocked by censorware. So you'll just have to find something else to thump
I do not support sheltering youth from some thing that is completely natural. Yet some how religious fundamentalists feel that it is necessary to control what kids see, think and hear.
Problem is that such religious (and political) extremists start by attempting to redefine what is and isn't natural.
Rather than by attempting to work out what is natural by scientific methods, including studying other primates.
Most of them would probably be shocked by the way Bonobos behave, however they are probably a better analogy of natural human behaviour than pidgeons.
i.e. the truth appears to be something along the line that sex is "natural", monogamy is "unnatural" and "sexual orientation" would naturally follow a normal distribution with hetero and homosexuality being the extremes.
In the US, it's about violence. Killing is our business, and business is good. We wrap(and rap) it, sell it, promote it, and grind it in to our childrens heads that this is acceptable.
But facts like that don't stop people talking about "sex and violence on TV". Obviously "make love not war" passed Hollywood by...
Actually, the point is that usually the first thing that gets blocked is any site criticizing the company that made the filtering software. Then, there are some political sites that somehow "accidentally" got filtered.
Note that with anything they intentionally block there will be other things which get "over blocked" e.g. because they use the same "dirty words" or are similar through some other simple metric. The results may appear to be random.
Also, see the (free software) SquidGuard add-on to the Squid proxy server at http://www.squidguard.org.
The difference is that the squidguard blacklists are honestly described as the results of a (very dumb) robot. Rather than the (bogus) claims to have been prepared by people which abound in the commercial world.
I think that the idea behind the filtering isn't a bad one.
There are plenty of good ideas behind science fiction. Someone needs to be clued up that Robert Picardo and Lexa Doig are acting....
I mean, does anyone expect total freedom in a school, really? It's primary purpose IS supposed to be education and preparation.
In which case porn would only be one of a number of things to be filtered. The useful list would include things you will never see in any commercial package, because the last thing they would do is block big business. Indeed there is plenty of stuff actually targeted at children which has little or no educational value.
Schools are trying as best they can to make the learning environment as safe as possible for as many students as possible and this does involve sweeping gestures like this.
They can only be (stupid) gestures. For starters what is "safe" for one person is not safe for another also what people do have in common is a "risk thermostat", attempt to make things too safe and people will actually compensate for that.
Added to which the idea that "porn=danger" appears based on an act of faith in the first place. Its "inappropriate" in a school, but it's just as much a waste of time if students are downloading and printing out pokemon as it is if they are downloading and printing out pictures of naked people. Though students might deliberatly choose porn for the purposes of offending the adults.
It is simply amazing how we can program operating systems that do miraculous things, but lack the ability to program adequate software that blocks viewing of the things congress wants.
Not really all the "miraculous" things operating systems do involve tasks which are easy for computers (though they might be difficult for humans) the blocking thing requires programs which perform tasks which are difficult even for humans.
Perhaps if the government invested money into a development program that can work on software that meets its criteria all of us would be happy.
Will throwing money at AI research magically create software?
I agree that current blocking software is not properly written. It should be more dynamic and "read" the page before it is viewed. Forget scanning just the URL, try looking at the whole page.
Such software is beyond the ability of people to currently write. The only place it exists is in the minds of science fiction writers. Thinking machines, which can understand human attitudes, are there with teleportation and faster than light travel. Even if someone built one tomorrow what makes you think that it would want the job anyway? Give it a little while hooked up to the net and it would soon discover the hypocritical attitudes underpinning it's "orders"...
How about that biology textbook? How'd you do without that? What about health? Oh, wait. Information wasn't banned from your school cause it had the word 'sex' in it.
Or any other word which might have some connection to "porn". e.g. "ball", "cock", "toy", "screw", "bird", "girl", "teen", "suck", "climax", "blue", "breast", "CD", "TV", "male", "female", "jugs", etc. Whilst all of these could be associated with "porn" they have many, many other uses.
Golly, congress certainly is being "harmful to minors" and thus should be filtered out.
I really think we need an "Orwellian Clock" in the same way that we have a "Armageddon Clock" representing when the world nukes itself. The Orwellian Clock would represent how far humanity is from the ideals set forth in 1984; however, it would need some refinement of exactly who runs it, what causes moves on the clock, and so forth...
Exactly. What if I wanted to let people read a paper I wrote by putting it on my site. I quote Ernest Becker from The Denial of Death, using the phrase, "... an anus which shits." 100% academic work, but likely censored because of "shits". Ah well. I'm in college.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I pay my taxes, I want free donuts!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I've heard the idea around here before, but what do people think about Community Censorware? The Block list would be public, and would be optional, think MAPS and RBL type lists. Sites could be added via contributions from the net, and (?!) voted upon for validity. Think Open Directory Project. Is anyone else interested in such a project?
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This message brought to you by Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Re: Loudoun County case... CIPA is a financial incentive, not an absolute mandate like in Loudoun County. CIPA doesn't block much of adult access. Also, "It must also be noted that the Loudoun court did hold that minimizing access to illegal pornography and avoidance of creation of a sexually hostile environment are compelling interests. The court went on to hold that, although the challenged policy was over inclusive because it restricted adult Internet access, it would be possible to create a policy which would protect children. Id. at 567." (Testimony, Jay Sekulow Esq., The American Center for Law and Justice (yuck))
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Actually, it's easier than that. The FCC is put in charge of determining "good enough", so they would probably look down on those who try to comply with the letter of the law while going against the spirit of it.
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Part of the role of a parent is to shield the child from various things until they are mature enough to not be permanently jaded from them. Eg. children are more impressionable than adults. So, while the child is in the temporary care of the state, the parent wants the child to be shielded in a similar manner, especially because the parent is paying the state for the education of their children.
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There's a clause that "allows" local schools to target more material if they want to, but makes local schools responsible for any repercussions of that.
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But they can if the librarians or the community want to.
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CDA and COPA tried that, but they were both ruled against as unconstitutional.
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You could get Playboy in my (Catholic!) high-school library if you were 18. My how times change.
As best I remember, my school library didn't stock Penthouse, Hustler, or porn videos other.
It seems on shows like NYPD Blue that they can now say some of the curses that George Carlin proved were indeed the "7 words you can't say on TV." Specifically, they say "asshole" "bitch" "bullshit" and "whore". (I know these don't match perfectly with the original 7.) I've noticed though, that if they "asshole" early in an episode, they'll say it again later in that episode, but they won't say "bullshit." Likewize, if they say "bullshit" they'll repeat it, but they won't say "asshole." They'll never have a character call someone a "bitch-whore" or say something like "you bullshit whore"...
My guess is that TV/movie/book lawyers, in cohoots with producers, writers, and FCC/MPAA/PMRC contacts, have begun to contruct an elaborate rule book of what can be said/shown where. The S. Park movie would've gotten an NC-17 if they showed a website about necrophelia, but shit-eating was okay. There seem to be rules that allow one or two "shit" words, but not 3 or more. We all know that an erect cock pushes it into "hard core" but flacid penises are okay.
It's absurd, and insulting. Artists are pressured to make their works conform to these twisted standards. It's a big load of shitty bullshit fucked-up crap by whore-bitch motherfucking (erect) cocksuckers.
So nice to see that the Australian government is not the only one who rams home impossible laws regarding the Internet. So, which members of government used up some of their "IOU" voting favours on this one? Support it, get it through, work off that "favour" and rest assured that it will get shot down after the fact (or, as here in Australia, shoved into the dark 'cos no-one can make it work :)
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
If anyone forgot about this link, it is the best way to explain to people why censorship software is bad.
http://dfn.org/focus/censor/contest.htm
As someone mentioned, this problem isn't so much legal as cultural. It's also very, very human. Wherever two or more people are gathered together, yea, there will be one among them who wishes to make certain that the others are thinking in the same way that they do.
That said, the growing tendency of governments and parents to want children to be shielded from *all* forms of "disagreeable" material (with a defintion of "disagreeable" which tends to be very strongly biased toward political and sexual concepts) is somewhat unrealistic. However, even more unrealistic is the notion that somehow technology is going to be the saviour. Let's face it, over the centuries, technology has focused almost exclusively on creating new ways of getting a mate, keeping a mate, or killing off competitors for a mate. None of which are things of which parents really wish their children to be aware. The most effective "censorware" available is the stuff between a parent's ears - especially when said parent is looking over the kid's shoulder as they surf.
However, saying to people "look, it's *your* responsibility as a parent to look after your kid" is thoroughly politically incorrect these days, so it's better for politicians to just pass laws to shut up the parents, and the "moral majority" types. It's worth noting that most of these laws probably won't actually be *enforced* very strictly - they're just for show. The government has been asked to "do something about the problem of p0rn on the internet". This is something, they are doing it.
My own reaction to this would be to wait for a year, and see what happens. One of the biggest flaw in western-style democracy is that laws are more and more being promised as electoral bandaids, rather than as serious efforts to solve problems. These laws are much the same - they appear to be designed to be pointed at when the Senator/Representative in question is standing for re-election, rather than as serious efforts at limiting access to "non-child-suitable" material. The trick is to prevent anyone from getting bored enough to put time and money into enforcement of them - so keep saying to your local Senators and Representatives that you want more police action on things like murder, speeding, etc. (evil grin)
Meg Thornton.
Perkin's Postulate: Online tech support is designed to provide everything short of actual help.
Geez, no interest in "equal opportunity" here.
If everyone thought the way you did (and thank God you're in the minority), our society would devolve back into a slave society in two or three generations. Of course, as long as YOUR family wasn't enslaved, then why the hell should you care? (In fact, having a couple slaves around the house might be enhance your reputation quite a bit.)
And I disagree with you. If the society doesn't deliberately spread educational resources through all social classes, then the poor will eventually get frozen out. Why should the rich give up their "hard-earned" assets to help educate some little bastard who's just going to grow up to compete w/their own kids? Much better from their viewpoint to make sure that everyone "else" is controllable.
Uh - not really. The founders set up the rules the way they were because it was the only compromise they could come up with to get all of them (who were representatives from the various colonial provinces/states) to accept ANY kind of national government (since they were naturally reluctant to replace a central monarchy with an equally-strong central presidency).
There's nothing inherently sacred about the system they sent up, other than the historical fact that it was a decent, simple system which has been flexible enough to transfer power to whatever level of government is necessary for the overall health of society. In recent times, with the growth of large national & global special interests, the federal government has assumed a lot of power in a reaction to the presence of those entities. State governments can't deal effectively with these trans-state & trans-national companies.
Yes, it's the duty of the state to look after the interests of IT'S residents - even at the expense of the OTHER residents in the country. It's the duty of the Federal government to look after the well-being of ALL the residents in the country. This means that the Federal government might have to make some decisions which will hurt a particular state, for the overall goal of improving the health of the whole country.
Of course, you can argue that the current federal government is not properly representing the interests of the whole country, rather the interests of the monied. I'm afraid I'd agree with you there, although it doesn't change my opinion that the federal government should have the power appropriate for performing its duty of maintaining the overall country's health.
As I've stated above, that's because the feds have to take into account more people's viewpoints to arrive at actions which benefit the country as a whole. I don't want a government which tries to fulfill every resident's desires - I want a government which tries to maximize the health of its entire society. That doesn't mean that it should ignore the input of its residents, but it shouldn't try and do everything that any of its residents want.
(Actually, honestly speaking, I'd rather have a government which fulfills _my_ personal desires as a priority over helping anybody else, but I'm trying to keep a rational debate going here :)
Even if I were inclined to believe your single point of "evidence", it's hardly representative of a statistical sampling of all major world societies over a long period of time. I'm pretty confident I can find more historical examples of societies with no public education with a large illiterate & poor population than you will be able to find with no public education & a broadly educated society.
Also, I'm not sure what your point is by saying that point in time is noted for its poverty and the great divide between the classes. Even if I accept your historical scenario, just because a population is somewhat literate doesn't mean that there won't be a rich/poor class divide. I'd be interested in reading about a society where a large chunk of the population _isn't_ literate, but where there _wasn't_ a rich/poor class divide.
This sounds suspiciously like mindless anti-government drivel memorized from talk-show hosts and people who find it convenient to avoid thinking about any reason for paying taxes.
I don't think a society can afford to allow a big chunk of its constituency to be "stupid"/ignorant - stupid/ignorant people do irrational things, based purely on emotion and w/o no critical thought. If you have too many stupid/ignorant people, and they all charge in one irrational direction at the same time, your society is going to descend into chaos and screw EVERYONE - not just the stupid/ignorant people.
That's why it's a good idea for a society to do its best to raise the education level for EVERYONE, and the most efficient & equitable way to do that for everyone is at the highest level of society, not at the local level. I know it annoys you, but the government is only agent at that level of society which has the duty & the power of organizing such an educational program.
I certainly don't trust private interests to perform such a task competently, since their main goal isn't to educate members of society - it's to make money, and they'll cut corners where they can get away with it so they can make more money.
Allowing lower levels society to be solely responsible for the education of their own residents will inevitably result in inequal education for between those different groups of population (as can already be seen by the widely differing test scores between states with widely differing commitments to education).
No, it's when you have people in charge whose aren't interested in maximizing the health of their society - perhaps for their own benefit - THAT'S when the real problems start. Amazingly enough, a lot of those people sound like you, stating that their interests should be able to override everyone else's. (Or conveniently ignoring or denying that anyone else might have any other interests.)
4. The CDA was a criminal law.
This bill is a funding condition.
``(i) is enforcing a policy of Internet safety that includes the operation of a technology protection measure with respect to any of its computers with Internet access that protects against access through such computers to visual depictions that are--
``(I) obscene; or
``(II) child pornography; and
``(ii) is enforcing the operation of such technology protection measure during any use
of such computers.
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/gotali st.php e stevils.php
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/great
I am a high-school freshman.
I am a vindictive left-winger.
And as such, I will have to bear the brunt of this decision. And I believe my children will. And theirs.
It's not easy being a teen geek these days. There are times when I fear for my health.
The big question comes with: Where does it end? If the government keeps taking away freedoms, how will it stop? (An object in motion, stays in motion)
Considering how much faith I have for this country, it won't stop.
I love what Peacefire is doing. They're helping enlighten minors as to what the real story is. But, it can only help so much. There will still be those uppity religionites that are breeding their next generation as we speak.
This is going to get worse people. Keep thinking freely, and you'll find yourself deported in a couple years. I hear Canada is beautiful in the wintertime.
Barak Michener
So, you have to block stuff that's 'obscene', 'child porn' or 'harmful to minors'... I work as a network admin at a school (whose tech committe does NOT want censorware), and from what it sounds like, I can bash out a quick proxy that blocks just one site of each category and slap it on the firewall... sounds like that would meet the requirements! =)
While many forms of socialism have used institutionalized information blocking, I wouldn't exactly call it "the first step to a socialist environment".
...then I would agree that it is one, but disagree that its the "first" step - as the first steps happened a long time ago ;)
Information blockage is hardly a basic tennet of "Socialism". Many systems, socialist and not, have used such things over the years. Many continue to use them.
Now, if you had said "First step towards a totalitarian system" (which may or may not be socialist)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The real problem is that so many institutions are dependent on the Federal government for funding. This is because the Federal government takes so much out of the economy that there is little left for private or state ventures. If this were not so, the local school or the local library could simply ignore this advice. As it is, Federal spending makes up more than 25% of the GDP, and it's imposible to ignore.
Your grandchild might ask you what state and local governments are for, and what power they really have. Then you might try asking yourself how and when all public instutions became defacto Federal institutions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...and I agree. Federal power is too great because they control too much money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When I was a wee lad (insert nostalgic comments here) there was a protected period when messing with computers was the norm as much so as soccer on the green....when the Sinclair Spectrums and Commodore 64 ruled the roost. Now imagine if every one of us had been told then that there was a hole world of porn and brilliant violent games sitting out there just waiting for us to figure out how to get to it..... we'd all have clubbed together until we were there. And every time we see another new piece of censorware come in we would always discover something we liked that we couldn't see anymore (like how long before /. posts a story on how someone couldn't read /. in their local library).
You underestimate I feel the interest in young people in computers (though I'm sure they won't all be learning chunks of the dns->hexIP nightly) , from the most innocent to mischevous (who is going to be first to look for peer-points by setting up a "child-porn" site of their classmates using the school network). I think the uptake of technolgies such as Napster shows us that we are not going to block the possible and people will be bothered to remember the workarounds!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I'm afraid I'll have to disillusion you. No, there is nothing magical about the age of 18. Kids do not suddenly "grow up" after travelling around the sun 18 times. They do not "grow up" sometimes until after twice that many years, if they even ever do. At the other end of the spectrum, there are the people who are responsible individuals at ages much less than 18. Differentiating between right and wrong is not the sole province of the 18 and older crowd. I also dispute your assertion that the process of education ends when a person becomes an adult. As the saying goes, learning is lifelong. When you stop learning -- that is when you are dead. Liken education to adaption, and you can draw the evolutionary parallels.
While on the subject I'd also like to point out that while parents should take responsibility for their children's welfare, that welfare will not be enhanced by over-protectionism. The world is rough, dirty, and often crooked (to highlight some negative aspects...). Denying the existence of this reality is as harmful to a child as throwing them to the wolves of society. Ignorance is not a virtue. Fortunately, nature was wiser than parents or legislators and instilled in youth curiosity and a sense of adventure, certainly foolish and dangerous at times, but also an important ingredient in engendering change. Granted, the experience of elders is crucial and so long as they continue to recount it, we will continue to benefit from those lessons. Equally important, however, is the questioning curiosity that youth brings; without which society might stagnate. The relevance of the above to censorship and filtering software is twofold:
We should re-examine our motivations for censorship, remembering that education is superior to ignorance
So long as the elders pass down experience and the youth question the elders, we have nothing to fear from censorship.
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
The more people are raised to not be able to deal with negative situations by being isolated from them, the more oppression will be imposed. It is a vicious cycle. Oppression leads to sheltering people from "bad" things, which when they are finally exposed to them they are unable to deal with and are greatly upset by. These people then scream for more efforts to "protect" people from those "bad" things, and we get more laws and more oppression.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
For those interested in the OLD incident this is referring to, I direct you to a mailing list digest that goes into this in more detail at: http://internet.ggu.edu/university_library/if/hyst eria.html.
In a nutshell:
2 years ago, someone found a link as listed in the previous message under OPLIN (Ohio Public Library Information Network) that took them offsite (http://www.sftoday.com/enn2/hscentral.htm) which is apparently a page that showcases high schools, teachers, etc.
So yes, I'm sure that at one time, there was a series of links that could be followed from OPLIN that would take you to a porn site. After poking through the site long enough, I would say that link is no longer there. I eventually had to do a Google search for "central high school oplin" to find out if Nathaniel was even on track. The thing is, this is old news.
So if you're outraged, as Nathaniel is, I would say that you should check your facts first, before reporting "news" that a) is no longer true, and b) has its facts not completely accurate.
The fact of the matter is that OPLIN linked to site A. Site A linked to site B. Site B had information on the environment at one time. Site B now contains adult themed material. I won't say porn because one browser opened up to an underwear site, and the underwear was men's briefs and bikini bottoms. Garish colors, but not pornographic. Either way, you have OPLIN -> Site A -> SiteB, rather then OPLIN -> Site B. I proclaim OPLIN innocent, and Nathaniel misrepresenting facts.
Opinion: Scientology is a cult you should avoid. Follow the
Censorware is great for that false sense of security people are so accustomed to here in the good ol' USA. It's great that Johnny will be protected by the smart software from our friends at Mattel. Now we can smoke our crack instead of paying attention to our kids and what they are doing behind closed doors.
The jackasses at ICANN could have made this so much easier by implementing a .XXX (or .SEX or .???) TLD. Lawmakers could have forced anyone who displayed porn on their sites to use a .XXX site, levying stiff fines against those that don't comply. Then, the only thing needing blocking would be .XXX instead of trying (terrifically unsuccesfully) to create software that bans any potentially 'harmful' site.
I know they're trying to ban more than porn. I'm sure they don't want 3rd graders able to read about how to make an oven cleaner explosive, but porn represents 95+% of their problems.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
If this had happened two months ago, we could politely point out to Gore's advisors that censorware X was blocking his and his supporter's sites and seemed to have a definite agenda. Then we could politely drop a line to the Bush camp, to express our moral outrage that the censorware package we were using clearly targeted pro-Bush sites.
:-)
Then Bush and Gore would have unwittingly united to do everything possible to stop the madness.
Ah well. It was a nice thought
Seriously, While we should continue the fight, we should also have a plan B in case we lose.
Plan B might involve creating censorware that actually lacks a covert political/social agenda, and is actually transparent enough to maintain this. And errs on the side of caution, (rather than blanket-banning a million sites because of one page (and have the gall to then boast about how many pages the database blocks)).
Basically, there is a lot wrong with censorware besides the fact that it doesn't actually work. So much so that we would be a lot better off using equally unworkable censorware if said censorware lacked all the other crap that the current crop contains.
The only thing that scares me more than government censorship is corporate censorship, yet that's exactly where we are. And that's not good!
(now don't explode, give me a second a read this)
If the government is now going to require its use, then perhaps we can now convince "them" that there needs to be some sort of governing body watching exactly what is censored. To prevent things like Software A blocking websites to competing software B or blocking sites with bad reviews of Software A and the numerous idiotic instances of "censoring for your own protection" If the government is going to require this software then, IMO, it should then govern this software as it can directly affect protected free speach. Perhaps a federally maintained blacklist instead of each company making their own.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
Already, we have people controlling what we can say/show on television, what we can say on the radio, etc, and now we will have people controlling what information on the Internet is acceptable. This is not a good message to send, especially to children.
Ultimately, I believe, it teaches children that they cannot be trusted to decide what is right and wrong for them. It teaches children to rely on the judgement of others. This must be wrong because I don't have access to it, and vice versa, this must be right because I do have access to it.
We need to teach children what we think is right and wrong, and why, and let them make up their own minds on the subject, and then hold them accountable for their decisions, whether good or bad. If you take that choice away, the choice between right and wrong, then you cannot be proud of a child that does something right, and you cannot be upset with a child who does something wrong, because it was not their decision. We are no longer raising children, who are individuals, but training future citizens, who have to learn to play by the rules.
There is a very strong, small, but highly organized group of zealots out there who feel that they must do Something to protect the children. They do care, but they don't know how to go about helping their sons and daughters cope with the realities of a world gone mad (as they perceive it). They were once secure under the iron rule of their religion, and fear the uncertainty inherent in having free will.
Why don't Methodists have sex standing up?
Because it might lead to dancing.
But in modern society with all its temptations, one's immortal soul might go astray and one will be condemned to the fiery pits of Hell for all eternity. Serving God so that we are rewarded a seat at His right hand in the hereafter is what these well-intentioned but misguided souls believe our purpose here on Earth is. "We must keep these images from the eyes of our children, because if they are exposed to them, their soul will become corrupt and they will fall from Grace!"
So when their children finally leave the nest they are wholly unprepared for the realities of Good and Evil in the Real World. These poor misguided people, children of oppressors, must now go out and perpetuate their prison because the Real World is a much scarier place to them than it should be.
That's fine. But why do they have to feel that they must justify their actions by oppressing me and my children? I simply Tell my kids about the evil lurking out there, expose them to it (no, I don't show them porn, but I might show them the links that come up on a search of the word 'oral'), and in good faith and trust give them the power to control their own destinies. It seems to work. The zealots would do well to remember that their God gave His children Free Will for a good Reason, and they might find Great Comfort in Trusting Him that they Worship so much.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
According to part (C) of the definition of Harmful to Minors, ...
"any picture, image, graphic image file, or other visual depiction that--
(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to
minors."
So, other than the fact that these are highly subjective(ie, is, say, sluggy freelance(http://www.sluggy.com) banned by this law? Does it have "serious literary or artistic value?"), it only covers images. Thus, highly erotic stories are NOT banned by this measure, nor are plans to build bombs(wasn't columbine one of the catalysts for bills like this?), or a myriad of other concerns broached by right wing politicians.
Additionally, part (B) says,
"(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is
suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or
simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals;"
It requires that this be "patently offensive" but again, that is an entirely subjective measure. Things that some people are extremely offended by(pr0n, for example) I find quite amusing. Also, you have to wonder whether this includes images that can be used for educational purposes, such as images often displayed in sexual education material.
I think the funniest passage is included in part (A), though:
"...appeals to a prurient interest in
nudity, sex, or excretion;"
How many children's books are there, and childish jokes, etc, that do appeal to their "prurient interest...in excretion".
Anyway, while some of the wording is vauge, I'm somewhat afraid that this law could live on. It is possible, of course, to attack it on a variety of grounds- ie, the fact that no software yet exists that is this exacting, the vaugeness of the bill, or as the poster of the article noted, the Brown v. Board argument. The biggest problem with the final argument, though, is that Brown v. Board doesn't apply to money, as evidenced by teh Rodriguez(sp? I don't know who it was against, either) that established that wealth is not a suspect class in terms of educational discrimination.
My $.02
Alex Magidow
okay, troll, i'll bite. prove that "thinking narratively" is good for anything other than turning otherwise inquisitive minds into drooling robots and i might care about it. otherwise, i think the ability to perform thought patterns that involve linking diverse objects from an array of sources is just as valid. then prove that the internet all by itself seems to be reinforcing the latter over the former, and i'll really care. until then, i'd say sweeping generalizations about a brand-new technology are silly. SILLY!
I do not have a signature
the new technology I was referring to is this "internet" thing that Al Gore invented. There is simply no evidence at this point that the internet warps the thought patterns of young persons in a bad way.
I do not have a signature
Does this shit apply to Colleges to?
the technology advisory board for my school district, and we had decided that the filtering/censoring software that was out blocked not only inappropriate material, but educational material as well, and it was also decided that it's impossible to determine what's inappropriate and what's not. Filter it all or don't filter. Censorship sucks.
How Jaded Are You?
So? It's just in school and libraries. People can see whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes. Last I checked, you couldn't get porn in libraries or schools, either, but I don't hear anybody complaining about that. This is no different.
niceFire.com - Humor and Lego's or Lego's and Humor or Some Combination of
I think most people DO think that there's a need for "censorware" in the first place. Or are you advocating the right of the first-grader to find hard-core porn on publicly-funded computers?
The salient point is not that site-blocking software is inherently evil or unconstitutional, it's just that it's ineffective -- and in such a way that it blocks more than it constitutionally should.
I've got three kids, two old enough to use the Web. I want to be sure that they don't see porn when they're browsing. I am also concerned that they are not exposed to rightwing fundamentalist hatemongering crap that would stunt their mental and emotional development as much as porn.
Any parent that wants to keep an eye on what their kids are seeing, whether in the print media, on TV, in games or on the Web, will be involved in their kids' lives and will monitor what they're up to. Rating systems, incompetent bureaucrats or snake-oil-vending censorware companies cannot do that for me. The correct response is to take responsibility for being a parent. Mindless passive measures don't work, they're just a way of giving the illusion of action without actually doing anything. And I'll be the judge of what my kids see, thank you very much. YOUR halfbaked opinions will be given all the attention they deserve (nada), and if you try to impose then on me, expect strong resistance. Censorware is just another excuse for petty interference by those who have too much time on their hands and think that they know better. A healthy society marginalizes such people. Any law that empowers individuals of that sort is a bad law that should be struck down.
Take your moral crusades to Iran or Saudi Arabia. I prefer living in a country where the system protects me from fanatics.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Taxes come from the populace. I am pretty sure that if a national survey could be taken, censorware in public schools and libraries would pass with at least a 60%-70% approval rating. All you need is 60 mintes to show how detrimental pornography is to a child's mental and social development and the entire nation would quickly be drawn up in a moral crusade against pronography. The slashdot folks who liberally and militantly oppose censorware must realize that there is much more at stake than perhaps an adverse effect for researching students. With a simple authorization by a professor or some other administrator, a student could be given full unrestrained access for academic studies. Its not as if censorware would render the internet useless. It would simply be protecting our greatest national resource.
Censoring means that the material that may be considered harmful is removed prior to public disemination. I can censor a TV show by bleeping the words in the audio track before it is broadcast. Censoring is ALWAYS done by the distribution end.
Filtering means that the material that may be considered harmful is removed or altered at the recieving end. I can filter a TV show that is coming down live from the network satelite during that 15 second delay before further sending the signal out along cable lines. Filtering is ALWAYS done by the recieving end.
This bill is NOT about censorware, but filterware.
Now, some might argue that this will effectively censor some sites out there. But this is not correct. Take the physical example of 'banned books' such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Sure, the book may be banned from school and public libraries, but there are other means to get the book: from a store, from a friend, possibly by online text. The book is in no way censored since the material is still readily available in some form. Same with online information, say that Slashdot is blocked by these filters. Certainly there are other was to access it, from private internet connections or net-cafes. No one is denying you any access to that site whatsoever, just that the public institution feels that they need to filter it for the public good.
Thus, this bill does not threaten anyone's 1st amendment rights in any way. You still have your freedom of speech and expression, and you still have ways to hear others if you so choose, just that in public institutions, what *you* may want to hear is not in the best of public interest, and thus needs to be filtered.
Now, mind you, this bill sucks. Yes, it does leave it up to the community to decide what to filter, but it should leave more to the communities than just that. In addition, filtering software is inefficient, and can filter legitamite sites as well as As some other articles on the net state, communities have already passed regulations that they will not implement filters due to any easy way to set a community standard and the lack of good software.
So while I expect the ACLU to challenge it, I'd rather see states challenge it as it violates several distinctions of federal and state powers. I'd also like to see groups like Peacefire tackle the problem and raise the issue that no filtering program is sufficiently good at this point in time to be setting national standards for them. Until such a time where we can dynamically determine if the content on such a page (including images) are not up to the standards of the given community, any national filtering solution will fail (and since I doubt we'll get to such a point in 10 years, this bill is waaaay before it's time).
I'd rather see a better approach in the sence of voluntary ratings for sites, and mandating that public institution must enable such features on a browser to conform with that ratings system. Then make it a civil offense to misrate your site after being notified that the site is improperly rated (or some other such action to avoid the quick-fire lawsuit type persons). Certainly 90% of the sites out there probably won't need to rate themselves, and those that do could be making sure that their site flies under the filtering radar (such as a breast cancer site making sure they indicate that they are a health-related site). Yes, it's not a perfect solution, but it's a better direction than filtering software.
But again, filtering != censoring, but a few slipperly slope arguments get you there. "Well, if X is blocked at public schools, why shouldn't it be blocked from the web overall?" doesn't follow logic, but a sympathic judge might eat it up. Any filtering law must state that it's for the purpose of maintaining community standards in public places and does not attempt to interfere with free speech rights granted in private places of home or business.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Then quite frankly, you really should not be sending your children to an institution where the government acts in loco parentis.
In other words, if you don't want the government dictating the way your kids are raised, don't let the government raise your kids.
DNA just wants to be free...
that's the major problem, though. censorware _never_ _EVER_ works like it's supposed to. We've all seen the graphically stupid, albeit funny, stories about censorware blocking sites that have no business whatsoever being blocked. Beyond the galling thought that we're entrusting decisions on how to educate the youth of this country to a piece of sofware, what makes it even worse is that we're entrusting decisions on how to educate the youth of this country to a horribly broken
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
It occurred to me that perhaps the purpose of having blocking software in schools really isn't to block objectional material per se, but to serve as a more subtle method of indoctrinating our children to get accustomed to, and accept the concept of being told what they can and cannot see. For this purpose the actual effectiveness of the software isn't terribly important, what matters is that children get used to asking permission to view certain material, and accepting that there are some things they really shouldn't see.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
there's always a few sites that use a "questionable" word in a completely different manner
Very few words which are exclusivly "questionable". Indeed many words used in porn have completly unrelated uses outside porn. Hence some of the apparent bizare classifications of the like of sports clubs (lots of sports use "balls" of some type or other), entertainment equiptment (best ensure that there is no mention of CDs or TVs) as "porn". Let alone you can only use nails (and not "screws") in construction. With loads more similiar stupidity being likely with the kind of programs used to compile blacklists.
If someone could write a program to do the job then the program would probably be entitled to be classified as a sapient being.
... a court is also likely to look to related, non-Internet situations that have arisen in the past. These precedents include decisions regarding the selection or removal of books in schools or libraries, and the selection of content for publication in school-sponsored student newspapers. The Supreme Court has ruled that schools are non-public forums that are outside the general marketplace of expression. Accordingly, school boards have significant discretion to restrict content and expression within that environment. Under this doctrine, school officials only violate the First Amendment when they limit access to materials "for the purpose of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives discussed in them, when that action is motivated simply by the official's disapproval of the ideas involved."
In situations where a school has restricted access to certain material, courts tend to consider whether the school's decision bore a reasonable relationship to a legitimate pedagogical concern. For example, a school district's decision that students exposed to violence, nudity, or "hard" language is a view-point neutral "legitimate pedagogical concern."
--
- It's not actually an official law until President Clinton signs it.
- The very same day that the president signed COPA into law, the ACLU filed a suit
against it (and they've been winning so far).
- CIPA is different from COPA and CDA though, in many ways. One of the main differences is that COPA and CDA were criminal statutes, bound by stricter
due-process considerations. CIPA is just an incentive-based "suggestion", similar to the 55mph thing, and so it's not bound by constitutional
considerations as much.
- This law has been introduced 9 times over the past two years, all by Republicans.
- The American Library Association strongly opposes such a law.
Also, one of the peices of evidence that the proponents put forth was a statement by the CEO of Net Nanny Software (yeah, he'll be objective):- A general perception exists that Internet filtering is seriously flawed and in many situations unusable. It is also perceived that schools and
libraries don't want filtering. These notions are naive and based largely on problems associated with earlier versions of client-based software that are
admittedly crude and ineffective. Though some poor filtering products still exist, filtering has gone through an extensive evolution and is not only good
at protecting children but also well-received and in high demand.
This is obvious political FUD, and very dangerous IMHO because it goes along with the innovation-meme and it gives critics a way to immediately brush off any counter-evidence. But the opponents of porn filtering DO use outdated evidence often, and it's something they should be careful of. Because there are a lot of current studies that show that filters still suck badly.--
So why would porn webmasters want to get around filters to give kids access? They all want your credit card anyway, and kids don't have credit cards.
On the flip side, the kid(s) could just get their parents credit card out.
Also, since when is "harmful to minors" unprotected speech? I know obscenity and child-pornography have high-profile supreme court decisions supporting their lack of free-speech protection. but "harmful to minors?" What the fuck is that? Does that relate dto the "7 words you can't say on TV" thing? (Which by the way, you now apparently can say on TV...maybe).
You know... I never thought of it from that angle.
... by clicking and holding in the right places at the right times, one could keep elevated priviliges to make modifications to restricted files)
:).
I mean, certainly - I hate censorware. I think the very idea of even TRYING to stop a person from accessing information that is available to the world is wrong.
However, this could be quite interesting. Thinking back, yea - kids raised around such things always find out how to get around them. Subverting authority, in even the most slight and novel way is definitly a kids major past time.
Kind of reminds me of when I found out how to subvert foolproof on the Macs at school (easy -
I used to use it to change all of the icon colors (with labels)... just for shits and giggles. Then there was that one time that I littered the box with porn in mischievous ways (last day of class for us seniors).
Ahh.... school was fun. Maybe its good that the kids are getting a new toy to play with. It truely does facilitate learning... learning how to get around restrictions, and make the best of a bad situation
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Just because there is censorware doesnt mean it has to work. My school has had websense installed for 2 years now, and i have more backdoors through it than i can count. I still find it funny that the biology website used by half the sophomore class was blocked because it had "learning games" in the meta tags. Even funnier that websenses own website was blocked under "Tastless".
I am !amused.
It seems to me that the federal government could easily make the argument that censorware is the least restrictive means for stopping students (who are minors) from viewing indecent speech; since the goal they outlined was preserving the rights of adults, the students are probably out of luck. Plus, since schools have special powers over students, there's generally little protection for those who would want to look at various banned materials through school computers.
Libraries, on the other hand, serve a general public (i.e., people over 18) and would probably be subject to a much greater degree of scrutiny. There, any filtering would impinge on adult speech (although it's possible that they would turn it off for 18-and-over). One court has already found that libraries can't use filterware to stop adults from viewing legal material, and it based its decision in part on that clause from the CDA opinion.
The upshot of this is that, unless the courts decide to change their minds, students will just have to use the public libraries more often...
(I wonder, though, whether it might be possible to challenge individual software programs one-by-one rather than go after the law on its face -- after all, it shouldn't be too hard to show that each one blocks perfectly legitimate sites and thus impermissibly restricts speech...)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
If you remember this internet, please help join the fight by switching to lynx, links, or telnet nameofsite 80 right now!
I've seen far too many parents think of school as a form of daycare for their kids. That is pathetic - school is to learn, and learning means making mistakes. Do I mean that all kids should make the mistake of viewing porn at the age of 7? No, certaintly not - nor do I think that a child should be able to paruse the internet unsupervised. If people have a problem with this, then they really need to re-think their priorites. Perhaps they should get out from behind their crapmed desks and volunteer some time at their childrens' schools. Then they can re-assume part of the responsibility without censorware.
Sure, that's all nice and idealistic, but that's also part of why it has become so sad.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
At least as far as the funding is concerned, it's constitutional. The Federal government might not have any constitutional basis for telling local governments and states what to do, but it does have plenary power to raise whatever funding it wants and spend it generally.
Just look at highway funding: under 23 U.S.C. 158, a state which fails to comply and raise its minimum drinking age to twenty-one has 5% of its federal highway funds withheld during the first year of non-compliance and 10% of such funds withheld in each succeeding year. This is entirely constitutional, because the state always reserves the option of not caring and not receiving the funds it wouldn't have raised anyway.
The first-amendment issues are important and interesting. But unfortunately, they're the only constitutional issues relevant here.
Read the rest of this comment...
Football is indisputeably harmful to minors.
Football causes many, many injuries to minors who participate in it every year. Sometimes, these injuries are permanently crippling.
Football related crime is quite common as well. Team jackets are used as gang colors. Innocent children have been murdered as a result.
Furthermore, professional football players are the worst hedonists on the planet. They do drugs, they rape women, and they are loose with money! How on earth could we let these people be role models for our children?
So by all means, any library or school that is using my tax dollars should ban American football because it is "harmful to children."
[/sarcasm]
The fundamental problem here is first defining "porn" (or other objectionable material) in such a way that it will never exclude material that citizens are indeed allowed to access, and second dealing with the reality that the definition of objectionable varies dramatically from place to place on a Net that is worldwide. Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court once claimed that he can't define pornography, but that "I know it when I see it". Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly provide for a clear delineation between something that would be allowed in .com versus .xxx, even disregarding the global implications of a scheme like this.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Hopefully, after enough kids can't research their projects/reports because they've been blocked from non-offending sites, something will finally be done for real and/or censorware will go away... I'm getting tired of the government just putting on cheap band-aids, handed out by congress.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Some (though hardly all) feminists have muddied the water by suggesting that pornography denigrates women. There is much truth to this argument, but they are incorrect in their estimate of the underlying cause. Pornography denigrates women not because it treats women as objects -- though obviously it does -- but because the pseudo-religious opposition to pornography treats women as toxins from which society must be protected. To a lesser degree than in Islamic society, but for much the same reasons, the more stringent standards for female body coverings rest on the premise that women are a corrupting influence on men, and that they cannot be trusted to control their instinctual imperatives, and at the same time insisting that they must yield to the instinctual imperatives of dominant males.
Our society is choked with people who -- and I don't care what pious excuses are offered for this -- are deeply afraid of sexuality, and more often than not full of fear and loathing for female sexuality. (Before anyone flames, please don't think that I'm arguing that male-oriented porn is either a realistic or healthy representation of female sexuality. But it wouldn't matter if it were.)
The contest between censorship and anti-censorship in America has got squat to do with civil liberties. It is a battle against an entrenched, institutionalized form of mental illness, a phobia of sexuality that manifests itself in the form of political oppression on the grand scale and domestic terror on the personal scale. Those who oppose censorship can shout all day long about free speech and they will utterly fail of effect because they are not addressing the real hidden agenda. We must take a stand in favor of sex and sexuality as a healthy, normal, and necessary part of human existence and refuse to knuckle under to this morbid anti-sex psychopathology no matter what political or religious mask it uses to hide its shame.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
So Congress has just allocated a ton of money so that the teachers who can't get the VCR to stop blinking 12:00 can use software to control the students who help them program the VCR for class movies.
Oh, you bet.
If I were in high school right now I'd have the octal version of goatse.cx memorized.
Suckers.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I believe, given what Michael Sims (yes, that Michael Sims, Slashdot/YRO editor) did against Censorware Project, this information is important to this discussion. And I'll take any karma hit for it.
The http://censorware.org site has been taken down since the following was posted, more than a month now.
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 16:49:46 EST
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@BWAY.NET>
Subject: The Censorware Project
I've been trying hard to avoid washing dirty laundry in public, but a couple of recent posts have raised the issue and I'd like to give an account of what happened to the Censorware Project (the site at http://censorware.org is now offline). What we have here is the spectacle of a group member who volunteered to act as webmaster effectively closing a group which wants to continue, because the domain happened to be registered in his name.
The Censorware Project was originally an informal collective of six people who collaborated online to fight censorware: Seth Finkelstein, Bennett Haselton, Jamie McCarthy, Mike Sims, Jim Tyre and myself. After Seth left the group, the remaining five continued. Several of us had never met or even spoken on the phone, yet for some time--around two years as I recall--we had a remarkably easy collaboration. There was no funding, no hierarchy, no titles, not even project managers. Someone would suggest a project and take the responsibility for a part of it, others would sign up for other elements, and proceeding this way we got a remarkable amount of work done, including reports on X-Stop, Cyberpatrol, Bess and other products.
Even though two of us were attorneys--Jim and myself--we never incorporated the group or wrote a charter or any contracts among ourselves. Mike Sims was obliging enough to register the domain, just as other members paid for press releases and the other incidental expenses which came along.
Robert Frost said that "nothing gold can stay," and the Censorware Project was no exception. Over the summer, Mike Sims' reaction to a perceived slight was to take the site down for a week, exactly as Seth says in his mail. He sent us mail at the time saying something like "The Censorware Project is over." I replied to him that, given that the group was a collective and we all had an interest in its work product, the domain, and the goodwill it had achieved, the decision was not his to make. Sims did not reply.
Mike put the site back up a week later without explaining, let alone apologizing for, his actions. Given his continuing failure to answer any email from me (and I think from others) and the overall signs that Sims thought the group was exclusively his, I wrote him several emails requesting that he turn the domain over to Jamie or Bennett, as I felt we could no longer trust him to administer it. We also found out during that time that important email from people trying to contact us, including members of the press, was not being answered by Sims, nor being forwarded to other members.
I ultimately became exasperated that my name was listed as a principal on what had now become a "rogue" site I had no control over. Over about a five week period, I wrote Sims several more emails asking him to delete my name from the site if he wasn't going to transfer the domain. Again, I received no reply.
Today, Sims took the Censorware Project site offline again, with a message which says "Due to demands from some of the people who contributed, in however minor a fashion, to this site, it has been taken down." Judging from some email I received from him today, this means me.
Its a sad thing, both because we got some good work done and because some of the other members of the group were eager to continue and in fact have continued working, while deprived of the Censorware Project site, name, email aliases and public recognition. These further efforts are appearing on Bennett Haselton's Peacefire site, www.peacefire.org. (I applaud the work but take no credit as I have not been involved in some time.)
On the page currently at www.censorware.org Sims makes the following request: "If you are interested in volunteering to fight censorware, please contact me." One of the reasons I made this post was so that anyone considering working with Mike can make an informed decision.
Now, if I recall correctly, there was a Supreme Court ruling that indicated that content-based censorship was unconstitutional. The argument was that "you can't go through books and mark out or cut out the offensive passages."
It was accepted that libraries could choose not to carry particular books based on the concept of limited resources - "We can't afford to subscribe to every single magazine or buy every book on the market, so we have to make decisions based on that." However, once the library holdings were acquired, the library staff could not go through and start marking out the "naughty bits."
Well, guess what - the Internet is a magazine. The library pays regularly for access, and receives the information from the providers through its network link, rather than throught the U.S. Mail. That is the simplest way to look at Internet access at the library, and if we do that, then it's plain that Internet filtering would come under the heading of content-based censorship.
Now, how much public money will get spent defending this viewpoint is anyone's guess, but nobody said that democracy was cheap.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I can't help feel that what the this will really do is ensure that we have another generation of hackers and crackers. Think about it, now every American schoolkid will join forces to ensure that every piece of censorware has a nice big hole in it that everyone knows about, maybe if the censorware companies are good enough we may even see some work to match the demos scene of the 80s (the best programming ever IMHO). Who do you think is more intelligent, the firms writing the software or the kids......I know where my money goes
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
My children and Grandchildren won't understand filters, because I sure as hell won't filter their home access.
And I'll go through the process of having their sites signed off at libraries and schools. Most schools provide a "authorization" policy if the child requests a questionable policy.
I'll make it as difficult as possible for the schools and the libraries.
I encourage others to do the same. The first amandment guarantees this.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
as i recall, there used to be a number of problems.
kids can't get info on (potentially lifesaving) condoms or sexual behavior;
women can't look for info on brest cancer;
problems finding chicken recipes (the alarm in the library goes off cuz you typed "chicken breast" into a search field);
Historical issues (searching for info on "the gay nineties", "Cock and Bull", "pussywillows", "The Owl and the Pussycat", "Wild Ass Images")
It's rather fascinating to watch our government doing so much to validate the all the concerns voiced in books like 1984. Things they said "would never happen here".
Technology Shift A) results in less employees needed. Employees are then terminated, since "America is not a social experiment".
Technology Shift B) results in the obsolescence of CD and DVD technology, and record/video companies are against the wall. Solution : pass protectionist legislation and villify the technology, because "The business of America is Business"
This reminds me of that old SNL skit where the moralists are removing the breasts/penises from marble and brass statues.
What a horribly sick society. Body parts are not bad, the horrid myths handed down through generations have made them bad.
Once again, America's Government is failing to think/consider its behavior. The larger issues will have negative ramifications for decades to come.
Unbeleivable that we have at least four more years of increasingly stupid legislation coming up as the right wingers crank up their religious propaganga/profit machines.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
The federal government has a number of restrictions placed on its power. Certain powers (or domains of regulation) are reserved for the states.
The federal government is bypassing those restrictions.
They aren't even hiding it. The two "main" presidential candidates debated over how, exactly, each of them will bypass the restrictions. They have such wonderful plans based on skirting around the Constitution. And, I must admit, that some good has been accomplished by federal meddling in state business. However, I see a shift in power and in form of government that I want to call people's attention to. Personally, I usually feel that federal government is too powerful, but it is better that you disagree with me fully informed than agree with me blindly.
The federal government taxes states' citizens, then threatens to withold funding for "state run" programs from state which do not pass certain laws or meet certain requirements. They do this, in part, in order to bypass those restrictions on their authority.
Recently, president Clinton signed a law stating that any state which did not set a 0.08 blood alchohol level standard for DUI would lose (some) federal funding for highways. The DUI laws (and standards) are entirely in the states' authority, not the federal. In effect, the federal government has usurped a power reserved for the states.
"Usurped" may be too strong a word; each state can, after all, simply decline to meet that standard. They will lose federal funding, but they can simply fund the roads themselves.
Federal funding my ass. The fed will tax the citizens of the states who choose not to comply, then send that money out of that state and into another. They state cannot "make up for" the lost revenue; they can, at best, tax the citizens even more to fund the highway projects. But they still pay, either way.
The federal government is, in effect, saying "We want to have something happen, but we don't have the authority to pass a law to make it happen. So we are going to tax you to fund programs that you like, then later threaten to withold your own money from you unless you do what we want to you. Yeah, we know we're aren't supposed to be involved in this sort of thing, but the program is 'state run' and simply 'federally funded'."
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Schools have always been about indoctrination. They teach useful skills, but they are also about instilling the values of the nation that they are in. If you cannot control the content of what is taught to some extent, they do not work as well as they should.
As in, "we're perfectly willing to obey the law, and just as soon as suitable software is released, we'll get right onto installing it."
Are you having a bad day?
Like most public places, the people that are noisiest are usually the most illiterate, idiotic and moronic of the bunch. Slashdot is just an extension of that. If you read at -1 you would assume that nobody seems to be able to read beyond a comprehension level of the average kindegartener.
But, something that gets ignored way, way too often nowadays is that it isn't the Internet that makes people stupid. It isn't any one thing. It is the way they are raised, the way they are taught, and the type of family they are brought up in. These things, along with the type of person they are (their genetic make-up if you will) are the only things that determine whether or not someone is stupid, or a misfit.
Misfits are not made by the Internet. Much like Heavy Metal back when I was in school, it is the misfits that are attracted to the Internet (just like they were attracted to Heavy Metal back in the day). And just because a large number of very, very vocal people display some tendency to be one way or another, you cannot assume that the root cause of that is whatever their favorite pass-time is. The cause lies elsewhere. It is the fact that they display these traits that they are attracted to this place as a pass-time. The trolls seek the other trolls, and the place where they can get the biggest rise out of the most people. Slashdot is an example of that.
But to assume that closing people off from that is going to improve the mental prowess of our youth is a grave mistake. You cannot teach by removing negative stimuli. If the Internet is a negative stimuli at all (and that is very questionable) you must teach children to use the appropriate areas of the Internet and avoid the negatives.
I see a frightening trend in this day and age when it comes to child rearing. It is the "protect until raised" mentality that has already caused a number of problems for people of my generation (and younger). People that believe this are raising children that have no idea that there even are negative things out there. And they really think that this is a good thing to teach. They don't understand that you cannot just cut children off from any possible negative stimulous. You have to teach them how to deal with that stimulous and how to avoid getting sucked into "bad situations". If not, we end up with children that cannot cope with reality when they are adults. They get out in the real world on their own and they just aren't able to cope with the problems that they are faced with.
Sure, mothers and fathers wish that they could protect their children from everything they ever could have to face. But all you will do if you raise your child to believe that the world is a safe and happy place, with absolutely nothing to worry about, is create a situation where the child either never leaves home, or never develops the ability to cope with reality at all.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but we must not succumb to this "let the government protect us" any more than we must raise our children to believe that mommy and daddy will always make sure that anything that comes near you will be filtered, sanitized and made safe. Asking the government to make rules that "protect the children" is doubly stupid in that it assumes that the parents themselves (the ones that subscribe to this idiotic "protect at all costs" mentality) are not capable of raising their own children the way they see fit. And not all people want to be told how they will raise their children.
I say it's high time that people stop being so lazy about parenting and just accept that it isn't going to be easy. You teach your children and show them what life is about. You had better not expect the government to do it for you. If you do, you will eventually end up with a generation of people that absolutely are incapable of thinking for themselves. While the big-business and government driven parts of society would absolutely love this, there is a point in time when people (at least, the ones with a few brain cells left) will get tired of being told what to do. And if you think that revolution is out of the question, then it is time for you to go study some of your history lessons.
Too many rules, too little tought. It seems to be the motto of the day anymore. I wish that there was some way to collectively slap the face of humanity and make them see how ridiculous it is. But, all I can do is bitch on slashdot. More's the pity.
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