Slashdot Mirror
Thailand Bans Teen Info On the Net
Reservoir Hill writes "Internet providers in Thailand have been prohibited from disclosing personal data about anyone under the age of 18 in a way that would allow others to gain access to them — including disclosure of their age, gender, phone number, email address, chat logon name, photo, or name of their school. Violators will face six months in jail of and a fine of $1,900. Web sites have been given one month to come into compliance." The article isn't clear on whether or not the prohibition applies to foreign sites that carry information about Thai kids.
Sorry, couldn't help it, I'm a programmer. What they need to do to encourage kids to not find ways around this is design the filter so when it senses under 18 related form data leaving the computer, it re-routes the kid to another page with a flash file of Michael Jackson saying "You're an idiot!" and kissing the screen. Now that would send em a message.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
hay boyz! lol come over to my house i have a sister too Profile for hotgirl8989 Name: Chrisy Hansen State: NY Address: 30 Rockefeller Plz
Yes, it is a form of free speech. However, freedom is not absolute. We commonly recognize that you cannot yell fire in a theater, use certain "fighting words", or perjure yourself, all acts of free speech that we consider unreasonable. Many people (although not many people on slashdot) believe that freedom of speech can be limited by intellectual property laws. So, the interesting question is not whether it is an act of free speech, but whether whether it is justified or not to restrict it. And censorship is the word used to describe an unjustified restriction on free speech. I think in this case there are sufficent societal benefits for the restriction, but reasonable people can disagree.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
"informational self-determation" - a term coined by the german federal constitutional court - is not censorship. it means that you can decide which informations about yourself is given to other entities. the "right to privacy" is actually a subset of informational self-determination.
of course, the government isn't you and therefore should not decide which information can be (or cannot be) out there.
Is it really a surprise, when you look at who the people are that draft these laws? Is it fair of us to expect them to be in touch? Perhaps what democratic governments need is a non-political, not-for-profit group that can propose some framework for national government tech policy? They could even propose different flavours for governments with either progressive or conservative agendas. At least then we may have some body of tech legislature that is based on informed analysis of what is being regulated. Easy to say, I guess...
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
...in case my meaning wasn't clear, "all websites" means all Thai websites, presumably including those sites that publish user-submitted data (i.e. social networking sites?), for some definition of "Thai website".
So the interesting questions I can think of are: is this retroactive to information already published, such that a site might have to verify the ages of existing users? Is the site responsible moderating content and users before potentially publishing personal info, or only remove things that they later find are personal info posted by minors? And will these sites be able to comply within a month?
In many countries people under the age of 18 can have student loans, drive cars, drink, have sex, but now we won't let them put their contact information on the net? Teenagers are people too, and they should have the right to make contact with whomever they choose.
Governments shouldn't muscle in as parents. If you want to reduce the abuse of minors via the Internet educate parents to help them understand the risks, and educate teens to help them understand the risks and how to avoid them. Show them some episodes of Dateline: To Catch A Preditor. Warn them about the lack of privacy on social networking sites and how easy it is to locate someone based on some simple searches. Run a mandatory 4 week annual course for all high schoolers with updated materials reflecting current threats.
Help people understand what they're getting into, but don't start censoring them.
If there is one thing you should understand about tech-literate teenagers, it is that they will find a way if they want to. It's better to educate and let them protect themselves than to try and protect them all with laws like this.
I can't see any reason for kids to be giving out their contact details online. if you can justify them giving out phone numbers and address's i'll concede it's a bad ideaa...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
people are just too fucking stupid to be told at times
Yes, some people are. And the problem of teen predators will never go away no matter what we do.
Now, do we:
A) Educate people, have a population that largely understands privacy risks, and still have teen predators, or,
B) Put this law into place, have a population that expects their Government to look after all their privacy concerns, and still have teen predators?
Predators aren't going away any time soon. On the other hand, the rights of the people all around the world appear to be.
My little sister listed her age on Myspace as 17 when she was 14. Need I say more? After seeing that, I'm all for this legislation. I'd even like to see the children themselves held responsible: they don't seem to be held accountable for their own actions at all these days.
God I feel old saying that. I'm only 30, I swear!
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The Internet censorship in Thailand is back in full force too, and all this happened right after Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia criticized the Thai government for Internet censorship during his keynote speech at the ICT Expo in Thailand earlier this month.
Then let the people who are too fucking stupid to learn these things get what's coming to them. It's called natural selection, and it is AWESOME. If you're too fucking stupid to survive, you don't, and you (hopefully) don't make stupid babies.
Parts of Thailand's economy is fairly reliant on Western (Primarily Australian and European) and Asian tourist dollars. The tourist industry is eager to get rid of the paedophile stigmata which mostly seems to come from North America these days, as I said earlier Thailand is a popular tourist destination for families, couples and singles alike in Australia mainly due to the fact that a two week holiday in Thailand is cheaper than most one week holidays in Australia.
Having recently been to Phuket I can say that the place family friendly, well most of it. The sex industry is based around the town of Patong (most of the family resorts are in Kata and Karon) more specifically Bangla Road. There are also several pre-existing laws to discourage paedophiles, for example the minimum legal age to work in bars is 20 (the legal drinking age is also 20 so under-age girls cant get into nightclubs to solicit). I wouldn't be surprised if their tourist industry had a hand in this, Thai's are not over-reactionary "think of the children" type people, they are a kind, easy going people who are very difficult to offend due to a majority Buddhist population, heck even the Thai Muslims are difficult to offend (losing your temper is considered a sign of a poor upbringing in Thailand so it is very rarely that a Thai will lose their temper) so US style "think of the children" scare politics very rarely work.
The regular tourist industry is Thailand's main import, although there is still a large sex industry which does attract a lot of single western (as well as Asian) men (when I was there the majority of western men were under 40). If you walk around during the day, even down bangla road you wont find many sex workers, just restaurants, shops and stalls only a few bars are open and these only cater to those who are looking for a drink.
From personal experience I can tell you that it is fairly difficult for a westerner (farang) to judge a Thai girls age and this tends to go in both directions, some Thai's who look 20 may only be 16 but a lot of Thai's who look about 20-22 will be 26-28.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
this argumentation is doomed to fail, an arbitrary limit for maturity is stupid. actually, i know a sizeable number of people who would not fit into this scheme - for example, roughly a third of my former classmates.
... why are people allowed to vote even if they don't know shit about the voting system ? clearly, this has something to do with abuse of power - maybe you could cut that out if this kind of knowledge would be teached free of cost and you could apply for the "voting maturity" test an infinite amount of times.
== first, sexual maturity ==
i know girls who were sexual before being 12 (even before having their period). not all of them fully knew what they were doing - to hear "you can always put it out" from a slightly stupid girl is probably a huge turn-off for a young boy with some knowledge in biology - but they were able to articulate their sexual needs and act upon them, so they clearly were sexual mature.
a solution would be more sex ed. really, on what grounds should one forbid two persons who know what they are doing some act, if it is consentual? non-consentual sex is already prohibited (rape, anyone ?). also, teen pregnancy is no argument with proper sex-ed (sorry, radical christfags).
== second, intellectual maturity ==
i went to a boarding school for "gifted" pupils, so i know quite a number of people who are seen (and see themselves) as "brighter" than the average person. we had to take a test at eigth grade to get there. after some time i came to the conclusion that you usually cannot compare "real-world" intellect at all. nearly all of them were somehow good at tests, yet many lacked "real world" skills and could not solve unusual problems (the real world is not your textbook example) due to lack of imagination.
on the other side, i know people who can keep up with daily tasks, are definitely not mentally retarded, but just stupid and / or disinterested. my little brother, for example, killed the microwave due to profound lack of skill and didn't even notice it due to watching TV. when my little sister (5 years old at that incident) woke everyone up (smoke + sleeping people => bad) we headed for the garden. my sister wanted to know why that happened, my brother didn't want to know.
wait, my brother is 16 years old. my sister was 5 and could recall the outlines of "how a microwave works" half a year later (in before shitty explaination). to top that, there is this "gifted" girl i know, nearly the same age as my brother, but indefinitely more intelligent and also, wise - she probably was smarter than him when she was 15. should he have more rights based on age? hint: my brother did apparently not become more intelligent or knowledgeable in the last two years and probably never will.
a solution to this problem could be mandatory tests for everyone to get certain "dangerous" rights. nearly every country has this for driving a car - you must proove you understood the rules, regardless of age. so
here in Germany, we have the "Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung" (translate as something like "federal central for political education"), which has the job to teach citizens on how the state works (it certainly isn't government propaganda) - you can order the German Constitution and many informational texts on local and global political issues at low cost (like shipping only), for example. in my opinion, every citizen should know how stuff works(TM); is imperative for a society with the goal of its citizens being free individuals.
== third, emotional maturity ==
this is by far the easiest to answer. i know people who were emotionally stable in a very young age. also i know people who are absolutely not stable. when i talked to emotionally unstable persons, many of them (6 or so), cried at
From when I was only 14 years old I was maintaining my own websites, including e-commerce sites, I was developing my own shareware games and I was promoting them, I was also maintaining forums and mailing lists, and I was also publishing/selling articles and short scifi stories to magazines (and I was also trying to publish my scifi in book form by approaching publishers, but I failed in this, because publishers did not believe in teenage authors). Giving out some contact info, carefully, was required.