If it gets so I can keep a spare body or personalized organ bank around, and if someone thinks up a way for me to make weekly backups of my brain/memories/personality... Well, I can come close, now can't I?
No. You wouldn't survive your first brain transplant. Someone qualitatively indistinguishable from you but numerically distinct might survive, but that prospect undermines the possibility of _your_ survival.
Egghead sent me a nice mail saying noone every really got my credit card even though 7300 people have reported fraud on their cards after the egghead crack, but/. doesn't think that is news?
The crucial question is whether 7300 out of several million is out of line with typical rates of reported credit card fraud. I understood the Egghead letter to be saying that it wasn't out of line, and that therefore there's no evidence yet of a problem.
Melvin Urofsky of Virginia Commonwealth University said he had been unable to assign students online research assignments about federal indecency law.
I'm skeptical of this claim.
At Catholic universities in the 1950's and into the 60's, faculty and students had to get official permission from the local ordinary (the bishop) to read books that were on the Index (of "forbidden" books). The point of the Index wasn't to prohibit people with legitimate reasons from reading those books, so students in, for example, Philosophy classes, were always given permission to read, say, Nietzsche. Researchers were given permission to read the books they needed to read for their work.
Assuming the state universities can handle the paperwork, I don't see how Professor Urofsky's complaint can be right. It's just not all that complicated to set up a process for getting permission for students.
I can see how one could have objections to this sort of arrangement, but I don't see how this could be one of them.
I know people who have stuffed envelopes, at home, for perfectly legitimate businesses such as medical equipment manufacturers and universities. Pay ranged from 1-2 cents to 15 cents per envelope, depending on how many items went into each envelope. For one person, this meant an hourly rate of anywhere from $15 to $30, but she was a particularly efficient envelope-stuffer. I assume that people who weren't efficient would drop out of the business.
So, yes, there are legitimate jobs stuffing envelopes, and, no, you probably won't find them in the classified ads.
I agree about the comparative silliness of the plots. Also, no one seems to remember that Gladiator really wasn't all that good-looking a movie. The battle sequence at the beginning looked good, but then all the computer-generated backdrops throughout the rest of it looked lousy.
M:I-2 looks great throughout. It has all the weaknesses people keep mentioning, but at least it looks and sounds great.
Everyone keeps saying to wait to see this at a second-run theater. No way! Go see it on the biggest screen available in your city, with the best and loudest sound system.
I agree with most of the complaints people have against the movie. It's not a great movie. But what there is to enjoy about M:I-2 (the way it looks and sounds) is best enjoyed in a theater that makes it look and sound as good as possible.
Definitely don't wait til it's out on video. A movie like this you should either see in a good theater, or not at all.
What about people like me who years ago fell out of the habit of buying music, long before MP3's came along?
Before I started downloading MP3's, I'd bought very few CD's in the previous few years. Throughout the 1970's, 80's, and early 90's, I'd bought music (less each year), but now I've got several kids and don't have the time or inclination. My life is too hectic.
But I _do_ have broadband access, and I can easily download music. I've downloaded thousands of MP3's in the past two years (I queue up the next day's downloads before I go to bed). I never listen to most of them, and I find myself coming back to (downloaded) MP3's of albums I already own, from years ago. But I also get to hear some new music this way. (I don't listen to the radio at all.) I really only play music when I'm working at the computer, sort of like having a radio on in the background.
I've bought a few cd's in the past two years, since I started downloading MP3's, but not very many. BUT: That's still _more_ than I bought in the couple of years before I started with MP3's. I believe that, without MP3's, I wouldn't have bought any cd's at all in the past two years.
Does that make me a net loss or a net gain for the music industry? Or too insignificant to matter?
After reading the hack, I ran out to Circuit City. They were out of stock, as were all the Circuit Cities in the area. I haven't found any other stores that carry it. But I _did_ get to look at the display machine, and it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
So I called I-opener and bought one over the phone. They specified that I wouldn't be charged for the internet service until I actually started using it. Sounds good to me.
I was a bit disappointed by the high shipping and handling fee -- a little over $30. But I want to get one before they raise the price, so I paid it.
One note: If you're on their phone system listening to the long description of I-opener, just press "1" to buy. The description of their service goes on for minutes!
Let's focus on the issue that's driving this: obscenity.
Obscenity is defined by local community standards. The internet has no local standards. So if libraries want to allow access to the internet, they have to find a way to impose local community standards regarding obscenity.
Filtering is clearly not ideal, and the standards it uses are likely stricter than those of any particular community. But until effective alternative forms of control are available, local communities will be willing to give up on access to some (perhaps a great deal of) useful information, in order to block access to obscene material.
(1) Library acquisitions are and must be governed by local community standards.
(2) There are no local community standards on the internet.
(3) Therefore, if libraries are going to make use of the internet, they will have to find a way to impose local standards on it, EVEN if that means much desirable content is lost.
As a matter of political fact, this argument will win EVERY time, but it's also the right argument. (3) follows from (1) and (2). Which premise do you disagree with?
Companies do market research...it is perfectly plausible that a company would have concrete data supporting a marketing campaign
So what? Nancy Reagan also had "concrete data" from her astrologers telling her how to arrange Ronald's schedule. How are the marketers different from astrologers?
You're impressed by the "concreteness" of marketing data. I'm impressed by the non-scientific nature of it, and by the way it's used to mask what are in fact values-based decisions. For a great example of how this works, see The Corporate Lame Name Game, from the archives.
No one knows what's going to sell, because there's no fact of the matter about what's going to sell. It depends on what people decide to do. This is a frightening truth, so people turn to pseudo-sciences like astrology and marketing so they can pretend they live in a safer, more predictable environment.
How many market researchers saw Open Source coming?
On the other hand, if you are at a completely private school like Harvard or something, go wild.
If it's tax money you're concerned about, I don't think there are really any completely private schools anymore (except a few fringe ultra-conservative schools that refuse federal aid).
Many private schools depend on government aid for about the same percentage of their total budget as do public schools. The difference between public and private has to do with the organizational structure, not with the sources of funding.
Why are you so willing to grant that anyone knows (in any great detail) what sells? There are supposedly "sciences" of marketing, of advertising and of management, and of government, etc..., but none of these is anything remotely like a legitimate science.
How about this: advertising decisions express the values of those who make them. That sounds pretty plausible to me, a lot more plausible than vague appeals to bogus "expert" knowledge about "what sells".
For your consideration: there is no such thing as scientific knowledge in any great detail about what sells (or about anything else that involves humans making free decisions under conditions of scarcity). There are a few interesting and true generalizations about human behavior (such as that they will tend not to make their motivations completely transparent to one another), but that's about it. There's no such thing as genuine knowledge about "what sells", because "what sells" depends on what people freely decide to do.
Organizations which make blanket appeals to "what sells" are typically uninterested in articulating the values which animate their own decisions.
To have taught them the values that I want them to learn and then to turn around and indicate that I don't trust them to live up to my expectations would be to convey my distrust.
Blocking access does not indicate that I don't trust them!
Part of what I want my children to learn is that responsible people take appropriate measures to insure that we don't put ourselves in situations in which a momentary impulse could easily lead us to do something seriously wrong.
For example, I could be trusted to take an extended business trip travelling alone with an attractive female colleague, without having anything untoward transpire. But I would never put myself in that position. I would make sure the situation never arose in the first place.
Taking appropriate measures to make sure that I'm not in that kind of situation is part of what makes me someone who could be trusted if the situation ever arose. My wife trusts me enough to know that I know better than to travel alone with another woman.
So, the short answer to your comments: taking reasonable measures like blocking access is part of the values I want my children to learn. Just because you and I don't share the same values doesn't mean I distrust my children.
This [viz. normal parental oversight] is part of the recipe for alienating our children.
Far from it. Blocking access to internet porn or to offensive cable channels shows my children that our family has a particular set of values. Far from alienating them, this gives them a better sense of the kind of community they belong to (viz. one that doesn't waste its time and attention on such trash). Your proposal is far more likely to alienate them, since it tells them that they live in a loose association of independent individuals with "freely" chosen values, rather than in a family with an established identity and set of commitments.
Kaufman flirted with various meditative and holistic groups and practices...
I heard a radio interview of Zmuda by Terry Gross on Fresh Aire a few months ago, and to hear Zmuda tell it, Kaufman did much more than flirt. He was for many years a dedicated practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, and was in fact part of the upper echelon / inner circle of the TM movement in the US. This was true before he was a celebrity and continued afterwards (with periodic breaks, apparently, when he was "in character" as Tony Clifton for days at a time).
Does anyone know if this is true, or just another of Zmuda's games?
Religious-Right types are not content with the knowledge that if their daughter becomes pregant out of wedlock, they will know about it (and this will be sufficient disincentive so that they will ask for nothing more).
Getting pregnant isn't what's damaging, it's the premarital sex itself. And if parents could be sure they had accurate after the fact knowledge about _that_, I believe it would be enough for most parents. In any case, you don't hear many parents asking for the government to criminalize pre-marital sex.
I understand that YOU think it's a great idea. I keep trying impress on you that the fact that you think so, that it is what you consider someone should be satisfied by, is no proof at all what a mentality quite different from yours considers adequate.
And what "mentality" might that be? Not only do I know a wide range of religious conservatives, I am one myself, and I think I have a pretty good sense of what the people to whom you refer care about. And what we want most of all is for government not to undermine our capacity to act as responsible parents.
I don't see where he's said anything like this at all. It's something you've put in his mouth as a strawman to knock-down.
Perhaps you missed this gem from the original article. It's a classic:
If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?
So, let's see: according to Jim, you can either home school, or else send your kids out into a world where the internet is going to be treated the same as books on the public library shelf, i.e., no supervisory role for parents. (Where was that straw man again?) How might books on a shelf be different from the internet? Oh, I don't know...how about local community standards?! In a public library, there are local community standards at work. On the internet, there are--and can be--none. Is Jim really as oblivious to such distinctions as he sounds? I've used no straw men; perhaps you're confused because his stated position is made of straw.
Please tell me how the system you propose is not horrendously extreme.
No doubt to you it seems extreme. But it allows anyone to publish whatever they please on a web page. And unless anti-censorship extremists are able to accommodate a sensible system of the sort we're discussing, which give parents substantial supervisory rights, that simple right will eventually fall before the reasonable demands of parents.
If you harbor any hope of keeping the internet as a place where anyone can say anything (a hope I share), you'd better start taking seriously the need of parents to monitor what their kids are exposed to. I'll vote against your right to free expression a thousand times before I'll give up my right to responsibly guide my children in their upbringing, and your comments reveal that you know that I'm not alone. Many if not most of my friends are extremists, and don't believe in a right to free expression on the internet in the first place, but I believe that they would be willing to settle for a system that affords them substantial powers to supervise their kids.
And that's the best compromise that's going to be on offer in this matter, I expect. You'll eventually have to choose: would you rather have government cooperating with parents to help them supervise their kids, or broad content-based restrictions? I don't see any other alternatives on the horizon.
One last note about Jim: I hope anti-censorship types are as embarrassed to have him as a spokesman as I am embarrassed by the more flamboyant pro-censorship types. That comment I quoted above is a disgrace, and anti-censorship folk should take great pains to distance themselves from that kind of rhetoric. Let me focus your attention on it one last time: isn't what I quoted from Jim a shameful rhetorical gambit from which reasonable folk should distance themselves?
I'd really like to hear a reason for why it's such a great idea that addresses the stated Religious-Right objection, that exposure for even a moment is dangerous.
There are lots of things reasonable parents don't want their kids doing, even for a moment. So long as we can accurately verify whether our kids have done those things, however, that in itself will be enough to keep most of our kids from doing them in the first place -- if only for fear of what would follow when we found out.
Compare, for example, pre-marital sex. Most reasonable parents don't care so much that it be illegal; they just want to be able to set up incentive structures in such a way that their kids don't do it, even once.
It would be better, of course, if no one let their kids do these things. It would be better if all parents understood why these matters are important. But, sadly, they (and, it would appear, most Slashdot readers) don't. So what most reasonable parents want is the ability to effectively encourage their own kids not do them, even once. And I believe that dclydew's reasonable proposal (to allow parents only to monitor their kids' internet usage) would permit this.
And, so far as I can see, that leaves only the extremists on both sides opposed, united only in their perverse desire to compel parents to raise children according to an alien system of values.
If you read Jim's comments closely, he's very clear: The children of parents who can't afford to home school are to be allowed to freely explore _whatever_ the internet has to offer, with no possibility of parental supervision permitted. Speaking charitably, that position is every bit as nuts as the opposite extreme.
And, to pick up my refrain, Jim and his colleagues had better learn to compromise, or they're going to end up on the losing end of a long series of battles. Proposals that acknowledge parents' rights will always carry the day in a political contest, as well they should.
I think you missed the basic point why it's a bad one from the pro-censorship side. Namely, it's closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. If someone believes sexual material causes all sorts of harm, then offering them a record as to how much mindrot has been done is hardly a solution.
If parents could depend on having access to an accurate, up to date record of what their kids are being exposed to, I'll bet most would settle for that. There are no doubt some who would continue to stake out the extremist position you describe, just as there are those such as Jim who hold the extremist anti-censorship position, but I think both of these extremes will in the end play little role in deciding what actually happens. Thank God.
Slashdot Mirror
If it gets so I can keep a spare body or personalized organ bank around, and if someone thinks up a way for me to make weekly backups of my brain/memories/personality... Well, I can come close, now can't I?
No. You wouldn't survive your first brain transplant. Someone qualitatively indistinguishable from you but numerically distinct might survive, but that prospect undermines the possibility of _your_ survival.
Egghead sent me a nice mail saying noone every really got my credit card even though 7300 people have reported fraud on their cards after the egghead crack, but /. doesn't think that is news?
The crucial question is whether 7300 out of several million is out of line with typical rates of reported credit card fraud. I understood the Egghead letter to be saying that it wasn't out of line, and that therefore there's no evidence yet of a problem.
Melvin Urofsky of Virginia Commonwealth University said he had been unable to assign students online research assignments about federal indecency law.
I'm skeptical of this claim.
At Catholic universities in the 1950's and into the 60's, faculty and students had to get official permission from the local ordinary (the bishop) to read books that were on the Index (of "forbidden" books). The point of the Index wasn't to prohibit people with legitimate reasons from reading those books, so students in, for example, Philosophy classes, were always given permission to read, say, Nietzsche. Researchers were given permission to read the books they needed to read for their work.
Assuming the state universities can handle the paperwork, I don't see how Professor Urofsky's complaint can be right. It's just not all that complicated to set up a process for getting permission for students.
I can see how one could have objections to this sort of arrangement, but I don't see how this could be one of them.
How recursively ironic is that? This alone should be enough to strike down this law.
Why couldn't he assign students online research assignments about federal indecency law?
BTW, there are no jobs stuffing envelopes.
That's not true.
I know people who have stuffed envelopes, at home, for perfectly legitimate businesses such as medical equipment manufacturers and universities. Pay ranged from 1-2 cents to 15 cents per envelope, depending on how many items went into each envelope. For one person, this meant an hourly rate of anywhere from $15 to $30, but she was a particularly efficient envelope-stuffer. I assume that people who weren't efficient would drop out of the business.
So, yes, there are legitimate jobs stuffing envelopes, and, no, you probably won't find them in the classified ads.
Local standards guide book acquisitions at public libraries.
You shouldn't expect a public library to give you internet access to anything they wouldn't ever allow as a book acquisition at that library.
Local community standards rule public libraries, and that's a good thing (assuming you think having local _communities_ is a good thing).
Grow up, all of you!
I went back and forth a few times with him yesterday, and his attitude didn't improve any. A real public relations nightmare.
I agree about the comparative silliness of the plots. Also, no one seems to remember that Gladiator really wasn't all that good-looking a movie. The battle sequence at the beginning looked good, but then all the computer-generated backdrops throughout the rest of it looked lousy.
M:I-2 looks great throughout. It has all the weaknesses people keep mentioning, but at least it looks and sounds great.
Everyone keeps saying to wait to see this at a second-run theater. No way! Go see it on the biggest screen available in your city, with the best and loudest sound system.
I agree with most of the complaints people have against the movie. It's not a great movie. But what there is to enjoy about M:I-2 (the way it looks and sounds) is best enjoyed in a theater that makes it look and sound as good as possible.
Definitely don't wait til it's out on video. A movie like this you should either see in a good theater, or not at all.
What about people like me who years ago fell out of the habit of buying music, long before MP3's came along?
Before I started downloading MP3's, I'd bought very few CD's in the previous few years. Throughout the 1970's, 80's, and early 90's, I'd bought music (less each year), but now I've got several kids and don't have the time or inclination. My life is too hectic.
But I _do_ have broadband access, and I can easily download music. I've downloaded thousands of MP3's in the past two years (I queue up the next day's downloads before I go to bed). I never listen to most of them, and I find myself coming back to (downloaded) MP3's of albums I already own, from years ago. But I also get to hear some new music this way. (I don't listen to the radio at all.) I really only play music when I'm working at the computer, sort of like having a radio on in the background.
I've bought a few cd's in the past two years, since I started downloading MP3's, but not very many. BUT: That's still _more_ than I bought in the couple of years before I started with MP3's. I believe that, without MP3's, I wouldn't have bought any cd's at all in the past two years.
Does that make me a net loss or a net gain for the music industry? Or too insignificant to matter?
...but they wouldn't be revising the law if Napster wasn't breaking it.
If Napster were breaking the law, they wouldn't need to revise it!
After reading the hack, I ran out to Circuit City. They were out of stock, as were all the Circuit Cities in the area. I haven't found any other stores that carry it. But I _did_ get to look at the display machine, and it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
So I called I-opener and bought one over the phone. They specified that I wouldn't be charged for the internet service until I actually started using it. Sounds good to me.
I was a bit disappointed by the high shipping and handling fee -- a little over $30. But I want to get one before they raise the price, so I paid it.
One note: If you're on their phone system listening to the long description of I-opener, just press "1" to buy. The description of their service goes on for minutes!
Let's focus on the issue that's driving this: obscenity.
Obscenity is defined by local community standards. The internet has no local standards. So if libraries want to allow access to the internet, they have to find a way to impose local community standards regarding obscenity.
Filtering is clearly not ideal, and the standards it uses are likely stricter than those of any particular community. But until effective alternative forms of control are available, local communities will be willing to give up on access to some (perhaps a great deal of) useful information, in order to block access to obscene material.
And they're right to do so.
It's tiring to repeat this, but here goes:
(1) Library acquisitions are and must be governed by local community standards.
(2) There are no local community standards on the internet.
(3) Therefore, if libraries are going to make use of the internet, they will have to find a way to impose local standards on it, EVEN if that means much desirable content is lost.
As a matter of political fact, this argument will win EVERY time, but it's also the right argument. (3) follows from (1) and (2). Which premise do you disagree with?
I won't be surprised if etoys once again sues etoy when next Christmas comes around...
That assumes that Etoys will still be around next Christmas -- not something I'd bet much money on right now.
At least one city (I forget, was it in Ohio? I think so -- heard it on NPR), has passed a law against talking on the phone while driving.
Companies do market research...it is perfectly plausible that a company would have concrete data supporting a marketing campaign
So what? Nancy Reagan also had "concrete data" from her astrologers telling her how to arrange Ronald's schedule. How are the marketers different from astrologers?
You're impressed by the "concreteness" of marketing data. I'm impressed by the non-scientific nature of it, and by the way it's used to mask what are in fact values-based decisions. For a great example of how this works, see The Corporate Lame Name Game, from the archives.
No one knows what's going to sell, because there's no fact of the matter about what's going to sell. It depends on what people decide to do. This is a frightening truth, so people turn to pseudo-sciences like astrology and marketing so they can pretend they live in a safer, more predictable environment.
How many market researchers saw Open Source coming?
On the other hand, if you are at a completely private school like Harvard or something, go wild.
If it's tax money you're concerned about, I don't think there are really any completely private schools anymore (except a few fringe ultra-conservative schools that refuse federal aid).
Many private schools depend on government aid for about the same percentage of their total budget as do public schools. The difference between public and private has to do with the organizational structure, not with the sources of funding.
...they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell.
Why are you so willing to grant that anyone knows (in any great detail) what sells? There are supposedly "sciences" of marketing, of advertising and of management, and of government, etc..., but none of these is anything remotely like a legitimate science.
How about this: advertising decisions express the values of those who make them. That sounds pretty plausible to me, a lot more plausible than vague appeals to bogus "expert" knowledge about "what sells".
For your consideration: there is no such thing as scientific knowledge in any great detail about what sells (or about anything else that involves humans making free decisions under conditions of scarcity). There are a few interesting and true generalizations about human behavior (such as that they will tend not to make their motivations completely transparent to one another), but that's about it. There's no such thing as genuine knowledge about "what sells", because "what sells" depends on what people freely decide to do.
Organizations which make blanket appeals to "what sells" are typically uninterested in articulating the values which animate their own decisions.
To have taught them the values that I want them to learn and then to turn around and indicate that I don't trust them to live up to my expectations would be to convey my distrust.
Blocking access does not indicate that I don't trust them!
Part of what I want my children to learn is that responsible people take appropriate measures to insure that we don't put ourselves in situations in which a momentary impulse could easily lead us to do something seriously wrong.
For example, I could be trusted to take an extended business trip travelling alone with an attractive female colleague, without having anything untoward transpire. But I would never put myself in that position. I would make sure the situation never arose in the first place.
Taking appropriate measures to make sure that I'm not in that kind of situation is part of what makes me someone who could be trusted if the situation ever arose. My wife trusts me enough to know that I know better than to travel alone with another woman.
So, the short answer to your comments: taking reasonable measures like blocking access is part of the values I want my children to learn. Just because you and I don't share the same values doesn't mean I distrust my children.
This [viz. normal parental oversight] is part of the recipe for alienating our children.
Far from it. Blocking access to internet porn or to offensive cable channels shows my children that our family has a particular set of values. Far from alienating them, this gives them a better sense of the kind of community they belong to (viz. one that doesn't waste its time and attention on such trash). Your proposal is far more likely to alienate them, since it tells them that they live in a loose association of independent individuals with "freely" chosen values, rather than in a family with an established identity and set of commitments.
Kaufman flirted with various meditative and holistic groups and practices...
I heard a radio interview of Zmuda by Terry Gross on Fresh Aire a few months ago, and to hear Zmuda tell it, Kaufman did much more than flirt. He was for many years a dedicated practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, and was in fact part of the upper echelon / inner circle of the TM movement in the US. This was true before he was a celebrity and continued afterwards (with periodic breaks, apparently, when he was "in character" as Tony Clifton for days at a time).
Does anyone know if this is true, or just another of Zmuda's games?
Religious-Right types are not content with the knowledge that if their daughter becomes pregant out of wedlock, they will know about it (and this will be sufficient disincentive so that they will ask for nothing more).
Getting pregnant isn't what's damaging, it's the premarital sex itself. And if parents could be sure they had accurate after the fact knowledge about _that_, I believe it would be enough for most parents. In any case, you don't hear many parents asking for the government to criminalize pre-marital sex.
I understand that YOU think it's a great idea. I keep trying impress on you that the fact that you think so, that it is what you consider someone should be satisfied by, is no proof at all what a mentality quite different from yours considers adequate.
And what "mentality" might that be? Not only do I know a wide range of religious conservatives, I am one myself, and I think I have a pretty good sense of what the people to whom you refer care about. And what we want most of all is for government not to undermine our capacity to act as responsible parents.
I don't see where he's said anything like this at all. It's something you've put in his mouth as a strawman to knock-down.
Perhaps you missed this gem from the original article. It's a classic:
If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?
So, let's see: according to Jim, you can either home school, or else send your kids out into a world where the internet is going to be treated the same as books on the public library shelf, i.e., no supervisory role for parents. (Where was that straw man again?) How might books on a shelf be different from the internet? Oh, I don't know...how about local community standards?! In a public library, there are local community standards at work. On the internet, there are--and can be--none. Is Jim really as oblivious to such distinctions as he sounds? I've used no straw men; perhaps you're confused because his stated position is made of straw.
Please tell me how the system you propose is not horrendously extreme.
No doubt to you it seems extreme. But it allows anyone to publish whatever they please on a web page. And unless anti-censorship extremists are able to accommodate a sensible system of the sort we're discussing, which give parents substantial supervisory rights, that simple right will eventually fall before the reasonable demands of parents.
If you harbor any hope of keeping the internet as a place where anyone can say anything (a hope I share), you'd better start taking seriously the need of parents to monitor what their kids are exposed to. I'll vote against your right to free expression a thousand times before I'll give up my right to responsibly guide my children in their upbringing, and your comments reveal that you know that I'm not alone. Many if not most of my friends are extremists, and don't believe in a right to free expression on the internet in the first place, but I believe that they would be willing to settle for a system that affords them substantial powers to supervise their kids.
And that's the best compromise that's going to be on offer in this matter, I expect. You'll eventually have to choose: would you rather have government cooperating with parents to help them supervise their kids, or broad content-based restrictions? I don't see any other alternatives on the horizon.
One last note about Jim: I hope anti-censorship types are as embarrassed to have him as a spokesman as I am embarrassed by the more flamboyant pro-censorship types. That comment I quoted above is a disgrace, and anti-censorship folk should take great pains to distance themselves from that kind of rhetoric. Let me focus your attention on it one last time: isn't what I quoted from Jim a shameful rhetorical gambit from which reasonable folk should distance themselves?
I'd really like to hear a reason for why it's such a great idea that addresses the stated Religious-Right objection, that exposure for even a moment is dangerous.
There are lots of things reasonable parents don't want their kids doing, even for a moment. So long as we can accurately verify whether our kids have done those things, however, that in itself will be enough to keep most of our kids from doing them in the first place -- if only for fear of what would follow when we found out.
Compare, for example, pre-marital sex. Most reasonable parents don't care so much that it be illegal; they just want to be able to set up incentive structures in such a way that their kids don't do it, even once.
It would be better, of course, if no one let their kids do these things. It would be better if all parents understood why these matters are important. But, sadly, they (and, it would appear, most Slashdot readers) don't. So what most reasonable parents want is the ability to effectively encourage their own kids not do them, even once. And I believe that dclydew's reasonable proposal (to allow parents only to monitor their kids' internet usage) would permit this.
And, so far as I can see, that leaves only the extremists on both sides opposed, united only in their perverse desire to compel parents to raise children according to an alien system of values.
If you read Jim's comments closely, he's very clear: The children of parents who can't afford to home school are to be allowed to freely explore _whatever_ the internet has to offer, with no possibility of parental supervision permitted. Speaking charitably, that position is every bit as nuts as the opposite extreme.
And, to pick up my refrain, Jim and his colleagues had better learn to compromise, or they're going to end up on the losing end of a long series of battles. Proposals that acknowledge parents' rights will always carry the day in a political contest, as well they should.
I think you missed the basic point why it's a bad one from the pro-censorship side. Namely, it's closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. If someone believes sexual material causes all sorts of harm, then offering them a record as to how much mindrot has been done is hardly a solution.
If parents could depend on having access to an accurate, up to date record of what their kids are being exposed to, I'll bet most would settle for that. There are no doubt some who would continue to stake out the extremist position you describe, just as there are those such as Jim who hold the extremist anti-censorship position, but I think both of these extremes will in the end play little role in deciding what actually happens. Thank God.
Extremism makes for bad policy.