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Kid-Safe Domain Created
Jadecristal writes "The Washington Post announces that President Bush has signed legislation to create a .kids.us domain. The legislation mandates that those with a .kids.us site not be allowed to link to any site outside the .kids.us domain." At the very least, it makes filtering easy.
How long will it be before www.*.kids.us becomes nothing more than a big advertisement for Nickelodeon, Disney, and Fox Kids?
Its a better solution than some others, BUT
Who gets to decide what content is suitable? Will discussion of the birds and the bees not be permitted by the repubs, but sites that exploit kids by trying to sell them stuff be allowed?
So, no Learnhowyourbodyworks.kids.us or whatswiththesethingsgrowingonme.kids.us or somepeoplebelieveinevolution.kids.us, but plenty of disneyshop.kids.us or sugaredcereal.kids.us sites?
This space available.
Most of the posts I've read seem to miss the point. While I'm completely opposed to selective censorship of the web as a whole, this provides a great solution for a "white list" of ok sites. Say a pre school or even grade school wants to provide limited internet access to their students. All they need to do is limit their access to the .kids.us domain. No one is going to pretend that the kids have access to the 'net at large -- that's not what they want. They just want a guaranteed 'safe' way to expose their kids to some educational resources. Limiting the access to a specific domain that you have to qualify to get into is a good thing. Compare that approach to some of the current blacklists and url filters.
Just by the fact that the name is "kids.us" I don't think this is something that is targetting more general audiences such as those accessing the internet in public libraries.
Overall though I think it is a good idea. Assuming websites targetted at children, (such as Disney, schools, and knowledge databases), take advantage of this it could be very beneficial. I think many of those who could take advantage of this will have to create dual sites: one for the domain and one for outside of it, as many schools and knowledge databases benefit from refrencing information that will not be in the domain.
I do security
However, realizing what a large and profitable market kids are, I wouldn't be too surprised if this gains great interest among companies who want to profit from this (personally I think brainwashing ads from the toy and entertainment industries is far more damaging to a kid than nude people could ever be, but thats beside the point).
If this is indeed the case, how long before this domain is as impossible to oversee or manage as the rest of the Internet is today? I see scalability issues. You can always enforce the requirement of no outside links by supplementing the system with software, but moderating the contents? Good luck.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
Just on a purely technical point, how are they going to govern the domain space. Are they going to setup a department just to keep checking up on the kids.us domains?
And also how the hell are they going to to stop the pedo's abusing this. Domain name and IP spoofing as well as email and the rest could lead to a situation no one wants to see.
The answer is not ham fisted attempts such as this one, its parental supervision. I know that my son is not allowed to go on the computer unless there is an adult present.
Because downloading and using a whitelist creates a hassle for the users. (You remember users, they're the people we work for, etc.) It's much simpler to have a rule... if it ends in ".kids.us" it must be safe.
so... what's to stop someone from posting "questionable" content on a kids.us domain??
can these sites explain mommy's breast cancer?
can these sites explain mommy's breast enhancements?
can these sites explain daddy's breast enhancements?
where's that arbitrary line drawn?
Parents don't have time to filter ALL information on the internet. It's a question of amount of time to filter all content.
Now most (but not all) parents will be able to trust the kids.us filter _as a baseline_. If they want their kids to see additional stuff they are always empowered to do so, and the time required to do that is managable.
Where this won't work well is for some parents who find some of the accepted kids.us content unacceptable. (And to be honest, I'm not all that worried about them.)
For the most part, I agree with you, but then, most of society doesn't. I have two children and one is old enough to use our computer, and I monitor her Internet usage. In fact, I have raised my daughter in such a way that she self-censors. She knows when she's stumbled across something that may be questionable and asks me if it's okay. However, not everyone is as good a parent as I am (sorry to sound snotty, but it's the truth.) Consider how this will inevitably boomerang back on our asses if we don't provide a safe "sandbox" for the rest of the parents out there who can't get it together. I don't want to see legislation that attempts to outlaw content and punish people for viewing certain things because some inattentive parent out there can't get the first clue on how to raise their child. I'd much rather accept this "lesser evil."
I'm surprised to see any carping about it as any attempts to make the Internet more kid-friendly without legislation would seem to find favor with most readers of Slashdot.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
any attempt at creating an adult only domain and REQUIRING adult oriented sites to go there is a 1st amendment violation.
Hear hear!
Like cities, the Internet is a "place" that was created BY adults FOR adults. As such it contains hazardous-to-kids analogs of traffic, industrial plants, political battlegrounds, pickup bars, red-light districts, casinos, marketplaces for dangerous items, and other attractive nuisances. Indeed, these produce much of its value and utility.
If a child is not mature enough to be allowed unescorted in the seamier neighborhoods of your local downtown, that kid is also not mature enough to be unsecorted on the internet. And trying to childproof the entirety of the internet (or all but a reserved area) is just as futile, damaging, and illegal as trying to childproof the entirety of adult society.
Creating an explicit childproof fenced-in playground, on the other hand, is just fine. With one possible exception...
I hope that either the prohibition on linking out of kids.us is relaxed to allow linking to kids. of any country that sets up a similar domain with compatable rules, or (perhaps better) that sites in other countries that are willing to abide by the US rules are allowed to register in kids.us.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
both in and out of schools, will be using all the focus on the internet as a distraction while quitely slipping these subversive documents called "books" to "kids" under the table.
I recommend "Farenheit 451", "Lies my Teacher Told Me" and "Welcome to the Monkey House" for starters.
Indeed, any librarian who isn't doint this isn't a libraian at all, just a book filing clerk, and should find some other line of work.
KFG
I don't get it. Why is this society so obsessed with the concept that children are some sort of retarded subhuman species?
I grew up with intelligent parents that cared. I was never denied any soure of information, regardless of how ridiculous and/or "innapropriate", but was taught to use my brain to discard garbage on my own.
My children will get the same opportunity.
I've grown up to be a responsible, sane adult who isn't mind-controled by the media. Obviously, being able to use one's own jugment to qualify what's out there is not a desired objective of the governments.
They'd much rather have drones who consume the information that was deemed good for them without question.
-- MG
That's my point! Why the hell not?
For one, most 8 year olds will, when faced with typical porn, go either "Ewww" or laugh out; but if they understand the basic idea of sexuality will understand what it's all about and just not be interrested in such imagery.
I can assure you that if some kid is digging for stuff on Harry Potter, and stumbles on some porn site, he'll just do like most of us and curse at the stupidity of not finding what he's after.
Unless, of course, you want to pretend that sex doesn't exist to your kids until it's much too late. Or perhaps you prefer to think that all humans are asexuate drones until some arbitary age?
Your kids will learn about sex. They will get access to imagery and texts. They will experiment amongst themselves.
Would you rather they understood nothing and be unprepared to make critical and moral judgement on their own?
I knew what sex was, and how it worked, and why people were so interrested in it young enough that I can't possibly remember being told specifically. That made me an accepting adult who is not completely fscked up with what is arguably the principal function of a living being.
While I don't particularly enjoy porn myself, I understand many do, and cannot think of single reason why that would be "bad" in any way.
My kids will be taught that some people like to be entertained by watching depictions of monsters horribly mutilating stupid teenagers, some by depicions of crime fighters doing impossible stunts to defeat the nefarious nemesis, and some by depictions of sexual activity both mundane and off-the-wall. All of them carfuly scripted (for the high quality stuff) fiction.
They'll get to decide which (if any) they enjoy for themselves.
-- MG
Apparently, .cn has similar restrictions...
Which is an excellent example of why governments should not get their hands involved.
I simply do not see why the government needs to run something like this, or put laws in place. It's quite easy for a private company to build (and spider) a *.kids.com domain or something similar. A DNS server, and a bit of spider code, maybe a few months of work. You resell DNS service to ISPs, ISPs sell it as a value-added bit to add appeal. No government intervention required.
Aside from sucking up to Republican conservatives, this simply doesn't have much point.
Furthermore, it's going to open a whole can of worms. If my tax dollars are going to support the company with the contract, what if my definition of what's "appropriate" differs from someone else? I can already see fights and lawsuits brewing over this, all of which would not be a problem if this was simply handled in the private sector.
If you want responsible citizens tomorrow, America, teach the children of today to be responsible. Let them see whatever content they want -- and teach them to deal with it responsibly.
May we never see th