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House Might Mandate Net filtering in Libraries
Richard Finney
writes "US Congress expected to mandate censoship in libraries
in a CNET News.com article. "
Wonder how close Slashdot is to being banned. I think this
is great. We really have to prevent the children from learning,
as it would be terrible if they started thinking.
A "site acceptor" company could be set up. They would own a trademark that could be used as a META tag. The company would post an "open contract" of an accepted use policy that would spell out what sort of content was and was not acceptable. This policy requires payment (per page per month, per hit, whatever) from for-profit users (such as corporate Web sites), but usage would be free of charge for personal or non-profit use (such as personal home pages). To use the tag for personal use, you print out the contract, sign it, and send it in.
Anyone can force their browser to react to the META tag. Given this, users can freely set their browsers to only allow pages with this META tag. People don't pay for this service.
Here's the trick, however: the site acceptor company doesn't span the Web looking for violators. That would cost way too much.
Instead, it works on a modified honor system. The contract puts the burden on the tag user to make their page(s) comply with the site acceptor's published standards.
The site acceptor learns of violators from the client base. That is, if I find some porn palace (or somesuch) with that META tag, I send email to the site acceptor. From there, they investigate. If the site is noncompliant, the acceptor contacts the Webmaster and asks that they drop the page or the tag. If they fail to comply, the site acceptor sues the user for breach of contract and/or trademark infringement.
I believe that this is all possible with our current IP laws. If it isn't, it might be a good idea for Congress to pass laws allowing this sort of business model to work.
Alternately, the Federal government can do it themselves. I recommend against this for two reasons. The first is the general principle that the Federal government should never do something that other entities can do properly, and I think that private industry can do this. Secondly, the concept of government-approved content is abhorrent to me.
This sort of site acceptor company would be no monopoly, either. The market is big enough for several of them, each with different levels of acceptance. Conservative parents, or those with younger children, might lock their browsers down to only allow KidSafe(TM) sites. More liberal parents, or those with older children, may switch that browser to PornProof(TM). Each one would have different standards of "acceptable", and sites could carry both tags if they met both standards.
This could be carried even to the libraries. For one to use a browser in a library, the user has to swipe their library card. Adult cards have free access; the browser clears all blinders and displays pages regardless of META tags. Childrens' cards start with no browser priveleges. Parents can add META tags to the cards, or even give their childrens' cards full no-blinder priveleges.
Congress talks about giving parents the tools they need to protect their children from inappropriate material. Their walk, however, has been telling parents (and the rest of us) what is and what is not acceptable.
The above proposal puts the decision, and the power, directly into parental hands. It even give parents the ability to restrict what their children see at the library. And we probably don't need to consult Congress or Gore to do it.
Mozilla, are you listening?
--The basis of all love is respect
-- SARCASM ON --
Yep, that's right, every person who is unable to afford Internet is just a slacker suckling off of the welfare teet. And Internet filters only block porn. Of course, silly of me to think otherwise. You are right, censorship has a bad rap. It completely trust the government to determine what information I have access to
-- SARCASM OFF --
Listen: Not everyone out there has the skills to land a decent job in this thriving economy of ours, and raising a family on $8/hour with no benefits is not easy. These people do NOT need more roadblocks denying them access to the free information that can improve their lives. How do you expect someone to get an ISP connection when they can't even afford a phone line?
You can claim that these filter block only porn, but that is bullshit. The filters block real, useful content. There is no way current filtering technology can effectively deal with the constantly churning ocean of data that is the Internet. I've used them. Filters suck, at least on systems that will have a wide number of users with unpredictable information needs. They may work fine to filter your home PC that only has one or two users, but not on a library PC that needs to meet the needs of hundreds.
I really hope that some day you are forced to walk a mile in the shoes of those you look down on. I am a well paid computer professional now, but it was a long hard road getting there. Public libraries were a critical part of that journey. I take it very personal when someone tries break the library system by imposing censorship.
If a child is too young to sit in front of an uncensored Internet connection, than they are probably too young to let wander unattended in the library.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Didn't the Supreme Court already rule that it was unconstitutional to use filtering software in public libraries? I'm only half-remembering, but wasn't there litigation in Viriginia that basically forbid a Library from using filtering software? I thought the Supreme Court was involved in that one, but I may be mistaken and it may have just been a Circuit Court case (in which case the ruling stands for only the part of the country where that Circuit Court has influence).
I know there are instances when Congress can overrule a S.C. decision -- if the S.C. makes their decision so narrowly that it states the law is being enforced beyond its original scope, in which case Congress just passes a law that specifically addresses what they want -- but I didn't think that was the case here.
Can someone point to a URL that deals with that decision so we can see exactly how Congress (bless 'em) can screw up our lives even more?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
They all took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Plainly put, those that vote "yes" on any legislation of this nature are willfully and knowingly in violation of that oath. It's an issue of whether or not we should tolerate or suffer an elected body that would violate one of the central tenets of this country's government just to try to get re-elected (and this is all this is really about.).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm conflicted with these developments. On one hand, there's a distinct difference between kids being denied nudie pictures (gotta admit, it's kinda stupid to go looking for pr0n like that in a public library) and kids being denied other kinds of information which someone has deemed "unfit" for their consumption.
But do you think I trust the government to deem what's fit and unfit for viewing publically? What if I think the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools and other public areas is unfit for kids? I daresay this omnipotent ability swings both ways.
I'm rather unhappy with this. And I know that there'll be kids gettin ready to defeat the blocking mechanisms from the word go. Information must be free, and all that.
Bah. Dumb govermnent.
I have this feeling of deja vu all over again...see below.
This hasn't empowered local communities to do anything - this amendment restricts federal funding for local libraries based on an undefined standard of "harmful to minors". No one has told local communities that "they MUST expose their children to a completely wide-open Internet". Many communities already have filtering in place, which is completely within their discretion to do (pending further court action, of course, but the principle of locally defined filters seems a lot less controversial). Now the federal government is trying to prohibit any community from receiving funding unless they follow a certain federal standard.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
BTW, I wonder if that decision would be have to be filtered out?
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
There is an issue here about the level of control parents should be permitted to exercise over their children, of course. I find it a little terrifying, for example, to think that the parents of a girl aged 13 or more could deny her access to truthful information about birth control. I don't know what the constitutional limitations are with respect to such things. I would certainly be interested in hearing about potential solutions to this problem.
The whole point in laws like this is to empower local communities to show discretion
Nope, that's wrong. The local communities can show discretion on their own without any help from the Feds. The whole point in laws like this is to force the local communities to adopt whatever standards Washington considers appropriate. Look at the legal min drinking age. The Feds cannot legislate it, but they shoved it down the throat of every state (do you really want federal highway funds? Here is how...)
The system works when local communities aren't told they MUST expose their children to a completely wide-open Internet.
I don't even know where to start. First, communities do not have children, parents do. I very specifically do not want my local community to tell me what I should teach my children. I am perfectly capable of taking such decisions by myself and do not need help from local politicians.
Second, what do you think the point of the Bill of Rights is? Community is a relative term, the Federal government is as much representative of a community, as you local town hall is. The whole point of the Bill of Rights is that people, individuals have rights that no government, including the local community one, can take away. Maybe my community wants to exercise discretion and forbid me to read Cosmopolitan (speaking of sex in the libraries [grin]), or to read Karl Marx or Ayn Rand or fill-in-the-blank -- well, it cannot. And why? Because I, as a person, have rights that my local community cannot take away.
Now, it's arguable whether absence of restrictions to access the Internet is a basic right. But that's not the issue. The issue is that the system does not work when the local communities can impose whatever idiocy the local politicians can come up with (and call it discretion) onto their population.
Phew, I am getting off the soapbox now...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
>It's been a while since my Constitutional Law :)
:) But I could teach it . . .
:)
:)
:) ]
>class.
I don't seem to want to admit how long it's been
>"Federalism" in the context of the Constitution
>has a different meaning than what I intended.
"Federali*zation*" has a meaning close to what you intended, as well. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen the term used outside of U.S. political & constitutional discussions . . .
Madison, Hamilton, and Jay all used the pseudonym, and scholars agree on which wrote most of them.
At the time, I'd probably have been in the anti-Federalist camp with Jefferson & Paine, though over the years I'm seeing my sympathies switch from Jefferson to Madison.
"New Federalism" was a term from the classic liberal faction in the Reagan administration for the process of returning usurped functions to the states. Generally, it was the effort to swing the pendulum back to the states. It wasn't entirely the same issue as deregulation, but the camps overlapped. I have no idea where Reagan himself stood on the issue (or how much he really had to do with the administration, for that matter), but his rhetoric puts him in this category. His rhetoric was generally classic liberal, but governance tended more to the right wing.
>Please disregard these questions if they will
>result in my being billed.
Awe
But this is your big chance! My hourly doesn't double from $200 to $400 until the middle of next month when I successfully defend the Ph.D. [If "$10,000 + $400/hour" makes you blink, you're not big enough to have an anti-trust problem needing a lawyer-economist
There are certainly valid points to the strict constructionist viewpoint of the Constitution, but on the other hand things are a lot different now than they were in the 1780s. Most people receive more benefit than harm from such extensions of federal authority like the FCC, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and so forth. I don't think the founding fathers intended their descendants to be stuck with exactly the same balance of power that they set up back then - due to modern technology and changing perceptions, the executive branch has gained a lot of power and the legislative branch has lost a little. In general these changes have worked out OK, since they are subject to constant legal challenge and review in the Supreme Court as well as the press.
I'll be the first to agree that the Constitution should have been amended as these changes occurred, rather than simply bent and forced into a new shape. However, it would be a mistake to return suddenly to the strict constructionist view now - the country would collapse fairly quickly without the more centralized federal control we have now.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The federalist notion is to keep things at the lower level, only giving the central government the power to do that which can't be done efficiently by the states. (The anti-federalists took it farther, wanting to yield essentially nothing to the center except on a case-by-case basis).
Increasing the number of decisions made by D.C. flies in the face of federalism (and in that of the "New Federalism," too, for that matter).
The way I see it, as long as the Feds are paying for this stuff, they have every right to dictate how the money is spent. The real solution is to stop relying on Federal funding for everything, and start funding these things on a more local level.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
That's about as far from a bedrock principle as you can get :)
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. See a lawyer in your own jurisdiction for that.
The Bill of Rights does not apply directly to the states, but only by way of the 14th Amendment and by "selective incorporation."
The particular restraints that kick in are those "fundamental to the notion of ordered liberty." Trial by jury applies, but the jury size of 12, and unanimous verdicts, only apply to the feds. States can have preliminary hearings rather than grand juries in felony cases. The free exercise clause applies, but applying the establishment clause is rather new (state-supported churches existed not only before the fourteenth, but two states continued to have an established church afterwards).
Some pieces apply, some don't. Libraries selectively providing access could go either way (they're not required to provide any access), but I'd expect (but wouldn't bet) that the federal limits would apply to states and their subdivisions.
hawk, esq.
I think it's best to start from the assumption that all sites are potentially harmful to children without parental supervision, and let anyone who wants to warrant their site as child-safe -- whatever that means -- do so at their own risk.
Oooh... this is just great. Of course, what's special about web sites? Nothing really, so it much for the best to start from the assumption that all books are potentially harmful to children, so children should not have access to books unless the publisher legally certifies that there is nothing in the book that could potentially harm even a single child. What, the publishers say they don't have suicidal tendencies? Too bad, too bad... But there is nothing really important in books, anyway, right?
And movies! No, movies are definitely potentially harmful to children. And don't start me on TV. I suggest that our wise legislators should pass a law to embed a chip in each TV set that will scan the age of people in the room. If any of the present is a child (say, under 21 years of age), the TV should automatically and immediately switch to the Disney channel. Technical problems? Ah, don't bother my little pointy head with these complicated words!
But these are all half-measures. If we think about it, life is potentially harmful to children so why don't we just collect al the kids and put them in nice institutions where the government-certified nurses will make sure that nothing harmful (like an idea) ever approaches our little angels...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Besides, I don't see many libraries carrying playboy or penthouse. Is that discrimination or censorship too?
Put it this way -- would you want to borrow a copy of Penthouse that someone else had already "borrowed" and returned?
"Excuse me, where's the Librarian? I can't seem to open this magazine."
Thanks for correcting my misuse of "federalism". It's been a while since my Constitutional Law class. :)
:)
"Centralization" or "central government" would have been a more accurate choice of words. "Federalism" in the context of the Constitution has a different meaning than what I intended.
What is "New Federalism"? Also (just to get more off-topic) wasn't Madison the original author of the Federalist Papers?
Please disregard these questions if they will result in my being billed.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
It's like we've been time-warped back to the 50s, though, where no one minded a little book-burning, should the occasion present itself. Except this time, it's the Internet.
I would ask "Why are they so afraid of information?" but we all know the answer to that. Is this some kind of breaking point we're going to keep hitting as time goes on? Will our horizons keep expanding so fast we can't keep up with it, until finally a minor cultural revolution takes place, breaks the dam and we start the process of filling the reservoir all over again?
TV comes along, and suddenly a generation is exposed to ideas and information they never would have had otherwise. The result was the 60s and 70s, where the adults struck out in fear of the unknown and the lack of control inherent in the new information age.We just started evening out again in the 80s. Are we encountering the same issue with the Internet in the 90s, to come to a head in the 00s?
Maybe with the rapid technological turnaround time we now have, with new development "generations" getting shorter and shorter, we'll get to the point where none of us can slow down enough to fear change, because we all remember a big advance that changed the culture from our own youths...
-- Raven
The problem is not necessarily censoring porn, but in the loose definition of "harmful to minors" that Congress keeps using. This is a very vague standard, and many people fear that it will be used to block useful information that certain groups don't like - information about birth control and sex education, for example. And the libraries will have to censor this information for everybody, not just minors.
If Congress would just spell out exactly what it is that they don't like, then one of these laws might actually end up being constitutional. Unfortunately (for them) they can't agree on exactly what is "harmful" or "obscene", so they keep trying the same thing over and over again.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
They want to block "child pornography and obscene content", eh?
:), Stephen King books, war novels, chemistry books, newspapers, magazines, etc could be defined as containing "obscene content" (especially considering the post-Littleton context in which this is being proposed...I remember reading about the VietCong's homemade weaponry when I was a kid; we don't want kids learning how to fashion weapons, now do we?)
Well, I can agree with not wanting child porn available to children, but, as a one-time library employee and current library volunteer (as well as a person capable of rational thought), I must say that this is a Bad Plan.
It's a Bad Plan because libraries are meant to be educational resources. Once we start banning "obscene content" from the screens of library computers, we have precedent to start banning "obscene content" from the shelves of the library. Which means that any overprotective mother who finds her child in the reference section browsing art books could sue the library for having books with pictures of Michealangelo's sculpture "David". (and wasn't the person who modeled for said sculpture only about 15? making it child porn, in a sense?) That's *just* what we need. Some of Picasso's works (if I'm identifying them correctly as his) have bare breasts represented. Can't have that, now can we? Our library carries movies too, including _Pleasantville_. In said movie, there is a painting of a nude woman. Need to get rid of that movie too.
And that's not even a very broad definition of "obscene content". Depending on how you interpret it, all of the trash romance novels (big loss, i know
Granted, this law may not specifically endanger our book collections, but it's only a short step further. Also, I grant that censoring public library collections isn't a new thing, but it's something that (in my opinion, at least) we should not encourage with laws of this kind.
Does anyone know of any petitions we can sign against this?
There's a serious problem with Pascal's Wager. According to Pascal, one is better off believing in God because of the potential bad consequences -- going to hell -- of not believing.
... which god? Pascal's Wager is just as applicable to Allah, the Jewish G-d, Ahura Mazda, Zeus, or Amida-Buddha, as it is to your Baptist God. If you believe in the Baptist God and it turns out that Ahura Mazda (the Zarathustrian God) is the real god, you get to go to Zarathustrian Hell. Pascal's Wager gives you no reason to value the one over the other.
... didn't Jesus himself preach against public displays of holiness? "When you pray, do not do it in the streets as the hypocrites do ..."
However
The fact that some of the ideas in the Ten Commandments are good ideas does not mean that the whole document is valuable, nor that it should be taught in schools. Remember that the Ten Commandments begin with "I am the LORD thy God who brought you out of Egypt; thou shalt have no other gods before me." This is an explicitly Judeo-Christian message (actually, an explictly Jewish message that's been co-opted by Christians). While "Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt not steal" are very good ideas to teach children, it is utterly inappropriate for the government to teach children Judaism or Christianity.
Further, it is inappropriate in an ostensibly free country for the government to teach people that religion is coextensive with, or necessary to, ethical or moral thought. Religion is too often and too easily co-opted by intolerant and theocratic movements, as one can see in the case of the Southern Baptist Convention (which I know does not represent all Southern Baptists) and the Religious Right. This is anathema to the republic.
For that matter
Actually,
They can say that there is no manitory censorship, you just won't get any money from them. The Feds do stuff like this all the time. Why do you think the drinking age is 21? The Feds can't mandate a drinking age, so how do they get around the 10th amendment. Simple, we won't give you highway funds if you don't have a 21 drinking age.
The FEDERAL income tax is the worst think that has happened to this country, because it allows the Federal Govt to bypass the 10th Amendment in this way. They can't make local laws, but they CAN take your money, and then NOT give it back. The extreme case is that they COULD take all your money, and only give back what they think you need
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Correlating CDA votes to Starr report release votes yielded the 285 Most Hypocritical US Representatives tasty bit.
Hopefully it will still be found unconstitutional. Some filtering in grade schools I can understand, but it should be left up to individual schools to determine their policy. Censorship in libraries, however, is absolutely abhorant. Censorship at the highschool level is also a Bad Idea. Even at the grade school level, the best filter is teacher involvement in the web surfing experience. Making the computer an unattended *replacement* for adult supervision is almost as bad using the television for that (at least with small children).
And what about this possible ban on Internet gambling? The way I read it, it is really the casino industry trying to protect their business. I don't gamble, but I am annoyed that the government feels they need to *protect* me in this way. Just more errosion of our freedoms.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Then again, any censorship is a bad idea. But in libraries it'd be even worse. The point of a library is to be a collection center of information. If we begin cutting out anyflow of information, no matter what the content maybe, we're losing something. We used to have a list of banned books, because we feared what was contained within them. Many of those banned books were also great literary works by some of our most celebrated authors, and are now not only allowed once again, but required reading in many school's English classes.
On a similar note of censorship... If we did allow this bill to pass, what sites would be blocked? Those which contained "Sexually Explicit or Violent Material" is how they usually phrase it. I think I saw that in this article too. Does that mean every news network on the web would be blocked? Thenews is certainly one of the greatest sources of violent content in any media. We have wars, rape, killing, terrorism, and other atrocities occuring in the world. Preventing people from seeing it doesn't stop those from happening. And removing said content from the web greatly reduces a person's ability to research using the web, since most research topics probably have at least one violent aspect. Do we next cut out chemical health advisories because the chemical may be fatal, and therefore used by some sadistic kid? Granted, this is a slippery slope argument, but the real problem here is not the slope. Normally these arguments run along the lines that if we continue, it will lead to absurdity. This one begins in absurdity. Keeping this content out of libraries does little to help anything (especially those adults who may need access to potential censorship canidates, depending on exactly what gets shut out), and is potentially very harmful for anyone wishing to do research at libraries. Granted, libraries should probably filter out the porn sites (that isn't precisely a good use of a library computer anyways), but using a gov't mandate to do so, and also remove other sites will not help. If ids really want to get on the internet to see something, they will. I'd think it better if they did it at a library where they havea greater chance of being seen, than at some kids house when the parents are out, or watching the news or otherwise ignoring their kids. That's where we need to focus. Kids can't be quite so violent if parents are a little more watchful. Again, granted, that isn't the whole answer, but it is certainly better than loosening gun control up at gun shows to a 24 hour limit on a background check, to be performed by over-taxed law enforcement officers (not the gun retailer), and then placing a worse than useless ban on a library research tool.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
For the adults out there, what would of you done had they taken away the ability to research what you were interested in when you were a kid? How many of you would of let them do it? I know my parents tried a couple times when I was a kid. Wasn't pretty, but they learned. :-)
So, I got to read what I want, learn what I want, even experiment with bombs, and the such. I sure learned a lot while I was a kid. Thank god for that. If I hadn't been able to, where would I be? Probably flipping hamburgers with my other high school friends. I never killed anyone, never even hurt another sole. Having that access was the greatest thing in the world.
Please don't take that away from our kids today. Instead, TEACH them how to be good kids. Don't just force it on them. It just doesn't work that way.
The way I see it, as long as the Feds are paying for this stuff, they have every right to dictate how the money is spent.
'Scuse me. Where do you think the Feds got the money in the first place? That's right... TAXES. Who pays those taxes? You and me and everyone else with a job. They don't have any right to try to end-run around the Constitution and use the money that US citizens gave them to impose their morals on our local libraries. Our libraries are controlled by our communities, just like they should be.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As Chomsky points out, regimes like the Soviet Union ruled directly by force - in America, propoganda is used to control people. No other country engages in such dubious exercises in public disinformation and misinformation as the US.
I don't mean filtering, I mean altering and filtering of content so you only think you're free.
What exactly are they filtering out? The article doesn't seem to be clear on what kind of material is being censored. If they just wanna keep 14 year olds away from porn at the library, I think that's understandable, isn't it?
There's a very simple solution to this whole "filtering" debate: require adult oriented sites to note as much in some META or other tag, and have all filtering software check that tag.
If an adult-oriented site does not label itself as such, they should be prosecuted. What adult site would _not_ do this? What adult site is targeting children?Contrary to popular moralist belief, the motivations of these sites are not to "corrupt our babies", but to MAKE MONEY.
Yes, we have "ratings services", but why jump through hoops just to state the obvious? If you know damn well your content should not be viewed by children, just add such a content advisory.
Instead of such simplicity, we have massive lists of sites probably long-dead, and filtering of words branded "naughty".
Someone bonk the government with a clue so we can "protect the children" without resorting to blind (or blurred) censorship.
--
#19845
what an evil dirty word...
What makes you loosers think you deserve to go into a library to get your dose of porn? What's to stop you from getting your OWN PC and ISP? Can afford it? Well then, get a JOB!! Maybe then you can enter the real world and not have so much time to complain about my taxes not paying for your habits.
I get sick of hearing all these ingrates whining whenever our leaders decide to restrict handouts. Here's a clue or two. Cruising the web for free in a public or school library is NOT guaranteed by the Constitution. It is very unlikely that the valuable data that would be restricted by filtering software isn't available in other places! It is possible, even easy, to get what would be restricted in other places. And finally, it is not your RIGHT to have me and other American taxpayers pay for your entertainment (apologies to all my international aquaintances 8*).
It is your right to speak. It is not your right to have your speech dissiminated by either me or the government. Limiting what can be viewed with government funded facilities doesn't limit anyones ability to speak out. Does this mean that duly appointed government leaders and officials get to decide what is proper to be destributed on government funded networks? Yeah, so what? He who pays the piper gets to call the tune.
So cut the bitching and whining and go hire your own piper!!
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I don't know about votes (I've only been following bills in the early stages), but http://thomas.loc.gov seems to have everything else you ask for (and maybe even the votes; I don't know)
...where I work there was a movement to prevent bad pictures and content on the web and a draconian filter was in place. Many technical sites were banned for reasons I do not know. I guess the information was deemed dangerous and too advanced for our minds. One of the sites blocked was the entire dejanews! Those newsgroups people can say anything and must be offensive... What pissed me off was when I tried finding technical literature for a printer in front of my boss and the site was blocked...
What was interesting is that no gun sites were blocked, so an NRA buddy of mine was having a good ol time in his NRA chatrooms.
I did find a way to get around the blocking software. Going through www.anonymizer.com got around anything.
Blocking software is impersonal, inconsistant, and not very smart. If a kid wants to look at titties, its better to have a person intervene in the disruption than some stupid unproven snake oil blocking software that can only be marketed by hype.
You are correct; I do agree with you. I would prefer no government control of any information, but if that is politically unlikely then local control is vastly preferable to federal control. Your voice is proportionally a lot louder at the local level. Of course, if your views on the subject don't match those of your community very well, then you still have some problems.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The text of the amendment is not yet available online, but should be available within a day or two at this page (look for a reference to an entry in the Congressional Record printing the text of the Franks amendment).
I DO NOT vote for people to "uphold morals and values" there is nothing worse than some polititian telling people what there morals should be. They are there to take care of public policy, nothing more. The government has NO business telling people what their morals should be! The last thing I wasnt is some ultra-right Christian Coalition type telling me what I can or can not access on the net: they want to not only filter porn, but sex-education, birth control, left wing political action groups, gay youth support groups and anything else doesn't fit their pseudo-morality. Some of the more extreme examples of this species of congress-critter are nothing more than facists.
You obviously havn't been to other countries. Almost all countries engage in this kind of propaganda campaign aginst their own citizens continuously. Some countires go as far as to require all media to be state-controlled (including the internet, which is why network access is so hard to come by in these countries). You can't seriously think that the Chinese government is more forthcoming to its people than the US government? We still don't know how many people were killed in Tienamen Square.
I read the internet for the articles.
Why not just place the monitors in plain view? That way if someone wants to view porn, everyone else (including a librarian) can see what the perv is doing. Nothing like a little public humiliation to enforce public (or pubic) decency, eh?
"Sometimes you have to listen to a lot of useless
talk" - Rush
Enforced morals via censorship is bad, but there is also a time and a place for everything. Most libraries don't carry visual pornographic materials (one of the local libraries where I grew up used to carry Playboy, not sure if they still do) and thats their right. It shouldn't be the governments job or responsibility to provide, enforce or mandate filtering however.
Some people are going to have a problem with libraries censoring or discouraging pornography as well. Get over it, go buy a magazine or rent a video. Most forms of media or libraries are censored in one form or another. Slashdot is censored in the form of having editors. The editors only post articles which from their point of view fit in with the editorial guidelines they've set forth: News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. I might feel that to me "The Internet Archive of Invasively Nude Female Geeks" fits in with the mandate, but its up to Rob and Hemos and others whether it gets posted.
Likewise I can walk down the hallway to our company library and look at the magazines: IEEE Circuits and Systems yes, Hustler no. Do I feel offended that I can't get pornography here? Nope, I'm free to do that on my own time. I would be offended if the company decided to filter out certain websites. I wouldn't be offended if I were repremanded for visiting them on company time though.
Trust me, /. is a fine candidate for censoring.
Not only that, consider all the clever spam that is designed to sneak past industrial strength procmail. Filtering is going to be a game where porn artists are going to win and information content providers will lose. Many legitimate sites will find themselves cut off due to draconian filters. I have seen it happen at work too many times when there was a movement to prevent tittie pictures being viewed by a few morons.
The Supreme Court is not doing its job when it allows the federal government to unconstitutionally link areas where they do have authority to other areas where they do not. This is somewhat like a company that holds a monopoly in one business "leveraging" that strength into another market -- with one important difference. The government does it with the implicit backing of guns.
Either the Constitution means nothing at all or it means what is says. For government to use other means to accomplish goals forbidden in the Constitution is *exactly* the same offense as violating those prohibitions directly. If the government is to be allowed to do things via other means that it is forbidden to do directly, what good is the Supreme Court and the explicit limitations on federal authority?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
You drive on roads, walk on sidewalks, sit in parks and attend public schools that aren't mandated by the Constitution either. Why do I have to pay for you to do THAT?
Because it furthers the public good that there be publicly funded and owned resources.
And the only way to be fair with these resources is allow them to everyone for whatever use they see fit (as long as the resource is not depleted/destroyed or reduced for others by that use).
No one is arguing that libraries should setup special "Nude Nude Nude" stations. But we are arguing that putting restrictions on content is inherently wrong because these resources are publicly owned--so the usage is up to the individual.
Instead of blocking MY use of the libraries connection to the Internet, why don't YOU keep an eye on your kids at the library or better yet, keep them at home watching Barney?
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
Critical thought is an essential ingredient for progress in human society. Censorship is based on the diametrically opposite notion that others (politicians, clergy, royalty) have better judgement than I as a regular citizen. They don't. Being taught not to think critically, but simply follow others' judgement, order and orders is what brought the world the crusades, gulags, apartheid, Auschwitz and the killing fields.
Now the same congress that just awarded Rosa Parks a medal for thinking critically, and acting on it, is actively working to prevent the development of critical thought?
It's days like these that make me pessimistic enough to fear that reality isn't as far away from dystopia's like 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and the American fundamentalist theocracy in Heinlein's future history.
What bothers me is the legislators thinking that they can/should mandate this at a federal level. This is an issue which is best dealt with by the communities. I at least have a chance of being heard by my local library and school district.
Unfortunately, many Americans don't seem to understand that there are, by design, several "governments" in the U.S. Some laws should be federal in scope, some should only be state or local laws. Problems arise when the federal government starts meddling in affairs best handled at a local level. Community standards are not a "one-size-fits-all" matter.
I am also concerned about the TYPES of "solutions" legislators are pursuing in the wake of Littleton. Why is it that all of these solutions seem to involve restrictions of personal freedoms and/or legislation of dubious Consitutionality? Don't they have anything constructive to add?
Shame on you, Congress -- especially those of you who claim to be for less federal government. I guess growing federalism is OK when it furthers your own agenda.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
They can say that there is no manitory censorship, you just won't get any money from them. The Feds do stuff like this all the time. Why do you think the drinking age is 21? The Feds can't mandate a drinking age, so how do they get around the 10th amendment. Simple, we won't give you highway funds if you don't have a 21 drinking age.
:( -- or ever after 21 for that matter -- so the Feds can force the state/local governments to make these laws. However, from the Bill of Rights point of view there is no difference between the Feds, the states and your friendly local town hall -- it's all "government" and government's ability to trample/ignore/go around the Bill of Rights is quite limited (subject, of course, to the whims of the Supreme Court). So the issue has nothing to do with Feds forcing local laws -- if the measure is declared unconstitutional (hopefully), it doesn't matter if it's a public school/library that made this regulation, or the Federal government.
Well, the case is a bit different here. There is no constitutional right to drink before you're 21
Of course the Bill of Rights does not apply to private entities, school and libraries included, but that's a whole different can o'worms.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You seem to be a little inconsistent in your beliefs. How does a federal mandate handed down from the highest levels of government encourage local community standards? Sure, right now the federal government may have acted to support the standards of your community, but what about the next federal law? If you want local control of things, then you should be consistent and oppose any sort of federal control such as this.
Of course all communities don't have to have the same standards of what is acceptable. But they should decide their standards at the local level, so that they can argue about issues like whether adults will have to use the filters too, how old is an adult, and what exactly we want to filter. Congress making laws about "harmful" material just clouds the issue, because people in different communities disagree over what's harmful to children (porn? sex ed? other religions?) but the law will be enforced across the entire country.
Also, the last time I checked, no one was forced to find anything on the World Wide Web (which is what we are discussing blocking). That's right, it is impossible to force your message onto anyone - they have to visit your site to get whatever message you are spouting. If parents would surf the web with their kids to show them how it works, what parts to avoid, and so forth, then we wouldn't need any sort of government control of information.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The problem is not only with the Feds. There is a great deal of local-level cluelessnees and fear of open information. Note that in the Loudon (sp?) library case, it weren't the Feds who forced it to block access to uncomfortable material, but the library itself, a bunch of moralizing assholes that they all are.
Recently my daughter who is in second grade brought home a note from a teacher, which basically said: "Dear parents, it came to my attention that boys tease girls. Teasing is illegal (no, I'm quoting and I'm not making it up) so please talk to your child so that he/she does not do this any more".
Washington is bad, but local morons can be much, much worse, especially if they see encouragement from the Feds. Hell, if my local library implements filtering, I'll be the first to hack around it and post the instructions on how to do this around the neighborhood.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Say, do you think these nitwits will filter out their own pornographic Starr Report? They chose to encourage Starr to write it and then they released it on the web where kids could see it.
Why is it okay for Congress to let kids look at sexual literature, but not okay for public libraries? I understand that Kenneth Starr intended his report to titillate Congress rather than kids in public libraries, but what is the difference?
"When people read this, they will want to throw up!" -- Kenneth Starr describing, approvingly, his report just prior to its release.
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
You're joking, right?
The censoring will be done by computer (because no humans can read the 1,000,000+ URLs added to the web every day). And it will be done broadly (because no human or computer can visit a site ten times a day to review what has changed).
Cyber Patrol, the most popular censorware program and widely regarded as one of the best, decided to block over 50 ISPs in their entirety. The whole domains. Gone. Often because of a few naughty words - or because of links to naughty sites - or sometimes not even for any reason we could figure out.
Slashdot does not have a naughty-words filter, so I can post the word "fuck" as much as I want. And it allows links to naughty sites, such as your link to Hustler. So slashdot.org will surely be blocked, in its entirety, by any censorware program that discovers it.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg