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"I Would Strongly Advocate Full Disclosure"
from the two-political-parties-and-a-microphone dept.
"The internet is going to provide knowledge, information and freedom to people all over the world." - Sen. John McCain
The world-famous Geek Compound is located in Ottawa County, Michigan, not exactly known as a hotbed of controversy and intrigue. But for whatever reason, we are now one of the areas whose libraries are being targeted by would-be censors. Uncaring of a federal court decision declaring censorware in public libraries unconstitutional, the American Family Association and other "pro-family" groups have declared the area a battleground. A small library in a small nearby town has become the first in our fair state to install mandatory censorware on all its internet terminals. And now, the home of Slashdot itself, Holland, is being pressured to do the same at its public library.
Politics is of course a war of ideas, and in any war there is the inevitable arms race. Sen. McCain was possibly the first to bring the issue directly to the Congress, with his S.97 introduced a year ago. But Elizabeth Dole was the first to make the subject a campaign issue, as is illustrated by the pro-censorware pamphlet:
"...libraries should install computer software that blocks access to pornographic sites on the Internet...the measure also should apply to computers used by adults." - ABC NEWS, June 28, 1999
After Dole dropped out, the issue languished for a while until, in a campaign hard-pressed for issues of substance, it was revived. Steve Forbes is quoted:
"I proudly support AFA-Michigan and the citizens of Holland in seeking a reasonable, common sense standard to what children have the opportunity to view in a public library." - Dec. 20, 1999
And McCain's latest quote came while stumping in South Carolina:
"Every school and library should be required to buy filters...to keep out materials that are not suitable for children the same way in which the library board filters printed materials for the library." - Dec. 22, 1999
It's a no-lose issue for politicians. In the race to see who can come out more in favor of children, facts get left by the side of the road.
Here's the strange thing: this open forum meeting, which the AFA hoped would be about internet porn, ended up being about everything except internet porn. McCain spoke briefly, and only for a few minutes did he discuss blocking technology. In the lengthy question-and-answer period, there were only two questions about censorware. One of them was mine, and neither was in support of his position.
My question was about blocking software and openness. I stopped short of grabbing the mike and shouting "open-source the censors!" but that was the general idea.
One of the major concerns that free-speech advocates have about censorware is that its blacklists, or blocking lists, are hidden. The list of URLs and such that are actually blocked by their software is protected by copyright law and by encryption.
It's an end-run around the First Amendment. The government could never step into a library and censor information from the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry. Or GayDaze, a non-pornographic online soap opera about gay men and a lesbian. Or any of the thousands of unfairly blocked sites that have been uncovered.
The end-run is to allow an unaccountable third party to put these blocks in place - hidden - and then for the government to mandate their use.
I briefly set up this paradox for Sen. McCain and then asked: "Do you believe that software installed in public schools and libraries should be open to public scrutiny?"
I didn't set it up quite as well as I just have; I figured that since he was the sponsor of S.97, "a bill to require the installation and use by schools and libraries of a technology for filtering or blocking," he might quickly grasp my point. But he didn't appear to be familiar with the fact that the blacklists are encrypted, and answered a different question.
But when I rephrased the question, his answer was that he "would strongly advocate full disclosure."
If the Senator - or anyone else in a policymaking position - is reading this, I would follow that up by saying:
Great!
But the software we're talking about doesn't do this. There is only one commercial package on the market that has an open blacklist. It is not popular and is almost never given as a preferred option for libraries and schools. The software that the AFA wants to install in Holland's libraries has a carefully-encrypted blacklist.
It's only because of the (arguably illegal) efforts of muckrakers that we know anything at all about this software. The AFA, Filtering Facts, and other pro-censorware groups endorsed a product called X-Stop in August 1997. Family Friendly Libraries called it "technology that will block ALL porn sights and ONLY porn sights" [sic], and rejoiced that a technology had "achieved 100% success." But their encrypted blacklist was decrypted and exposed shortly thereafter. Unsurprisingly, the product did not live up to its marketing hyperbole. In October 1997, the endorsements shriveled and disappeared as quickly as they'd come.
The product was the same. Only our knowledge about it had changed.
McCain calls for "community standards" to be applied to each public library. But no censorware offers checkboxes for "rural Kansas" vs. "New York City" blocking. They are all one-size-fits-all. And because we can't look under the hood, nobody has any idea what size that is.
If we're going to use third parties to censor our public libraries, let's make sure they let us see what they're doing.
That's what I would have said to the Senator if I'd had a microphone of my own.
Finally, I have to say that I was impressed by the student in the balcony, a high-school student at my guess, who - after listening to the standard recap of Columbine and the standard attack on the media for giving the murderers Doom and the internet - stood up to state his case. He said that he looked at how the Columbine murderers were being described by the media and by McCain, and the description sounded a lot like himself. He played violent video games and spent time on the internet and he wasn't afraid to say so. That took guts.
McCain's plan for kids like this is twofold: first, to fund a study of "very intelligent people" to determine once and for all whether there is a link between media violence and real violence. And second, to protect parents' rights: "your parents need to know what you're doing on the internet," he told the high-school student, so that they could all sit down as a family and discuss whether it was appropriate.
I hope that kid knows about Peacefire.
Tonight, there will be a meeting on censorware at the Holland library which we hope will include both sides of this issue. Watch for a report tomorrow.
[An unfinished version of this story was accidentally posted Monday evening, and several Slashdot reader comments were lost. I apologize for the mistake. -Jamie]
"required to buy" blah blah (Score:5)
If government money is used to fund the service (like a library) then the government can set up guidelines that control policy. Of course this assumes that we (the voting public) control the government... (Heh. See above insurance knee-jerk.)
But 'computers used by adults' smells of Liz Dole sitting in my living room. Next thing we'll be required to do is wearing arm badges with our ethnic symbols on them.
What needs to be made clear to the people who think that they are in charge is that they are wrong. The sovereign entity in the United States is the Individual, not the State. Keep yer laws off my body, and keep yer policies out of my home.
Kids arn't sentient (Score:5)
"It's for their own good - niggers wouldn't know what to do if they didn't have someone telling them what to do."
"Why do women need to vote? They'd only want more dresses and better soap."
Let's re-phrase these a wee bit:
"It's for their own good - children don't know what's pornography is wrong unless someone tells them."
"Why should kids have a say? All they'd want is more candy and less homework."
Get the idea? Children today are treated as second-class citizens. Oh, sorry, wait, they arn't even treated like citizens. So what are they? Property, for the most part(at least in the eyes of the law). Look closely at the precedents: blacks, women, jews, and all the others. All were thought to be inferior, and as soon as they were given the chance, they proved everyone wrong(well, those that accept proof, anyways). You often hear about "that very mature child" and the fourteen year old that people think is twenty.
Let's look at the "very mature child" first. All the mature children I met are mature because they were given the chance. Mainly, that chance was adversity. They were given the chance to speak their minds, to take action.
Let's look at the second case: someone who, for some reason, is thought to be older. That would be me. When I was 15, I was getting into bars ID-free, while my 19 year old friends were getting checked. I was given the chance to behave like a 19 year old, and I did. It had nothing to do with ME, just the way people saw me. They expected me to control my drinking(which I did - for the most part). I have too many examples to write here, but trust me, they are there.
To everyone who wants to "protect" our children: there is a line that has been crossed. It was crossed when censorware became a library tool. We are no longer protecting are children - we are oppressing them. It won't be long now
Dave
Some thoughts (Score:4)
It'd be great if volunteer organisations could compile net-available databases of what they perceived as inadvisable sites, for whatever reasons.
Users could then have smart cards, for accessing public terminals, programmed with THEIR choice of which databases to use as filters.
This would meet the right-wing's objection of not wanting minors to access "age-inappropriate" material, whilst meeting medically SOUND reasons for wanting to screen out stuff (eg: epileptics from sites containing violently-flashing images), whilst ALSO meeting the anti-censorship's objections of not wanting outside agencies dictating who sees what.
By having a person choose who's (if any) filters they use, nobody is being censored. If you don't agree with one organisation's views, pick another.
At the same time, you avoid the perils of hijacked web pages, deliberately mis-spelled URLs, hijacked guest-books, inappropriate banner adverts, banner adverts linking to something other than what they say, cracked web-sites linking or redirecting to inappropriate material, etc, etc.
"So," you say, "the risks of those are very low, and the cost of what you're suggesting is high."
Rubbish! Volunteer organisations are just that. Volunteer. They cost nothing to anybody. Filtering software would take an afternoon to modify to use this type of scheme, and would cost the companies involved a pittance. Everyone and their pet goldfish has their pockets -stuffed- with more cards than a poker deck, so it's not like we're suffering from a mass shortage of places to store preferences.
"It's too complicated!" Uhhhh - you don't have any trouble using cards at the gas pumps, the supermarkets, the electronically-locked doors to your place of work, ATMs, PCMCIA devices, automated subway stations, et al. Why would this be any more complicated?
Truth is, nobody wants an answer to the argument. If they did, we'd already be using either the scheme above or something functionally similar. It's easy, it's cheap, it allows people to control what THEY see, it answers every single issue that either side in the Prawn debate has raised, PLUS genuine medical issues that nobody has even bothered thinking about, all in one very simple to implement package, with no one group controlling anything.
(Also, there's too much money to be made in those dubiously-located websites and ethically-questionable banner ads for any of the pro-prawn brigade to even dream of looking for a mutually-acceptable possibility. Besides, it does their case good if they can make the other side look like a bunch of rabid extremists. Actually hammering out something that would be -welcome- to the other side would damage their street cred and their macho egos.)
Rating Does Not Work (Score:3)
In April and May 1999 my wife and I were working with others on a study on controlling harmful and prohibited content on the Internet for the German Ministry of Commerce. The study favored Internet Content Rating and Selection as the premier method of content control, but during our work on the study we found that ICR&S systems have a lot of fundamental problems which stem from the nature of the media and which make it impossible to create a useful ICR&S system. The referenced text lists lists the problems inherent to any selection mechanism...
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp
Re:Very level headed (Score:3)
Chris Wareham
Re:Very level headed (Score:4)
That's someone who is fair game for the politicians. If we don't vote, we can count on our communications being censored, many common activities being illegal, and being taught science as the way the bible would teach it. Read a chemistry book on your own time in that kind of world, and they would just know you were planning to make bomb making chemicals or drugs.
GOP Debate on 1/10 (Score:3)
First they (McCain included) billed the issue as one of "protecting children", that it was not a first ammendment issue. When the moderator asked about the adults who would also be using the library terminals, no one could give a good answer in legal terms, so they started resorting to moral imperatives about removing pornography from our society altogether. One of them (it was either Keyes or Bush, sorry I can't remember which) even declared loudly that his children did *not* have the right to freedom of speech until he said they did.
I think the views of the candidates that make it all the way out to the public through the media are often milder than what these candidates actually believe. In the press they always seem to find some legal justification for their views, but when you listen to them talk, it comes down to their personal, moral, and religious convictions and very little open-minded or logical reasoning.
And for some reason, they think that their convictions are more important, more RIGHT than those of the average adult, average child, or average would-be pornographer. With someone like that representing the country, we can only expect personal freedom to decrease.
Republicans don't have a monopoly on censorship... (Score:4)
It takes a lot of guts for a politician to take a pro-civil liberties stand on issues that are framed to 'protect our children'.
-
protect our children from exposure to rape, incest, genocide, murder - outlaw the bible.
-
Opensource filtering (Score:3)
A 'censorware' project with a three aspect rating system-
a weighted average system, where registered users rate sights similar to the slashdot system, but instead of +/-. There would also be a categorical rating and likert scale of appropriateness for age groups. For sites that had highly dichotomous ratings (ie three ratings of adult only, two of appropriate for all ages) a flag for independant review would be in order...
a self rating system, in which the site maintainer is solicitied to categorize their web site.
a bot rating system, (the norm for censorware), which goes by 'dirty' words and whatnot.
also a directory system, in which anything in a particular directory branch can be blocked. This might be a great way to get more participation in DMOZ.org (The mozilla open directory project)
These of course can be combined, and have thresholds for the individual browser etc.
This information could be used not just for blocking, but to aid in logging by flagging potentially inappropriate material to the parents.
Some comments on the original post were- it takes a critical threshold of moderators to be effective and unbiased. A legitimate complaint, but the weighted system is likely to find equilibrium faster, and likely to find outliers/controversy quicker.
Another comment was- many words have dual interpretation hence a bot can mistake an innocent post for something 'naughty' and miss content that the censor would like censored. While true, weighting a site to the degree of trigger words is much less likely to get a false positive, which can be counterbalanced by one of the other methods. Similarly, a false negative can be avoided by only allowing sites that have been rated by an alternative method. Perhaps a system similar to metamoderation, the sites could be flagged if it has had fewer than say eight ratings, it could then be sent to those who have expressed an interest in the topic for which it has been preliminary rated. If the moderator were say in charge of a DMOZ directory related to the topic, then they could get a heavier weighting.
If there is sufficient interest, I might be willing to lead such a project...
LetterRip
Tom M.
fstmm@NOSPAM.yahoo.com
Onward Censorship Soldiers (Score:4)
First, fear seems to one of the most effective tools in politics. The trouble is, it can backfire. Get your constituents fearfull and the campaign gets a boost. But if they are critical of your fearmongering, the campaign takes a hit.
The key is to give politicians the stick for using the net as a fear tactic.
This is where jamie's speach to the converted comes in. Its great to register your complaint to politicians and in open forumns where one may find supporters. However, an argument based on emotion and the message "you guys suck" won't reach the ears of our intended audience. Well thought out pieces such as this provides the arguments, and the thought process, we as a community should focus on.
We want to make internet censorship too dangerous to touch. Let politicians find other subjects to use as a cheap boost for their campaign.
Re:Porn != Free Speech (Score:3)
It's not about obscenity, it's about the classification -- of whether something is obscene or not -- being done in an obscure way where you have no way of knowing whether or not that classification system matches your community values. Throw in the fact that it's done by a computer and AI still isn't here yet, and the only thing that you do know about it, is that it will inevitably fail. Your tax dollars will be spent on something that is guaranteed to not work!
So if your library installs one of the filters (that uses a non-disclosed method of filtering) you don't know how it is going to judge any particular content. You just know that, thanks to security-through-obscurity, you might have occasional difficulty accessing information about Middlesex county, and that it will still be quite easy to bring up a huge 24-bit picture of someone giving a blowjob to a mule.
That would be fine if it were practical. Just keep in mind a few things:
---
But how do you filter packets? (Score:3)
That's easy enough to implement, when all it involves is taking a dozen 8"x8" piece of plastic and placing them in well-defined magazine rack locations.
What people clearly don't understand is that Attempts to prevent the use of packet-switched communications networks such as the Internet to transmit information that could possibly offend are technically doomed to failure, [hex.net] because it's all just packets.
The best that has been done thus far is that the seriously offensive stuff sits behind barriers that require a credit card validation to open up.
Your suggestion of determining what sites fall under a "general obscenity law" doesn't work, as the general result of such laws is not simply to "filter" such things, but rather to establish that the police ought to go over and outright close the site down.
What you're looking for is some sort of "in between;" stuff that is permitted "viewing" for adults, but forbidden for children. And that is decidedly not something that is well-defined.
One of the more interesting situations I have been in was a "debate" over this; a district attorney with experience in the matter in the Ontario jurisdiction discussed censorship in the context of a church youth group.
There were a surprising variety of opinions on the matter, and what was more surprising still was that even in the context of a group that you might expect to focus on it blindly (and there were a few people like that), it was quite clear that there could be no clear legislation to agree on.
Consider some examples of situations with varying levels of permissiveness/ambiguity:
- You and I might agree that "extreme"/"hard core" publications like Hustler or Penthouse "leap over the line," and have often gotten censored and censured as a result of running afoul of obscenity laws.
- Playboy and other clearly "soft core" publications may be "clearly" inappropriate for youngsters, but considering them to be obscenity is far less clear.
- What of things that are merely "suggestive," such as swimsuit catalogues, the Victoria's Secret catalogue, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition and such?
- What of the "nearly naked Africans" that appear in National Geographic?
- What treatment should a medical anatomy text get?
- What about an issue of a medical journal, Deviant Psychology, specifically dealing with the treatment of individuals with addictions to dramatically obscene materials, that has to excerpt from such in order to help doctors treat patients?
- What about a documentary about pornography? There have been controversies over the documentary Not A Love Story. [ontla.on.ca]
The problem is that there's not adequate law to deal with the problem, and this nicely predates the Internet.Does it differ if purchased by a doctor, or by a hormonally-challenged teenager?
What if the teenager, despite hormonal challenges, truly is planning to study medicine?
Filtering and the SCA (Score:3)
Also, I've heard one problem that a lot of SCA folks have run into. The SCA, or Society for Creative Anachronism, is a medeival party sometime in the late 60's (can't remember what year). The SCA often uses "Anno Societatis" dates originating from said garden party, often written as roman numerals. In the late 90's, SCA members started having problems with filtering software blocking many new SCA web sites. Didn't take long for someone to figure out that blocking software didn't like the SCA dates (when this problem started showing up in A.S. XXX) in the URL.
Re:Very level headed (Score:3)
> reported on the news, terrorisiom, shootings,
> police beatings, etc. Grandma started preaching,
> "if we put God back in schools, got rid of this
> atheism crap, censored the sex and violence from
> the int-r-net, the world would be a peaceful
> place." After that, I knew she would be hard to
> reach.
Thank you.
I think this is the real problem we are seeing
here. People see violence, they see terrorism,
they want some answer. They want to know why.
Theyjust want a simple answer that they can
hold up and say "here is the problem".
They don't care about crowding in inner cities,
how would you go about solving that anyway?
They don't care about the US supporting Isreal's
takeover of Palistinian homlands, not their
problem. They want an answer that is simple.
No prayer in school? Thats a simple one huh?
if all the kids were required to stand up before
class and say a few words that they are told to
say about how good god is...that will change
everything.
Porn on the internet...well thats obviously the
cause of rape and all sorts of bad things.
Afterall if children saw porn justthink all the
bad things that migh thappen...Ye Gods...they
might go home and masturbate!
I disagree (Score:3)
What we SHOULD be doing is allowing the PARENT to decide what to expose their child to and how they should learn these values. Give the parent the option to parent. If we give children *rights* of all things, how are they going to be able to do that? It would become against the law, against the civil rights of the child, to forbid them from doing something the parent doesn't want them to do. How can this be a good thing? Do you think you know how to parent my child better than I? Does the government?
With respects to the heart of this particular issue, censorware in public libraries, I thought McCain's quote hit it close enough:While I don't think schools should be required to buy censorware, I think it should be permitted for them to screen out online material in EXACTLY the same fashion they screen out printed material. Libraries don't tend to carry back-issues of Playboy and Hustler. Is this censorship? If you have a problem with how your local library is restricting access to information, TAKE IT UP WITH YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY BOARD, for they should be the ultimate authority as to what's allowed in their libraries and what isn't. This should be as much a community decision as possible. (That also means I'm pretty much against using off-the-shelf filtering software as it exists today.)
Counter to what people are proposing, I *do* believe items being blocked should be listed somehow. In addition, I would like the parent to be able to say, "My child is mature enough to be allowed access to these materials," similar to "child" versus "adult" library cards.
Further, even if these suggestions aren't adopted, you're still quite capable of getting a cheap-ass Internet connection at home and allowing your kid to browse porn all day and all night if you wanted. If you think your child is mature enough (or that's just the way you want to parent them), that's your perogative, but I most certainly do not want my kids having access to overly sexual material (or whatever else that's questionable in my eyes) in a public library without my explicit consent.
And they will have that consent, when I feel they're mature enough to handle it.
Re:Okay, here's my take... (Score:3)
> means that little Joey Slashdot would be able to
> give young Jerry Falwell, Jr. his password,
> allowing Junior access to the sites that daddy
> doesn't want him to see.
The library is not "Daddy". If "Daddy" doesn't
want Little Jerry to see things he dislikes, he
should accompany him to the library.
You seem to be operating on the premise that
merely viewing porn is harmful to children. Please
PROVE this point and then we can talk about
implimenting protection.
Seriously, how many kids by age 12 or so have
never seen any porn. I was like 10 when I found
my fathers Playboy collection. How is this any
"worst"?
> 2.) The minimal blocklist has to be just that:
> MINIMAL
Ok
itself (like porn) can be harmful. I will go for
this. There should be a required contract. The
company compiling the block list should be
liable for any unfairly blocked sites. They
should pay a fine opf $1 million per day that
a site is unfairly blocked, retroactive from the
day it was placed on the list to the day it was
removed.
That should "enforce minimalism".
> 3.) This would be pretty tough to implement,
> especially if implemented at the proxy level.
Hopefully thats where it will be implimented.
I know I will be happy to help write a web
based CGI anti-proxy page. (permute all the URLS
into arguments for the CGI with an XOR key...
blind the URL in both directions..should be easy)
-Steve
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:5)
Here's a newsflash -- children _ARE_ second class citizens, in a very real and biological sense. They are wired completely differently from adults. Children are wired to learn, absorb, and grow, part of which involves hormones that prioritize emotional reactions out of scale, and center the child's mind on himself. This is on purpose, by nature.
Adults are wired differently -- they don't learn easily, their emotions are numbed from years of toil, and they have simply seen FAR more of the world than children. All this allows them to digest new information in a healthier, rounded context, at the cost of creativity and passion.
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.
Happily, biology is well aware of this, and this is why parents are in charge of children -- to provide perspective and guidance children simply cannot provide for themselves.
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.
Now, as a parent, wouldn't you rather allow your child to learn how the modern world is going to work? ALL of the world, not just the parts most attractive to adolescents?
"We are no longer protecting are children - we are oppressing them. It won't be long now
Until...what? Parents send their kids off to slaughter? They wipe their minds clean? Serve them with cocktails? PARENTS LOVE THEIR KIDS. They have a DUTY to them. This attitude is no less frustrating to me now than it was to my parents when I espoused the same laughably self-important histrionics when I was a teenager.
Life's wonderful irony is we all get to deal with the immature crap we gave our parents. Nature does that on purpose too, the bitch.
Jeff McCoskey -- Cookie Coward, not Anonymous Coward
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:3)
There are limits (Score:3)
First of all, I think we do need some kind of filtering software on public computers. As much as I lobby for a free internet, without censorship, I also don't think showing Jimmy the 5 year old the beastiality site is a good idea. There is a reason Hustler and other "adult" magazines aren't available to everyone in the public library. Hustler may have great articles, but there is enough in it that is objectionable that it is not offered. If they could offer only the Hustler articles, without the pictures, off-color jokes, etc, I would be all for it being available. This is what the filtering software is attempting to do, offer the quality content suitable to everyone without offering the objectionable material. This isn't about just keeping kids off the sights, because anyone walking behind the person sitting at the computer can also check it out and see what's happeneing. If you move the computer to a room by itself, then yes, adults could view porn, but this isn't a very pratical answer, since many library are only one room to begin with.
Second, there has been a lot of talk about giving children the oppurtunity to act as adults, something else I agree with. But there has to be limits placed on that as well. A lot of people when given the oppurtunity to act as responisible adults do so, but unfortunately, just as many choose not to. Look at the number of people who drink and drive. They have the opportunity to act responsibly, and choose not to. Look at the kids from Columbine. They had a lot of freedom (as witnessed by the fact their parents didn't know what was going on). They chose everything but to act responsibly. We should treat kids above their age, but within reason. Giving them free reign to explore everything on the seedier side of the Internet is NOT within reason.
Lastly, I agree that the software is not perfect, but until it is, there aren't too many other options. Going to the library and looking at whatever you want on the internet is not a right, it's a privilge. We can't let everyone have everything, but I also don't think we can take it away completely, because it's so useful. The logical option is to give as much as we can until the software catches up with everything else. If there are eight million sights filtered, maybe 100,000 will be filtered by accident. But given the choice between filter those sights accidentally and giving anyone the right to view anything, I'll take the accidental filtering for a while.
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:4)
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.
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:3)