Supreme Court to Hear CIPA Case 418
Ruger writes "The Supreme Court of the United States will "decide if public libraries can be forced to install software blocking sexually explicit Web sites," according to this article from the Associated Press. US lawmakers have passed three laws to 'protect' children from Internet pornography, but the Court struck down the first and blocked the second from taking effect. 'A three-judge federal panel ruled the Children's Internet Protection Act violates the First Amendment because the filtering programs also block sites on politics, health, science and other non-pornographic topics.'" Our previous story on this ongoing case will bring you up to speed on the issues.
They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
They are now down to "we must protect the children". Will the court buy it? Hopefully not. Legislation should NOT be used to do the work of respobsible parents.
As an adult, I should have unfettered access. A child's protection is not sufficient cause to violate MY 1st amendment rights. It is the parent's responsibility to filter for the child, not society's.
Hm... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's only one question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will the librarian turn off the controls at the legitimate request of an adult or child. If so, there's no debate and no abridgement of free access.
Otherwise, I see absolutely no harm in having tools that slow down teenagers from leaving goatse.cx sitting on library computers as a "joke" that my 5 year old daughter has to walk through.
Big deal (Score:-1, Insightful)
Funny, I was watching Seven recently, and Morgan Freeman's character gets an FBI agent to get some library records of people who have checked out certain characters. Brad Pitt's character says "how is that legal?" and basically Morgan says it's not, but who cares.
now, with the patriot act, it IS legal [cla-net.org]
blatanly legal, as the Bush administration and his boy Ashcroft thumb their noses at you.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
No federal law is preventing them from carrying any magazine they like.
This federal law is mandating they restrict content from the web wheather they like it or not.
There is a serious difference between the two.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
Add in the fact that most filtering programs these days would not only filter out "Jugs the Magazine", but also "Jugs the water carrying vessels", and it gets worse.
Filter on the word "Breast" and you filter out Breast Cancer, or the Bible for that matter (it's in there, frequently).
Trusting businesses to maintain "Black hole" lists doesn't work either, because it either becomes government supported censorship (who's paying for the filters...right...your taxes), or it becomes an easy way for political adgendas to be advanced (See the ACLU site blocked because they defend the Free Speech rights of the unpopular).
The Government shouldn't be in the business of telling me what I can see. Libraries are a function of the Government. Therefore Libraries shouldn't be in the business of telling me what I can see...Q.E.D.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
huge difference
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Censoring porn vs. Censoring everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know of any existing software that doesn't try to block you from going a million other places, too. Sites on homosexuality. Sites on alternative religions. It seems like most of the filters have been put together by people who are less interested in protecting children than promoting an agenda.
The opposition to this would probably be far less if there were some kind of guarantee that legitimate informaiton was not going to be blocked along with all the so-called 'smut'. I have nothing against telling people they can't browse porn from a public library... but I do have something against the government telling public libraries that they can't let kids find out about Wicca or gay rights or whatever they might want to really learn about, just because the filter says it's bad.
I think it's more along the lines of (Score:3, Insightful)
So the upshot will be that many libraries will have to cancel internet access altogether if forced to comply.
Now if the law included a nationwide site license for the nanny software & money to libraries for set up & support, then it would be a simpler decision between do we support porn in the library or not.
However, the decision the USSC is facing is more along the lines of do we allow libraries to provide internet access or not.
So, what DO we do? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just a question of parenting and observation of your child's activities anymore; adult content isn't something you have to go looking for anymore. It lands in my inbox every day, thanks to spammers. Must I forbid my children from using the computer at all? That's not a good solution either.
I, for one, would rather see them focusing efforts on keeping the adult sites from using "push" marketing tactics and pass enforcable laws against the spammers.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
beware any cause... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to be a convenient way to suppretitiously legislate morality-based attacks on personal liberty.
The Library of Congress might (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
I can not speak for him, but I share his opinion and have raised a quite sucessful child. He heven spells better than me
As a responsible parent, I gave him rules, even for the web, monitored his activity and disciplined him accordingly. Taking my parenting responsibilities seriously, I wanted to keep the "village" out of my decisions for his upbringing as much as possible.
In my opinion, the people that need a "nanny state" are the ones that raise little vandal brats, then run back to the government asking for even more nannying to obfuscate their own lack of attentiveness, shirking even more of their own responsibility.
Wheres the money for training, set up, licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you haven't noticed, but most libraries are overworked and underfunded as it is.
Requiring them to purchase & maintain new software will likely lead to many canceling Internet Access altogether.
As far as your five year old, isn't she a little young to be wandering around the library by herself?
Re:There's only one question... (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as "goatse", have all of the computers face the librarian's desk. It won't take too long for the site to be changed... If you are worried about your daughter not seeing these things, or hearing these things, then don't take her to the shopping mall on a Saturday night. Want to know how many times I heard the "F" word last time? Is it offensive to me, yes. Do they have the right to say it, yes...
And I do have a 6-year old son. I teach him right and wrong, and I try to be with him in situations where this may come up. Whether or not I'm with him, if he asks questions, I try to be honest with him while still telling him what is wrong with it.
Define pornograpy first. (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, i have no problem with them adding pornography to the libraries, because I am unwilling to draw that line for someone else.
Re:Censoring porn vs. Censoring everything. (Score:3, Insightful)
This cannot be done, because "sexually explicit" is too vague a concept to write a software spec around. It means different things to different people, and computers tolerate exactly zero ambiguity in their programs. Also, definitions of the phrase which rely on other vague terms like "lewd", "lascivious", and "vulgar" also suffer the same problem. It works fine for lawyers, but computers just don't get it. Ergo, you'll never see a successful filter.
Re:make it easy and make it work (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with that is - who decides what is porn and what's not in a global
Remember - this is a top-level domain that's meant to encompass all "porn" - who decides what makes the cut?
It's a library for god sakes... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Double standard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked at a library, and except for specifically designed children's programs, it's not someplace you should just drop your kid off anymore than you'd just drop them off at the mall without supervision.
Furthermore, the library is not just for your child. It's for the community as a whole. And as such it should serve the community as a whole. No, I don't want someone to be surfing for porn from the library, but I do want someone to be able to do research on breast or testicular cancer while at a public library. Currently the two are mutually exclusive - there is no way to block only the porn sites.
Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
My local library is paid for with my municipal tax dollars, and managed by my city government. So, under what principle does the Federal Government have any say in how my local library manages its business?
If I think my library should be using censorware, I can walk on down to city hall at the next town meeting, and bring it up. If I don't like the censorware my library is using, I can do the same. Or, for that matter, I can volunteer to work at the library myself. If someone in D.C. doesn't like the policy my community has chosen, tough beans. It's our library, not theirs.
But for longer than I've been alive, the Federal government has been taking more and more decisions away from local governments.
And for legit sites not interested in the ghetto? (Score:3, Insightful)
And pr0nmeisters would never volunteer for it because it would be restraint of trade.
Re:There's only one question... (Score:0, Insightful)
Certainly not. Just because most of US society has a witch-hunt mentality with regards to sex does not mean everyone does. I would rather my children be uncensored from anything on the internet. If they see something of a sexual nature, I'd much rather encourage them to talk to me about it rather than hide it from me. Telling kids not to view pornography and trying to prevent them from seeing it just guarantees that it is attractive to them and that they will be sure not to talk to you about it.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:4, Insightful)
However, they are not your babysitting service. Children should not be "dropped off" and left to fend for themselves until they are old enough to deal responsibly with the rules therein;
- keep quiet and do not disturb others
- keep away from the homeless people wandering through the bathrooms (here they do at least)
- realize there is material for everybody there, with different points of view
- know how to check out and return books in an undamaged state
Watching books and managing the library is the responsability of the librarians, not watching the children of irresponsible parents who like to "drop them off" there.
Re:In other news (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with these filters isn't what they let through, but what they block. (In addition to them being federally mandated as opposed to the library's own choice.)
Seriously, these filters are really stupid. At my local library, you get the choice when you sit down to use filtered or un-filtered. For kicks, I chose filtered, then tried to find a book I wanted in the library's own catalog. My request was blocked because the book was titled "The First Sex," a book about how women are about to take over the world.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that it's my duty to filter what my child sees. However the one place that should be a safe place to drop the kid off is the library.
What the hell? Your second sentence is completely at odds with your first one! First you accept responsiblity for filtering the data your child gets. Then you follow that up with a claim that you should be able to shirk your responsibilities by dropping the little tyke off at the library.
Do we really want to discourage children spending time at a place where they can learn?
There is so much wrong with that sentence ... where to start. No one is talking about discouraging children from going to the library. Hell, if kids think they can look at nude pictures, they'll probably beg to go to the library. So the problem isn't on their end, it's with you. You're choosing to discourage them because of your personal beliefs. Second, they will be learning at the library it's just that you're afraid of them having access to material that you don't like. It sounds kind of funny but when a child sees some dirty picture, they are learning that such material exists. Filters or no filters, they will continue to learn at the library.
Parents have little enough time - forcing them to spend what they have watching what their kids see at a place that should be a safe haven is going to discourage discovery and learning on the behalf of the kids.
Hey, the library is not a babysitting service. You're going to have to make a choice here. What's more important: monitoring what your children see or your free time. Don't give us this "safe haven" crap. A library is full of information. If you don't want you kids to have access to certain kinds of information, then be prepared to take the responsibility yourself.
GMD
parents are getting lazier by the day (Score:5, Insightful)
when my child is on the internet I monitor what she surfs. why should this be different at the library. maybe the issue is parents want to "send their children" instead of taking a part in it.
We need to focus on raising our children not finding others to do it. Porn stopping software stops all sorts of things other then porn. and who is who to tell me what is acceptable and what is not? I'll raise my kid thank you very much. and in doing so I want her to have access to as much information as she needs to fullfill her life. the focus should not be on what our kids see but how we teach them to deal with it. This is the real world people. there are uncomfortable situations everywhere. I don't believe we should stick goat sex up on a wide screen or anything like that. but let me be responcible for my own child.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:5, Insightful)
No it wouldn't.
The problem with all these arguments is that they miss the point of the First Amendment, which protects any speech, not just speech that national moral standards deem worthwhile.
People don't like to talk about this openly, but the fact is that most of us like porn, at least in some form. Admittedly, the vast majority of porn has no redeeming social value, but that's not enough to make it against national law. The only reason the laws are as strict as they are is that a rich, highly vocal minority are imposing their religious moral standards upon the rest of the country--standards which are technically unconstitutional because they violate the doctrine of separation of church and state.
Diverting federal funds because of religious issues, while not technically making it against the law for libraries to allow unfettered internet access, is still mingling church and state.
Of course, there's the other side:
Would I myself walk into a library, sit down at a computer, and bring up a porn site? Absolutely not. It's rude and inconsiderate to other patrons, and any library ought to have a rule against it. But here's the clincher: It's the libaray's business what rules they decide to make and how they decide to enforce them, not the federal government's.
I ask Congress something they've been asked many times before, and will likely be asked many times again: What part of shall make no law don't you understand?
Downright silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, they need to at least get the language right. Children do not look up porn; immature teenage boys do. You don't just randomly stumble into porn sites.
On the other hand, I have no problem with libraries filtering their content as long as they use open source software like DansGuardian and ONLY use it to block porn sites. I've set this up for clients and it works nearly flawlessly.
Re:Embarrassment is an abridgement (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a number of people who might feel embarrassed/ashamed asking a complete stranger for permission to access websites on legitimate, protected adult speech
That would only be a concern if there was a requirement to tell the librarian the reason for disabling the controls. Since the librarian obviously wouldn't care about the reason, there's no issue.
The other point is that simply standing in the "non-fiction sex" section of library is potentially embarrasing. Does that mean that the library is abridging those reader's rights because the books they are browsing are potentially identifiable?
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
See Mandatory Seatbelt laws or the 21 Year old drinking age, or the 55 MPH speed limit (later changed to 65, later junked).
And it's not about browsing porn (I'll bet dollars to donuts anybody who was browsing hardcore porn on a library computer would quickly find his access to said computer cut off), it's about being forced to install software that arbitrarily removes the access for *ADULTS* to web pages based on metrics which are completely out of control of the local librarian, and for that matter generally inaccurate.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:2, Insightful)
The internet doesn't allow this easy categorization. The librarians don't get to look over the material before putting it "on the shelves". This causes a serious problem with no good answer.
Option #1: Censor all questionable content.
Well, that's great and all, but as an adult I should be able to ask for, and recieve, all that other stuff. Who decides what I see and what I don't? When they decide books like:
Catcher in the Rye
Carrie
Brave New World
The Color Purple
Flowers for Algernon
Forever
aren't for children shouldn't I be able to check them out and read/see them?
Option #2: Censor nothing.
Well, hell, that's really not good either. I'd like to avoid the situation of having (as someone else pointed out earlier) my 5 year old seeing some prankster's idea of a joke. Shouldn't I be able to decide when my child is and is not "old enough" to make their own decisions?
Option #3: Carry on as usual.
What we've done is made all libraries into "good" libraries via this medium called the internet. Why not do what the good libraries have been doing for years. Restrict the publicly available works and have a system to allow unrestricted access to those people who want it.
Great, I hear everyone out there saying "But then I'm monitored when I do something 'the man' doesn't like". Big deal. That's already an issue. They already keep track of who checks out books. There are still ways to garantee privacy, we just have to apply them to this new problem.
--
As an aside, I have to wonder why the *obviously* pornographic sites aren't required to be easilly identifiable and filterable. You don't go into the grocery store and get smacked in the face with a poster of two dogs, a rooster, three women, and a midget all engaged in some horribly distrubing sexual tryst. Why can't we push all the pornography into a single
1) eliminate the vast majority of spam
2) filter all sites containing this material from my business, home, etc.
3) have some idea what I'm in for when I see a link, rather than just the unknown (www.whitehouse.com)
Set it up, and then change the charter of the other TLDs. I'm sure some kind of reasonable compromise can be made on what is and isn't pornography. We do it in the movies, we do it in print, why not online?
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that it's a free speech issue thinly disguised as a funding issue. Does anyone remember when the Federal Gov't made the drinking age into a 'Funding Issue'? It said that it would only give highway money to states which had a drinking age of 21. Now all 50 states have a drinking age of 21 now, and have for decades, even though every state has the 'right' to determine its own drinking age. Funding is the government's traditional tool for overriding the states' rights and other constitutional guarantees, until and unless the supreme court comes along and whacks its nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Until the libraries have the ability to exist without this money, and many don't, it is effectively a law requiring filtering software.
The sentence I have problems with... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but libraries are also not required not to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines. I have been to a few libraries that have subscriptions to Playboy and erotica on the shelves. Hell, my college library had the last 15 years of Playboy archived on microfilm. If libraries are going to use filters (which I oppose), it should be decided on the local level. The Federal goverment doesn't ban pornographic or erotic books from being in libraries so why should it be allowed to mandate what can be accessed via the Internet from their facilities.
Why not a children's access computer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not put special "Children's Access" computers in the children's section?
If we keep the majority of books away from children (when I was a child I remember being barred from entering the "Adult" section of the library, until I told them I couldn't find Ronald Clark's biography of Albert Einstein where I had already been looking, so they let me go in there that day), then it makes sense to keep them from the worst areas of the Internet. But this should only apply to the children's area!
Once they reach teen-age, kids should be allowed to use the unfiltered computers (and be told they will be banned from the library altogether if they are caught downloading pornography, unless they can show that it was an accidental "pop-up" or something that momentarily displayed an ad for pr0n.)
I don't see why this idea hasn't been considered.
If resources are limited in a particular library, then when someone wants to use a computer, they should be given a card with a password on it; and this password allows them to log in to the computer. Children under the age of 13 would be given a different password; and it would log them in with the filters running.
Linux of course would be ideal for this, but I don't know if there are filtering programs written for Linux. But Windows XP has pretty good separate logins, this should be pretty easy to do.
Re:There's only one question... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no existing AI technology that can filter pornography. Even bright, motivated people can't consistently filter it. There is no legal definition, and different courts can't agree on what is art and what is pornography even when they look at the same things. Until people can agree on this, which will be three weeks after hell freezes over, there can never be any filtering software.
That's why parents looking over their kids' shoulders is, and for the forseeable future will be, the only filtering system that works.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's only one question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:porn abounds (Score:3, Insightful)
Odd, while the spam I get contains lots of promises of all sorts of indecent things, I don't actually see any. There aren't even links for me to click on to get to the site. I wonder what his problem is...
Oh yeah! The cutting edge mail client I use, mutt [mutt.org], has support for not displaying HTML. What a great feature! Perhaps more email clients should add support for not displaying HTML.
The nature of email is that it's going to go downhill. Any legislative effort to stop it is only going to stifle effective communications. The spammers are already using mail servers in foreign countries. (Similarly I expect as long distance phone call cost continue to decrease to start getting telemarketers in foreign countries ignoring my state's do-no-call list.) The only effective solution is to filter at a user level (or ISP level at the user's request). For the short term, to minimize your horror at seeing it, disable viewing HTML email. (Perhaps email clients could add a "only display HTML from people in my address book option.)
Is Dvorak equivally as angry about his right to choose what junk mail he gets from the postal system? Both email and postal mail provide a system for random strangers to send you things you don't want. It's life. Bothered that you're "forced" to see these messages? Stop using a mail client that previews HTML.
Re:There's only one question... (Score:5, Insightful)
a requirement that parents actively supervise their children's web-surfing
If libraries used this rule uniformly, there would no need to censor anything at all, parents could decide for themselves what they want their children to see, and libraries would not have to stretch their already woefully tiny budgets in order to pay for twice the number of computers and filtering software for half of them.
By the way, in no way am I suggesting that even this should be codified. If certain parents don't agree with what the library is doing (whether refusing to filter or requiring that a parent attend a child at the Web machines), perhaps such parents should take care to ensure that their child just stays home where everything is safe and they can spend time reading the Bible and the constitutional handgun magazines instead of the dangerous material at the public library...
Re:Not a free speech issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They will keep trying (Score:3, Insightful)
Not so. The First Amendment most definitely does not protect "any" kind of speech, it never has, and it was never intended to. It prevents the gov't from passing laws that regulate speech for the sake of regulating speech. That doesn't mean that you have can say anything you want to anyone you want at any time you want and not expect the consequences. Nor does it mean that private non-gov't entities have to obey the same rules.
If I take out television ad that falsely claims that you're guilty of some horrible crime, then I am not protected by the First Amendment. If the TV station realizes that I'm lying and decides not to run my advertisment then they are also not guilty of violating my First Amendment rights. Nor can I exersize my free speech rights by casually violating private contracts, official oaths, privacy laws, etc.
People don't like to talk about this openly, but the fact is that most of us like porn, at least in some form. Admittedly, the vast majority of porn has no redeeming social value, but that's not enough to make it against national law. The only reason the laws are as strict as they are is that a rich, highly vocal minority are imposing their religious moral standards upon the rest of the country--standards which are technically unconstitutional because they violate the doctrine of separation of church and state.
Nonsense. First, the laws aren't strict. You can buy, view, or create pretty much any kind of porn you like in this country short of child porn, which is illegal for obvious reasons. The only question here is who funds the access to the porn.
Second, the fact that a given law parallels the moral beliefs of the majority of the population does not make it a violation of the establishment clause in the First Amendment. If that were actually so then laws against murder and theft would also be unconstitutional, because, after all, the Bible teaches that those things are sins, and we can't have religion tainting things, can we?
Personally, I think that net filtering is stupid. Watching what people are doing while online and kicking out unruly patrons who break the rules seems to work just fine. Let the Libraries and the communities they exist to serve make these decisions.
This law might be a violation, and if it is the courts will say so. But don't pretend that everything law or government decision that you disagree with is automatically an unjustifiable violation of your rights, because it just ain't necessarily so.
Congress WILL make laws, however crazy (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not for Congress to determine whether a proposed law is uncostitutional. Although it should be their responsibility to not waste time/money on lost causes (blatantly unconstitutional laws), it's the function of the Supreme Court's to determine the validity of their laws. I still prefer that distinction wrt the seperation of powers.
Their job is to write laws. It bugs me, but that's how their performance is judged for re-election. If there are no new laws, then that can be easily translated to the voters as inactivity. No politician can afford that.
Back to the topic:
If this attempt gets struck down, then the issue will definitely re-appear. This may be the third try, however even if there is no chance for a future bill to be passed on the subject, the appeal of looking like your fighting the good fight will keep this issue alive in Congress.
Re:They will keep trying (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They will keep trying (Score:2, Insightful)
Not Sufficient (Score:3, Insightful)
If you request that the filter be disabled, you are in effect stating that you will access material that may be deemed inappropriate by the library staff and the community in general. The only way to exonerate yourself is to divulge your purpose and the subject matter for which you are searching. If you do not, then it is reasonable to assume that your good name will be put in jeopardy. Since you may not wish to suggest to the library staff that you could potentially be gay [glsen.org], have testicular cancer [acor.org], or be interested in providing homeschooling [home-school.com] for your daughter, you are effectively blocked from accessing the material. All three topics have been blocked by filters in the past.
As for leaving explicit images on public computers, a change to library policy would be a more appropriate solution. CIPA was not designed to impede teenage pranksters. It was designed to block US citizens from accessing material deemed inappropriate from public libraries in direct violation of the First Amendment right to Free Speech.
-HopeOS
Re:Free Speech Does Not Compel Listening (Score:2, Insightful)
However, on the matter regarding funds from the federal government, I must disagree.
I am personaly of the opinion that the federal government should not be allowed to persuade,using funding (or lack of), anyone on any issue for which it would be unconsitutional to pass a law. And, atleast according to another post [slashdot.org] some courts do agree with me.
Anyway, Im not going to pretend that this issue is simple and that all the godaweful porn in the world should be avaliable to be view publicly at our libraries. However, I will be very vocal on my personal belief that the federal government should not be able to use funding as a scare tactic. This is, as you mentioned, the real issue.
Scott.
Re:There's only one question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Mike used to work for RuleSpace Inc. [rulespace.com] 6 months, to be exact. RuleSpace Inc. is used by AOL, Intel, Smartstuff and Telemate.
But, guess what!
Error rate for domains: 34% [peacefire.org]
Yeah, that's a quality algorithym there. Better then a dart board!
US Patent 6,266,664 can be read at the USPTO - to wit, their system does a ratio of bad words to good words.
So, in summary, it looks up words from a database, sums the hits, applies a function to the sum and divides by total words. Don't worry, they say "neural network!"
But wait! They make the list themselves. Of course, they do it by examining if the turn of phrase is used more on pornographic sites or breast cancer sites! That was clearly a deep line of thought well deserving of a patent there. Please, defend your company more for us, because defining a list of regular expressions and calling them "better, bad, worse" isn't exactly a-1-a computer science.
Oh, and in case you think I am wrong? Neural Network! Neural Network! Neural Network! Neural Network! Neural Network! There! I can't be wrong now!
Re:Whatever happened the .XXX domain idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's porn? Who will decide? Nobody agrees on a definition, even in the united states. What some people see as art, other people think is pornography (example: the statues at the Justice Dept. that Ashcroft thought were indecent). If you compare the same definition across cultures, over the world, it's even worse.
How would you enforce it? Build another great wall of china? Force porn-webmasters to register to .xxx? They won't volonteer, as it restricts their potential market! What about doing the opposite: considering every site as restricted until proven otherwise... you got work on your plate now!!!
Whould you let any governement agency control what you can see on the net at a library? Giving censorship power to any agency is very risky...
The main idea is: there is nothing that can replace parental supervision. Filters cannot be perfect; making it illegal is unenforcable and sex spam gets to your inbox anyway.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, let's pray for these heroic brave souls!
Re:Not a free speech issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Should public money be used for building nuclear bombs? Should public money be used to perform painful and life-threatening experiments on animals? Should public money be used to create lasers that can blind hundreds of people at once? Public money gets used to pay for lots of things I don't like. That's one of the prices you pay for living in a society where not everyone has the same set of values.
Anybody reading slashdot should know that this is pure spin.
Anyone reading /. knows that is false. Filter software (all of it) has a long and sordid history of blocking all kinds of things that should not be blocked. And why should the librarian be forced to unlock your site for you? He/She's got enough to do as it is.
But it's not irresponsible to let your child go to the library.
It is if you are not supervising them and they are not of an age where you trust them to do The Right Thing(TM). You (and your wife/partner/whatever) are ultimately responcible for your child. No one else. If you do not take the responcibility to keep your child safe then you have failed in your job as a parent. The library is not a free babysitting service and many have rules against unsupervised children. Thankfully they ignore that rule so your precious child does not have to stand outside in the freezing rain because you can't be bothered to take the time out of your oh so busy day and do your job as a parent.
Despite what the ALA and ACLU say, porn is not information. Nor is it "art" or "speech".
To you, this is true. But this is not true for everyone else and I resent you forcing your view down my thraot.
Support the Conservative Agenda! (Score:1, Insightful)
As everyone knows, most kids who go to Catholic school end up rebelling against the system in larger numbers than kids who go to traditional, secular, public schools. Walk into any private high school in this country and count the number of people wearing black and sporting skateboards on their backs. Walk into the public school down the block and see the difference.
Therefore, the best way to create a more open and accepting society is to put more kids in catholic schools, filter their access to the internet, keep them indoors after 9 pm, don't let them date until they're 18, yada, yada, yada. By the time the Conservatives realize what a huge mess they've created, it'll be too late and they'll be in the supreme minority of government. Didn't anyone see _Pleasantville_? Balck and white baby! Bring it on Mr. Bush! I welcome your plans!
Of course, the rest of us have to endure the torture in the meantime... Oh well.
Guess what's gonna happen to laws like these when Bush gets to appoint judges to the supreme court? Anyone want a recount now?
Re:They will keep trying (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a draft IETF RFC that addresses this very question:
ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/internet-draf
The problem is that the DNS is a global namespace and there's no consensus on what should go in a