We must have posted at the same time (see my post entitled "Censorship vs. Responsibility") or else I would have just replied to this:-)
What really concerns me is the ability of this technology (aiding and abetting lazy parents) to create a "groupthink" mentality, of the concensus must be right. Such a mentality could be exploited in all sorts of ways.
-- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist
When will people learn that censorship is not an alternative to responsibility. I wrote a 13,000 word essay for an ethics course on just this topic (don't worry, I'm not posting it). In this case I was discussing 'net nannies', but a v-chip follows the same principle.
The problem with censorship is who decides what is in and what is out. Child pornography? 99.99% of the population would agree that this is objectionable, but the dangers lie at the boundaries on objectionality. I am sure that is some parts of the southern U.S. a v-chip would soon enough screen out programs that delt with religiously controversial issues, or the history of slavery, the list goes on... I'm not beating up on the south, every culture has its problems. We (in the west) like to point at communist countries and scream "Big Brother", but we may allow the same level of information control to develop under our noses.
What is needed is a level of maturity, and responsibility on the part of parents and guardians. We wouldn't let our young children wander through an x-rated or brothel district unescorted, yet we seem to think that when the media is electronic, 'content control' becomes someone else's problem. Parents should be prepared to either supervise their children, or deal with the fact that kids are going to discover things we might want to hide from them.
We almost deserve v-chips - it is the price we are paying for 30 years of parental laziness...
The problem with the idea of a anti-anti-piracy seal of approval is it makes the Open Source community too easy a target for the RIAA and its brethren. It would be all too easy to write us off as a hoard of thieves... is this the image that we want for OpenSource?
An alternative might be to propose valid alternatives to the perceived threat that these copy-protection shemes pose. I have frequently told people that I would be happy to pay an artist directly for their music (for example)... and double their income while I'm at it. $2-3 for a new-release albumn? Who'd even bother pirating then?!?
-- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist
Ahh, but code modularization (OO-ness) flies in the face of commercial interests, or so we are finding out. At my work we are pushing the "component based" philosophy, but vendors are not interested in developing anything that can be tinkered with or reused as components by other vendors. Furthermore, standards are all well and good, but to get the commercial edge, companies like to "enhance" the standard - HTML for example?
I would assert that computer scientists (or comp. sci. researchers) are in a position to contribute in the sense of true science, however the nature of the industry constrains what good we can do.
Lesson: The money is in stupid crap with bells and whistles, not in genuinely innovative and well designed software.
Slashdot Mirror
We must have posted at the same time (see my post entitled "Censorship vs. Responsibility") or else I would have just replied to this :-)
What really concerns me is the ability of this technology (aiding and abetting lazy parents) to create a "groupthink" mentality, of the concensus must be right. Such a mentality could be exploited in all sorts of ways.
-- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist
When will people learn that censorship is not an alternative to responsibility. I wrote a 13,000 word essay for an ethics course on just this topic (don't worry, I'm not posting it). In this case I was discussing 'net nannies', but a v-chip follows the same principle.
The problem with censorship is who decides what is in and what is out. Child pornography? 99.99% of the population would agree that this is objectionable, but the dangers lie at the boundaries on objectionality. I am sure that is some parts of the southern U.S. a v-chip would soon enough screen out programs that delt with religiously controversial issues, or the history of slavery, the list goes on... I'm not beating up on the south, every culture has its problems. We (in the west) like to point at communist countries and scream "Big Brother", but we may allow the same level of information control to develop under our noses.
What is needed is a level of maturity, and responsibility on the part of parents and guardians. We wouldn't let our young children wander through an x-rated or brothel district unescorted, yet we seem to think that when the media is electronic, 'content control' becomes someone else's problem. Parents should be prepared to either supervise their children, or deal with the fact that kids are going to discover things we might want to hide from them.
We almost deserve v-chips - it is the price we are paying for 30 years of parental laziness...
-- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist
The problem with the idea of a anti-anti-piracy seal of approval is it makes the Open Source community too easy a target for the RIAA and its brethren. It would be all too easy to write us off as a hoard of thieves... is this the image that we want for OpenSource?
An alternative might be to propose valid alternatives to the perceived threat that these copy-protection shemes pose. I have frequently told people that I would be happy to pay an artist directly for their music (for example)... and double their income while I'm at it. $2-3 for a new-release albumn? Who'd even bother pirating then?!? -- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist
Ahh, but code modularization (OO-ness) flies in the face of commercial interests, or so we are finding out. At my work we are pushing the "component based" philosophy, but vendors are not interested in developing anything that can be tinkered with or reused as components by other vendors. Furthermore, standards are all well and good, but to get the commercial edge, companies like to "enhance" the standard - HTML for example?
I would assert that computer scientists (or comp. sci. researchers) are in a position to contribute in the sense of true science, however the nature of the industry constrains what good we can do.
Lesson: The money is in stupid crap with bells and whistles, not in genuinely innovative and well designed software.
-- Coding is art, I'm a surrealist