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Challenging the Child Online Protection Act
narramissic writes, "Today in Philadelphia a federal trial got underway that will decide whether COPA is constitutional. The outcome will determine whether operators of Web sites can be held accountable for failing to block children's access to inappropriate materials. An article on ITworld outlines the arguments of the foes in the battle: the DOJ and the ACLU. If I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on the ACLU. Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge." Two courts have found COPA unconstitutional and the Supreme Court has upheld the ban on its enforcement, while asking a lower court to examine whether technological measures such as filtering could be as effective as the law in shielding children; thus this trial. The article does not mention that it was the DOJ's preparation for the trial that was behind its earlier request that search companies turn over their records — a request that only Google refused.
Comment 1: Think of the children
Comment 2: It's the parents job to police their kids
Comment 3: Parents can't police all the time
Just call this a meta-post so that we can get the generic comments out of the way.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The COPA is a big pain in the ass for web site operators that makes unreasonable (and completly unbenificial) demands form us. The sooner this is struck down, the better.
This, even if enforced, will not protect children from themselves, or the unscrupulous... it will, however, give polititians someone to roast on an open fire to make them look good in election years.... This should be the VFMA (vote for me act) as that is how it will be used, like many other bad laws in the US
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
...to the congressional page program?
Any child who wants to get around these screenings can, unless a credit card is required, and some kids have cards anyway, or use their parents. This law just makes a headache for programmers and people who have to prove their innocence to not being a child.
That's not a bad bet given the previous rulings, but picking the odds of a court's decision based on one's own ideas of what people "have to" do seems like a lousy way of handicapping.
From a purely technical standpoint, these 'children protection' things are total bullshit. I remember faking my age all the time before I was 13 to get around those acts.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I don't see any reference to that distinction in the Constitution.....
Comeon, do tell. Are you serious or was this just a troll. Hell the current "conservative" judges in the Supreme Court also had some problems with this. Not enough to knock it out completly, but they are being careful, knowing its not quite right.
This law sounds incredibly vague. What is inappropriate? If I have a few cuss words on my home page does that mean I have to block everybody? What about bikini pics? How about articles that some people think are inappropriate because of their religious beliefs?
How does this affect web hosting companies? We host thousands of domains and I'm sure some of them could be considered inappropriate for kids.
It's not a site owner's job to filter out people that might be offended by the content, if you don't like a site don't go there.
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children given access to the Internet by their parents?
Mod this kook down, this is a hoax. Everyone knows that Bush is going to take over this country and create the the Union of North America (UNA), not the North American Union you retard. Get the facts straight.
Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge.
Why is it that the ACLU has to fight in court to get people to understand something that should be painfully obvious? Man up people, the government is not your mommy.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"I am under 13"
"I am 13 or older."
Ok great! Now only the honest kids will be prevented from signing up to most forums. It's about as ridiculous as the "YES, I'm 18 or older" on adult pr0n sites.
It would seem as if COPA is only protecting the site operators in the event that something bad DOES happen to young childern. These kids can still get themselves into trouble if they want. I guess some people think that the fancy agreement is somehow significant (as seen in EULAs.)
from his clammy, sticky, hands!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I say we just add a filters.txt to our sites similar to robots.txt .. we then list pages that might be offsensive/adult in nature, and then make someone else responsible for filtering.
So that I can say I did due diligence using standard protocols - you failed to protect your kid or your kid circumvented the protocol.
meh
Right on message and Mac users would love it too!
If parents raise their children in a halfway decent manner, having them exposed to some awful sites will cause revulsion but not harm.
Gah, kids don't spontaneously explode if they don't wear a helmet while tricycling.
DOS: No serial number required.
95/98/SE: To cut down on casual piracy, enter this serial number.
Win2K: Since that didn't work, it might phone home unless you ask nicely that it not phone home.
XP: Since that didn't work, it won't activate until you let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't nuke existing installations.
Vista: Since that didn't work, we'll nuke any box that stops phoning.
Or if we're talking copyright - witness the evolution of the NET Act ("It's a crime if you sell it"), the DMCA ("It's a crime if you crack DRM"), and the attempt to pass something harsher (SSSCA/CBDTPA) a few years later. (Look for another attempt after the elections, and/or something to mandate DRM into the hardware specifications, as Vista takes hold in the marketplace and is once again cracked...)
COPA was designed to ensure that under-12 kids could get Myspace pages, that under-18 kids can click "I'm over 18" to see b00bies, and that (not legally required, but I've seen it on many brewery/winery/distillery pages) under-21 people can click "I'm over 21" to read about booze.
After a few years, and after enough "horror stories" have appeared in the press about how 11-year-olds are being victimized on Myspace, 15-year-olds are seeing teh b00bies, and underage drinkers are able to read about beer, legislators will have a wide selection ready-made excuses to come up with some sort of "Real ID" or single-signon system for the Intertubes.
The courts only decide whether or not something's constitutional. Until they do so, it is constitutional. When the courts strike down COPA, it will be replaced by something even worse.
Glad it's the ACLU and not the EFF, now we might actually win!
I've been wondering, why don't the adult web-masters voluntarily put something like
.xxx domains and the parents not using filtering software have only self to blame.
<META NAME="might_be_inaporopriate" CONTENT="true">
Let the net-nanny type apps handle it, and be done with it...
Its lot less painfull than moving to
I know l33t kids could get around it, but it's an offer of hand.
...for their thorough trashing of our republic, that them Dem bums we will be voting in are just as bad.
COPA was passed Dem help in congress and signed by a Dem Prez.
As always somebody's trying to blame some organizations, not parents. They're easier to sue.
But be honest, how can you check the age of kid? There's no way. Only way would be to use some kind of adult interaction. Let's say - if kid wants to register for this kind of page it needs to be done by adult. How? Simple. Bu using credit card. AFAIK it's quite popular with pr0n sites (no, I'm not registered with even one). This way companies can always put a blame on adults, effectively protecting themselves from being sued.
Of course there's a problem - less kids registered - means less income. And kids prefer their parents NOT TO KNOW what is going on with them. It's always easier to blame somebody.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
To my mind this is like putting the responsibility for controlling underage drinking in the hands of the alcohol manufactures instead of the retailers and drinking establishments. How do you make a cap on a bottle that can be opened by a 21 year old but not a 20 year old? I don't think these controls can be feasibly implemented any further away than the initial person-Internet interface. once you are past that you have no means of absolutely determining age and identity.
I want to know what is being done to protect adults FROM children. False allegations, false accusations, baiting, online deception, vandalism, slander, and the like.
I spent two years in prison for some bullshit some kid said on me, and I had to not only prove it was impossible, but had to hire a lawyer to find a technicality in the trial to say the trial was bogus. Otherwise, without having a family on the outside with a little bit of money, I would be rotting in prison today. Go ahead, tell me children don't lie about being molested. Go ahead, tell me children don't lie. Go ahead, tell me! I will look you dead in the eye and tell you how full of **** you are.
I bristle with anger whenever anybody does anything in the name of "protecting the children". These laws are being used to go on the equivalent of modern day witch hunts. Don't believe it? Wait until they come after you, and you're in front of a jury stating as plainly as possible, how what they are saying makes absolutely no sane common sense. It doesn't matter. The jury has been cherry picked jury of neo-conservative republicans. You'd get a much fairer jury if you stood outside Walmart and grabbed the first 13 people that walked in or out the door. When has any defendant ever had any say so or oversite in the picking of a jury? Answer: NEVER. Think about that. That's why America is so corrupt, its why everyone pleads out, its why you have the right to a jury trial in name only.
I think any person who wants to protect children, needs to start by granting children more basic human rights. For one thing, to be considered as citizens of the country, and not property of their parents. To be given a say so in the development and passing of the laws under which they have to live under. To have the voluntary right to opt out of schools, which have become indoctrination camps to teach people to jump when they are told.
There is no freedom in this country. You have freedom of mobility, and that's about it (and you have that anywhere). How many of the hundreds of thousands of laws on the books have you ever had any chance to vote on, ever been asked to vote on. How many of these bogus laws ever come up from review? Never. That's why there are ludicrous laws still on the book about not spitting from your donkey on the sidewalk in front of a lady during daylight hours.
These laws are passed in some place far away in a room by a select group of people and then applied nationwide to the majority, who are too busy with their own lives struggling to make ends meet to travel to find these backrooms and stand up (even though they wouldn't be let in the door).
so, is the una different from the nau like the judean people's front is different from the people's front of judea?
Why oh why can't we have a mod option for -1, Has No Contact With Reality?
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
Does the federal govt. currently hold pornographic video distributors accountable for limiting the sale (or rental) of their product to minors? If so, and if that restriction is considered to be constitutional, then I'm not sure how one can argue that COPA is not also constitutional. It just applies the same principle to businesses that distribute their product over the net instead of through a brick and mortar (or mail order) system.
With Cable TV, you have the ability to set your television set to block specific channels - thinks like Skinamax, Spice, etc. These channels aren't automatically blocked. The parent has to sit down with the remote control and program it. I don't see why the internet should be filtered for the rest of us, because parents are too lazy to look over Little Johnny's shoulder and tell him to say off the warez site with the nasty ads.
If you want the internet filtered for your kid, install and manage your own filtering software. It's the parent's responsibility to take charge of what their children are doing, viewing, etc. It's not the content provider's problem at all, particular on a medium like the internet where you have no face to face interaction (e.g. checking ID). Frankly, if you require a valid credit card, I think you'd solve the whole issue.
My objection lies with of some of the banner ads and emails, which can be really atrocious. From time to time, I get things in my Inbox that make me cringe and wish I would remove them from my brain. "Barnyard" and "hot lovin'" should NEVER appear in the same sentence. I can only imagine something like that coming to a small child....
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
I hope COPA gets shot down... no one will miss it. Really, it's just a way for site owners to transfer blame: "The stupid kid lied about his age, so there's nothing I could have done. Not my problem." Though, COPA has come in handy as an excuse to ban underage asshats from forums and the like, when you discover they're 11 and registered as 13. ;)
No child under 13 should be set loose on the internet unsupervised. In fact, the same can be said of most 14 and 15 year-olds too. And, finally, to beat a dead horse, no form of mass media (internet, video games, TV, etc) should be used as a substitute for real parenting.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
yes, that's obvious
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Just because you dislike porn doesn't mean you can tell other people whether or not they should be allowed to watch it. That's what freedom's about. You know, that thing America's founded upon but the government keeps trying to quash? Yeah, that.
Care about privacy? Read this!
Haven't we heard similar, if not the same, arguments surrounding every form of media that humanity has come up with? This stuff is great for politicians trying to promote themselves as the 'family values' candidate and for other nimrods who don't want to take responsibility for their own kids. But it is about censorship. In the 80's and 90's we had Tipper Gore and the PMRC trying to censor Heavy Metal and Gangsta Rap. And Andrea Dvorkin et al trying to ban all pr0n. I remember hearing the words "bitch" and "bastard" on that great/terrible Bruce Willis vehicle, Moonlighting, in the 80's and thinking "I can't believe they said that on TV!" Why? Is there anything inherently harmful about those words? And then there was the inevitable argument about which was worse for the kids, seeing someone get shot on the A-Team or seeing Roseanne Barr's nipples... ahh, nevermind.
Despite my beliefs, I'm not going around telling others how to raise their kids. It's none of my business. If parents and guardians fail to take responsibility for children in their care, that's none of my business either. If parents are not capable of supervising their children, the kids should probably be put in state care.
If I'm expected to take responsibilty for others kids then the first thing that needs censoring is religion. All of it. Let us rid ourselves of this poison!
Since when does Johnny Jr pay the internet bills?
or how about -1 error code 420 or -1 velocity C+20kph or -1 divbyzero or -1 SQRT-2
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
In my line of work, I see a lot of boobies, and I gotta say, those are some really nice boobies!!! All naked and hanging out in the sun... WOW!!!
(My line of work is ornithology of course)
Because it would apply to pretty much everything we say here.
I see kids online browsing porn, who's fault is that? Parent cuz they are just plain stupid. I see kids smoking crack! Who's fault is that? The Parent. Cuz they are not aware of the friends accumulated nor pick the kids up from school. If your kids smokes crack in school, sue the school. I see kids knowing how to use guns. Who's fault is that? the parent. They do not police the viewing habits or they watch shows about guns and such. The way your child behaves and interacts in society is always the parent fault and I hate my rights being revoked because the government has to step in to fix these stupid issues. If you want good kids, take away the TV, Soda POP, Sugars, make fun activities for kids and parents to enjoy and bond with. Good education. You can live in watts in Los angeles and still have good kids. Monkey see, monkey do!!!!!!
Since when does the ACLU advocate personal responsibility? If this legislation has gone so far out of whack that the ACLU can't make it someone elses responsibility it must suck.
does that mean you need protection from women?
here, i've got a wacky idea for you: why don't we prosecute child predators AND prosecute false accusations of child endangerment
just like we should prosecute rapists AND prosecute false accusations of rape
the problem is thinking that because of your experience, we should weaken the fight against child predators. or that because child predators exist, we should disregard yor tragic experience
no
we can do BOTH: fight the false accusers, and the predators, at the same time
it is a weak mind who thinks the fight against one weakens the fight against the other
it doesn't
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You think Bush would start a union? Bah...
Splitter!
He clicked on a "sketchy" site that purported to have "hints and secrets".
A nice looking bare-chested woman popped up.
There was a couple second pause... then he nonchalantly clicked the "X".
Ok, so I am not sure what he would have done had I not been looking over his shoulder, but what more could you ask for?
As long as unexplained charges don't show up on my credit card, that is what you should expect your child to do while web surfing and "inappropriate" material appears.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
My objection lies with of some of the banner ads and emails, which can be really atrocious. From time to time, I get things in my Inbox that make me cringe and wish I would remove them from my brain. "Barnyard" and "hot lovin'" should NEVER appear in the same sentence. I can only imagine something like that coming to a small child....
Some ISPs, I know mine does, offer spam filters. I've got my filter set so that any email I get from someone I don't have their addy in my addressbook goes into either a spam or a suspect folder. Only email from those in my addy book make it through to my inbox. My isp also offers a filter for children.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Among non-lawyers, the Fourteenth Amendment is easily forgotten, but it is one of the greatest of them all, right up there with amendment one. It made institutionalized racism illegal, it ensures equality, and it gives due process rights to everyone. That last one is mindnumbingly important, it is what ensures that all americans are granted the liberties that they have a right to, even though they aren't specifically spelled out in the constitution. Stuff like abortions, contraceptives, choice in secual partner, privacy, etc.
While different amendments may be used to justify privacy the First Amendment's Free Speech clause is the earliest use of an Amendment to justify privacy. There were at least two different cases in the 1800s, the first was in the early 1800s, the USSC ruled that privacy was very important for free speech, that if a person couldn't rely on privacy then they couldn't reasonably be expected to have free speech. Anonymous speech was crucial to democracy. In another case in 1892 a different USSC ruling was similar.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Look, this is trivial. All you need to do is amend the act to be called the Child On-line Protection Act For Electronic Entertainment Licensing, and remind everyone that they need to 'think of the children'. Then no politician will touch it with a 10 foot pole :)
.evom ton seod gis eht
People nowadays seem to believe that the whole world must protect them (and their children it would seem) from everything... from the criminals, from the person next door, from everything bad in the whole world.
I am so tired of hearing how the world failed to protect some idiot from their own stupidity or how the world failed to be the good partent to your child that you for some mysterious reason could not, and now somehow it's all our fault and you are totally innocent and victimized. There's an article here at least every 10 days with another sickening example of this retarded behavior.
Makes me sick. People, grow up!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It is also against the law to keep their child home, due to truancy laws.
It is not illegal to keep children at home. More and more parents are homeschooling thier children, and they can legally do this.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Not literally, of course, but to hell with them. I'm tired of this "protect the children" bullshit.
Protect the children? Let them make their own fucking itnernet.
But be honest, how can you check the age of kid? There's no way. Only way would be to use some kind of adult interaction. Let's say - if kid wants to register for this kind of page it needs to be done by adult. How? Simple. Bu using credit card. AFAIK it's quite popular with pr0n sites (no, I'm not registered with even one). This way companies can always put a blame on adults, effectively protecting themselves from being sued.
I see two problems with using credit cards, well three, for an age check:
- Children can just use a parent's credit number.
- Giving your credit card number to just anyone is like handing them your credit card, would you hand someone your credit card to do whatever they want with it?
- Children can get and some have their own credit cards.
FalconShould there be a Law?
When has any defendant ever had any say so or oversite in the picking of a jury? Answer: NEVER. Think about that. That's why America is so corrupt, its why everyone pleads out, its why you have the right to a jury trial in name only.
I don't know where you are but in most places in the US both the prosecution and the defense can have potential jurors removed from the jury during jury selection. The judge too can remove them, and many will if the person knows about Jury Nullification.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Sorry, no cigar.
IF the court declares something unconstitutional, it was ALWAYS unconstitutional. It "didn't exist". Get out of jail free, etc.
Not that it matters a whole lot. The problem is fourfold:
1) Until the court throws the law out, you have no idea whether it will.
2) Neither does the rest of the legal system. So it still goes after you. "Get out of jail free." doesn't refund your bondsman's fee, your lawyer's fee, replace your lost chunk of lifetime, reassemble the broken family, get you your job back - with back pay, replace your repossessed house and car, restore your credit rating, replace the expensive collectable guns you had to dispose of, fill in the hole in your resume, etc. It does purge the criminal record - which doesn't help you if the info is already out in hundreds of non-court databases. And even if they knew damned well this one would get thrown out you have no way to sue them. "I vas Chust Dooink my Chob!"
3) The courts normally don't even take up the issue until somebody gets convicted of violating the law in question AND there's NO other way to dispose of the case without addressing the issue. Even then it takes the Supreme Court to definitively strike a new law, and they can arbitrarily refuse to even hear it - which they usually will do unless two appellate courts disagree, and sometimes even then.
and...
4) It takes a LOT of time and work to strike a law. It takes the legislators and chief exec very little time and work to pass another like it, with slight tweaks.
And another. And another. And another dozen. And another thousand. And put riders on every "must-pass" bill, like the budget, or a use-of-force authorization, or
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
From another topic today.....
>> "Speaking as a European, I can safely say, so what? "
I see kids knowing how to use guns. Who's fault is that? the parent.
I hope kids are learning how to use guns, er firearms. I knew how to shoot and clean a rifle before I was ten. Both my best friend's dad and mine took us out target shooting. What they stressed most though was to respect firearms. I don't have any children now but if I ever do, I'll teach them to shoot as soon as I believe they are ready.
FalconShould there be a Law?
As long as it's a voluntary rating system, I'm with you. But as soon as it becomes a mandatory rating system, then I think you've crossed the line, and I'm not willing to give the folks running the rating system that much control over society, for the sake of your or anybody else's kids. Sorry. (Particularly since a mandatory rating system would never work -- what would we do, use our nuclear arsenal to threaten to annihilate countries that don't make webmasters flag exposed nipples? At best, you'd have to fracture the net and create some sort of Great Firewall to block traffic from countries that didn't want to enforce ratings, or which used different ratings systems.)
If there really are that many people who are worried about what their kids see on the internet, then I think there will be (and is, demonstratably) a market for censored access. Webmasters who wanted their sites to be accessible to people on censored connections could apply to the rating agency to be added to the whitelist, which would require basically promising that your site was free of various types of adult material. If a site did have adult material, then it would be a straightforward breach of contract civil suit (or potentially fraud). This avoids the time consuming process of having to actually inspect each site for content, which has always been the bane of whitelists. Really ultra-paranoid parents, or those with particularly emotionally sensitive or disturbed children, could choose to buy additional levels of restriction, perhaps onto to hand-inspected sites, if they wanted to protect against even the occasional fradulent submission.
The analogy to buying cable TV with all the adult channels is an apt one. Any intelligent person these days ought to know that there is a lot of porn -- and other "adult themes" -- on the internet. If you choose to get uncensored internet access (which today is all internet access), and allow your kids to use it, then you are making a determination that it's worth the risk. If it's not, just don't get internet access. It's not like it's coming into anyone's house automatically, like broadcast TV or radio; it takes a conscious effort to sign up and pay every month for a connection.
I would rather that families which children just stayed unplugged until ISPs realize that there is a market for censored internet and provide it, then try and turn everyone's internet into some sort of "family friendly zone," which it both will not and can never be; trying to make it so using heavy-handed legislative tactics can only have the effect of driving internet business out of the U.S. or perhaps fragmenting the Internet completely.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
this is slashdot...isn't that what 'redundant' is for?
OK, I could do with losing some weight, but at the mo, I have a pert pair of man-boobs.
If I run, there's a pair of bouncing boobies.
This space unintentionally left blank.
the day when a person was held responsable for their own actions?
--
proof people are stupid
http://www.darwinawards.com/
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
That group of character witnesses for the ACLU ranks right up there with the president of Hustler Magazine testifying as a character witness for Bill Clinton. They ARE the problem. They don't care what effect their material has on kids, they just want to make money off of it. I hope the DOJ can pull through on this one. ~AR
Not a week ago I heard a telling second hand of someone trying to carry their nine month old into an lingerie shop, that sold a few other adult items, and they were told they could not bring the kid in there. The reason they were told this was that if the law caught the person under 18 in there shop then there would be a fine to pay. If a physical shop owner is responsible for post a sign and keeping underage people out of their shop, then why not virtual shop owners?
MOD PARENT UP
When I said awful sites I meant just that. Sites depicting murder, blood & gore, hate speech, rape are the ones I am talking about.
Boobies are anything but awful.
The US morality police would be more outraged if a teen saw a tit on a site than if they saw neonazi propoganda on a site. What's wrong with those people.
Other addictive substances and trends have regulations. I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to get on the internet and NOT be subjected to porn.
I can regulate my children's internet usage at home, but I can't do it at school, or in public libraries.
Pornography wouldn't be what it is, if it weren't to some degree appealing to just about everyone. There are already laws that regulate the distribution of pornography in print so that it is not readily available to minors. Pornography is a tool used by pedophiles to groom children.
If it is effective in making children lower their guard with a little coaxing from someone with malicious intent, it has equally the power to abuse even the well-protected youth, who is naturally curious and yet does not have the wisdom to make sensible social choices...
Studies have shown that early promiscuity in boys and girls increases when they listen to sexually explicit lyrics in music, in which women are referred to as "bitches and hos". Pornography is this crap on steroids...
As a parent of five children, I don't pretend that I can or ever will be able to police my children's exposure to this stuff, but I won't sit idly by while it washes over them in wave after wave... as it becomes available on ipods, cellphones with vids, video on demand, personal devices, in commercials, over the web, or wherever... And with so many new devices out there, it is a fulltime job just keeping up with the nuances of it all, let alone trying to police the old stuff, as a parent, the task is more than fulltime.
I know it's noble to stand up for human rights, but exactly who is benefitted by the unmitigated distribution of porn on the internet? Do some of the objectors here have their own stake in the porn industry? Are they making money off of it? I doubt that, but it's ridiculous how often people are willing to stand up and defend it, when it's one of the prevailing propagators of spam, popups, spyware, and is a timesink for so many "productive" companies and organizations due to porn addiction.
So I hold an unpopular opinion? I'm not threatened by it. I've not even mentioned religion, yet you see fit to blame it all on religion, and assume my motivations are solely religious, but why can't someone agnostic hold out high standards of moral behavior for adults and children? Why is it so threatening to suggest that kids be allowed to remain free of pornographic predation?
I understand the arguments about freedom, but ask an addict how free they are... COPA doesn't eliminate pornography on the net, and all of you mature adults who insist on having pornography in your lives, will still have ample opportunity for it. The porn industry is not in danger of running out of money anytime soon... there are no lay offs planned for the foreseeable future... so why do you feel the need to lobby for porn?
And heck, if you didn't have as much porn, perhaps you'd be forced to actually meet a real girl (or boy)... and learn just how much better the real thing is to an image on spyware popup...
--Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Because it's a lot bloody easier to keep somebody who is underage out of a physical location:
a) You can see that the customer is underage (or appears so)
b) You can ID the customer for picture ID on the spot. It costs the customer nothing to do this, and if you don't believe the ID is real you can still kick 'em out. There's no way to tell if a credit card belongs to the online customer, and unlike a driver's license there are risks and/or charges the customer would have to assume for using it as an identifier
c) You have a physical person who can differentiate and judge whether a person be allowed in the store
If a physical shop and a virtual shop were the same thing, then there wouldn't be any virtual shops in the first place. Extremely different circumstances and conditions apply between a website and a brick'n'mortar.
It is incredibly scary to think about how true this quote is.
---FourChannel---