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Child Online Protection Act Appeal Rejected
TarrVetus writes "The Associated Press reports that a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has ruled that the Child Online Protection Act will not be revived, upholding a 2007 decision that the unimplemented 1998 law is unconstitutional. The law, which made it a crime for websites to allow children access to 'harmful' material, was declared a violation of the First Amendment because of existing elective filtering technologies and parental controls that are less restrictive to free speech than the 'ineffective' and 'overly broad' ban."
In other news all Philadelphia residents have been put on the Sex Offender list.
This law is 11 years old and it's still squirming through the courts. For all those that say that free speech is protected by the constitution and that certain branches will do away with unconstitutional laws: here is an example of how long you can potentially have laws affecting you while you're fighting it in court.
Of course this law is unimplemented but several other laws like DMCA and Patriot Act ARE implemented and unconstitutional. It takes longer than a 2 term presidency to do away with a dead law, how long do you think it would take to repeal a law that has been in use?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
To be clear, this has nothing to do with child porn. This is a law intended to prevent children from accessing porn.
> "If this law had gone into effect, it would have resulted into dumbing down of the Internet," said Chris Hansen, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Whoa whoa whoa, since when has Chris Hansen become is a pro-pedo lawyer?
Most porn sites nowadays have intro pages that ask the user to confirm if he/she is over 18. Would eliminating this law mean that those sites are no longer required to have these intro pages?
(Also, do not confuse this law with COPPA, which is the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, which is enforced [and is constitutional] to prevent children under 13 from posting their personal information online.)
How many times did you have to read this summary before you understood the current state of the law?
Think Deeply.
I'd be more apt to believe that if the judge had struck it down on the principle that parents need to protect their kids rather than the world needs to make itself kid-friendly in all ways. An extended investigation to it and then turning it down because it would be poorly implemented and ineffective on top of all that is a win I guess, but it's not the resounding "this is flawed and stupid on a fundamental level, cannot be made to work, and shall never come to pass in any form" I would have hoped for. As it is, the "other side" will simply go back to work, maybe making exceptions, but will bring it back in a few years.
Edit: it is nice of course that the judge acknowledged it was a stupid idea to "chip away at the first amendment." And I realize of course the type of ban I am wanting, the judge saying nothing of the type will ever be passed in any form, is not within the judge's powers.
Basically I'm whining about it not being perfect, which is itself a fundamentally flawed idea that will never come to pass.
I'll believe the government can do that when they can prove they can keep:
1) My social security number
2) My finacial information
3) Any other personal identifiable information
safe (well you know what) just in their own systems much less the internet as a whole. If it isn't technically feasible to protect me from people that are actively looking to ruin my entire life, then they don't have a shot at keeping my kids "safe" from whatever might possibly someday have a potentially negative effect on them in some way.
take that aussies!
if only the *parents* out there shared a similar view...
Now, most parents do indeed want to keep kids away from it, yet they willingly turn over the keys (computer) and let kids drive the Indy 500 (internet). They just can't be bothered to actually administer and moderate what their kids are doing.
Yes yes people are busy, but if you're that busy, why did you have kids in the first place? I don't want my access to whatever material I see as reasonable restricted simply because someone else refuses to take their own responsibility.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
A law intended to prevent children from masturbating to child porn, that is.
The trick lies in blocking adult entertainment from children while making sure it's delivery is unhindered to the adults who are legally allowed to view it.
Furthermore, you have to be sure to seperate adult entertainment from sites talking about, say, breast cancer, that kids may need for research projects in high school.
So, while I'd wager many share your view, many of us here have to come to the realization that a comprehensive solution is too unwieldly to even imagine.
This is where parental supervision comes into play, and often where the kick falls short.
Two things: first, this is a parental issue, not a government issue. Parents should be instructing their children to close any browser window that has pornography in it; second, and this is somewhat based on the first, is that teenagers going through puberty are not going to be harmed by viewing pornography (it is debatable whether or not prepubescent children would be). It is a matter of maturity, and again, only the parents can really judge whether or not their kid is mature enough to view "mature content." If a 15 year old is looking at pornography that they downloaded over the Internet, what is the problem? This material is only of interest to sexually mature people, and teenagers generally fall into that category.
Palm trees and 8
Why?
If it is covered by free speech, I don't see how you can say "you must be *this* old to use free speech". Is porn harmful to people under 18? Even if they are legally allowed to have sex?
Why not violent material?
Absolutely, that is where this kind of oversight belongs.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Then maybe those "adults" with children should raise and monitor them themselves. Your kid is not my problem, put your own damned net filters on, or cut the cable, but leave MY Internet alone.
"Now, most parents do indeed want to keep kids away from it, yet they willingly turn over the keys (computer) and let kids drive the Indy 500 (internet). They just can't be bothered to actually administer and moderate what their kids are doing."
How do you monitor what your children do online? That is the equivalent of trying to keep track of everyone that your children associate with, everywhere that they go with their friends, everything that they say, etc. It is just not possible to do that, and it never was.
Palm trees and 8
I'm glad this happened.
Allow me to be blatantly honest. I think kids should have the right to explore their sexuality in a safe manner online. I know I did.
Why is "adult entertainment" so exclusive anyway? You know, they could have extremely tame erotic websites to cater to kids who are interested. Probably like softcore Playboy pics or something.
it is very easy, vey lazy, and very dumb to ape the usual cynical comments about our government (speaking as an american). but one of the bedrock principles of our government is checks and balances: if one branch gets out of line, another branch puts it back in its place. here, the legislative branch passed a law which abrogates freedom of expression. the judicial branch comes in, and squashes it. so celebrate, goddamn it, the system works
it is not useful for anyone to find that the system failed when it passed this law in the first place. people are weak, they make dumb mistakes. obviously, this law was an idiotic mistake. and it won't be the last idiotic law that is passed. but laws bet blocked, and overturned. please make note of that. there is a filter in place
of course, the diehards will find SOME way to complain about something. their first stop, of course, will be to list the familiar abuses of the bush administration... the bush administration that is now dead. the usual talking points and familiar executive branch excesses are history. move on, please find something new to whine and bitch and moan about
the biggest check of all, the biggest filter of all, the american people, just closed the chapter on that administration. of course i don't expect some of you to actually cheer when something good happens. for some of you, you seem congenitally incapable of doing that
whining and bitching and moaning. if that's all you can do, you've failed, not your government
so celebrate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And yours didn't question you reading Playboy at 9 years old?
My parents restricted the hours I watched TV and kept tabs on what I watched. They took an interest in what I did and with whom I did it. Reading was things that they provided or I asked for (and they approved before I got).
Is that really so hard to comprehend? It's called childhood, your parents are responsible for you (and liable to a pretty wide degree).
Indeed many things can happen outside of a parents view, but the stuff that's inside their OWN HOUSE, they have to own up to responsibility for.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Whoosh.
For those who also do not feel the gust of air from the joke flying over your head, let me google it for you.
Are you joking? Parents are HORRIBLE at judging when their kids are mature. If it was down to parents a whole lot of kids should not even know sex exists until they are 30. Now start to consider what happens to gay children born in a religious families, parents that refuse to have their kid vaccinated... etc... Yes, governments are bad at this, but there's A LOT of crap parents around as well (have a guess who it was that pressured government into creating all these laws in the first place ).
I hope you're joking. Have you seen the state of the world today? It's a shambles! The economy is collapsing, and I think we all know the reason. Every single one of our children sees naked female breasts from the very day they're born. This has to stop, and it has to stop now: the children are our future, and if we don't protect them from the naked horrors of pornography, who will?
I would rather you did it as well. I would rather we not leave it up to the government.
It's your job to be a parent to your children, not the government's.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Gotta tell you, a lot of porn sites have chat nowadays, or at least the most fun ones do, and I don't want my kids being on those sites talking with a bunch of degenerates.
Softcore porn for kids is (I can't believe I'm saying this) probably not that bad of an idea, considering that almost everyone has gotten their chafed little hands on a Victoria's Secret catalog somewhere along the way, but the nature of internet porn is that every site attempts to link you deeper into dirtier and more proprietary material to get you to look at their ads and pay for their content. Slippery slope for all with sleds.
Now, chatrooms for kids to talk to each other? Fine. Maybe this would mean a large-scale endorsement of OLPC, for all the wrong reasons?
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
To be clear, this has nothing to do with child porn. This is a law intended to distract the public from real issues and generate new revenue streams for politicians and their allies
there, fixed that for you.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
I'd imagine Its sort of like monitoring what they watch.
- Set them up on a restricted account (on whatever OS you use), so that they CAN'T change things/install things without your approval. That might mean that you need a different
computer for YOUR use, vs. the "whole families use".
- Add a password, don't tell them what it is. If they want to use the computer, then an "adult" needs to be monitoring their usage. Yes, you might sometimes just unlock it and let them play on site X, but if they want to get on-line, you have to know they are there. Check in from time to time at random and see how its coming. Maybe spend some time playing their games with them, or just watching.
- Install "parental control" software (yes, its not 100% effective, but its at least a step up).
Talk to your children and let them know about the "dangers" to both themselves and their computer of going to random web sites, "accepting digital candy/files from strangers", etc.
Realize that at the point they can bypass all of your "controls" to look at pornography, they are doing the equivalent of you sneaking into your fathers drawer of Playboys (albeit quite a bit more graphic)
Alternatively, perhaps one idea is to make a drawer of playboys something that they can "sneak into" so they have less initial dive to get at the hard-core stuff?
At a certain point they will be old enough that it just won't matter, part of that is their age, and part of that is how you raise them (and who their school friends are).
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I'm glad you pointed this out -- I've been starting to wonder about the /. crowd after the debates over the last few weeks.
"Child porn is wrong, think of the children!!" But shouldn't it be "Child porn is wrong, DON'T think of the children!!"? Why are there so many articles about it?
Even ignoring that that's part of what you accept as your role when you have a child, there are a hundred internet censorship programs out there that work pretty effectively. It's not that difficult to install them, hell to even just install them for one user. And setting up different user profiles on a computer, with passwords, is one of the easiest things to do. When it comes to TV, just tell them when their bed time is or when they can't watch TV. Sure, they might anyways, though thousands of kids watch 'inappropriate TV' and come out just fine. But, more importantly than any of that, the parents need to teach their kids the concept of a moral compass. More important than blocking what they see is teaching them how to UNDERSTAND what they see, teaching them right from wrong. If a kid knows right from wrong, it's safe to assume he'll turn out fine even if he runs across hundreds of horrible sites advocating nasty things like racism or religious extremism. Encourage open discourse. Finally, know your own damn kid. Know if he's impressionable and needs some extra help understanding things or just blocking things that would be far beyond him just yet, or know when he's responsible enough to handle himself and let him deal with more mature things. Many parents have done it for years, decades, perhaps even centuries. Why do we have such difficulty with it?
I, for one, would love some help in blocking stuff for my son. I put on controls and try my best to keep him from being dragged into that stuff at a young age, but it is disturbing how much comes through even the tools we have.
I would love it if the porn sites simply said that their money comes from adults and they have no business luring children into it (like smoking companies) and voluntarily made more protection for our kids to help make my parenting that much easier. I know this is wishful thinking, but at some point, freedom of speech is taking to a point of hurting our society and not helping.
We are not actually able to say anything we want whenever we want. Example, try going into a theater and yelling, "Fire!" over and over. You might go to jail and if someone is hurt, you'll be sued and rightly so. You abused your freedom of speech to hurt someone. There is no doubt that porn hurts people.
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If you think parents are horrible, try government. They don't know how to tie their own shoelaces without hiring a consulting firm for $1,000,000 to study the idea first. If you are looking to government to be a watchdog for your children, then, well, all I can say is that you are clueless.
If the courts worked, we wouldn't have decisions like Wickard v. Filburn, Hiibel v. 6th, Herring v. US, etc. It seems like every other month the SCOTUS is shitting on the constitution in one way or another.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Logs on the default gateway. Maybe have a whitelist of sites.
Better to learn from other people's mistakes (or experiences). I'm pretty sure the Planned Ignorance crowd is motivated by a desire to propogate their genetic line at all costs, rather than any real concern for their immediate offsprings.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
a physics professor, in fact, who happens to be a friend of mine, puts it this way:
"They correlate marijuana use with other drugs, and say '70% of hard drug users started with marijuana.' But they are missing something: they ALL started on milk!"
There's an old adage in science and statistics which seems to fit with your claim. Correlation does not imply causation. The only way that one could determine whether porn makes rapists more likely would be to provide a meaningful, methodologically sound definition of "pornography addiction" and statistics on the number of people overall that could be classified in such a way. Otherwise, you might as well say "Milk creates rapists, because most rapists drink milk".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I got my first modem in 1987, and it wasn't too long after that when I downloaded some naked photos. My mom probably would have freaked-out but I don't see how I was harmed in any way.
I don't really see why kids need to be filtered. We tell them about the disgusting habit of taking a ____, or how to properly clean their ____, so surely we can share with them reproduction. We need to teach them eventually, and now is as good a time as any.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Parents are HORRIBLE at judging when their kids are mature.
Bad parents, which is the type you're ranting about. The good ones are pretty good judges of their kid's emotional health and tend to be on base with what their kid(s) should be exposed to (and what they are). There's also a major difference between not wanting a kid to do something and pretending it doesn't exist, and good parents tend to be the type that knows the line: they may believe in abstinence, but they'll make sure their kid has the knowledge he or she needs to navigate his or her environment. I know plenty of religious families, and the kids learn about sex when they're ready for it (or even before they really understand it-which is incredibly funny but also hits home that a kid maybe old enough to have sex but not ready for it).
open source modern art: laser taggi
If it is covered by free speech, I don't see how you can say "you must be *this* old to use free speech". Is porn harmful to people under 18? Even if they are legally allowed to have sex?
Many parents believe it to be. That's why it's a matter for parental control. So long as it remains strictly a matter for parents to decide, it doesn't really matter if it turns out not to be harmful. Certainly, for younger kids it opens a lot of questions they are not prepared to understand the answers to.
Why not violent material?
That's a very good question! I don't know the answer.
Pendant point, but sex is instinctual. If a girl and a boy were left on an island and they learned to survive but were not taught anything about sex they will eventually "figure out" how to have sex so to speak if they were attracted to each other; clumsily I might add.
The problem with your suggestion is that it requires parents to WORK at filtering their child's content, and most parents have been trained by the government school system that working is not necessary. You can be lazy, just "skirt" the minimum requirements, and still get a diploma.
They continue that habit as 20-something parents.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
You could try raising them properly, instilling proper values, ensuring there are open lines of communication; you know, try parenting. As for specifically how to stop them from surfing porn on the internet, take the computer out of their room and put it in the living room (or whatever room you habitually hang out in). And make sure the screen is facing out into the room. That way if the little bugger is surfing porn, you can enjoy it too ;)
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
There are effects and you can find them in lots of research on the net if you took the time to look. Just look up the percentage of convicted rapist that are addicted to porn.
That a convicted rapist is addicted to porn says nothing as to whether or not the porn caused that person to become a rapist.
There are 3 possibilities here:
a) Porn makes one more likely to become a rapist.
b) Being a rapist makes one more likely to watch porn.
c) The two have no real correlation and it's coincidence.
You're automatically assuming that your statistic implies option A, but I'd personally be far quicker to assume option B, and they're not the same thing.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That's a good point. I tip my porno to you, good sir.
Are you sure they aren't prepared to understand that?
Is exposing kids to things they "are not prepared to understand the answers to" harmful? We are going to have to censor calculus websites now?
This is one of those things where repeating it often enough makes it true. Show me a study that shows that exposing kids to nudity or porn is harmful.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
^Logs on the router is typically a good way to go, if you don't tell them what the router password is. Maybe Wireshark and a hub would work? You could leave their computer clean, but still snoop on them...
Or you could state some expectations and show a bit of trust in the relationship.
>>>seperate adult entertainment from sites talking about, say, breast cancer, that kids may need for research projects in high school.
If they are that old, there's no reason to censor it. They are their peers are already discussing sex - possibly even practicing it (oral is popular these days). Remove the filters so these young adults can gain access to accurate information ("yes you CAN get pregnant the first time"), instead of being fed bunk through the in-school rumor mill.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Porn "addiction" (like gambling "addiction") isn't an addiction. It's a COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR.
A real addictive substance causes actual measurable, physiological changes in the body - chemical dependency - and the addict suffers from withdrawal symptoms.
Compulsive behavior, on the other hand, is a purely mental issue: there are no physiological effects and no withdrawal sickness. ANYTHING can become a compulsive behavior if your brain is wired up that way. The object of the compulsion has no causative effect. A person prone to compulsive behavior is going to latch onto anything they find pleasurable -- regardless of whether it is sex, food, shopping, exercise, gambling, religion -- and pursue that one thing to the exclusion of everything else in life.
12 step programs basically don't cure the underlying compulsive tendencies, they just redirect a self-destructive compulsion to something else that is more socially acceptable and less harmful.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Filtering software.
Got any recommendations for good Open source (read: free) filtering software that parents can install on their kids PCs or laptops?
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
You put the computer in a public room of the house, not in their bedroom. That will stop most instances of the problem.
You can also follow the easy step by step directions available from Microsoft to setup user accounts so your kids are limited in what they view.
Better yet you can look into content filtering (just like you looked into what to feed your toddler/infant) and do something simple like OpenDNS or Content Watch or Net Nanny and not have to worry about it 99% of the time.
In short: Be A Parent. Get Involved. Do what you did when you first had your kid and were freaking out that you didn't know anything about raising a kid. Your job isn't done until they are moved out, and even then your kids need you (even if they never talk to you and generally don't visit on the holidays).
There is a very real problem of people not being responsible anymore. Just two generations ago this kind of apathy would of been outrageous. Now its the status quo.
You point out one instance of the system working -- just barely -- and say that it is proof that the system works.
Sometimes.
I agree with the above posters, and will go further: (1) 11 years constitutes an effective failure. (2) The Executive branch has (almost quite literally) gotten away with murder during this past administration, with very little help coming from either the Legislative or Judicial. (3) In order for individuals to challenge the constitutionality of a law, they must show that (a) they were personally affected by the law, and (b) actual, rather than theoretical, harm. This is a disastrous flaw in the system, which has contributed to the excessive amount of time it has often taken to repeal unconstitutional laws. And finally (4) if you think all unconstitutional laws and regulations created by the Legislative and Executive were "mistakes", then you are very much mistaken.
I wonder how long it would take for a determined kid to glean the password=) (I'm assuming the parents won't be anal regarding computer security)
It's your job to be a parent to your children, not the government's.
I would like to point out that there are several good third party filters. That allow customization based on category and individual site allowances.
One of which I found useful in my own house is called Bsafe by http://www.bsafehome.com/
In relation to your post: http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2009/01/9-reasons-to-keep-your-kids-away-from.html
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
How do you monitor what they do offline? It's the same thing. Computer setup by the kitchen....how hard is it to see nude pictures, while you are cooking and glancing over??
You argue from ignorance/lack of imagination. If *I* can't think of an easy solution, there is no solution or it should be everyone else's problem, but not MINE.
My point is, so long as the parents are the ones controlling what the kids see rather than the entire world, it hardly matters.
Meanwhile, if YOU want to answer 4 year old questions like "She's not a horse, why is he trying to ride her like one?", "why is that lady spanking that man?", and, in particular, "Why did we have to stand in the corner? we were just playing mommy and daddy like those people on TV!" be my guest! :-)
Vagingle? WTF? Did your mom have a clit piercing with bells attached? I figured they make you remove those before giving birth.
I concur. Those are bad decisions.
This is not to be confused with COPPA, which is also a 1998 law protecting children online that exists and is enforced.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
This is absolutely a free speech issue, and while the government has the power to regulate speech, this generally applies to the time, place and manner of the speech rather than its content.
The Supreme Court has long held that if the government wants to regulate speech based on its content, the regulation must serve a compelling government interest, be narrowly tailored to fit that interest, and be the least restrictive means possible. This test is referred to as "strict scrutiny." ( Source)
In this case, COPA is simply way out of line. While the status of protecting minors from the horrors of breasts as a compelling government interest is debatable (I would argue that it is none of the government's beeswax), COPA is definitely not the least restrictive means possible to protect the children. Responsible parents can and should control the content that their children access through the means available to them, and thus any government regulation beyond this is by definition not the least restrictive means possible. So any government regulation to this end is unconstitutional as long as free speech is involved and parents have at the very least the opportunity to parent responsibly.
The problem is that by and large there's a difference between teaching reproduction, and the wide variety of sex enjoyed, and available on the Internet.
Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone, or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality? In particular without a parent there to explain that while there may not (depending on your personal world views) be anything wrong with someone enjoying a little pain with their pleasure, it's not something that everyone is into?
Do you really want more people to have the idea that it's okay to do harm to others, but only if you really love them? Because, tell me, have you ever seen, read, or heard an "accepted" explanation about reproduction that didn't start out "When two people really love each other and want to have a baby..."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for teaching someone about the physical side of love when they express an interest in the topic. I also believe that they should be taught of three possible combination of sex as well - M/F, M/M, and F/F - but I grew up in a fairly progressive household. Many are going to feel differently, and I'm okay with that.
While I understand your statement completely. I would like to remind you that not everyone in their 20s fell victim to that thought process. Again, when one is raised to be accountable by their parents, they will typically hold their children accountable. I have a 5 year old who has demonstrated enough proficiency on a computer to navigate to games and such. We have an older pc that I have set up for her running ubuntu that does not have an active network connection. When she needs something on it that requires network access I will install it myself, or she is sitting right next to me, if it happens to be an online game. As she gets older and matures, these restrictions will be lifted based on maturity level and discussion. I have no doubt that she will try to circumvent them in the mean time. As I happen to be a computer geek, hopefully I am ahead of the power curve on preventative measures. Though, at the same time, attempting to bypass network restrictions will be teaching her at the same time.
Oh well, the joys of being a parent.
I cut it three times, and it's still too short.
I would rather keep kids away from online porn.
I would rather parents keep their kids away from online porn. My government should not have a say in what you choose to let your kids access.
BTW, you should keep your kids away from my journals, they're not fit for kids. Actually they're not even fit for adults.
Free Martian Whores!
>>Seriously, why do people think the system is deficient
>>just because problems are not solved instantly?
Because it's insane having to go through this every other year or so!
What else do you call it when the Legislative and Executive branches see their attempts to pass feel-good laws consistently rejected as unconstitutional by the Judicial branch, yet nevertheless continue to approve the same unconstitutional boondoggles? Oh and lets not forget the cost to both federal and state budgets needed to resolve a question already answered the **LAST** few times it came up?
If there seems to be any impatience on the part of your fellow Slashdotters, consider maybe it is due to our exasperation at seeing the idiots in government insist they can make 2+2=5 if they just keep working at it long enough....
--bornagainpenguin
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
This is by far the most rational post I have seen on this topic. Yes, place the computer in the living room, and spend time with them in that room. Even if you are not doing the same thing as them, just being in the same room has benefits. There is some evidence (still being studied) that spending time in a different room than your kids is harmful to their development and increases the likelihood of them engaging in risky behavior (unprotected sex, for example).
Palm trees and 8
Ok, isn't ANYONE going to point out that the summary is totally wrong? The *Supreme* Court declined to hear the government's appeal of the Philadelphia appellate court's decision. It's not still squirming, it is dead. Deceased. Gone to meet it's maker. It would be pushing up daisies if the editors from Slashdot even bothered to RTFA.
Is congress going to try again? Of course. But this particular law has reached the end of its non-life.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Well ... if they are going THAT far, at least they are ahead of lots of other people, and perhaps that will at least teach them (both the parent and the child) about proper password security. :)
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It's not about protection. It's about control. It's about inciting self-hate and body image problems. It's about inciting misery, and sexual frustration later in life.
Why?
Because people with sexual psychosis are more likely to seek pleasure somewhere else. Some percentage of these pleasure seekers will investigate church/religion.
Religious laws exist to create customers for the Church.
To suggest that blatant anti-sex laws are not religious in nature is idiotic. To suggest sexually active teenagers should not be "exposed" to pornography is idiotic.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Just look up the percentage of convicted rapist that are addicted to porn.
The implied implication arrow (the existence of which is debatable but let's not go there) points in the wrong direction.
Look up the percentage of convicted rapists that were breastfed as children. Say it's 90 percent. Is breastfeeding dangerous?
The rate of people in group A that are also in group B says something about the people in group A. It does not (a priori) say anything about the people in group B.
You want to look at how many of the porn consumers are rapists, not how many of the rapists are porn consumers.
Correlation does not imply causation.
As I have pointed out (http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1099757&cid=26552417), the problem isn't that your parent wants to infer causation from correlation. It's that the causation your parent wants to infer points in the wrong direction.
"So what if many rapists look at porn. Only 0.000001% of porn-viewers become rapists."
And what the parent has done isn't a correlation. It's a (measured/observed) conditional probability.
do you really understand how Porn affects us?
My understanding is that it makes you horny.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Pendant point, but sex is instinctual. If a girl and a boy were left on an island and they learned to survive but were not taught anything about sex they will eventually "figure out" how to have sex so to speak if they were attracted to each other; clumsily I might add.
I'm really not sure about that; if fact I'm downright skeptical.
I'm inclined to believe they very well might not ever figure it out. They might figure it out watching animals go through their mating/reproductive cycle, but even that counts as being taught; not instinct.
Does this mean that sometimes going part way down the slippery slope is actually the best protection against going further down the slippery slope? My head hurts...
There are 3 possibilities here:
There's actually a 4th possibility, and I would submit it seems more accurate than your #2. It is:
d) A third factor (maybe genetics, to make something up) causes both the raping and the porn addiction
After all, it's probably not like the rapist becomes addicted after raping someone, which is what your (b) would imply.
How do you monitor what your children do online? That is the equivalent of trying to keep track of everyone that your children associate with, everywhere that they go with their friends, everything that they say, etc. It is just not possible to do that, and it never was.
You are kidding right? Let me start with a simple car anaolgy and then move to a clincher.
You have a nice clean car. Your kid asks to borrow it, saying he needs to drive three streets away to a friends house and stay there for a few hours and then drive back. You agree and in a few hours your kid returns the car. You notice that the car is now caked with mud around the wheel arches.
Now, you didn't have to watch your kids entire exact trip, didn't have to watch the exact turns they made, yet it would be pretty fair to say that they didn't go where they said they would go.
You don't need to monitor every single thing your kids do online, and you don't need to keep track of every single person they associate with. Get a general idea of what's going on with your child, see who they generally interact with. See their influences, their ambitions, find who they look up to. I would make a safe bet and say that if you really knew these things, you would be able to predict what they will be looking for - online and when they socialize.
Seriously, give them a level of freedom and trust. Let them be responsible for their own actions and choices. Chances are you will end up with kids that are much more adept at handling life that way - not to mention at the end of it you will have a much better relationship with them.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
My clock is LCD you insensitive clod!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seeing as most children figure out how to masturbate on their own, I imagine that, unless they hated each other or were very self-conscious, it wouldn't take them long to go from "we both like fondling our own bits that are located in the same general region" to "Insert tab A into slot B".
Of course, they might just get stuck at mutual fondling, or possible skip over to 69ing instead.
What you are referring to is a well known adage that "correlation does not mean causation." That is correct, BUT the correlation is absurdly high...almost 100%. Does it mean that if you are addicted to porn you will become a rapist. No! But, if you are not addicted to porn, there is an extremely low change you will become a rapist.
Everyone thinks they are immune and nothing applies to them...until they are convicted of a crime.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Okay. Protect them. One at a time. Go to their houses, and when they click on links that bring up images of breasts, cover their eyes with your hand. This is a means of child protection that has been conducted since prehistoric times. With that sort of precedent in natural law, no court could stop you.
I'm going to invalidate all my moderations on this topic because I have to address some issues in here.
My parents were the sort who thought that children should be insulated from any kind of sexual awareness. Not to be seen, not be spoken of, not to be thought about. Now to a kid with any kind of backbone what that translates to is 'HOLY FUCK I REALLY HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT THIS SHIT!'
Consequently, when I stumbled upon porn as was inevitable, I obsessed about it. I obsessed about sexuality and even read sexual self help books in the library when I was eleven. I knew more about sexuality before puberty than was probably healthy, and the catalyst for all of it was people telling me 'you can/should not know that.'
If my parents had approached sexuality as some normal, boring (which it is for most people if they really look at it objectively), and trivial (pregnancy aside) activity between consenting adults instead of some hidden, fascinating, powerful mystical right of some kind that must be kept secret at all costs I probably would not have become hyperaware at such a young age. I probably would have been mentally healthier.
What's worse is that while my problem was overexposure, that's because I was headstrong and my response to forbidden knowledge is 'fuck you,' but other kids get conditioned to the idea of forbidden knowledge or bad knowledge and turn it into a learning problem. Their curiosity is diminished and their ability to learn is crippled because they become afraid to ask questions that they think will get them 'in trouble' and eventually they don't even think about thinking to ask questions. It's a type of conditioning, and then when they become adults and are finally released from the mental prison imposed on them by their parents and society at large, the conditioning stays with them. They've effectively internalized that prison, and very few ever really wake up and ask why it was so important for them to be handled the way that they were as children.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
There's a euphemism I haven't seen before!
>>>I would like to remind you that not everyone in their 20s fell victim to that thought process.
I know. If you re-read my post, you'll see I was only talking about the students who earned low grades. Our government has done a brilliant job of teaching these students that "just showing up" is enough to earna diploma, and they do the same with their child-rearing. They might be there, but they're not putting in any effort.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
>>>Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone, or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality?
(1) Let's be honest. These sites are hard-to-find. It's not something you just stumble upon.
(2) Someone in the "girls are icky" stage will probably handle it better than the "girls make me hard" stage. The former will just think it's funny, whereas the latter might feel embarrassed & try to avoid the topic. I find children easier to communicate with than self-conscious teenagers.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
This will finally do away with that stupidity on phpBB fora where people are required to load an extra page just to lie* about being older than 13.
*Or tell the truth, but which nosy 12-year-old does that?
Unless it's a 24-hour clock, where it's correct once a day, unless it's not broken in such a way that it could complete a rotation faster than 24 hours, in which case, every so often, there would be a day where it was wrong the entire time
Haven't you seen the nipple protectors for breast feeding? They attach to the nipple so that milk can flow, but the aperature is shaped like a beer bottle top, and there is a visual barrier in the form of a Marlboro ad. No need to worry about corrupting the tot's tender psyche with pornography!
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Nothing to add, but I agree. If I had mod points I'd use them here.
Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone
I for one never had that phase, maybe because I'm a bisexual male? That would be an interesting study. Anyway, I don't see the correlation. Are you afraid that the S&M will somehow artificially reinforce the immature irrational aversion to females?
or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality?
That illegal status varies very highly from state to state and nation to nation. You claim toward the end of your post to have been brought up progressive, but your approach implies more similitude with the type who thinks that the world is homogeneous to where you are right now.
In particular without a parent there to explain that while there may not (depending on your personal world views) be anything wrong with someone enjoying a little pain with their pleasure, it's not something that everyone is into?
It's funny that you're advocating teaching the very thing at the same time that you're attempting to advocate not teaching.
Do you really want more people to have the idea that it's okay to do harm to others, but only if you really love them?
It's important for people to stop confusing love and sex. It's moralistic baggage from the era of 'no sex before marriage' that people are still trying to integrate into their otherwise sexually emancipated lives. However that's a much larger topic, the real issue here is simple consent. If person A says to person B 'I like it rough, and I want you to do X to me' then it's pretty clear. Love need not enter the equation at all.
Because, tell me, have you ever seen, read, or heard an "accepted" explanation about reproduction that didn't start out "When two people really love each other and want to have a baby..."
Just shows that the accepted process is just another artifact of the 'no sex before marriage' era. People need to find new modes of addressing the situation to kids instead of unrealistic anachronisms which have led to insanely high divorce rates.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I swear one of these days I'm going to go on a crusade to show kids how an OS-complete bootable live CD can free them from all the censorship outside of hosts blocked by the network.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Exactly. You're not going to make productive human beings out of your children by locking them up, and a virtual prison is no different. You have to teach them about the world and how to process and interpret it. Better that they learn about 'bad' things through the lens of their parents than from whatever immature/incomplete/irresponsible opinion their peers have, or worse, not learn at all and end up a gullible, naive putz that anybody can take advantage of.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Shadows still progress across the face of a broken sundial.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Have you seen the state of the world today? It's a shambles! The economy is collapsing
I noticed. Making your way in the world today takes everything you got.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Seeing as most children figure out how to masturbate on their own, I imagine that, unless they hated each other or were very self-conscious, it wouldn't take them long to go from "we both like fondling our own bits that are located in the same general region" to "Insert tab A into slot B"
Insert tab A into slot B isn't that simple. Its probably not where her masturbation is centered, after all, that's usually the clitoris, so why would it be the focus of their attention.
Plus she'll be dealing with a menstrual cycle as well, with unexplained bouts of bleeding and cramping. Is it really going to instinctively occur to her that putting his penis in there is a fabulous idea?
Plus its a pair of virgins. Odds are that, even if they decide to try it, that it will be unlikely to lead to her orgasm, and far more likely will be associated with some pain and discomfort, even blood if her hymen is intact. And soreness afterward.
Overall, its not automatically going to be deemed a success, it might not even rate as high as their anal experiments depending on how -that- goes.
I suspect that even if they 'tried it' they'd be just as likely to write if off as repeat it.
Of course, they might just get stuck at mutual fondling,
Yeah, I think they'd get that far for sure, and might settle there.
In any case I just don't see intercourse as an obvious instinctive natural progression.
or possible skip over to 69ing instead.
Possibly. Assuming they didn't conclude that the bodies sewage system was an unhealthy place to put their mouths, especially if their knowledge of hygiene and bacteria was as thorough as their knowledge of reproduction.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
All those nights when you got no lights the check was in the mail
And your little angel hung the cat up by its tail
And your third fiancée didn't show
Sometimes you wanna go...
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
So monitor your children's computer usage.
I don't really see why kids need to be filtered. We tell them about the disgusting habit of taking a ____, or how to properly clean their ____, so surely we can share with them reproduction.
Most porn online has little to do with 'reproduction' in an educational or clinical sense
We need to teach them eventually, and now is as good a time as any.
Of course! Every seven year old needs to be taught the finer points of a gangbang, or 2G1C.
Not defending the COPA in any way...it is wrong and dumb. It places the onus on society as a whole to 'prove' they are not children. And, by nature, you cannot do that in the online world.
But children are not merely 'short adults'.
I really wonder how I am going to handle this with my children.
Have the PC in a common room, with the monitor facing the room. And, even after they are older, make a point of walking through the room once in a while.
You'd be surprised how effective that is. Not 100% (nothing is), but not bad. When the kid knows you may be standing right behind them at any time...it really puts a clamp on what they try to do. And the kid has to know by example...i.e. you doing it.
Well, there's only one way to find out!
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
If you don't breathe, there is a near-zero (I suppose you could do it under water and then never come back up) chance of you becoming a rapsist. Pornography and rape both correlate highly with sex drive, but obviously that doesn't mean there is anything inherently wrong with having a high sex drive.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
"It's an adult thing - some adults like to do that".
Not really much different to trying to answer why it's on the news that people are trying to kill each other in horrible ways. Or are you going to block the TV news too?
Have you seen the state of the world today? It's a shambles! The economy is collapsing
I noticed. Making your way in the world today takes everything you got.
I read that as "Milking your way in the world today ..."
Sick puppy am I.
Of course it does. What other kind of pornography would children want to look at?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
terrific.
At the point that becomes useful for them, and is adopted in large numbers is the point that the "precursor" to the "year of linux on the desktop" happens, since the only OS that can be set up as a LiveCD is either Linux or BSD, and I believe linux is further along in that regard.
(Gack, too late and too many run on sentences)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I'll bet I could make FreeDOS work if I really tried. Not that it would be useful.
I prefer DSL on business card CDs.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
And what would you do when end up catching them doing it?
Kid will just do it at some time when you aren't around.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Is it really unconstitutional? I don't know; but I do know that it is completely idiotic to try to criminalize something that people have no influence on. There is no practical way that a web-master could ensure that no child could reach "harmful content" via his web-site; or even that there would be no harmful content hosted on his web-site. Sometimes I suspect those in power imagine computers like some sort of magical device that could easily do anything, "if only somebody would get their act together". It would be nice if it was a requirement that you were qualified for the job before you could be elected for a public office; I mean, I'm all for democracy, but I would expect if you are bright enough to run for things like mayor, congress or president, then you are also bright enough to learn and understand a few basic facts about how things work in the real world.
If it was an easy thing to do, I would say that it was a very good idea to make sure that our children could not come into contact with things that were more dangerous than they would be able to handle well. But it isn't. The only people who stand a reasonable chance at protecting children are their parents - and possibly teachers - but even they can only do so much. Sad, but true.
Business Card boot disks are great ... unless the machine you're looking at only has a slot-loading drive.
Nothing like having to burn a 50MB distribution onto a 650MB disk to make one sit there and wonder why they don't just switch to a bigger LiveCD. :)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
(1) Let's be honest. These sites are hard-to-find. It's not something you just stumble upon.
Funny you should choose that term. Turn on "adult mode" or whatever they call it, and the BDSM images become surprisingly easy to find.
Not that I find this a problem...
How many times were we attacked after 9-11?
Want to buy my anti-elephant rock? I haven't seen an elephant in my living room since I got it.
But it's still illegal for them to view adult material, even though they may already be practicing (or even making their own) so the filter must remain in place.
Humans under 18 or 21, depending what the specific taboo is, are still considered children.
Gambling and porn addictions appear to involve the same dopamine-mediated reward pathways in the brain as, e.g., heroin addiction. Google "porn addiction," "sex addiction," or "gambling addiction" along with "dopamine" for many refs, do it in google scholar for scientific articles. There's even some indication of physical withdrawal symptoms.