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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.'"
It's not porn, it's art!
How exactly are they trying to enforce this ?
I'd say that the sites that still want to expose erotical/sexual content, would just move 1 inch outside the US, probably Canada. So while all american sites and their revenues are hit bigtime (the search engines will definitely start to filter on this), the other countries get the profit.
Every tenth poster about Madonna or Catherina Zeta Jones or any other female celebrity is somewhat sexual content.
Since i'm not an american and i'm nowhere near US, it won't affect me, but it still seems enormously stupid idea. The motivation could be correct, but the implementation will suck.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
While it sounds like a decent idea, I'm really all for the whole uncensored and unregulated internet. It's more interesting to me to see what people do with the total freedom granted to them. The more stuff like this that's get passed, the closer we move to real censorship. Okay, so I know I probably sound like I just put a fresh bit of tinfoil on this morning, but I really like my internet the way it is.
The Fark 'boobies' tag finally gets the nationwide recognition it deserves...
This guy's the limit!
All you have to do is know one name, one word even, and any search anywhere will return adult material. Are they gonna put something in front of that? How about just typing in a url that goes to some detail page beyond the index page? Blocking all of that takes a trememdous amount of work... way harder than just "watch your kids" and "tell them about what's there". Any kid can go into a bookstore and see books with adult material in them, in fact you can go to any commercial big-box bookstore (barnes + noble, etc) and you'll see a slew of underage kids in the adult book area. We're just people, people!
stuff |
Note: I am a conservative, but I still don't like most of what Gonzales does.
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.
This one actually makes sense. I have young students that occasionally search for school-related things using Google. Some of the sites that come up are questionable at best. I apprecite those webmasters that have the decency to place a warning and no explicit material on their portal page. Even better are those that make you agree to view the content and set a cookie. That way no matter what page you enter to (since Google doesn't give preference on most searches to a home page as opposed to one deep in the site), the cookie is checked and you get the "agree/disagree" page no matter what.
However, it seems a bit unenforcable. I mean, what about websites overseas? What about websites overseas operated by American's? What about websites in the US operated by foreigners? I think that there are still too many unresolved questions about jurisdiction on the Internet. I would think that as a lawyer, Gonzales would understand that. This is something that depends on the goodwill of the webmasters, much like most other things on the 'net.
Where EXACTLY in the Constitution of The United States is this authority delegated from The People or The States to The Damned Feds?
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It may be reasonable, it's also unconstitutional. From the article:
The definition of sexually explicit broadly covers depictions of everything from sexual intercourse and masturbation to "sadistic abuse" and close-ups of fully clothed genital regions.
A little broad, eh? So now we get some neopuritan in the FCC or whoever gets to control this deciding what constitutes "sexually explicit". And what constitues a commercial website? Most museums and non-profits may be safe, but what about newspapers? Magazines? This is prior restraint, and this is one of the reasons the First Amendment was passed.
What if your site has that famous picture of Ed Meese talking about his commission on pornography in front of the bare-breasted statue of Justice? Is it art? It is news? It is porn?
Gonzales seems way too obsessed with pornography. Someone should give him a subscription to Hustler online or something like that so he can, er, release a little pressure.
My sig is too lon
During his speech, Gonzales also warned that Internet service providers must begin to retain records of their customers' activities to aid in future criminal prosecutions
Future criminal prosecutions, whenever the government deems it necessary for those who might cause problems for them. The implication is the government does not trust its own citizenry, and must have the ability to invade their privacy at any time in order to control or silence them.
What other ways can people be spied on by the government? Is this what we want, a paternalistic government and a paranoid society?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
1) The US is not the world, so your laws can go hang.
2) Your views of what is sexually explicit are screwed up, so your rating system would be as well.
3) The real problem are the spammer and scammers stealing millions from the public. When I don't receive 100s of spams a day - then you can start getting worked up over boobies.
4) We don't trust you, we certainly don't trust you enough to let you do something this. Earn that trust back first.
One of my sites features prominent images of "Tinky Winky getting it on with the Noo-Noo", "Tubby Custard Full Facials", "Over the Hills and Far Away, Hot Barely Legal Teletubbies Come to Play - With Each Other and Also With a Mysterious Large Cylindrical Object" etc. etc.
I hope that will not lead to legal misunderstandings which would put me in line for a stint of federally sponsored rectal enlargement.
Great, more morons who don't understand PICS. At least this is better than the .xxx domain.
Is it just me going insane, or does that actually seem like reasonable legislation?
Both.
As parent, the thought of such a regulation gave me pause--I consider myself responsible, I want my 11-year-old to have access to the Internet, and I don't want to have to sit there with her ALL the time.
But then, I came to my senses and thought, "it IS my responsibility to monitor her Internet access." The silver lining to such a regulation proposal is that it has made me rethink of my parental priorities...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
She did yell out to Bush and Jintao, which maybe could be considered disturbing the peace or something given the context. It was not a rally, not a demonstration, it was two heads of state with press coverage. So maybe it was in bad taste on her part, but I don't see how she did anything as bad as the press makes it out to be.
I think this law, while it might have some positive consequences, is bad overall. The first step to restricting freedom of speech is regulating speech. While we do have broad categories of "bad" speech such as speech designed to cause panic and mayhem ("fire" in a movie theater), or false claims (slander), there really isn't a whole lot of regulation by the government. This is a good thing. I want the government doing its job (defending my borders and protecting my rights) while I do my job. I don't see how regulating citizens' speech or removing their freedoms is the government's job in a country that prides itself on how free it is.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
a mandatory website self-rating system. The system, very similar to one suggested under Clinton's administration, would require by law all commercial websites
..." will come down the pike a couple years after this has passed.
Self rating yet mandatory? Is it me or is there an inherent contradiction in this? This is just a law to get "a foot in the door" so the government can have more excuses to eventually control the net as a whole. "Self regulation has been proven to fail, we MUST apply this NEW more restrictive law
Bastids.
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
In his press release, Mr. Gonzales brought up the statistic that "one in five children has been solicited online".
To which my wife and I looked at each other and went "Uh - really. One in five."
And then I started to wonder. Was this children solicited by adults? How are we defining children? Is this just a sampling of MySpace users, assuming that all solicitees are children, and all soliciters are adults? Are we including two teenagers including lovey-dovey emails to each other, or kids hanging out in Pokemon chat rooms getting hit on my a pedophile?
I'd like to see the numbers, because I've been in lots of forums, have recieved emails from adults and teens about things I've written (like a "Xenosaga Backtracking" article), and I haven't seen a random person pop up in one of these forums "Hey, that's a nice Pikachu - now I'd like to see you naked!"
Granted, maybe I'm naive - but I have the feeling that "one in five" is either inflated, or including things that most people would never consider solicitation (again, such as minors hitting on minors).
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While looking around the web, we accidently found this site.
So every commercial site (is slashdot commercial? They sell subscriptions) should have to go to enormous expense to label it pages or risk five years of jail time -- because you and your wife make typos?
My god, do you and your wife ever make the mistake of buying the wrong toothpaste at the grocery? Perhaps we ought to abolish the Free Market and go to a Soviet system of allowing only one brand of toothpaste, to protect your family.
While we're at it, do you and the wife ever have a little too much to drink? Perhaps we ought to bring back Prohibition to save you from your hangovers.
Part of being a free citizen means not asking the government to hold your hand to prevent you from making stupid mistakes. By all means, if you feel you can't handle the consequences of typos, get rid of your Internet service. But don't ask the rest of America to go to great trouble and expense just because you can't type.
Incidentally, what lasting harm did seeing this porno site do to you, that its owners should risk five years in prison? You still seem to be around, your wife and kids are still alive -- did your marriage break up or you dog die because of this typo?
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A second new crime... A third new crime...
Am I the only one who is disgusted by the wording? What, are prisons not full enough yet?
I guess when there are not enough criminals, we just have to make new crimes...
Perhaps a better approach would be to educate kids about the things they're likely to run into, while giving them a more solid foundation from which to evaluate it morally and ethically.
Like so much of the spew that the current US Regime continues to produce, this is clearly another case of "distract them while we slip it to them". I am actually surprised that out of the 40-some-odd posts I've read here about this resurrection of Tipper's late abortive attempt at protecting the Internet from Children, only one of them has even mentioned the real thrust of this legislation - which unsurprisingly has nothing at all to with pr0n or protection of netizens from it.
This is wrong on a number of levels, and Gonzales' attempt to exploit minors as "victims" of the Internet and its alleged pr0n is just that: Another Republicrat attempt to exploit children as a means of manipulating their parents.
Furthermore, fuck Gonzales and his repeated and ongoing assertions that use of the Internet is de facto evidence of some "criminal activity". He is at the heart of what is arguably the most criminal Regime ever to control the US - the crimes of his mentors in this administration start with treason and continue down thru spousal abuse and criminal malfeasance. How can it not be obvious that this pathetic smokescreen is simply backing for his attempts to force ISPs to aid in government efforts to regulate and control political Speech?
A headline has been running for several days now concerning Yahoo's apparent liability in the imprisonment of a Chinese national for political speech in China. How much longer before we see reports that ATT, Google, Yahoo, or MSN have supplied information leading to the political imprisonment of US citizens? Careful, that's a trick question - if that Chinese fellow had been in the US, he would have been labelled a terrorist, and there would have been no reports, since there is no longer any requirement that the govt announce the fact once they have imprisoned a citizen for this new class of "crimes"....
"You might be gang-related...""The Internet is made of cats."
Imagine you have a study of solicitations per 100 children. Those 100 children report 20 solicitations. That's 1 in 5 right?
Wrong. Why? Because that could be 1 child that frequents certain sites of ill-repute and getting 20 solicitations. That's 1 in 100, not the aforementioned 1 in 5. While I don't think it's that low, I don't think it's that high.
Odd how a story about porn reveals the perverse nature of statistics.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.