But it's very difficult, if you choose, to keep porn on the net from children. Either you have to be with them all the time, or you can't let them use the net. The current technologies aren't working well enough.
So... just don't have the Internet if it bugs you so much, right?
But that's no longer a reasonable option for parents who want a valuabel education for their children.
Creating a domain for pornographic material makes sense.
Not allowing any porn anywhere else does not. However, a law where only porn that is labelled in a standardized and filterable is allowed in normal domains would make sense.
Under this type of system, we could allow porn makers to upload to the usual domains, with the requirement that they include a standardized tag of some sort -- prehaps a meta tag in the section of the html. Or perhaps a minimum of any one of a number of standardized tagging schemes to create as many avenues of accomodation as reasonably possible for the industry
This would allow browsers and/or operating systems to be set by the user to filter out anything that is tagged as porn (or of, course, coming from the.prn domain)
The tricky part: defining porn. It would be necessary to have a rule defining what type of material requires a standard tag which would not apply to the.prn domain.
This would be a compromise. Arguably, some capacity for free speech is lost. But accomodating the industry with it's own domain and plenty of ways to publish in other domains that are safe for families goes a long way toward ameliorating the intrusion on speech rights.
This is a classic case where one right -- free speech -- conflicts with another -- to reasonably control the education and development of one's children. One could argue that all you have to do is either not have the internet in your home, or only allow children to use it in your presence; but I think that these are unreasonable expectations for parents. The Internet is becoming more and more indispensible for education, and children need to have the ability to explore on their own without encountering the worst of the big bad world.
The policy prescription I've outlined is, I believe a reasonable imposition on the porn industry. We don't allow them to place their images in the physical public space -- and that's considered reasonable; I think it's also reasonable to place limits on their expression in the digital public space.
Snake Horse.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's very difficult, if you choose, to keep porn on the net from children. Either you have to be with them all the time, or you can't let them use the net. The current technologies aren't working well enough.
So... just don't have the Internet if it bugs you so much, right?
But that's no longer a reasonable option for parents who want a valuabel education for their children.
Creating a domain for pornographic material makes sense. Not allowing any porn anywhere else does not. However, a law where only porn that is labelled in a standardized and filterable is allowed in normal domains would make sense. Under this type of system, we could allow porn makers to upload to the usual domains, with the requirement that they include a standardized tag of some sort -- prehaps a meta tag in the section of the html. Or perhaps a minimum of any one of a number of standardized tagging schemes to create as many avenues of accomodation as reasonably possible for the industry This would allow browsers and/or operating systems to be set by the user to filter out anything that is tagged as porn (or of, course, coming from the .prn domain)
The tricky part: defining porn. It would be necessary to have a rule defining what type of material requires a standard tag which would not apply to the .prn domain.
This would be a compromise. Arguably, some capacity for free speech is lost. But accomodating the industry with it's own domain and plenty of ways to publish in other domains that are safe for families goes a long way toward ameliorating the intrusion on speech rights.
This is a classic case where one right -- free speech -- conflicts with another -- to reasonably control the education and development of one's children. One could argue that all you have to do is either not have the internet in your home, or only allow children to use it in your presence; but I think that these are unreasonable expectations for parents. The Internet is becoming more and more indispensible for education, and children need to have the ability to explore on their own without encountering the worst of the big bad world.
The policy prescription I've outlined is, I believe a reasonable imposition on the porn industry. We don't allow them to place their images in the physical public space -- and that's considered reasonable; I think it's also reasonable to place limits on their expression in the digital public space.
Snake Horse.