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Congress vs Misleading Meta Tags
Krishna Dagli writes "The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would make it a federal felony for Webmasters to use innocent words like "Barbie" or "Furby" but actually feature sexual content on their sites. Anyone who includes misleading "words" or "images" intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined, the bill says." Terrible news for the Barbie/Furbie fetishists out there, to say nothing about being completely impossible to enforce globally.
Just because it's impossible to enforce globally doesn't mean we shouldn't codify it here. That's sort of a non sequitor.
Does this imply that any porn star named Barbie has to change her name (again) before starting up a web site?
make it a federal felony for Webmasters to use innocent words ... but actually feature sexual content on their sites.
How do you define what makes a word 'innocent'? Are they going to make a list of all "innocent" words, or what?
The 163-page Child Protection and Safety Act represents the most extensive rewriting of federal laws relating to child pornography, sex offender registration and child exploitation in a decade.
Ah, I see...
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Congress, with all the problems in the world, focuses on THE most pressing problem right now - misleading meta tags.
With respectable, upright, and moral leaders like these, we will all be safe from accidentally looking at pr)n - we are saved!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
My work here is dung.
I agree with your sentiment but there are ways around the issue you describe without resorting to legislation.
For example in IE you can set an option on the Advanced tab to not search from the address bar. Or you could install NetNanny or something similar. I know these aren't perfect options but a little public education and parental responsibility seems to me to be a better place to start then passing laws like this.
Again the cries of "someone needs to think of the children" seem to drown out all common sense and parental responsibility. As long as people insist on Congress playing guardians to their children we will continue to see our rights eroded as legislation such is this is eventually used for other then the intended purpose.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
So ask your rep. to pass a law requiring a new TLD named '.xxx' and put all the porn sites there. Oh wait, they just blocked that.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
How common is it to visit a porn site when you where really looking for Barbie dolls or anything else for that matter? It's not something that has ever happened to me. The only time I see porn on the internet is if I go look for it.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
..it will become illegal for members of Congress to use misleading terms like "tubes" to describe worldwide packet-switching networks.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
...There will never be another false hyperlink goatse joke. Goodbye old gaping, your misrepresented link humour will be mourned. This law will bring the end of an era for internet humour.
to say nothing about being completely impossible to enforce globally
National sovereignty. How quaint.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Disclaimer: I am in Canada.
From the wording in the summary, this speaks to the mentality of the congresscritter. I mean, some right-wingers have this idea stuck in their head that the pr0n on the internet is there for the children, that people are trying to lure kids to the porn sites for some reason which I (nor they) cannot imagine. What benefit is there in that for anybody? It's not as if the kids have any purchasing power! Hell, it's not even as if webmasters can capture some parents income with porn!
"Daddy, will you buy me a membership to this website! It's only $2.99 for three days!"
Valacosa to congress: children are not the "target audience" for pornography!
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Good thing we pay these people insane amounts of money to come up with fluff, feel good legislation instead of dealing with the real issues ( illegal domestic spying, Iraq, privacy, ect... ).
I can't wait for november.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Anyone who includes misleading "words" or "images" intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined, the bill says.
How many porn sites try to attract minors anyway? Minors don't have credit cards.
The idea is completely ridiculous. First off, 20 years for using a misleading meta tag? Does that sound appropriate? Particular if you consider how easy it could be to do (you copy the template from some previous site for another site and forget to update the meta tags).
And who judges whether a tag is valid or not? While there may be a few that are clear cut, most will be highly ambiguous and down to some arbitrary decision process, and likely used backwards (i.e. find a site you do not like, then see if you can find some law it breaks, such as this one).
Again, it used 'think of the children' to role in crappy, unenforceable laws which steal away people freedom, and solve a non-existent problem. I have two daughters, and frequently searched various keywords such as Barbie, and never encountered any pron sites. The only, and obvious, solution to the minor problem of children accessing inappropriate content is for parents to be responsible in how their children can access the net.
Just how screwed up do you have to be to consider a nipple to be threat to a child's development?
Better to concentrate on ensuring that child can grow up in a world that has freedom of speech, a clean environment and open minds than one that views sex as somehow dirty.
Between MP3 downloads and porn sites with childrens words on it, this Internet thing is getting dangerous.
I'm going to have start committing crimes with lighter punishments, like murder and rape.
How is barbie a tough call for a site full of fake blondes with fake breasts that look 100% american?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
So, can you offer a single good reason why anyone would reasonably use "Barney" or "Barbie" or "Pokemon" as keywords for a site featuring a naked woman with semen all over her face?
What if the guy is called Barney, the woman is called Barbie, and... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
You're missing the point though. Trying to censor content based on fuzzy guidelines is not helping promote freedom. If a pornography site is number 1 in Google for the keyword Barbie, complain to Google that it's keyword matching rules are broken and get them to delist the site. Don't just get your government to go round censoring things you disagree with. Once they start on that path, where will they stop? If porn can be censored what about pro-Muslim sites using words like 'Jesus' in their keywords? Oh the horror! It must be censored too!
By the way, I'm not American so I don't really care, I'm just making some suggestions that you can choose to ignore if you wish.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
my opinion, meta tags are kinda bogus anyways.
as to enforcability, just wait til the death star comes flying along trying to enforce this thing. cause frankly, that's the kind of weapon congress would need to enforce this galactically.
is the bill intended to be good? yeah, but it's no substitute for parents actually taking an active role in their kids life. personally if i were speaking for jesus i think I'd have to say that barbie dolls are as evil as porn. do little girls need a plastic figurehead of 'beauty' and 'fashion' any more than they need access to a triple x porn site? I sick of people calling little pink boxed pieces of plastic and calling that 'good.'
now speaking for myself i'd have to say that plastic dolls are quite an ironic way to 'preserve' and 'expand' an empire of 'pretending to do good things for girls' try asking a little girl if she'd rather have a parent or family member at home, being there for them, or if they'd rather have a piece of plastic. frankly i think that for every barbie doll sold, that question needs to be asked at least once.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
First of all, what kind of a phantasy is that? Why would a porn site "trick little kids into visiting pornographic sites by using meta keywords" in the first place? Little kids don't have credit cards. Plus, I can't speak for the US, but I would guess you already have laws against showing/selling porn to kids under a certain age.
And you seem to lack imagination. There is no way to legislate this because the English language simply has too few words to express all there is to express. What if it is a site where not the model is called Barbie, but it's about a person's fantasies about Barbie. What about the keyword "Hamster"? Knitwork? Farm? And so on and so forth. Go to the usenet binary groups some time to get an idea of how broad a field human sexuality is.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I agree, everything that is annoying or offensive should be illegal.
What about using a meta tag like bush , and implying a fetish for pubic hair on an adult site?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
While using relevant and accurate META tags are good for everyone, should using inaccurate ones be illegal? Is it the job of congress to regulate how websites describe themselves?
If I wrote a classified ad of myself saying I was a 150 lb white guy when I was really a 500 lb black guy, should that be punishable by 10 years in prison?
Well, how about "sexual congress," a legitimate description of a sexual act? (As Allan Sherman once said about such phrases, "nine months after a couple engages in 'sexual union,' does the woman go into 'organized labor?'")
All kidding aside, how about legimate uses for such words in sexual sites. I remember a pair of models called the Barbie Twins about 5-10 years ago. Would webmasters not be allowed to use that just because Barbie is a toy? How about a Chippendales dancer in rip-off fatigues who markets himself as G.I. Joe?
I think if a web site uses LEGITIMATE keywords, including those of toy names, AND uses the voluntary web filtering keywords, they have a case that they are giving the people the ability to screen.
A more basic problem, one I think they were trying to solve, is the problem of misleading keywords. Why should I get a useless link farm page with ad banners when I am doing research on something completely unrelated just because the person that put up the page wants more banner downloads?
Of course, if you outlaw misleading keywords, people will work around the rules to achieve the same end goals.
The only thing this legislation does is give politicians a way of saying "Look! I'm being proactive about this!" (when they are being stupidly reactive in truth... isn't that misleading as well? Can we outlaw misleading political statements???)
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I don't know what slays me more, that the same dimwits who think the internet is made of tubes are legislating meta tags, or that these morons believe there are a bunch of deviants on the web trying to give porn to children. These idiots wouldn't know a meta tag if one bit them in the ass.
Porn didn't become a multi-billion dollar industry by marketing to people without the means to pay for it. This legislation "for the children" is nothing more than trying to stave off the ultra right wing fundamentalist wackos that aren't bright enough to realize their kids won't be protected by this at all. These are the same nutjobs who protest at movies they could totally prevent their kids from watching just by being good parents. If you don't want your kid watching porn buy a porn filter. Otherwise your kid will find porn. Christian fundamentalists have huge sexual hang-ups and make things like porn so taboo how could kids not be drawn to it? Tell a kid not to look at something fervently enough and eventually he will look just to see what the fuss is about.
I guess it is better they pass a bill that essentially does nothing instead of completely pandering to whack job hatemongers like Pat Robertson. Imagine if someone like him were in power. Anyone not in church on Sunday would be labeled a perverted homosexual Baby Jesus hater and put on the NSA watch list.
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Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
Who uses the meta-tags? I know that I don't when I surf.
I recently became the legal guardian of my 11 year old half brother. This has meant that I had to put my money where my mouth is on certain issues.
I agree that it sucks that a small child can search for a site innocently and end up at a hardcore porn site. I don't however think that the legal attack vector will work or that putting in place Net Nanny style software is the answer.
The answer is simple, it's to be a good parent. That involves a combination of education (a cyber version of the "do not talk to strangers" conversation) and supervision (I monitor what sites my brother visits, not some software).
I used to preach about poor parenting being the root of all evil and since I became a parent my opinions have not changed... the people who complain about their children being vulnerable online are only blaming technology for their own bad parenting and there is no danger in the cyber world which has not been around for ages in the real world and the same steps to keep your kids safe apply in both worlds.
I would not let my brother have unsupervised access to the internet at age 11 any more than I would leave him alone in Soho after dark.
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I've seen published claims that exposing children to sex (and things related to sex - at least in some minds -- porn, nudity in the home, seeing their parents have sex, hearing people talk about sex, reading about sex...) is invariably harmful. I always wonder about such claims - is the research funded by people with an agenda? is the research specific to the US where it may not be the sexual exposure itself that is harmful, but rather the response of society to children who know things that the puritans don't want them to know.
Just how perverted and sex obsessed the US and thus how seriously sex information in the hands of children is taken, can be deduced from all the instances of families being harrassed for having pictures of their kids nude in the bath, or skinnydipping. Or the fact that going to a nude beach, or even appearing in public with an erection can (potentially) lead to a man (but rarely a woman) being stigmatized for life by being convicted as a "sex offender".
Personally, I think that making sex and the human body (all parts of it) more accepted and acceptable would help to alleviate many problems in American society.
I still don't understand how using the analogy of "tubes" is any different than the analogy of "pipes" which has been used for 40 years to describe abstract data streams from one point to another. The senator didn't know what he was talking about, but it is true that there are FIFO queues involved in the routing process, and that net congestion (especially that caused by spam) can be a serious issue, for some folks at least. The guy may be a crotchedy old moron, but what the hell is wrong with saying "tubes"?
Regardless of the product being sold (shaving cream, butter, cars, liquor, beer, computers, clothing, soft drinks, food, etc), the advertisement will almost invariably have a sexual element to it. Why? Because sex sells products. The advertisers know this, we know this - because it works (unless you're a bastard like me who simply buys whatever is cheapest or works best, regardless of adverts). The actors and actresses involved in making those advertisements are typically young and sexy. Even if they aren't young, they tend to be sexy and good looking.
Ultimately it comes down to "buy our product and you will be sexy and/or get this guy/girl".
But woe be it to those who actually try to act on the feelings these advertisements tease (litterally) out of us. Sure, that girl may be sexy, but if you dare look for too long at a girl on the street who IS sexy, you are a pervert. If you are female and do the same, you a slut or whore. If you discuss sex, want sex, get sex, do sex, act sexy, are sexy - you are labeled "bad" - but buy our products anyhow, please?
Sex=Bad, Sex=Product=Good, cognitive dissonance reigns supreme...
All of this is shown to our children, and they make the connections, and see the illogic of it, and those who have children can't explain it to their kids because they would have to explain sex, and Sex=Bad, remember? These commercials and advertisements, that our children can see and understand (magazine covers, radio ads, department store flyers, commercials on TV, even shows targetting children it sometimes seems, because parents inevitably watch them, too) - they all have a sexual element to them, to sell the product.
The adverts say "sex is good, consume our products, sex is good", while society and parents scream about "SEX IS BAAAAD - THINK ABOUT THE CHIIIIIILLLLLLDDDDDRRRRRREEEENNNN!!!!"
Meanwhile pornography in the US is one of the growth industries during a recession (like it has never been a growth industry, no pun intended). But remember - Sex=Bad, but Sex=Product=Good (hmm, maybe this is why porn is consumed here in the US, because it is the ultimate expression of Sex as a Product?)...
Our children see all of this, take all of this in, and we punish them for exhibiting any sexual urges, though it is undeniable that they are or ultimately will become sexual beings. The cognitive dissonance, the view of the hypocrisy, without the understanding of its existence (not to mention the why or how of it - I understand its existence, but I can't even honestly answer the why or how, and any answer I could give probably isn't half the story) - is it any wonder our children are confused?
Is it any wonder the adults are, too...? Pass the soma, please...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon