Perhaps you've hit something. You note the discrepancy between "real life" laws an internet-applicable laws in the US. Maybe this is the problem - not that we need to make the internet as regulated as everyday life is, but that we need to make everyday life less regulated, so that it approaches the state of the internet.
As for your example, no you can't do that in California, but you can indeed read your favorite issue of Playboy anywhere you damn well please in Europe, Canada, and most other countries that aren't either a fundamentalist Islamic state or the United States.
arents have the right to raise their children as they see fit. Whether it agree's with your ideals and philosophy's or not. Whether or not a Baptist family chooses to teach evolution is up to them, not to the masses. I agree with you, it is bad parenting (in some people's eyes) yet to someone else it might be good parenting. The whole debate over parenting is all opinion. What one parent says is good for a kid is what another parent says is bad for a kid. Its their opinion, its their right to have that opinion, and its their right to exercise that opinion as long as the child is under their legal care ( up to 18 years old). You have the right to disagree with them, but not to dictate how they raise their child.
I disagree with that. A parent does not have an absolute right to raise their child as they see fit, and the law currently recognizes this. A parent does not have the right to deny their child an education - schooling is compulsory until the age of 16 (18 in some states). A parent, even if they're a Christian Scientist, cannot deny their child treatment for serious medical conditions (several parents have been sued and lost over this issue). For the exact same reasons, I'd argue that a parent does not have the right to indoctrinate their child in an attempt to bring the child's idealogies into conformance with their own. Some parents may attempt to do so, but this is certainly bad parenting, and exactly why education is indeed compulsory - at school a child can visit the school library, read textbooks, talk to people, and generally do things their parents may not approve of. Unfortunately home schooling is still permitted, but even then the parents are required to teach a basic minimum of information, even if they dislike it.
Anyway, there is no effective way to force parents to be good parents and allow their children to be actual people, but we certainly don't have to help them by doing things like installing censorware in libraries. If a child can find some information in a library that his parents wouldn't let him see otherwise, the risk of some other kid seeing porn seems unimportant to me.
You just changed the age at which we discriminate. Why is 12 ok, but not 18? What is ok as a 'general guideline' and what isn't? If you believe that age restrictions are legitimate, but that the age should be lower (not the 18/21 it is in most of the US) that is fine, but it doesn't seem like that is what you are trying to say.
Well, I'm afraid I don't have all the answers =)
I do think that the 18/21 age is too high, and something like 12 or 14 would be more reasonable. Remember, we're not just talking about pornography here, but other "offensive" or "dangerous" material (such as bomb-making directions, atheists, information on illegal drugs, abortion information, Southpark downloads, etc.). I can't say that I would favor entirely removing all restrictions whatsoever. It does make sense to me that a 6 year old is limited in his or her internet surfing. However, once children reach the age where they can begin to formulate serious opinions on their own (whether their parents like it or not), it's not the parents' place to restrict their access to information.
but the second paragraph talks about when censorware might be ok (ie, if it only blocks true porn, and none of the other sites listed). In addition, the general stance of anti-censorware proponents is that _any_ censorship is a problem, even if all it censors is true hardcore/illegal porn from children (primarily because, due to the human factor, that ideal is unreachable).
Well, if censorware only blocked hardcore pornography, it wouldn't be as big of an issue. However, as you noted, this ideal is unreachable, and secondly, it's not even the ideal held by most proponents of censorware. People such as the American Family Association are as interested (if not more so) in blocking access to abortion, drug, atheist, etc. information as they are in blocking hardcore pornography.
In effect, they use the pornography issue as a red herring - their main concern is not "little johnny might go see MPEGs of people having sex at the library", but that "little johnny might go read infidels.org and see evil blasphemous things!" The first concern would be easily taken care of with even one librarian that occasionally walked around. The second concern is what requires censorware. However, the first concern is much more popular, so they only mention that one (loudly and repeatedly).
This is why we prefer art by the young and governance by the old. I don't WANT healthy, normal, selfish, sex-obsessed teenage boys running the world, and neither do you.
So instead we have unhealthy, abnormal, selfish, sex-obsessed old men running the world. Great.
Now this debate infuriatingly and routinely argues both sides against itself. Yes, adults are responsible for their own children. Yes, this INCLUDES regulating access to information the the adult simply KNOWS BETTER how to keep in context. Porn in and of itself is not going to hurt anyone -- it's the anti-woman philosophy of much of it, the obsessive behavior that can result from unregulated access that is unhealthy. If you accept that parental responsibility is a given, then you either accept their right to employ 'censorware' (lovely, prejoritive word, that. second only to 'pro-life' and gaining fast), or you accept their right to DENY ONLINE ACCESS PERIOD.
Well, first of all, I would not accept that it's a parent's right to deny online access to their children, for any reason. If it's a choice between no internet or a smut-filled internet with no filters, I'll take the smut-filled internet without the filters. Just as a parent has no right to tell their children they can't read, a parent has no right to tell their children they can't access the internet.
As for censorware, this depends on what degree of control you think parents should have over their children's access to information. I personally don't think a fundamentalist Baptist parent has the right to tell their children they're not allowed to read about evolution, or that a communist parent has the right to tell their children they're not allowed to read George Orwell. Sure, some general guidelines (especially before the age of 12 or so) are needed, but idealogical molding ("brainwashing") is not acceptable. Unfortunately, censorware, despite its purportedly good intentions, seems to be used more as a tool of idealogical molding than as a tool of genuine good parenting. A parent that uses software filters to block infidels.org, aclu.org, alt.atheism, now.org, and a host of other such sites trying to prevent his or her child from viewing information that may contradict the parent's idealogy. This is certainly not "protecting" the child, and is, in my opinion, bad parenting.
I don't see a problem with it. The Darwin Awards make fun of people who got themselves killed, so I don't see how people who merely can't operate a computer have more of a reason to complain.
Well, so? There are tons of pages that are written badly. w3history.org doesn't allow "alternate browsers" either (Opera won't work under Linux or Windows...it requires IE or Netscape), but Slashdot had no problem linking to it (without any browser comment) anyway. Why suddenly the comment here? Do we only care if Netscape/Mozilla under Linux can access a site?
Exactly. Opening the Quake source code didn't create this problem - it was always possible to disassemble the Quake executable and modify it to cheat. It's just a lot easier now.
It's still possible to have good, cheat-free games though. Tetrinet (online 6-player Tetris) had a really bad design, with everything kept track of client-side, and didn't even prevent you from typing ASCII 255 (the "packet" separator char) into the chat window, so you could cheat just by typing some simple text into the chat window. Yet many people still play the game, and don't cheat. They find other people who they know and who also enjoy playing the game so that nobody wants to cheat, since that would be somewhat pointless.
Anyway, this is really the only solution. Any other attempted solution just makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to cheat.
Disclosed source-code, however, sounds so ugly. Open is such a pretty, pleasing pair of syllables, so fitting to name a company with....
Not being Mr. Perens, I can't say for sure, but it seems to me that he used "Disclosed source-code" rather than "Open Source ode" purposely, since there is a difference between the two. His arguments apply to any situation in which the source code has been disclosed. This source code, however, is not necessarily "Open Source." For example, code licensed under the SCSL (Sun's not-quite-Free license) is disclosed to the user, but not Open.
Handwriting recognition could be useful for languages with too many characters to feasibly put on a keyboard (such as Chinese), and for OCR'ing handwritten documents. As an input method for languages using a latin-based alphabet, it's pretty useless, for me at least. I can type much faster than I can write, and I think this is true for pretty much anybody with more than rudimentary typing skills. I'll stick with typing, thanks.
As for voice recognition, perhaps there are some limited uses, but I don't see this as being useful for me or most of the people I know either. I don't want to be talking at my computer - this would require either wanting everybody around to hear what I'm saying or being alone. I don't think it'd speed me up much either. I can type around 100-120 wpm, I doubt I can talk much more than 10% faster than this.
Yeah, that's the main problem libertarians (or "semi-anarchists") have - they're in the minority. The majority of people are very receptive to banning things that piss them off. For a libertarian society to work, the majority of people would have to understand the concepts and realize that only really bad things should be made illegal, not just everything that makes them unhappy.
So, unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for this.
Wrong. I have absolutely no objections to public libraries carrying information on human sexuality. My objection is to the notion that it's good to allow minors unfettered access to such material (and most especially to material that has no educational value - such as lurid close-ups of female genitalia) without parental approval. If a public library is considering allowing my kids to access pornography on its Internet terminals, it should at least have the decency to get my approval first.
So do you think that the Internet should allow less access to such material than a typical public library would? Why should a 14-year-old be able to check out a book on sexuality from the library, but not be allowed to view similar information online?
However, it is my responsibility as a parent to decide what, when, where and how my child learns.
I'd have to disagree with that. It's a parent's responsibility to guide a child's learning, but not to control it. Unless you keep your child locked up in a room, you are not going to be able to realistically control what, when, where, and how your child learns about everything. I'd argue that it's a good thing this isn't possible. Parents are supposed to raise their children to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them with viewpoints which are identical to their own...
Well, the point is that "censorware" is client side. Just because I put it on my kid's pc doesn't mean some kid in europe can't view all the porn he wants. I'm saying the law can be applied based on where you are- it's not like routers all over the internet should censor porn.
Perhaps with some work it can be, but that doesn't mean it should be. There are differing laws in different countries, and you seem to think that this is such a good thing that it needs to be extended to the Internet. Why should pornography access to 17-year-olds be different in Europe and the United States? Are American teenagers really that much more impressionable than their European counterparts?
Why is it not feasible to change a law? Because the majority agrees with it? I would sure like to see a society where anyone can choose to disagree with a law and not follow it without any consequences.
Usually, yes, because the majority agrees with it. This, of course, does not make it a good, moral, or ethical law. The majority approved of slavery in the United States, and Hitler was a pretty popular guy in his country. (Granted, these are extreme examples, but they illustrate my point.) Some laws are undoubtedly necessary to prevent complete anarchy, such as the provisions against murder, theft, and the like, but I don't think preventing minors from viewing pornography falls in this category of laws. I'd also like to see a society where people who disagree with those unnecessary laws can choose to ignore them. It is my hope that the Internet will be that society, or at least part of it.
Yes, they should! What is this, a new country called "internetland"? We still live in a country where it is illegal for a 9 year old OR a 17 year old to buy pornography from the magazine rack at a store, but they can go home and download it for free. But then the censorship paranoia freaks yell "freedom of speech! what if they're looking for information about abortion and get blocked?" Then the "censorware" is not doing it's job.
Censorware when done right should impose the same level of censorship that we apply to everyday life. You can go to a library and with enough searching find books on abortion, sexual problems, even steamy novels for housewives- but you won't find the latest issue of Hustler.
You're using a very US-centric viewpoint here, and also making the mistake of assuming that just because that's how we in the US currently do things, it's the correct way to do things. In many countries, a 17-year-old can in fact purchase a copy of Hustler. Why should it be more difficult for them to acquire it online? Why shouldn't the 17-year-old be able to acquire this copy of Hustler? Do you really think that he/she can't get a copy of the magazine anyway, even with some arcane laws imposed upon bookstores?
Before anyone says anything about how the age requirements should be lower for any of this stuff, that is not relevant to this discussion. Take it up with the laws that exist already.
That's entirely relevant to this discussion. You're proposing extending bad laws to cover the Internet merely because they're laws that already exist. I'd have to oppose that. While it may not be feasible in some cases to change the bad laws, we can at least prevent them from being extended to cover the Internet.
Honestly, just listen to what you're saying. Since we don't agree with the laws, we shouldn't apply them to the internet? Most of these proposals aim to bring the internet to parity with existing laws.
That's not possible, since the Internet is a multi-national medium. Should we impose Afghani laws on the Internet? US laws? British laws? Iranian laws? Chinese laws?
But there will be a day when it is, and I'll be there to buy a copy to put on my kid's iMac.
The day censorware actually works is the day we'll have sentient computers. I fail to see how else a computer can make accurate distinctions between, for example, a medical site about human sexuality with sexually explicit images and a porn site.
This is listed as STS 103, but the NASA guy during the lift-off yesterday mentioned this as being the 96th flight of the shuttle program. Where are the other 7?
You can't force them to expose their children to anything, but I don't think they should have complete control over what their children are exposed to either. *Maybe* up until their children are 10 or so, but not past that. The children should be able to find stuff out on their own. If they've been raised well up to that point, they'll be able to deal with the stuff they find.
That's only a good thing if you agree with the idea that parents should be able to control everything their children see. If some ultra-fundamentalists refuse to let their kids read science textbooks or visit science websites because they're "evil," is this ok simply because they're the kids' parents?
While I dislike gratuitous 1984 references as much as the next guy, this seems extremely similar to what's described in the novel. Not only is it illegal to break laws, with these competers it becomes suspicious to look like you're going to break laws. Eventually it'll be suspicious to think about breaking laws.
We need to restrict ourselves to actually punishing people who break laws.
Hopefully the courts will see that this case is similar. There is certainly a substantial non-infringing use of the Napster software. While the RIAA is probably right in that the majority of users are there to trade pirated music, there are quite a few who are there to trade their own music. If one takes the time to actually hang out in the chat rooms and talk to people rather than just attempting to pirate the latest hit single of some radio band, there are quite a few independent artists who let people download their music (completely legally).
Of course, I'm sure the RIAA isn't too unhappy about "accidentally" taking out the independent artists along with the pirates. After all, "independent artist" means "artist not represented by the RIAA."
Actually, I'd wager that counting bytes/day, illegal file transfers constitute a majority of ftp traffic. The vast number of warez and mp3 FTPs out there swamp the relatively few remaining major legal FTP sites (the majority of software the typical person downloads these days is downloaded via HTTP).
Even if not a majority, pirate sites make up at least a quite large percentage of total FTP traffic.
Incorrect. Napster was designed for the sole purpose of transferring mp3 files. Since these files never pass through Napster's servers, they have no way of enforcing copyright laws, as they never actually see the files. If you look, there are quite a few legal mp3s on Napster (mostly from relatively unknown bands such as those at mp3.com). The fact that more people choose to trade illegal mp3s than legal mp3s is something beyond Napster's control.
And, that RIAA representative wasn't the brightest. But, napsters servers can be compared to a "thieving guild" or however it is spelled. It provides the tools, the server, the information on how, and the oportunity to - trade copyrighted mp3's illegally.
No. Napster's servers provide the tools and opportunity to trade any mp3s. Whether these are copyrighted mp3s traded illegaly or public domain mp3s traded legally (or copyright mp3s traded legally with the permission of the copyright owner) is entirely beyond the control of Napster. Since these files never pass through their servers (they go directly from user to user on a TCP connection), Napster has no way of verifying the legality of a particular file. I personally have downloaded several legal mp3s from Napster, so yes, they do exist. That the majority of people using their software choose to disobey copyright laws is the fault of those users, not of the Napster software. The users who trade copyright m3ps illegaly should be prosecuted, not the software manufacturers or the Napster users who do not break copyright laws.
I'd guess that the past editing would only create a problem if one of those past posts in the archives were deemed to be illegal. Since slashdot currently does not edit the contents of its posts, it probably isn't liable for them. Of course, you never know...
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you've hit something. You note the discrepancy between "real life" laws an internet-applicable laws in the US. Maybe this is the problem - not that we need to make the internet as regulated as everyday life is, but that we need to make everyday life less regulated, so that it approaches the state of the internet.
As for your example, no you can't do that in California, but you can indeed read your favorite issue of Playboy anywhere you damn well please in Europe, Canada, and most other countries that aren't either a fundamentalist Islamic state or the United States.
arents have the right to raise their children as they see fit. Whether it agree's with your ideals and philosophy's or not. Whether or not a Baptist family chooses to teach evolution is up to them, not to the masses. I agree with you, it is bad parenting (in some people's eyes) yet to someone else it might be good parenting.
The whole debate over parenting is all opinion. What one parent says is good for a kid is what another parent says is bad for a kid. Its their opinion, its their right to have that opinion, and its their right to exercise that opinion as long as the child is under their legal care ( up to 18 years old).
You have the right to disagree with them, but not to dictate how they raise their child.
I disagree with that. A parent does not have an absolute right to raise their child as they see fit, and the law currently recognizes this. A parent does not have the right to deny their child an education - schooling is compulsory until the age of 16 (18 in some states). A parent, even if they're a Christian Scientist, cannot deny their child treatment for serious medical conditions (several parents have been sued and lost over this issue). For the exact same reasons, I'd argue that a parent does not have the right to indoctrinate their child in an attempt to bring the child's idealogies into conformance with their own. Some parents may attempt to do so, but this is certainly bad parenting, and exactly why education is indeed compulsory - at school a child can visit the school library, read textbooks, talk to people, and generally do things their parents may not approve of. Unfortunately home schooling is still permitted, but even then the parents are required to teach a basic minimum of information, even if they dislike it.
Anyway, there is no effective way to force parents to be good parents and allow their children to be actual people, but we certainly don't have to help them by doing things like installing censorware in libraries. If a child can find some information in a library that his parents wouldn't let him see otherwise, the risk of some other kid seeing porn seems unimportant to me.
You just changed the age at which we discriminate. Why is 12 ok, but not 18? What is ok as a 'general guideline' and what isn't?
If you believe that age restrictions are legitimate, but that the age should be lower (not the 18/21 it is in most of the US) that is fine, but it doesn't seem like that is what you are trying to say.
Well, I'm afraid I don't have all the answers =)
I do think that the 18/21 age is too high, and something like 12 or 14 would be more reasonable. Remember, we're not just talking about pornography here, but other "offensive" or "dangerous" material (such as bomb-making directions, atheists, information on illegal drugs, abortion information, Southpark downloads, etc.). I can't say that I would favor entirely removing all restrictions whatsoever. It does make sense to me that a 6 year old is limited in his or her internet surfing. However, once children reach the age where they can begin to formulate serious opinions on their own (whether their parents like it or not), it's not the parents' place to restrict their access to information.
but the second paragraph talks about when censorware might be ok (ie, if it only blocks true porn, and none of the other sites listed).
In addition, the general stance of anti-censorware proponents is that _any_ censorship is a problem, even if all it censors is true hardcore/illegal porn from children (primarily because, due to the human factor, that ideal is unreachable).
Well, if censorware only blocked hardcore pornography, it wouldn't be as big of an issue. However, as you noted, this ideal is unreachable, and secondly, it's not even the ideal held by most proponents of censorware. People such as the American Family Association are as interested (if not more so) in blocking access to abortion, drug, atheist, etc. information as they are in blocking hardcore pornography.
In effect, they use the pornography issue as a red herring - their main concern is not "little johnny might go see MPEGs of people having sex at the library", but that "little johnny might go read infidels.org and see evil blasphemous things!" The first concern would be easily taken care of with even one librarian that occasionally walked around. The second concern is what requires censorware. However, the first concern is much more popular, so they only mention that one (loudly and repeatedly).
This is why we prefer art by the young and governance by the old. I don't WANT healthy, normal, selfish, sex-obsessed teenage boys running the world, and neither do you.
So instead we have unhealthy, abnormal, selfish, sex-obsessed old men running the world. Great.
Now this debate infuriatingly and routinely argues both sides against itself. Yes, adults are responsible for their own children. Yes, this INCLUDES regulating access to information the the adult simply KNOWS BETTER how to keep in context. Porn in and of itself is not going to hurt anyone -- it's the anti-woman philosophy of much of it, the obsessive behavior that can result from unregulated access that is unhealthy. If you accept that parental responsibility is a given, then you either accept their right to employ 'censorware' (lovely, prejoritive word, that. second only to 'pro-life' and gaining fast), or you accept their right to DENY ONLINE ACCESS PERIOD.
Well, first of all, I would not accept that it's a parent's right to deny online access to their children, for any reason. If it's a choice between no internet or a smut-filled internet with no filters, I'll take the smut-filled internet without the filters. Just as a parent has no right to tell their children they can't read, a parent has no right to tell their children they can't access the internet.
As for censorware, this depends on what degree of control you think parents should have over their children's access to information. I personally don't think a fundamentalist Baptist parent has the right to tell their children they're not allowed to read about evolution, or that a communist parent has the right to tell their children they're not allowed to read George Orwell. Sure, some general guidelines (especially before the age of 12 or so) are needed, but idealogical molding ("brainwashing") is not acceptable. Unfortunately, censorware, despite its purportedly good intentions, seems to be used more as a tool of idealogical molding than as a tool of genuine good parenting. A parent that uses software filters to block infidels.org, aclu.org, alt.atheism, now.org, and a host of other such sites trying to prevent his or her child from viewing information that may contradict the parent's idealogy. This is certainly not "protecting" the child, and is, in my opinion, bad parenting.
Not to mention that their product is Open Source and has more features than most commercial remote administration tools.
Oh, and I don't suppose you'd know about those 500+ textfiles they've written (dating since circa 1984, since those aren't mentioned on CNN.
moderators - how is this redundant when it's the first post?
I don't see a problem with it. The Darwin Awards make fun of people who got themselves killed, so I don't see how people who merely can't operate a computer have more of a reason to complain.
Well, so? There are tons of pages that are written badly. w3history.org doesn't allow "alternate browsers" either (Opera won't work under Linux or Windows...it requires IE or Netscape), but Slashdot had no problem linking to it (without any browser comment) anyway. Why suddenly the comment here? Do we only care if Netscape/Mozilla under Linux can access a site?
Exactly. Opening the Quake source code didn't create this problem - it was always possible to disassemble the Quake executable and modify it to cheat. It's just a lot easier now.
It's still possible to have good, cheat-free games though. Tetrinet (online 6-player Tetris) had a really bad design, with everything kept track of client-side, and didn't even prevent you from typing ASCII 255 (the "packet" separator char) into the chat window, so you could cheat just by typing some simple text into the chat window. Yet many people still play the game, and don't cheat. They find other people who they know and who also enjoy playing the game so that nobody wants to cheat, since that would be somewhat pointless.
Anyway, this is really the only solution. Any other attempted solution just makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to cheat.
Disclosed source-code, however, sounds so ugly. Open is such a pretty, pleasing pair of syllables, so fitting to name a company with....
Not being Mr. Perens, I can't say for sure, but it seems to me that he used "Disclosed source-code" rather than "Open Source ode" purposely, since there is a difference between the two. His arguments apply to any situation in which the source code has been disclosed. This source code, however, is not necessarily "Open Source." For example, code licensed under the SCSL (Sun's not-quite-Free license) is disclosed to the user, but not Open.
Handwriting recognition could be useful for languages with too many characters to feasibly put on a keyboard (such as Chinese), and for OCR'ing handwritten documents. As an input method for languages using a latin-based alphabet, it's pretty useless, for me at least. I can type much faster than I can write, and I think this is true for pretty much anybody with more than rudimentary typing skills. I'll stick with typing, thanks.
As for voice recognition, perhaps there are some limited uses, but I don't see this as being useful for me or most of the people I know either. I don't want to be talking at my computer - this would require either wanting everybody around to hear what I'm saying or being alone. I don't think it'd speed me up much either. I can type around 100-120 wpm, I doubt I can talk much more than 10% faster than this.
Yeah, that's the main problem libertarians (or "semi-anarchists") have - they're in the minority. The majority of people are very receptive to banning things that piss them off. For a libertarian society to work, the majority of people would have to understand the concepts and realize that only really bad things should be made illegal, not just everything that makes them unhappy.
So, unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for this.
Wrong. I have absolutely no objections to public libraries carrying information on human sexuality.
My objection is to the notion that it's good to allow minors unfettered access to such material (and most especially to material that has no educational value - such as lurid close-ups of female genitalia) without parental approval.
If a public library is considering allowing my kids to access pornography on its Internet terminals, it should at least have the decency to get my approval first.
So do you think that the Internet should allow less access to such material than a typical public library would? Why should a 14-year-old be able to check out a book on sexuality from the library, but not be allowed to view similar information online?
However, it is my responsibility as a parent to decide what, when, where and how my child learns.
I'd have to disagree with that. It's a parent's responsibility to guide a child's learning, but not to control it. Unless you keep your child locked up in a room, you are not going to be able to realistically control what, when, where, and how your child learns about everything. I'd argue that it's a good thing this isn't possible. Parents are supposed to raise their children to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them with viewpoints which are identical to their own...
Well, the point is that "censorware" is client side. Just because I put it on my kid's pc doesn't mean some kid in europe can't view all the porn he wants. I'm saying the law can be applied based on where you are- it's not like routers all over the internet should censor porn.
Perhaps with some work it can be, but that doesn't mean it should be. There are differing laws in different countries, and you seem to think that this is such a good thing that it needs to be extended to the Internet. Why should pornography access to 17-year-olds be different in Europe and the United States? Are American teenagers really that much more impressionable than their European counterparts?
Why is it not feasible to change a law? Because the majority agrees with it? I would sure like to see a society where anyone can choose to disagree with a law and not follow it without any consequences.
Usually, yes, because the majority agrees with it. This, of course, does not make it a good, moral, or ethical law. The majority approved of slavery in the United States, and Hitler was a pretty popular guy in his country. (Granted, these are extreme examples, but they illustrate my point.) Some laws are undoubtedly necessary to prevent complete anarchy, such as the provisions against murder, theft, and the like, but I don't think preventing minors from viewing pornography falls in this category of laws. I'd also like to see a society where people who disagree with those unnecessary laws can choose to ignore them. It is my hope that the Internet will be that society, or at least part of it.
Yes, they should! What is this, a new country called "internetland"? We still live in a country where it is illegal for a 9 year old OR a 17 year old to buy pornography from the magazine rack at a store, but they can go home and download it for free. But then the censorship paranoia freaks yell "freedom of speech! what if they're looking for information about abortion and get blocked?" Then the "censorware" is not doing it's job.
Censorware when done right should impose the same level of censorship that we apply to everyday life. You can go to a library and with enough searching find books on abortion, sexual problems, even steamy novels for housewives- but you won't find the latest issue of Hustler.
You're using a very US-centric viewpoint here, and also making the mistake of assuming that just because that's how we in the US currently do things, it's the correct way to do things. In many countries, a 17-year-old can in fact purchase a copy of Hustler. Why should it be more difficult for them to acquire it online? Why shouldn't the 17-year-old be able to acquire this copy of Hustler? Do you really think that he/she can't get a copy of the magazine anyway, even with some arcane laws imposed upon bookstores?
Before anyone says anything about how the age requirements should be lower for any of this stuff, that is not relevant to this discussion. Take it up with the laws that exist already.
That's entirely relevant to this discussion. You're proposing extending bad laws to cover the Internet merely because they're laws that already exist. I'd have to oppose that. While it may not be feasible in some cases to change the bad laws, we can at least prevent them from being extended to cover the Internet.
Honestly, just listen to what you're saying. Since we don't agree with the laws, we shouldn't apply them to the internet? Most of these proposals aim to bring the internet to parity with existing laws.
That's not possible, since the Internet is a multi-national medium. Should we impose Afghani laws on the Internet? US laws? British laws? Iranian laws? Chinese laws?
But there will be a day when it is, and I'll be there to buy a copy to put on my kid's iMac.
The day censorware actually works is the day we'll have sentient computers. I fail to see how else a computer can make accurate distinctions between, for example, a medical site about human sexuality with sexually explicit images and a porn site.
(somewhat off-topic)
This is listed as STS 103, but the NASA guy during the lift-off yesterday mentioned this as being the 96th flight of the shuttle program. Where are the other 7?
You can't force them to expose their children to anything, but I don't think they should have complete control over what their children are exposed to either. *Maybe* up until their children are 10 or so, but not past that. The children should be able to find stuff out on their own. If they've been raised well up to that point, they'll be able to deal with the stuff they find.
That's only a good thing if you agree with the idea that parents should be able to control everything their children see. If some ultra-fundamentalists refuse to let their kids read science textbooks or visit science websites because they're "evil," is this ok simply because they're the kids' parents?
While I dislike gratuitous 1984 references as much as the next guy, this seems extremely similar to what's described in the novel. Not only is it illegal to break laws, with these competers it becomes suspicious to look like you're going to break laws. Eventually it'll be suspicious to think about breaking laws.
We need to restrict ourselves to actually punishing people who break laws.
Hopefully the courts will see that this case is similar. There is certainly a substantial non-infringing use of the Napster software. While the RIAA is probably right in that the majority of users are there to trade pirated music, there are quite a few who are there to trade their own music. If one takes the time to actually hang out in the chat rooms and talk to people rather than just attempting to pirate the latest hit single of some radio band, there are quite a few independent artists who let people download their music (completely legally).
Of course, I'm sure the RIAA isn't too unhappy about "accidentally" taking out the independent artists along with the pirates. After all, "independent artist" means "artist not represented by the RIAA."
Actually, I'd wager that counting bytes/day, illegal file transfers constitute a majority of ftp traffic. The vast number of warez and mp3 FTPs out there swamp the relatively few remaining major legal FTP sites (the majority of software the typical person downloads these days is downloaded via HTTP).
Even if not a majority, pirate sites make up at least a quite large percentage of total FTP traffic.
So ban FTP then?
Incorrect. Napster was designed for the sole purpose of transferring mp3 files. Since these files never pass through Napster's servers, they have no way of enforcing copyright laws, as they never actually see the files. If you look, there are quite a few legal mp3s on Napster (mostly from relatively unknown bands such as those at mp3.com). The fact that more people choose to trade illegal mp3s than legal mp3s is something beyond Napster's control.
And, that RIAA representative wasn't the brightest. But, napsters servers can be compared to a "thieving guild" or however it is spelled. It provides the tools, the server, the information on how, and the oportunity to - trade copyrighted mp3's illegally.
No. Napster's servers provide the tools and opportunity to trade any mp3s. Whether these are copyrighted mp3s traded illegaly or public domain mp3s traded legally (or copyright mp3s traded legally with the permission of the copyright owner) is entirely beyond the control of Napster. Since these files never pass through their servers (they go directly from user to user on a TCP connection), Napster has no way of verifying the legality of a particular file. I personally have downloaded several legal mp3s from Napster, so yes, they do exist. That the majority of people using their software choose to disobey copyright laws is the fault of those users, not of the Napster software. The users who trade copyright m3ps illegaly should be prosecuted, not the software manufacturers or the Napster users who do not break copyright laws.
I'd guess that the past editing would only create a problem if one of those past posts in the archives were deemed to be illegal. Since slashdot currently does not edit the contents of its posts, it probably isn't liable for them. Of course, you never know...
I believe that a very strong argument could be made for 'suppressed' information if the default setting on the 'Threshhold' was 0 or higher.
What do you mean "if the default setting...was 0 or higher"? The default threshold is 0.