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ACLU & EPIC Will Challenge CIPA
Sarcasmo writes: "Apparently, the ACLU and EPIC plan to file suit in order to challenge the legality of the Children's Online Protection Act." While the link in there leads to a privacy.org, here's a direct link to the article. Either one will tell you that the groups will "attempt to have the new law struck down on First Amendment and due-process grounds." Best of luck to them.
Actually, it's the Children's Internet Protection Act.
If you'd have read the article instead of rushing for first post, you'd see that the mistake isn't in the header, it's in the text.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If I can't bring my paper copy of playboy into the library and read it, why should I be able to access it online? It's the same thing people...
If you had read the article, you would have noticed that it's really the Children's Internet Protection Act...
The Childrens Online Protection act is COPA, not CIPA. CIPA is a Hong Kong outfit that makes knock off Intel chipset mobos..
.sig: Now legally binding!
My response to the article? I don't think that the government should mandate "the use of filtering software in schools and libraries receiving federal grants for computers or Internet access." In other words, I am in support of the groups challenging the law. I believe that each institution should decide how it would like the internet to be censored from its subjects, depending on the nature of the institution. Filtering software will never be perfect anyway, and quite often the filtering software filters out sites that are very useful and helpful.
In short, I believe that better rules and regulations within each institution should be established, and the law should go. When someone views something he/she shouldn't, he/she should be disciplined accordingly. Filtering software is not perfect, and can be quite a nuisance.
<Forrest Gump>And that's all I have to say about that.</Forrest Gump>
Furthermore, opponents say, a government-imposed mandate is a poor substitute for parental supervision, private use of filters and public education efforts.
And this comes from some of the same people that sue parents for spanking their children of "indoctinating" them with their "religion".
Such reasoning has never stopped the promotion of such ludicrous things as sexual harasment laws and the like. Back in the day, you got mad and cussed someone out, or maybe even hit them, you sobered up, appologized and all was well. Nowadays you get handcuffed and spend a night in jail, and forget about trying to appologize, that's an admission of guilt, and will only get you a bigger fine.
If you ask me the whole system is MESSED UP.
God bless America (unless that offends you)
Homer, that's not God, it's just a waffle Bart stuck to the ceiling
I know I shouldn't eat thee
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
It's not 'abandoning your children' to tell the government they have no right in telling you how you raise your children.
How would you like it if some new law stated you could no longer read to your children from the Bible because it had been substantivly disproved in case law, it contained lewd and lascivious material unfit for children, and mature intellectual themes not easily understood by anyone under 18?? Each of thses is true, but you wouldn't like it, and even though I will never read to mine from the Bible I wouldn't like it either.
.sig: Now legally binding!
And 90% of what is termed 'Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor' is inflicted by the parents of the minor, so we should lock up all parents too.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Today's parent's need to wake up and accept the fact that they have MADE A CONSCIOUS CHOICE to have children, and therefore must accept the responsibility that comes with parenting. I'm sick of MY rights being violated to protect some illiterate yokel's kids. I should be the one who decides if my child should purchase an uncensored CD at Wal-Mart, not the government or some corporate drone.
That's why, as a parent, I've taken matters into my own hands in rearing my children. I'd much rather make conscious, informed decisions regarding the upbringing of my children, than have the government decide what is and is not appropriate for them. I home school my children, in order to remove them from the iminent threats of public schools, and to allow them to learn in a sheltered, nurturing environment. Not only do they learn english, math, and the sciences, but I can instill in them the words of the Holy Bible, and the Christian faith as well. Some day, my kids will grow up to be adults and experience the harsh realities of the real world, but until then, I am going to be the one who decides what is or is not appropriate. I can only wish other parents would take the same steps as myself.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
Anyone notice how any right whatsoever can be taken away in the name of "the children"... what children, I don't know because I don't have any, and I resent my liberties being infringed because idiot parents are too stupid to raise good kids without installing V-Chips, censoring "explicit" material, banning weapons, alcohol, etc. I even have to pay taxes to send your damn kids to school in my town, because dad wouldn't wear a condom when he raped mom... OK I'm thoroughly drunk as you can tell, but I mean what I'm saying here.
While I like the idea of protecting kids, this law is not the answer. Perhaps parents should try to spend more time with their kids. Parents complain that kids watch all this evil stuff on TV and see it on the Internet, but perhaps those parents should step in and establish rules on what their kids can watch. As a parent they HAVE that right, after all. And as the saying goes, which proves true for laws like CIPA, "The road to hell is lined with good intentions"
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Since the issue is software blocking protected speach, I'd like to see the courts put a restriction on the software that it not block any protected speach. With the current state of technology, this would effectively kill any censorware for use under this law, but would be clearly in keeping with the first amendment. Furthermore, it would open up the possibility of putting censorware companies trying to get their products in libraries at risk of lawsuits, and thus give them a harder time making censorware for home use which blocks protected speach (but which is legal for private use), since they'd have to maintain and justify a separate list of protected speach their home-use product blocks anyway.
Of course, porn sites, or even sites with explicit content of various other sorts, frequently identify themselves as such, either by actually requiring age verification or by having a click-through page saying you have to be in a place that permits viewing such things. If those sites simply sent a header to identify themselves as such, it could be enforced by browsers in places where such content is, in fact, prohibited. I haven't actually surveyed the front pages of porn sites, so I don't know how effective it would be, but this would avoid deep-linking problems and actually make those warning pages meaningful.
If anyone wants an actual, real link to CIPA to see what it says, here.
Personally, I cannot be responsible for plowing out my street. So I am willing to pay someone to do this for me.
But you can take this too far. You can choose to not take personal responsibility for your kids. Maybe you cannot take care of your kids 24/7, so you hire baby sitters and nannies and arrange daycare for them.
Odds say that a significant amount of the people in any field are below average. A significant number of people are below average as parents. I suspect that this has not much to do with income level. Same goes for the hired help.
But in any case, we have a situation where some folks pawn off their responsibilities to the government. "Protect my children" they say.
But the easiest and most profitable way for government is not the one on one supervision that a parent can supply. It is something else.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Yes too many things in this country are taken away "because of the Children " (add Rush Limbaugh emphasis). Guns are taken away because ignorant people leave guns lying around and their curious kids pick them up and shoot each other with them.
Now who is at fault? The parents for leaving their gun lying around the house. Now what if it was your friends gun, or the schools gun, or the governments gun? (just follow me on this...)
I would say that it is reasonable to assume that when I drop my son off at school that the Police man patroling the halls is not going to leave his gun loaded in the caffeteria. And similarly, when I drop my son off at the library to research __________ I don't expect a high speed sleaze portal to be lying around. The solution is not to ban porn access outright, but to only allow access to those who want it and can leagally access it.
And as far as the other 50% goes, I hope you really were drunk, otherwise you need some counseling
Homer, that's not God, it's just a waffle Bart stuck to the ceiling
I know I shouldn't eat thee
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
What's wrong with the "adult" world?
We try children in adult courts
Now this is a good point. The double standard is apalling. Kids can't drive, smoke, drink, practice their own religion, choose to move out on their own, choose to have sex, or speak their minds. They are not equal citizens. Yet, they can be held accountable for their actions. They have the responsibility, but not the rights. That's a shitty contract. And you're telling me the government wants to protect the children, and we aren't letting them?
Why must children in public libraries be able to view every piece of filth availible?
To gain a little perspective. *shrug*
And because there's nothing we can do to stop it (short of assigning an adult to sit with the child - something rather rare these days, or so the slashdot crew would assume. ;)
The sooner kids begin their education on the "real world" (what you refer to as the adult world) the more happy and successful they tend to be in it (as far as I've observed, anyway). Blindly shielding them from reality does nothing to further their development.
Until then, children need to be protected, though, not used as pawns in a libertarian game.
You have way to much faith in government. Better watch it. They might take advantage of you. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
cuz they really shouldn't be able to get to the hardcore porn, or have pedophiles chasing them in chat rooms.
personally, i've always been an advocate of some type of "adult" content tag so you can lock out the material or chat room at the browser.
every library i've been to gives you a login...so why would it be so hard to provide adult/minor logins that disable/enable content?
last time i posted this, i got a torrent of "no one will be able to enforce it" -- phooey. if i bought one of those funky tv transmitter kits and dug out my rf books, i could broadcast porn all over my neighborhood.
what stops me? the law. the fcc would be on my butt pretty quick, and the penalties would be harsh. if anything, it would be easier and faster to track down a renegade porn site than a mobile xmitter.
a kid should be able to search for breast self exam, chicken breast recipes, etc. w/o getting a bunch of hits on porno sites.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Some day, my kids will grow up to be adults and experience the harsh realities of the real world, but until then, I am going to be the one who decides what is or is not appropriate
Ok, I mostly agreed with you up to this point. Face the facts - parents have the responsibility to prepare their child from the real world, not shield them from it. I fully agree with home schooling, but you do not want to be overprotective during their childhood so they are shocked when they discover the world isn't perfect. A slow, careful exposure to both the good and bad parts of society will better enable children to handle the obstacles they will face in adult life. I'm not saying that you show your children pornography or anything like that, but they must be adequately exposed to a real sense of history, not some watered-down censored version. As a human race we've accomplished some great things, but also brought upon ourselves horrid deeds. Ex. Christopher Columbus was not this great almighty hero of the Western Hemisphere - he raped, killed, and stole from thousands of Native Americans - but they don't teach you that in elementary school.
I fully agree with your wish to prevent your child from certain things, and I believe you are a rare parent indeed who personally sees to what your children see and hear. Please, though, inform your children well about the bad parts of society both yesterday and today.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Child pornography is illegal, whether in print, on film, or online. There's no legal uncertainty in that particular arena (save for the question of whether virtual kiddie porn with computer-generated "children" is really child pornography). That's not the pornography that the CIPA was intended to prevent children from seeing.
The kind of porn that the CIPA was intended to keep children from seeing is Miss July, or Brutus Beefcake's Backdoor Buddies or how to give a breast self-examination or what the warning signs for testicular cancer might be. Oh, wait -- those last two weren't meant to be kept from the kids because they aren't pornography. But the problem, you see, is that the software mandated by CIPA _does_ filter that sort of thing out. It prevents adults from accessing medical information; it prevents children from accessing medical information; it prevents people from accessing literature which may be of dubious quality but is nonetheless no more pornographic than the books on the shelf. The law is overbroad and it leads to legitimate expression being squelched, and _that_ is why the law should be held unconstitutional -- not because there isn't a desire to "protect" our children from human sexuality.
(Oh, and you might want to check your stats before throwing out bogus numbers like that 1-in-5 is raped; that's as indefensible as the 1-in-5 Americans is disabled "statistic".)
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
As doing stuff in bulk is always less expensive, the tax increases to pay for all this should cost less than the loss of productivity and cost of raising children and you'd have a much more uniformly educated workforce which should increase the GNP. All in all, there are no bad points here.
I'll leave the adults who apparently can't take care of themselves for another time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Why are you so hell-bent on abandoning your children in the library?
And it's not "our children." I don't have any children because I do not like children. If I do not want to raise children of my own, I certainly do not want to be burdened by yours. It's bad enough that my tax dollars are spent educating your children. Now you want to cripple the computer in the public library so that you can use the library as a daycare center.
If you want your children protected from adult topics in the library, have them use the school library rather than the public library. Or -- brace yourself -- go with them to the library and supervise them. The fact that you chose to have children should not mean that adults are denied access to information on breast cancer, AIDS, testicular cancer, vasectomies, birth control, gay rights, and countless other topics that mention "dirty words."
Mere animals can manage to care for their children until they are ready to be adults.
Yes, and they fuck in front of their "children", too. I don't see the average dog campaigning against their puppies seeing sex.
Why can't we? We blindly focus on one tiny aspect of life - the first amendment - and sacrifice everything else.
No, you want to blindly focus on one tiny aspect of life (children) and sacrifice everything else -- including the ability of adults to do meaningful research on a myriad of subjects at the local library.
They will be adults soon enough; then they will be able to make adult choices.
Except in the library, where your filtering software will prevent them from exercising their right to view what they, as adults, choose to see.
Children visiting their sites is a problem for them, for two reasons: Many parents will blame them, rather than the child, if they find their kids surfing a porn site, and non-paying users wasting bandwidth on their advertising sites cost them money.
Regardless of what you may think about porn site operators, I'm sure you'll agree that they are primary in it for the money, and economically it makes sense for them to block kids.
And it's not so simple as you say when it comes to unblocking mistakes. What about an abused child that tries to look up support groups for childrens suffering sexual abuse?
A site like that could easily end up being filtered due to words in the text, but clearly be protected, and important. Do you really think a child that has learned that adults can't be trusted through abuse will go to the librarian and tell them they want to see that site?
Especially in small communities where the child abuser may very well get to hear about it...
Or what about a kid suspecting he/she is gay, but don't dare tell anyone? Many kids in that situation get severe problems, and need support to figure out what they want - and especially so in homes where the parents may have voiced anti-gay opinions. Do you really think a kid like that would ask to have information or support pages unblocked? Or would you maybe rather that they end up comitting suicide, as many do?
If anything, if you want to protect kids, you should not censor, and instead you should spend time talking to your child, and let them know you'll be supportive, even if you may end up learning things about them you'd prefer not to know...
I agree with you that child porn is bad. Not so much because of the images themselves as because most of what current law deems child porn depict actual abuse to children.
However, presenting statements like "It is not normal and I would not be supprised if statistics prove that constant pedie porn casues childhood rape", and then going on to use that as an argument for filtering, is an amazing attempt at manipulation.
I don't claim that no such statistics don't exist - I don't know. What I react to is the use of statistics that don't even reference, and that possibly doesn't exist, to say argument for blocking child porn, and then continuing to make a connection to the porn industry, as an argument for general filtering of porn.
Apart from the creative use of statements about statistics, your argument falls apart in two central places:
First, the connection between child porn, or other porn. Yes, porn is a multi-billion dollar industry. But it's also just that: An industry. All the major players are large corporations that are visible, some are even publicly traded on Nasdaq and other exchanges. The companies standing for the real wealth in the porn industry couldn't possibly take the chance of involving themselves with illegal or abusive porn even if they wanted, because they are so highly visible.
Many of those companies are as concerned as you are about child porn, because the existence of abusive porn is a threat to the very existence of these companies, since the worse the problem of child porn is perceived, the easier it is for people morally opposed to all porn to pass laws that requires filtering or other measures that makes it harder for adults to view or buy their products.
But you are in your post equating the porn industry to the child porn peddlers.
The second place it breaks down is just there. Yes, I'm sure there are lots of people out there selling child porn. However, if you were abusing children and selling illegal child porn (or other abusive porn), would you really make that site public?
If it's public enough that the people updating the block lists for the filters will find it, don't you think those people will report it to the police? Don't you think the site will be taken down, and that the police will try to track down the owner?
If you really want to prevent someone from seeing child porn, then donating time and/or money to organizations that actively seek it out to report it to the police would be more constructive than installing a filter that will inevitably also block valuable material (whether or not you include "normal" porn in that category), and that defer value and moral judgement from the parent to someone else, without disclosing those decisions to the parent.
Where we live with the highest quality of life ever.
Where we need someone elses employee to look after our children spending more time with them in total than we do. Where these people are placed in charge of the moral destiny of our children, and our morals are unimportant and contradicted regularly.
Welcome to a world where letting your child go to another parents to play for a night is great because it means we can have a meal + a 'night in' darling.
Welcome to a world where ten year old children come home to empty houses every night because mummy wants that new car and is putting in the extra hours.
Welcome to a world where parents don't have time to ensure that the materials their children are watching on the TV or the net are suitable and morally acceptable because the neighbours popped round for a glass of wine or seven.
Welcome to a world where parenting is so easy that you don't have to do anything or than pay for clothes and wake them up in the morning.
Welcome to a world where zero effort placed into parenting will *still* result in your child becoming a well balanced, contented, productive adult who enriches the lives of all those who meet him.
Welcome to a world where your child will turn out *just like you*.
FGS when will people get over the fact that children are not a fashion accessory, cute or desirable to cement a relationship. Children are for when you are ready to STOP living your young life, GIVE UP all those great things you do in your spare time and SACRIFICE time spent with friends and associates in order to bring up your child.
It's the biggest commitment a human being will ever make. Making the decision to have a child with your 18 year old girlfriend is a far bigger decision than any judge will ever make in an MS case.
I know this, because I had to leave an 18 year old woman I loved very dearly because I was not ready (as she thought she was) to have a child.
It ripped me to pieces for some time, but if I had the chance to make the decision again, I would make the same one.
Wake up world.
-------------- Russ
Conscience? Is that *still* in the dictionary?
I guess they have to earn the rights, by showing they are responsible.
-no broken link
4. they don't think a 30 year old should see said latex person
-no broken link
This isn't talking about filtering in the home. It's talking about mandatory filtering in the schools. Do you think that schools should pay for HBO and Cinemax and leave access to those channels unrestricted? Do you think schools should pay for internet connections and leave access to that unrestricted? What about libraries? This isn't an easy topic. There are million edges to this dicotomy (a megacotomy?). Filtering software blocks sites that troubled chilren may need to view, which they can't view at home, but you can't have the public access unfiltered because kids may use it to bring up porn (and I'm not talking about kids stumbling across porn, there will be one smart kid who can bring up the sickest child rape pics on the net and then show his friends, who show their friends), and you can't monitor their internet use because then the troubled kids won't seek the information they need (about rape support, or teen homosexuality) if they are being monitored, which is why they don't do it at home. It's all fucked.
-no broken link
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
You statement illustrated my point exectly. If a 14 year old fucks up enough so that they are given life without parole, then they don't deserve the rights. True, you earn the rights by waiting, by not screwing up. I never said it was hard to earn these rights. But some people can't do it. They feel that tying up and killing a younger friend is acceptable. Well, they fucked up in that period of time where they don't get full citizen rights yet are held accountable for their actions. So they get tossed in jail for life. The act of not doing the shit that they are held responisible for is the act of "responsibility".
-no broken link