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CIPA Before The Supreme Court
Jim Tyre pointed out the excellent collection of links on censorware.net to coverage of yesterday's oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court about the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), as promised by this story last month. There's also a link to the place where transcripts of the oral arguments will show up about three weeks from now.
The Children's Internet Protection Act should be called the SurfPatrol Benefit Act. 99% of the "filtering" software is so horribly mis-written and mis-configured that it might as well be a screen full of holes. True internet "protection" takes dilligence and supervision, not the purchase of some sham software. They aren't protecting anything but their own state-of-mind and the software companies that put out this over-priced drivel.
The CIPA is a violation of the first amendment, no question about it. Despite its good intentions, it is only a starting point for things to grow and get bad for everyone.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
No matter what the cause, censoring information does absoultely nothing except shield people from the truth and reality. Not to mention, should I trust and leave censorship in the hands of others to deal with? It should be up to the parents (in this case) to figure out which content is good for their children. Since anything can be accessed on the internet easily no matter what, I think this is just a waste of money.
I've always been a strong believer that censoring children from the real world is retarded. Your typical American family would have their children grow up believing that there's nothing wrong with the world. That everything is minivan and soccer games. Children get censored from things like crime, war, sex, and violence. They grow up not understanding how to handle these sorts of things and only become a bigger part of the world's problems.
Whether it be censorship on the internet or parental censorship of a pr0n mag, I think censorship to "protect" our children is a bad idea. Hurts more than it helps.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
This law is too easy to abuse under the current administration. Given the religious zeal of many of our nation's leaders at this point and the multiple outlandish abuses of the DMCA, one can only wonder what the next step is. Remember, some of the people in Congress on the cybertechnology committee (Santorum et. al) are very religiously-minded that might use this to give our nation's children access to only those sites they deem "appropriate". While it is wrong for people to be viewing pornography in plain sight of children, why should reasonable research suffer? And is it realistic to ask if the ruling body of the Web just register porn under its own domain or under a specific set of IP addresses that could be more readily screened out by public computers?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Just because you have a "noble" cause doesn't make you a saint or in anyway correct.
If you want legislation to protect children then you people need to swallow your pride, fear, and anger and treat everyone fairly.
You have not done so.
Nobody owes you peace of mind. You are not entitled to it anymore than anyone else in this world. You have a responsibility to resist the temptation to use every sledgehammer approach you can think of to get what you want.
Extreme statements like, "Do everything possible to _____" might make great news media drama for morons who still get their news from television, but all it really does is make you look stupid, hostile, irresponsible to make even Ulysses S. Grant blush, and downright hatefully dangerous.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
What really needs to happen here is a better solution than censorware needs to be proposed. The public library in my city handles this issue by placing the publically accessible computers near a high-traffic area, facing the checkout counter.
Increased monitoring is a better solution because it would allow legitimate research to continue, and wouldn't allow a particular company to dictate what is allowed and what isn't. As we have seen, much of the censorware on the market is overly restrictive, and in my opinion, biased. They restrict anonymous browsing, and, who know what spyware could be embedded in their products.
IANAL... But I play one on
is about as likely as making automobile superhighways safe for children. Unless you want to severely limit the traffic, it's not going to be "safe".
There is no substitute for parental supervision. I'd tell parents:
You bought the computer for your child. You paid for the internet service. You brought the big scary electronic world into your house and set your child in front of it. It's not the government's job to make it safe for your kid.
Terrycloth Lobster
No, there's too much of a movement to rob children of their childhoods entirely.
Life should be nothing but minivans and soccer games at this point. They're children, let them be children.
Some social worker showed up in my daughters 2nd grade class talking about homosexuality and how it should be accepted and all of that crap. It's all way above their heads and not something they need to be concerned about.
I agree with you to a point, but if you dont place limits, you wind up with kindergarten teachers indoctrinating children to their world views. I have no problem discussing anything with my kids when they ask. I do have a problem with some stranger forcing them into discussions that they dont need to have, or want to have.
The *parents* should be the ones who decide what a child is exposed to. And I think its unfair that we're dumping the weight of the world onto 7 year old shoulders. Let them just be kids. There'll plenty of time to learn about war, sex, violence, and so on.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Until the legal wrangling gets completed, the best filter on objectionable material is to place the terminals such that they are highly visible and in a busy area. That way anybody who insists on viewing pr0n and the like is basically creating a public disturbance...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Then you would have parents saying they were "victims" as children, and thus declaring themselves exempt from self responsability. Through their lawyer, Johnny Cochran ;)
>> The simple fact is porn is only easy to come by when you look for it
Really? Type in the name of any popular video game, as if you were looking for cheats or walkthroughs. Pretend you're 8 and searching for Pokemon.
Or pretend you're a little girl searching for songs from her favorite boy band.
How many clicks does it take until you see the first pornographic banner?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If you're a parent, your kid's probably caught you having sex. It hasn't warped them. But you can imagine the problems your kid would have after seeing a killing.
Which brings up the whole point of parental responsability - parents today are too lazy, self-centered, or unaware, and let their kids see over 7,000 violent acts (including rape, murder, etc.) on Tv and at the movies, before they are 18.
So, the real solution would be for parents to sit down with their kids and watch the same shows they watch, surf the net with them, and discuss what they (the kids) see.
A more logical (and effective) choice than CIPA would be to unplug the television.
I don't know why the parent was modded as a troll. His opinion is a perfectly valid one. However, I don't see how censorware could have prevented this from happening. What could have would be for the parents to be aware of a few things.
1. what software is installed on the computer. Chat clients can be configured to log sessions to disk. The parents could then have read the logs and realized what type of situation the child was getting themselves in.
2. what the children are doing on the computer. Placeing computer equipment in a public place in the house, instead of having a "computer room" allows parents to monitor what their children are doing on the computer. Some people think that kids need their own computer. This can be done, but the way a friend of mine handles it is to not allow external access from the kids computer. If the children need to do research, they can do it on the one computer in the house that can go on the internet, and save their research on a shared drive.
3. communication. Parents need to warn their children about what issues they may encounter on the web. What parent waits until their kid touches a hot stove before telling them it can burn them? So why wait until they get into a potentially dangerous situation before warning them of the dangers they can encounter on the net?
These are the things I plan on doing as my children get old enough to begin using the internet. I would like to see what other ideas people have.
IANAL... But I play one on
Rather than suggesting that parents be parents and set rules and limitations for their child, lets step aside and allow the child to run the show.
I've seen what that leads to. Some friends of the family had a daughter who was given EVERYTHING she wanted. Today, at 24, she refuses to hold down a job, is heavy into drug and alcohol abuse, and expects her father to provide for her and her 2 illegimate children. And heaven help him if she doesn't get it NOW!
Let children be children, yes, but let parents be parents! Parents are supposed to set limits on children. Bad shit happens when children are allowed to set the rules.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Not only does it keep children and people from surfing on "bad" sites, but it also keeps people from looking up other information. Would you like to surf for info on cancer or STD at such a machine? Might as well throw in a public service announcement.
And even if they didn't care, it's more than I'd like to know. For instance when I was abroad I was at this webcafe, and the line was basicly right behind the machines. Without looking at the screen in particular, I still saw the large "GayChat" logo in the corner of one of the screens. Not that I have anything against that, but I really don't feel the need to know anything about strangers sexlife.
Granted, I don't give a flying fuck because I can surf for that at home, but not everyone can that. But given that filters aren't perfect, I do understand that having a "human" filter is used. But it's certainly not perfect either.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There you go, there's the "con" argument in a nutshell.
Wrong.
The "con" argument, in a nutshell, is that although child pr0n is illegal and undesirable, no filters are perfect and will completely block it out - rather, they're MORE likely to block out things that are not pr0n... i.e. the National Organization for Women's Breast Cancer site. Planned Parenthood's Condom use site. Perdue's Breasts 'n Thighs informational site. They're less likely to block out the billion pr0n usenet posts from anon.pinet.fi
Just as it has been said that our justice system is based on the premise that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than imprison 1 innocent man, it is better to allow access to 100 pr0n sites than to censor a truly informational and useful site.
That's the "con" argument. I'm not for child pr0n, but I'm even more not for censorship and you deciding what my child should be allowed to see. :)
-T
Ahhh, facist parenting at its best.
That only works until they turn into a teenager. Then you have a problem on your hands far worse than any child that watches the news, trusts you, etc. If you're lucky they won't break the law just in spite of you.
Bad things also happen when parents are not responsible guardians and guiding friends. When you are the "parent" in a position of authority, where your children are told to be seen and not heard, you lose a bond between you that could prevent almost all the problems we encounter with teens and young adults acting irresponsibly.
Or at least that's my opinion. But YMMV.
Done properly, it sticks. Children need rules. The rules need to be enforced. But if you are arbitrary about things, then you will be perceived as unjust, with the results that you have predicted.
... in that case one falls back on analogies, with the additional explanation that this is "just an way of thinking about it, but the real answer is more complicated". Be prepared, because you will occasionally be asked for the real reason anyway, and you should not skip here. Saying "I think that this part works this way" is far better than asserting a lie. Lying to your children is something that is really best avoided. If you don't know the answer, tell them that you are making a "best guess". Things will turn out much better later if you are known to be trustworthy.
OTOH, rules enforced, but not brutally enforced, and explained in a reasonable manner will be respected. (Usually. Children are different from each other.) And if the rules are respected, then the teenager will argue against them rather than just flout them. This can be exhausting, and occasionally enlightening. But it doesn't result in the dire consequences that you are dreading.
The important thing is that the children must respect the rules, but this sure doesn't mean that they must live in fear of parental abuse. Respect means respect. Fear means fear. They aren't the same concept at all. One can both fear and respect something, e.g., nuclear radiation. One can fear something without respect, e.g. an abusive authority figure. And one can respect without fear, e.g., an elegant mathematical proof. The rules should be respected with the fear that is traceable to an understanding of logical consequences. If you tell a child to not stick his hand in a fire, the rule can be respected because of the undesireability of the logical consequences.
Now it's true that when children are young, it can be difficult to explain the reasons
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.