Appeals Court Rejects Child Online Protection Act, Again

mabesty writes "From The Washington Post: A panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that COPA restricts free speech by barring Web page operators from posting information inappropriate for minors unless they limit the site to adults. The ruling upholds an injunction blocking the government from enforcing the law." We last covered COPA when the Supreme Court handled it last year.

Comments

What a relief.

[Limburgher]

I was afraid they might set up some sort of recreational club under this law, a COPA-cabana if you will.

Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[Talking Goat]

Finally, a decision. Now will parents stop pushing legislation and start monitoring their children's online activities? No, they'll just push another bill. But at least we have a precedent, again... Wait, what was the point of a precedent? Apparently, parents haven't caught on yet.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[TopShelf]

Something has to be done to give parents a fighting chance, however. Chances are that most kids are going to be more adept at using the computer than their parents, resulting in either ineffective monitoring by the parent or evasion of monitoring by kids.

Nobody denies the right to have adult-oriented content out on the web, but it shouldn't be shoved in your face quite so easily. When I signed up for cable-modem access, for example, and the guy came out to set things up, the first time I accessed the email account it already had about a dozen spams, some for porn sites. While COPA may not be a good idea, something needs to be done, period.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[Talking Goat]

The parents' "fighting chance" should be fought by the parents, not the government. Legislating child-rearing is yet another cop-out from a generation of parents that refuse to take responsibility for their children. If you are disturbed enough by the content to be found online, and you haven't raised your children well enough to trust their judgment around such content, then you need to be responsible and watch your kids. What's so hard about that?

Parents are so quick to scream for laws to protect their children, regardless of the restrictions it places on rest of the public. and yet if we were to legislate parenting licenses to ensure parents were watching their children properly, you'd see the biggest hell-storm to ever sweep across the nation. Where's the fairness in that?

If we can't tell you how to raise your children, then don't tell us how to raise our Internet. Watch your kids, for god's sake.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[gorilla]

Something has to be done to give parents a fighting chance

Why? If you're a parent, then it's your responsibility to do whatever you feel is appropriate in terms of looking after your kids. It's not the rest of societies problem. Parents are doing far too much insisting on protection 'for the children' which ends up restricting what adults can do. Do your job, don't expect me to do it for you.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[SCHecklerX]

Sounds like we need some SPAM laws instead, then. Seriously...how likely is it that johnny is going to get a sexual image on the internet (likely http) unless he is explicityly looking for it?

My inbox, however, gets flooded with tons of offers from 'Women who want to meet me' and 'office secret admirer's' every day. The penis growth stuff is mostly filtered, now, though.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[gpinzone]

It's going to be tough. You gotta think back to your childhood. Back then all we had was cable TV and the "Playboy Channel." Granted it was only softcore porn, but it was the unspoken goal of all 13 years old boys to sneak a peek at the verboten channel, even if it was scrambled. (You had to hope for scenes with a heavy white background in order for it to come out straight.)

Even if you lock everything down in your house, you know damn well, there's gonna be some other kid on the block whose parents are less watchful. If you impose all these restrictions, I predict your child will begin asking to spend an inordinate amount of time over a friends house to "study." Forget the laws. This is the Internet. No one is going to be able to regulate all the offensive material coming from all over the world all the time. Once kids find something that gets through the filter, the URL will spread like wildfire.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[stratjakt]

how likely is it that johnny is going to get a sexual image on the internet (likely http) unless he is explicityly looking for it?

You gotta be kidding.

Try doing a google on Britney Spears, and see how many celebrity porn sites show on the list.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[4of12]

It's not the rest of societies problem. Parents are doing far too much insisting on protection 'for the children' which ends up restricting what adults can do.

I agree with your second sentence, but I have reservations about feeling so absolutely correct about the first.

Yes, it is quite correct that the majority of parents are underqualified and have unrealistic expectations that society will assume some responsibility for raising their children. Talk to any public school teacher and you can find out pretty quick just how bady most parents are neglecting their jobs.

And so I believe that heavy-handed Internet porn filters at libraries are bad policy. That parents should be monitoring their children's activity and not complain so much. Automating the monitoring to save money doesn't wash as valid excuse to me, no more than using a VCR and TV as a convenient babysitter does.

But, unless you can afford to home school your own children, there is a necessity for you to go a job and to send your kids to some public school somewhere where you are physically unable to monitor what your children are doing.

In that case, I think parents have a reasonable expectation that society will fulfull some responsibility for monitoring their children and preventing them from exposure to things that they would rather their kids not see at a young age.

Zoning restrictions that prohibit the establishment of adult movie theatres near schools are another example of where society has collectively decided it is their problem and made some policy decision.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[AyeRoxor!]

"If you go into a magazine store, it's not like they have Hustler out there along with everything else - instead, magazines like that are usually obscured by placards above which you can see the title, if that's what you're looking for. I think a mechanism similar to that is what is needed online - something of a barrier to child access, but doesn't require specific identification of the viewer (to protect privacy). It's not a simple issue, to be sure. There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to enact such barriers ("Click here if over 18" is a joke). "

How is "Don't remove this placard if under 18" any different from "Don't click here if under 18" ?? They're both the honor system. They can both be enforced by the watchful eye of a responsible adult, and they can both be defeated by the absence of such supervision.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[cHiphead]

I think a .xxx for any material worse than Playboy would be a good 'standard' for the internet, but not legislated. Or just force them all to use Usenet. If a kid can learn to navigate newsgroups, he's probably smart enough to mentally deal with porn (but that's probably just me). ;)

It should be interesting to see just what kind of timetable it takes my son to get into such things. I'm surely going to be running filters and blockers of some sort while he's really young. Haven't really looked into yet (got a few years and hope to keep him OUTSIDE instead of stuck inside in front of a screen going blind like his father)

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[rimberg]

If you objection is with content being pushed to you that a reasonable person (legal term) would find offensive, then this is already illegal in law in many countries, pursue it as if you had received it through your mail through the front door.

On the other hand having content that some one has to go out and look for that you wish to prevent kids from seeing, this is a parental monitoring issue. Parents do not lobby for train stations to be closed because kids may go and play their, and even if they did lobby they should not be allowed to have their will enforced.

If a parent wants to prevent their child from doing or seeing certain things on the internet they have at least three options, there is no restriction on not applying several of these at the same time.

1. Be in the room when the child uses the internet.
2. Client side filtering can easily be install on a computer this may block some content that should not be blocked but this may be acceptable as it is the parent choice to install the software.
3. Client Side logging, if you can not be in the room but are worried about the child having looking at things that the child knows she/he should not look at install loggin software and tell the child it is there. This way the child may look at some thing thatâ(TM)s inappropriate but they know you will catch them and apply an appropriate punishment.

Related to point one, the FBI has a list of things you can do to minimize the likelihood that a stranger will victimize your child online. Communicating with your children is the No. 1 thing you can do to help; talking to your children about sexual victimization and the potential dangers online is paramount. The FBI recommends taking time to sit down with your child and having her show you what she likes to do online. It also suggests that you not let your child have the computer in her room; set up the computer in an open area with a lot of traffic. This makes it difficult for her to carry on inappropriate interactions.
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguide.htm For more information and debate on this see. http://www.teekosoccertips.com/safelinks.htm

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[zachjb]

Actually I live in a decent size city, Lafayette, and we have a newstand that has adult material in plain site without anything prohibiting the view. The city doesn't raise a stink because people know of the material in the store, so all of the censoring is actually done by the parents, not the store owner or the government.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[coke_dite]

As a parent of two preschool children, I have to agree. My four-year-old is not allowed to browse the internet (of course, he can't type yet, so it's not really an issue). Until he is old enough to understand that certain materials are inappropriate, he will have to have either myself or my husband do his surfing for him, and we will either print or save relevant pages for him to view offline.

Once he's old enough to surf, he will be allowed to do so only when one parent is present, and we will limit the amount and types of websites he can view. Right now, he is allowed to use a laptop which is not connected to the internet (or to our own network), but which has many preschool educational games installed on it. I doubt he's feeling the lack.

If we are responsible for raising our children, then we're responsible for what they read, what they watch, what they surf. We can't expect the government to babysit our kids for us (hell, we can't even expect the government to babysit incarcerated criminals for us sometimes!) - we gave birth to them, essentially, we created new life. That carries a pretty hefty responsibility with it. Suck it up and stop asking Uncle Sam (or Uncle Jean in my case) to raise your kids for you. jmho

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[4of12]

Talk to any public school student and find out pretty quick how badly most teachers are neglecting their jobs.

You're correct.

Some of teachers do neglect to perform their duties with dedication we, the taxpaying public, expect of them.

<sarcasm>Given just how exorbitant the salaries are for teachers these days, I'm surprised that we have as many problems attracting competent teachers as we do.</saracasm>

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[trifster]

Common sense should be if a parent is going to let his or her child go on the internet they damn well better know any and all of what they are doing. Are you concerned when your child goes out and plays with little johnny who pulls out his older brothers playboy? Same shit different way.

How do you differentiate what is good for children to see or not? Huh? Would brittanyspears.com be banned? MTV with picts of her in skimpy clothes? Oh thats differnt thats pop culture.

Further more I let my teenage children use the Internet at the computer located smack dab in the middle of the family room. They want to go to the fringes of the net they can but I'll see it. At some point teenagers are going to be exposed to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll (sorry, couldn't resist); despite the medium changes from the 50s, 60s and 70s the same old concerns live.

The point isn't that Click here if over 18 is a joke isn't ment to be a prevention, its a legal samantic. The point is the parents need to parent and it just doesn't happen these days. I see it in the parents of my childrens friends, good people that "just don't have the time". Bullshit, you want to procreate? You take all the responsibilty that comes with it.

The real crime in all of this is PISS POOR parenting. It is people with comments and thoughts like yours that let parents off the hook of responsibility.

Oh and news flash, i don't care if your kids are 2 or 20, they have seen more "unacceptable" shit in the world of everyday life than you can imagine. The Internet is hardly the highest on my concern list.

Bullshit, CENSORSHIP DOESN'T WORK!!! Period! End of discussion. It never has and never will.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[kwerle]

How is "Don't remove this placard if under 18" any different from "Don't click here if under 18" ?? They're both the honor system.

That's an excellent example. Let's look at it:
The porn mag is in a public place. There is some amount of public pressure for youths NOT to look at porn (in public). If you don't think so, consider how much more porn is viewed in the private of the internet vs. the public of the magazine shop.
The owner of the store with the porn mag is financially responsible. If they let youths view the mags, they can be found guilty of (insert your decency law here) and fined/jailed. [so, no, the placard is not "just the honor system" - it is a legal barrier the proprieter needs to keep from getting fined/jailed]
In most areas, porn mags are limited in what they can show. Some places more than others. Not so, the internet - one browser gets you whatever you want.
Porn mags do not arrive, uninvited, in your mail. If they did, the senders would be fined/jailed.

They can both be enforced by the watchful eye of a responsible adult, and they can both be defeated by the absence of such supervision.

If, by that, you mean that neither can be enforced except by an adult that never leaves their children's side, then I guess you're right. If you mean anything else, I guess you're wrong.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[Reziac]

And there is nothing that makes something so attractive to a kid, as restricting access. Oooh, that's forbidden, so I gotta find a way to get it!

Whereas what's regarded as ordinary, explained by thinking adults, and is the kid's choice to leave alone -- as a rule, they're not even interested in.

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[Mikeytsi]

Common sense would dictate that you would spend more time controlling what content your child accesses. You can quite easily set up a rule in most e-mail programs to block e-mails that are not from a specific list of allowed addresses. YOUR refusal to educate yourself on controlling YOUR child's access to materials YOU find offensive is not MY problem.

However, if you insist that it become MY problem, then you have no room to compain when I smack your kid on the head to shut them the hell up when they're acting like little bastards in a restaurant and interrupting my meal. Do you have a problem with THAT too?

Re:Way to Go Absentee Parents!

[numark]

If you had a daughter (maybe one whose private parts are being leered at in darkened bedrooms around the world), you might have a different idea about what consitutes free speech, and what is abuse!

That's not what COPA was designed to prevent. Pornography of that nature is most certainly illegal already. No one in their right mind would approve of that kind of pornography. On the other hand, COPA was designed to give the government leeway to overly regulate legal pornography businesses by taking over a parent's responsibility. If you can't be responsible enough to watch over your children, then you shouldn't come and complain to the government because they didn't do your job.

Legislating morality is a dangerous precedent to set, and I think that decisions regarding legal pornography should be made by adults, and the government should stay out of parenting. Don't want your kids viewing pornography? Then either put the computer in a high-traffic area in the house or having some sort of monitoring. Or, more importantly, teach your kids the proper way to use the Internet. Of course, it's much easier these days to just let kids surf the Internet at will, and that's the parent's fault. I'll say it again: it's a parent's responsibility to look out for their kids.

Meta tag

[Khalidz0r]

Why not inforce a rule asking people providing adult material to have a meta tag specifying this exactly, or send it some way or another, so that censorship programs can read this and disallow it for children, I think a kid wanting to see adult material will know his way through clicking buttons telling he is over 18 years old.

Khalid

Re:Meta tag

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Because then it will be up to the author of the Web page to decide what constitutes "adult material," and if he guesses wrong, he goes to prison.

In some cases, it's obvious: porn site operators and the proprietors of sites like rotten.com would be idiots if they didn't use the tags. But there's a huge gray area. Is my personal home page "adult" because it contains a few four-letter words? I don't think so -- but some prosecutor, somewhere, might, and then I've got big problems. What about medical sites which, by their nature, include detailed discussions of human anatomy?

I wouldn't object at all to the creation of a standard (I'd rather have it done by the W3C or some other private entity than the government, but whatever) for "opt-in" kid-safe sites: a clearly published set of rules that says, "If your site does not contain any of the following [naked people / dirty words / etc.] then you are authorized to use this tag." Then the more extreme censorware could look for this tag.

I would still object to public libraries and the like being required to block stuff that doesn't contain the tag, for all kinds of reasons, but it would be a start.

Complexities inherent in this issue

[Dukeofshadows]

Some people will define "protecting" children by different means. The Christian Right around here would deny children access to everything they don't agree with, cinluding evolutionary textbooks since they might "corrupt" their kids. Other people will take their 7-year-olds to go see Robocop or the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the hell of it. Trying to protect children requires good parenting first and foremost, not just overly protective laws. Public schools are trickiest of all since so many ready-to-litigate families have different concerns for their kids. I think the easiest solution would be to either have all of the computers monitored by a faculty member. Maybe they could also tell the kids well in advance that their activities will be monitored with justification neccessary for visiting sites deemed "questionable". Granted, that system could be abused and not all kids need protection, but for Johnny trying to e-mail the president and instead visiting a .com instead of a .gov (whitehouse.com is a notorious porn site), some measure of protection should be in place.

I propose a new law

[ReelOddeeo]

How about this one.

Whenever congress (or state legislatures) pass a law that is later found to be unconstitutional, public funds must be used to reimburse all legal costs that were incurred in bringing the suit and having the unconstitutional law found to be unconstitutional.

Why should private or industry money have to be used to combat ridiculous laws that legislators can freely pass at a whim? Let's make them at least have to budget the cost of overturning their unconstitutional laws.

Example. Some hypothetical attorney general, let's call him "Asscruft", proposes to congress, and congress later passes, and the president signs a bill making it illegal to think bad thoughts under penalty of 5 years of $500,000.

Everyone would be screaming to have this overturned. Lots of private money would have to be used to get this nonsense overturned. Why should the citizenry be forced to overturn bad laws that they didn't want but that their "representatives" thought would be good for them, or that corporate interests bought and paid for?

Re:I propose a new law

[stratjakt]

So it would be better if our tax dollars funded every whiners agenda?

For every 'just' cause citizens take in court, there are three hundred frivolous ones.

The ACLU is hell-bent on making sure noone ever says the word 'God', or celebrates Christmas in public. I don't want to fund that bullshit with my tax dollars.

And if the RIAA gets the "Freedom to listen to whatever the hell you want Act" overturned in Supreme Court, do you want your tax dollars reimbursing them?

Re:I propose a new law

[Zirnike]

First: Not the government. I don't want to have to pay because some moron from a different state thought COPA was a good idea. The Senators pay. The Reps. pay. And the president pays. Unless they voted against or vetoed it.

Second: The founders didn't want to do it, but I think it might help: Any bill introduced should be reviewed by a court at the level of the appeals court before it can be enforced. Only checking on constitutional grounds, like it is now. That might help...

Third: No amendments to bills that are unrelated to the stated main purpose of the bill. Not directly related, but that would help too.

Great news..

[grub]

It's bad enough I buy booze for underage kids, I wouldn't want to be buying them pr0n too!

Online porn

[tonywestonuk]

One reason that I would think twice about letting my kids (if I had them) use the net would be for the amount of accessible porn, and the like that is so freely, and easily available. Over a certain age (15 maybe, maybe more) then anything goes, but, as it stands, I can click on a page within a presumably benign google search, and be presented with something that isn't. Allowing sites to show 'information inappropriate for minors' to minors is like selling kids top shelf mags, or allowing them in to the movies see uk cert 18 movies.
I'm completely against censorship to those of us who have arrived at adulthood, but saying that kids should be allowed to view adult material because of 'free speech' is wrong.

T.

Re:Online porn

[kryptkpr]

No, it's not wrong.

What's all this bullshit about shielding the children anyways? The children don't need, nor want your shielding.

I'm not saying we should starting selling pr0n in all elementary schools world wide, but kids are going to have sex. They're going to look at other, naked, kids or adults or whatever. They're going to be curious; this is what kids do.

So instead of shielding your [proverbial] kids from the "horrors" of porn, how about educating them instead?

There is such a thing as tasteful porn (that doesn't involve anal sex followed by the guy blowing his load all over the girl's face .. that should be saved for their mid-late teens, but if they really want it, how the hell are we going to stop them?).

STOP LYING TO YOUR KIDS.

Don't make them grow up in an imaginary world you've built for them.. They will be totally unprepared for the real horrors, or the real world. Your job as a parent is to educate your kids as to what is [relatively] right and [relatively] wrong. Don't be afraid of sex, it's not wrong, and it doesn't have to be dirty (I still remember the first pr0n pic I downloaded from a local BBS, it was a girl who had a sweater on, the kind with lots of holes in it, and you could ALMOST SEE A NIPPLE! me and my friends were amazed. This was more then enough for us.)

Kids get curious around the age of 12 .. waiting until they're 21, 18, or even 15, is FAR TOO LATE. If you don't educate your kids, the world will, and the world isn't a very caring, nor loving teacher.

Re:Online porn

[stratjakt]

I agree with the parent. Kids shouldnt be allowed to view adult material, and it really shouldn't require anything but some common sense and good faith from the web community to prevent it. But that good faith doesnt exist.

I built a PC for each of my children, for their rooms to do whatever they want with. I dont want to have to sit over their shoulders and watch them constantly, because I want them to be able to learn the computer the way I did, by just screwing around on it. I want them to be independent and learn from doing, like I did.

So I set up a proxy for them, with PICS filtering and other 'standards' (squid and dansguardian, OT: anyone know how to transparently proxy with dansguardian?. The idea was it would make a good enough whitelist.

Now, I'm more worried about the kids finding a pokemon chat room and being stalked by some pedophile than I am about them accidentally seeing a boob.

cartoonnetwork.com has a really cool (kid speaking) c-toon trading game my one kid loves. You watch TV on fridays and they give out codes, which you punch in to the website, to get c-toon cards, and then can play a card game (pokemon like) online with other kids. Whats great about it is that there's absolutely no way for personal information to get across. You dont pick a username, it presents a list of made-up silly names that you choose. You cant chat, you can pick from lists of prewritten phrases. (So no trolls posting ascii goatse)

Anyways, back on topic. I've noticed that some pricks out there put fake PICS and other codes into their porn websites. IMO it's a pretty contemptable way to make another nickel or two off of their banners. Its also IMO criminal, since they're basically marking the content as a childrens site, which is like sticking copies of Hustler into kids hallowe'en bags.

Meh anyways. I dont know what my point is. Some people are just pricks. We wouldnt need laws if they werent. Personally I'm in favor of the kids.us domain, I think it's the best compromise. It gives parents a very simple way to whitelist for younger children. It would be nice if it didnt have to be mandated by government, but if you left the registrars to regulate it, well, they wouldnt.

Re:Online porn

[stratjakt]

>> Kids get curious around the age of 12 ..

And until that age they should be allowed to be children.

Making kids grow up too soon, and expecting them to be miniature adults when they're 5 or 6 is probably the most damaging thing you can do to them.

Re:Online porn

[tonywestonuk]

My position is that, as a (soon to be) parent, It is ME, NOT the owners of a adult Website, or anyone else for that matter, who should have the choice to allow or disallow what my kids view. The government should have the power to require websites to restrict their content FOR MINORS (and not a blanket censorship for all). If a parent, who thinks there is nothing wrong with allowing his/her kids to view such sites, there is nothing stopping them personally choosing to bypass the kiddie-restriction, on their heads be it, but this is still giving the parents the choice.... Giving the government this power, gives parents the power to choose.
T.

Protecting the kids?

[ChuckDivine]

I'm sure we're going to hear again from the gang that just wants to "protect the children." And we're going to hear from the people who want parents to surf the Net with their children, thus combatting the problem from another approach.

Might I suggest a different approach?

Children are going to be exposed to bad things. They always have. At home I have a book titled "Pioneer Women." It's about the roles of women in settling the western United States. One photograph is particularly memorable. It's of a small child looking at the body of man who's just been killed in a gun fight. I suspect that's more traumatic than seeing a bit of pr0n on the Internet.

When I was a child, I was exposed to information about the Holocaust and World War II. As a teenager I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and the Kennedy assassination. Children today have been exposed to the horrors of 9/11. All these things are far more troubling for children than a bit of pr0n on the Internet.

So, short of shutting up children in some sort of tightly controlled, heavily censored environment (hmm, sounds like a jail), they will be exposed to bad stuff. Perhaps, instead of trying to shield our little darlings, we should instead be teaching them that the world is not always a nice place. We should be giving them the tools to deal with nastiness and worse. I think this is a far healthier approach to take -- as well as more practical.

Re:Protecting the kids?

[stratjakt]

>> we should instead be teaching them that the world is not always a nice place.

We should answer questions that they have, but we definately shouldnt be forcing or expecting them to grow up by the age of 5 or 6.

There's the saying "you're right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". I submit that peoples right to act like assholes stops when my kids are around.

Re:Protecting the kids?

[Reziac]

And fact is, if a young kid trips over a porn site, chances are he won't know what the hell it IS, other than lots of naked bodies -- and to an 8 year old, what's interesting about that?

If the parent goes OMIGHOD and snatches away the mouse, the kid gets the notion that here's something worth investigating, just because forbidding something induces automatic curiosity as to WHY it's forbidden.

Whereas if the parent says, "Oh yeah, some adults like to look at naked people" like it's no big deal, the kid is likely to shrug and look for something more interesting (to a kid).

Libraries Get Temporary Relief

[robbway]

This law allowed the government to withhold funds from any library not applying the appropriate filtering software, or having ineffective filtering software. All filtering software is incomplete meaning you could "prove" arbitrarily that any library or group of libraries is unworthy of Fed funds due to ineffective Web filtering software.

The filtering software also blocks educational/informational sites on things like: breast cancer, testicular cancer, tourism in Essex and Sussex, and sex education. Not to mention blocking adult content from adults.

The core of the law has good intentions (another brick to the road to Hell), but the legaleze is vague and inappropriate.

I've seen news stories locally (Baltimore) that claim this "requires libraries to allow pr0n surfing." Not so. Long before this law, most libraries have rules against such things, and still do. They also had a child internet area in view of a librarian's desk, and the adult area computers were off limits to ages 12 and under.

I think the children were being protected just fine by the libraries already. Maybe we should let them take care of their own business.

Parents - Here's An Idea

[goldspider]

I've been arguing with myself back and forth, and finally have settled on the more libertarian side of my internal dispute.

Parents, if you don't want your kids to be exposed to materials on the internet you find objectionable, don't let them use the internet. Up until middle school, at the earliest, I don't see any reason why a child would NEED to use the internet. And by then they've probably seen/heard everything at their local public school.

And of course, parents who don't care what their children see are free to let them run wild.

I completely agree

[diablobynight]

Personally I think a lot of legislation forced down on children is entirely unfair, especially considering they have no vote or say in it. LIke I still thinks it's rediculous to have a drinking age of 21 but a smoking age of 18. I think that if kids are old enough to have an M16 tossed into their hands and told to go die for their country, they are old enough to have a couple of beers. Sexism is heavily frowned upon, and so is racism, why not ageism? Because all the policy makers are old and have forgotten what it's like to be young. It made me so angry when I was 18 and I signed up for a 20K loan to cover my first year of college. It made me angry I was old enough to put myself 20 thousand dollars in debt, but not old enough to drink certain kinds of beverages.

Re:I completely agree

[arkanes]

The thing that pisses me off the most is that we'll draft people who can't vote. That's just fucked up. And you can vote, but not drink. In my mind, there shouldn't be any age limits on anything that are greater than the age of majority - it just doesn't make any logical sense. Especially since the only things I can think of are alcohol and running for public office, neither or which are nearly as important or as life-changing as all the other things you can do at 18.

Re:I completely agree

[YrWrstNtmr]

The thing that pisses me off the most is that we'll draft people who can't vote.

And you happen to be in what country?

A. in the US, there is not 'draft'. Selective Service registration, yes, but no actual "Come down and take a physical" draft.
B. The Sel Service registration age is 18. Which also happens to be the age at which you can vote.
C. Running for public office is also generally allowed at age 18. OK...for President, you have to be 35. I don't think we're ready for a teenage pres yet.

D. Now...should the drinking age be lowered to 18? hmm...tough one. On one side, we have semiresponsible people. On the other side, we have drunken riots at many colleges across the country, and many late teens killed (or other victims) driving while drunk.
Tough call.

Re:I completely agree

[Nom du Keyboard]

even now, every so often I'll walk into a meeting with a client (as most of my work is done internationally and online this is rare) and they'll completely change their attitude from very professional and respecting to very hostile and degrading strictly based on age.

I'll bet it is not your age nearly as much as other factors.

Do you dress professionally for meetings? Do you treat your clients with respect? Do you have a reasonable haircut of a reasonable color, no obvious tatoos or piercings? Do you arrive sober, and speak educated English. Are you copping an attitude because you once did well in a DotCom and once made more money then the people you new deal with? Or do you consider all this just selling out, and that you should be accepted for who you are regardless of how you dress and/or act?

There's a lot you can to to cultivate a professional provided you care enough about your business to do so.

After reading your rant, you don't strike me as a reliable person that I'd want to do business with.

Re:I completely agree

[arkanes]

You need to educate yourself a bit about the draft and how it works. It's not currently active. It can become active, which is to say they can send out notices, in less than 48 hours. Since it's not active, there's no "draft age" per se, but it has been in the past, and can be in the future, as low as 16 - at the whim of the President. On the other side, I don't give a shit how many teens kill people driving drunk - for one thing, you'll have alot less of it if it's legal. If someone is old enough to vote, they're old enough to drink. Period. Raise the voting age to 21 or lower the drinking age to 18. It's not a tough call at all.

Re:I completely agree

[arkanes]

Okay, lets line all the straw men up in little lines. Drunk riots aren't an issue here, they're usually people above the age of majority and don't have alot to do with drinking, because they grow out of emotional events, like soccer or celebrations or concerts. The President, not Congress, has the power to start up the draft, and can do it whenever he wants, and will do it if we need bodies for a war. We haven't needed bodies, so it hasn't been activated. That's not really relevent to the point, which is that if you're going to reserver the right to tell someone he has to kill and die for his country, then he damn well should have a say in policy, which means voting.

Now - the allure of the forbidden is a major reason for underage drinking. That's just a basic fact, it's not really disputable. Here's some of the reasons legalization makes sense, while it doesn't make sense to legalize murder, just in case you really are too damn stupid to see the differences.

A) Drinking is a victimless crime. Yes, I know about drunk driving and all that. Doesn't matter - getting drunk does not involve causing harm to anyone.
B) There is a very small social stigma associated with drinking. The major force of law is NOT it's very existence, but rather the social pressure to obey a law. When a law isn't respected by society (drinking, underage smoking, mild drug use, jaywalking, certain types of white collar crime), it's much easier break it because of other pressures, like experimenting or greed or peer pressure. People absolutely drink and do drugs because it's illegal. They do it for the same reason they get tattoos and piercings and funky haircuts. It's an easy, mostly harmless way of rebelling when you're at an age when it's very important to do so.

I personally don't need this law...

[scottcha 4]

If my kids want/need to be on the internet they go to our central computer in our dining room which is in full view of most of the house. The computers in my kids rooms while networked together for games do not have internet access.

It would have been nice for this to pass for the loser parents that don't know or care what their kids are getting into.

Censorship? I don't think so. For crying out loud you need a license to own a dog but any idiot can have a child.

Anonymity

[Ececheira]

On the other hand how do you propose to put an access control that won't violate anyones privacy?

<em>The court also said screening methods suggested by the government, including requiring Web-page viewers to give a credit card number, would unfairly require adults to identify themselves before viewing constitutionally protected material such as medical sites offering sex advice. </em>

That last issue seems like it will be the downfall of any access-control system. How do you both prove age while maintaining anonymity? They're mutually exclusive things.

Re:Anonymity

[Psmylie]

Such authentication would have to be on the client side, not the server side, if you wanted to protect your privacy. Maybe some sort of adult verification plug in on your browser. Then, when you hit a server with adult content, the server checks the client to verify that you are of age and the client says, "yup, my user's and adult. Let him in." and the server allows access.
Another option would be something like the .kids domain, where a kid can't see anything outside of that domain but a logged in adult has full run of the net.
Both solutions would probably be pretty easy to hack, but those are 2 possible ways surfing with as much anonymity as you have today.
Of course, option 1 would require cooperation from the porno vendors... which would never happen. And it still doesn't address the spam issue.
In my opinion, the very best option is to have the PC out in a family room or something. Don't let your kids have their own PC until they can buy one on their own. Don't allow them to surf when you aren't home, and lock down the PC to make sure they comply. And, when they are online, check on them every once in a while. It's good to see what your kids are up to, and there are sites much more dangerous then porno sites out there.

Stupid americans

[CastrTroy]

What makes people think a law like this will help to protect their children from pr0n on the internet. Even if a law is enacted within the united states, there is no way of them forcing this law on sites situated outside their borders. It would be completely useless

Are they raising them or not?

[scrotch]

Seems like many people just don't want to face the fact that there is violence and nudity in the world. They ignore it in while we go to war, they ignore it on the streets and they try to simply not deal with it anywhere they encounter it. It would be much better if people faced the fact that most of the world is not like the Mall. If kids were educated about what goes on and the consequences of these things instead of insulated and kept ignorant, maybe they wouldn't have such devastating consequences. Maybe advertising that plays to our ignorance wouldn't work as well. Maybe people would realize that "Bombing Evil" is overly-simplistic and have some understanding that it could have more consequences than a football game.

Is adult content really bad for kids?

[cbogart]

Are there any studies that demonstrate that occasionally stumbling on adult content can damage a child? It seems far-fetched to me.

So, what's the big deal really ?

[Murphy(c)]

Something has to be done to give parents a fighting chance, however. Chances are that most kids are going to be more adept at using the computer than their parents, resulting in either ineffective monitoring by the parent or evasion of monitoring by kids.

Well call me naive, or maybe European (which I am), but I'm still wondering what is so wrong with kids occasionaly seeing naked people.
Really. Is there any proof that children that have seen sexual scens turn out to be dangerous criminals, perverts, or worse Polticians ?

In my contry we still have adult magazins right next to the "standard" magazins in shops. Children are exposed to these as well as on TV, even in the lamest Ad for shampoo you have naked women and such. And any kid that that is looking for some "exposure" only has to wait for some weekends late night (23h-1am) movies.

I'm still pretty sure that all the fuss about p0rn comes from the lack of knowledge of it. It's like most things in life. If it's forbiden then you will damn well try to get it. How hard is it for parents to simply explain to their kid what sex is, why their are porno magazins, and hence why their are porno Sites on the net.

I mean, my parents did it, and although they are in my mind Uber parents, I'm sure a lot of others have done it too.

Murphy(c)
Oh and by the way I haven't turned out to be a child rapist or pervert.... yet. :)

Why should one need to give out CC#???

[moncyb]

From the article:

...including requiring Web-page viewers to give a credit card number, would unfairly require adults to identify themselves before viewing...

This is much more of a problem than just "violating" your privacy by identifying yourself. There is a real risk of credit card fraud here. Anyone remember the stories about the so called "free" pr0n sites asking for a CC# (under this law) so they could verify age, then charging the person's card because they put a clause somewhere in the fine print?

Would you really want to give out your CC# to every site which has "PG" "PG-13", or "R" rated content? That's probably half the sites on the internet. This is a stupid law. IIRC this is the law where the same standard also applies to any site which you can post messages or give out personal information. (Right now they just require playing with cookies) There goes the other half.

Not for long.

[UberQwerty]

Chances are that most kids are going to be more adept at using the computer than their parents, resulting in either ineffective monitoring by the parent or evasion of monitoring by kids.

In as few as 30 years, the ruling class will be made up largely by people who grew up with computers - and there has never been an oppressed community (the net-savvy) whose distinguishing charachteristic (the internet) acted directly as such a powerful organizing tool.

Mark my words - within our lifetimes, it will become impossible for this kind of fascist bullshit to get pushed through government, and computer law will make sense. Maybe this is already happening.

In the meantime, parents who want "a fighting chance" should take note: drop the "I am not a computer person" attitude and learn what your kids already know about the internet. It actually takes less effort to do this than it takes to whine about your problems to the government. And your kids will be overjoyed at the chance to teach you something!

Freedom of speech is a bitch.

[RatBastard]

Freedom of speech is a bitch, isn't it? Freedom of speech means that I am going to hear/read/see things that I find offensive (like your little hissy-fit) and you are going to see/read/hear things that you find offensive (like me mocking you). But that's the price we pay for the ability to speak our minds.

There have always been and shall always be those who abuse the system, who push the limits too far. But does that mean we have to give up our rights and freedoms because of these assholes? You woiuld surrender your freedoms that easily?

Many Different Laws - COPA, COPPA, CIPA

[Liza]

I noticed in reading the comments that people seem to have confused COPA, the Children's Online Protection Act, which seeks to restrict content posted by web site owners, and CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act, which seeks to require schools and libraries to use Internet filters to block access to sexually explicit material.

I can't believe you can't keep these laws straight! ;) Don't forget COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and CPPA, the so-called "virtual child porn" law.

Short & sweet VERY GOOD article explaining which law is which, and their current status (if, like COPA and CIPA, currently being challenged in the courts): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A397 48-2002May31.html

Liza

hm...

[themusicgod1]

"Don't let your kids have their own PC until they can buy one on their own."
computers are cheap if you aren't so elitist-if you pointed your nose just a little below the horizon you'd see you can get most 386's for free and computers less than that for free. cheap 486's can range below 100$[canadian] to near 25$[canadian] for used...I think i had 5 computers running at one time not to long ago, and i paid 20$[canadian] for the whole hardware setup [mostly, one 3com ISA NIC card]. A more reasonable alternative may be 'when they are old enough to know how to configure their computer to attatch to the family hub/router/network/Modem, then they may view whatever they please. That would have stopped me -- most of the time that i lived at home my computer was about to be connected 'Real Soon' -- but due to problems with the process i was having trouble. Besides that, if they fuck up a free computer with virii [not mind you that most computer virii work on anything less than windows 95 anyway...i can't speak for low levels of Linux...]...

hell, if they are smart enough to get that far, chances are they are smart enough to bypass whatever else you can throw at them [honestly]...and this is supposing there is content you wouldn't trust them with in the first place...

as for myself, i showed my dad the Usenet [he didn't realized it existed...] IMAGINE THE PORN i pointed out...! i shared :P. and what are we trying to censor, anyway, and why? are we trying to protect them from strangers? teach them to be strong. teach them how to use a weapon [firearm and or pointed edge]. my parents threw me in martial arts lessons at a young age...if i were to come across my '10 years younger' self i wouldn't mess with him even if i had a knife on me. there are scary people in the Real World - deal with it.