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New Internet Regulation Proposed
bumgutts writes "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has suggested a mandatory website self-rating system. The system, very similar to one suggested under Clinton's administration, would require by law all commercial websites to place 'marks and notices' on each page containing 'sexually explicit' content, with penalty up to 5 years imprisonment." From the article: "A second new crime would threaten with imprisonment Web site operators who mislead visitors about sex with deceptive 'words or digital images' in their source code--for instance, a site that might pop up in searches for Barbie dolls or Teletubbies but actually features sexually explicit photographs. A third new crime appears to require that commercial Web sites not post sexually explicit material on their home page if it can be seen 'absent any further actions by the viewer.'"
Where have you been? Fark doesn't have a 'boobies' tag anymore. They moved all the adult stuff to a seperate URL, foobies.com.
Technoli
Great, more morons who don't understand PICS. At least this is better than the .xxx domain.
The UK has an amazing law which allows its citizens - (sorry, subjects of Her Gracious Majesty Elizabeth II von Battenberg Saxe Coburg Gotha usw) to be rendered to the US at the request of the US authorities without their having to present any evidence that a crime has been committed. Imagine the fun of this one. I host a site in the UK without the flag, which is viewed by an American. As a result, the US Govt. decides to extradite me to the US as a result of an action beyond my control, i.e. the decision of a US ISP to permit relaying of an illegal website to a US citizen. And my heroic Government will do nothing to intervene. Of course, if the website is hosted in, say, France, the US authorities will simply have to interpret French legal expressions like "Merde alors".
Pining for the fjords
actually, there were quite a few people outside the white house protesting.
this woman used press credentials (probably for shintangren (NTD?), the falungong media group) to get on the white house grounds, up on the camera stand, and then started screaming at the top of her lungs at president Hu when he started talking...
Bush indicated to Hu that he was ok, and he should go on.
The press guys tried to chill her out, but didn't restrain her.
Finally, secret service got up to the top of the platform and escorted her out. She's charged with disorderly conduct.
I don't think the administration did anything wrong here at all, since she snuck in under false pretenses and disrupted the media coverage of a major diplomatic event... and it was not a public area.
Not exactly false pretenses, the whitehouse guys said she has valid credentials and has attended numerous other press conferences.
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"Hadley said Wang was an accredited journalist who had attended White House events before "and had not raised a problem.""
The disruption part was the only bad part. Although there's mention in another athat they are considering additional federal charges against her.
"She was charged with disorderly conduct and could face additional federal charges, said service spokesman Eric Zahren."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/21/bush.china
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/04/the_stone_ phill.shtml#013567This blog post explains where & how this stat probably came from:
Yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a kiddie porn "wake-up call":
"It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of an epidemic in the production and trafficking of movies and images depicting the sexual abuse of children," Gonzales said.
"The threat is frighteningly real, it is growing rapidly, and it must be stopped."
The attorney general said one of every five children online is now solicited. He cited a recent estimate that 50,000 predators are online at any given time prowling for children.
Gonzales attributed the one-in-five stat to "one study," which is most likely a 2000 report conducted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But way back in 2001, Spiked Online's Sandy Starr actually read that report:
The NCMEC's national survey of 1501 American 10- to 17-year-olds found that 'approximately one in five received a sexual solicitation or approach over the internet in the last year'. There is a huge leap from 'sexual solicitation or approach'...to 'approached by a paedophile'.
The report found that almost half of the solicitations reported did not come from an adult, but from other children: 'juveniles made 48 percent of the overall and 48 percent of the aggressive solicitations.' The report also points out that only 'one quarter of young people who reported these incidents were distressed by them'. 'Sexual solicitations' between children in an internet chat room are the online equivalent of adolescent fumbling, a world away from the threat of paedophilia.
Gonzales himself gave the source for the 50,000 prowling predators, citing "the television program Dateline."