"I Would Strongly Advocate Full Disclosure" 514
"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]
blah (Score:2)
-mark
It's all for the best (Score:2)
author who has to remain nameless in that I've
forgotten his, or her, name. To wit, Wizards
Rule #2: "The worst of harm may often result from the best of intentions".
Very level headed (Score:2)
Here in the UK, it is only in the last year that newspaper articles have started to shift their empasis towards a pro-Internet view. Prior to that, newspapers like The Sun and Daily Mail as a great opportunity for shrill editorials about Internet porn, etc.
What's strange is that there seems to be a growing acceptance that the Interenet is a powerfull and unstoppable medium. Government acts aimed at controlling it's content are falling by the wayside due to the lack of controls that *could* be put in place.
Hopefully the stifling of Internet access in public places (schools, libraries, etc) will be the high-tide of net censorship. As computers become more and more ubiquitous in the home, and web access forms part of digital TV content, we'll see the pro-censorship lobby marginalised to the fringes of knee-jerk politics.
Chris Wareham
scratch McCain off my list (Score:2)
Well, I was hoping there would be someone left in the race with a chance of winning that I could vote for. Internet Censorship is a fairly small issue, but it's one that will be decided in the next four years, so it matters who gets in now. Given Bush's fascist attitudes on abortion and same sex marriage, and the ominous-sounding "faith based initiatives", I don't think I could go for him either.
Looks like I'll have to throw my vote away on whichever of the libertarians [lp.org] gets nominated.
same story, different day (Score:2)
"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.
Re:blah (Score:2)
Anytime you step back from defending free speech, even a little bit, you lose it. Like you said anything less than absolute free speech, is not free speech. I still think the best solution is an adult TLD, maybe
Question re: copyrighting URLs (Score:2)
Unless they simply encrypted the blacklists and copyrighted/patented the algorithm. Is this a more accurate description?
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
Re:blah - Well Said (Score:2)
Slashdot was for free software, now they've sold out to make a buck. Fine purchase you made there andover.net...
It's time for a new, truly unbiased news source, Slashdot's days are numbered, I'm afraid...
The plateau has been reached and is now falling. Also, I'd like to reiterate your point on how Slashdot's opinion is (wrongly) viewed as the majority's opinion. I fully agree with that.
I fully expect this to be labeled as flamebait or a troll...I wouldn't expect any less from the in fact, uber-biased Slashdot.
If Slashdot was truly for the people, they'd have addressed this issue by now. Unfortunately they're for andover.
philth
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.)
The Use of Tactics (Score:2)
We know this because we've guarenteed it ourselves. That's the way OSS is supposed to work, isn't it?
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
I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
X-STOP has strange blocking (Score:2)
Re:blah (Score:2)
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.
Re:Filtering and Linux (Score:2)
Heck. I'd set up squid *anyway*, that way, you have a record of what's being done with your network (to a point, anyway) and the caching is oh so nice.
Porn != Free Speech (Score:2)
I Agree with McCain. Obsenity has no place in public schools in real-world media, so why should it be alowed to be accessed over the internet? Why shouldn't the same rules apply to the internet that do to paper-based media in a public library?
This isn't about free speach, stuff like this isn't protected. It's about keeping the same standards that already apply to libraries to the new medium of the internet. It's not censorship if it's censoring things that aren't protected under the 1st amendment.
The problem seems to be that the "black list" of software that is used is encrypted. Meaning that it's not the gov't that determins what is obsecene(as is the case now), it's private companies that make the software. These companies can pick and choose what can and can not be seen. They usually block access to sites that ARE protected under the 1st amendment, shuch as anti-censorship sites, etc.
Maybe a gov't body can be set up to determine what sites fall under a general obsenity law, and open the list to all the censorware companies. The list could be made publicly avalible, and be the list that determines what and what not can be seen in a public school or library. This way, only the non-protected obscene material, which isn't premitted in a public school/library now, isn't accessable.
I'm not for MORE laws, just the ones that already apply should be enforced.
Filtering software- doesn't... (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me... (Score:2)
I dont know about that.. you can say anything you want, as long as you dont threaten to blow up high schools, and as long as you can find a medium to express yourself in.. you can SAY it.. whether or not anyone will believe you, or carry your words, is another question.
*I suppose it would be a good idea to block porn in libraries, but where would it stop? It would just move on to internet cafes, and so on, until it started affecting home users. and would the block stop with porn? Sooner or later more subjects would be blocked, some of which genuinely help people with sexuality difficulties. *
#bzzzzzt# wrong.. my "cybercafe" is a privately run business, which I fund myself, and through the money from my patrons. A Library, much like a public terminal in the courthouse, is paid for by the tax money from your area.. which means, you are playing with government money at that point, and it becomes a "public" issue, rather than the above mentioned cafe, which is a private issue.
*I'm a bit wary of McCain, simply because I am wary of all who display a military past with too much pride. "I obeyed orders, and killed people, and I didn't even know why!" seems to be a fine thing to these people. Military people rarely get out of the military way of thinking, and thinking that the public should learn things on a 'need-to-know' basis is insane.*
Now, see, Im looking another way.. he actually SERVED in the military, he actually DID HARD TIME for what he believed in. I guess Im a conservative libertarian, but I have a LOT of respect for this man, a lot more than I do for Clinton who draft dodged, Gore who claimed that he invented everything this side of sliced bread, Ventura, who has proven to be exactly the moron one would expect from an ex-wrestler, and Trump, who is used to buying his way to whatever he wants. At least McCain has an IDEA about what really working is, what serving (important word) a term of something means.. he may think kids dont deserve the "right" to see Veronica Moser at a library..; and I stand behind that 100%.. I dont want my child looking at anything at a library on a school mandated class trip that I wouldnt show him at home. (remember the trips to the library in town? what were the first books kids snuck off to find? hmmm?)
I just feel that *censorship* is getting thrown around a LOT.. but I would rather have the software written by someone who is writing it to PROTECT CHILDREN and not to get filthy rich, or take grants from company A to block sites featuring company B.. see my point?
Maeryk
Re:Open Source System Opportunity! (Score:2)
Re:blah (and click-through discussion) (Score:2)
What classes as XXX material? Who judges it? The user? the sender? the state/country of the sender/reciever? At what ages do you become an adult? 16/18/21? Who is prosecutable and by whom, under which countries laws? What would be classed as "obscene" in one place, would be trivial in another.
To go off on a completely different track, did you ever wonder why porn sites (or spammers) go to such lengths to try and get to you look at pages? In short, to increase "hits" and click through, because for each page load they get paid, regardless of the relevent of the user reading it.
This, I believe is what needs to be addressed, and it's irrelevent if it's spammers, selling porn, or printer ink. If you get paid per page loads, you attempt to maximise page loads. If you on the other hand, get paid by inquiries, or some other more valid metric, the emphasis changes completly.
If you educate the businesses that "click though/page views" is not a valid payment model, and move to say, inquiries, a lot of the problems will disappear as the reasons for "dragging" people to sites will reduce.
In summary, businesses think lots of "page loads" = lots of customers, so pay for lots of page loads, resulting in spamming, page grabs, etc.
Remove the pay per page load model, and I believe a lot of the lower problems will also be solved. Plus, it's easy to takcle the model, as it has *nothing* to do with porn, persay, it's just a business model to refute.
--
Libraries (Score:2)
On one hand, libraries should not be a place where a kid can run to perform an end-run around their parents. I'm always advocating that it should be parents who decide what their children should and should not look at, not the government. Parallel to that, however, the government should not be unwittingly help kids get around their parents.
On the other hand, anyone over the age of 18 (and probably younger than that) ought to be able to look at/read/consider anything they damn well please -- it'd be unconstitutional to do otherwise.
Creating a balance is hard here. Do you have "adult" computers? Do you have someone watching the computer, switching the filters on/off remotely? Do you institute national retinal databases and have the machines keep track of who is using the system?
It is important to have control over what your kids are seeing/hearing. It is important to avoid censoring material for adults in an effort to protect children. I have no earthly idea how to strike a balance.
----
Re:scratch McCain off my list (Score:2)
I'm not sure which state you live in, but I know that voting for Libertarians in New Mexico has had a positive effect. We're looking at gaining major party status, which would make it easier to get more people on the ballot, and give us a chance to hold primary elections. Both these things will draw more press coverage to the issues that Libertarians care about.
It doesn't even matter if Libertarians are elected. The press coverage will help sway the platforms of other parties toward Libertarian ideals.
Your vote isn't about being on the winning side. It is about helping others understand what you want in your representatives, now and in the future. Vote for whoever best reflects what you want. This will have some effect on the choices available next time. Take the long view.
It's not a horse race. There is no prize for voting for the candidate that happens to win.
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.
-
Re:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
You wouldn't let your kid wander around a city, red light districts and all.. You wouldn't let your kid wander around a pornography store in real life..
So why are you letting your children Wander around the internet unattended?
Parenting isn't meant to be done in-absentia.. The computer/television isn't a babysitter...
Raising children requires ACTIVE PARTICIPATION by the parents.. Its not my responsibility to prevent your children from looking at porn..
Its not the government's responsibility to prevent your kids from looking at porn.
Its yours.
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:2)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
I think what's happening here is that library censorware advocates have a problem with the "publicness" of library terminals. Politicians then take this issue and further generalize it to "protecting families and children" by calling for the demolishing of Internet "porn" (which really means anything of dubious nature according to Christian tenet or pop psychology moralistic blather). The easy solution of "block it for everyone" has been presented precisely because it is quick and easy, it parallels the sweeping generalizations of political family protection platforms, and because no one has come up with a better solution. Clearly, as adults, we want to be able to view what we want when we want. But I don't think most of us have a problem with not showing children sexually explicit content. The question then becomes how to decide what children should and should not be seeing in public facilities, who should decide, and how to ensure that the decision protects the rights of both adults and children. Obviously, this is not a question that's going to be answered in a one-night forum or with a one size fits all software solution.
Chuck.
Porn: The worst evil of them all. (Score:2)
McCain seems to be nothing more than a staunchly conservative Republican with fantastically backward-looking ideas. And for that, he will never have my vote.
Does he even know what he is talking about? I can assume the answer to that question just by the way he acts. "Oh, kids can see porn? Well, let's stop that right now. How do we stop it? Well, there is a computer program that stops it... Well then, we must simply require that all schools install this software on their computers. What? The software does not work as expected? Oh well, it looks good to the voters."
He seems to do things that must know are wrong, but does them just because they make him look more conservative. I guess Bush is trying to become more moderate so McCain is trying to be more conservative.
But the underlying hypocrisy of porn being the worst evil of them all, spouted by all conservatives as well as supposed "family" organizations, is one of the most disgusting facets of our culture. Let's consider a porn movie. Two adults having sex. Let's forget oral, anal, or any bizarre sex acts. Just two people having sex. Now, how can that be illegal when everybody does it?? And how can it be illegal when many of us look at what is being done in the movie and hope that one day our children will be lucky enough to partake in this activity? But still, despite all the hype that would lead one to think otherwise, we have movies, tv shows, and movies on tv that show people getting shot, beat up, drowned, whatever. An activity in which we hope none of us or our children ever partake. It's so hypocritical.
Violence in the media, Porn, these are just the buzzwords of today. The South Park movie was one of the best political statements I have ever seen. A movie can be shown on TV where a guy stands in the center of town and picks people off, one by one, with an uzi, and nobody cares. But I say Shit, piss, cocksucker, cunt, motherfucker, fuck, or tits, and I get a huge fine. Or I show an erect penis or a vagina, one of which at least 99.99999% of the world's population has, and I get a huge fine.
These taboos make no sense. And nobody wants to even consider attempting to change society's views towards these things. Rather, we should keep these horrible ideas (i.e. sex) bottled up, kept behind the closed doors of our bedrooms. Wouldn't want anybody to know what a vagina looks like, for god's sake.
Now, mass murder, that's another story. We can talk and show that ad nauseum. We'll pay violence lip service but really, we don't care about guns in movies. In fact, guns are good! We love guns! And all the money we get from the gunmakers! Yes, guns are nice! But violence, nonono, badbadbad. But guns, great! Sex? nononono. Except for my mistress here. And my stack of Hustlers. And my porno tape collection. And all my goods from adulttoys.com...
Ahh, hypocrisy. But who am I to talk.
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
No, I've not been censored (Score:2)
I regret having had to yank it off the Slashdot front page, but I did so, in order that the full story could be posted today.
No censorship involved - if there was, you'd hear me yelling about it! Just good old-fashioned screwups and fubar.
Jamie McCarthy
Re:Porn != Free Speech (Score:2)
"Obscenity" can be restricted, but porn isn't obscenity (look, playboy's still on hte shelves).
IANAL, but I've got one on the phone right now... Obscene matter must have no scientific, literary, artistic and political value - even porn has artistic value.
Nice article, but I can't read all of it! (Score:2)
Well, I tried to visit some of the links in this article, but instead I get things like:
Forbidden by rating check
You are not permitted to access the URL http://www.peacefire.org/ due to the policy of your organization.
If you have a legitimate business reason for accessing this site, please send e-mail to firewall.admin@.com or log a call with the help desk.
If you have questions about the browser blocker please check the FAQ at http://intralink/organizations/is/home/webnotfaq.
Requests are too numerous to respond to individually. Please give us a week to resolve the issue and try the site again.
Don'tcha love filtering? Of course, I'm not at a library, I'm at work...
-jerdenn
Re:blah (Score:2)
That depends who you talk to. _I_ think that
it does...the popular view on "Free Speech"
is more like "You can say anything that doesn't
offend anyone"
> However, my rights end where yours begin.
Kind of a bastardization of a metaphor.
> So, I guess censorship is good, when it is
> implemented properly
Here I disagree. Censorship litterally means
that some party gets to decide "What speech is
OK". I personally reject that idea totally.
NO person EVER has the right to decide what
speech is OK for me to hear (secrets wispered
into someones ear being excluded from "Speach"
as its a whole nother topic of privacy there)
To make a second point. This issue is based on
the idea that "Seeing Sexually Explicit Material
is Harmful to children". This statment is taken
as fact, when in truth it has NEVER been shown
to have any validity whatsoever.
> In other words it works, in theory. But then
> again, so does communism (in theory). So there
> ya go.
Actually... there are communes still in existance
today, even right here in remote areas of the
United States. I would say Communism works as
much in theory as in Practice (marxism might
not...there are a few forms of fake communism
that definitly don't...but the USSR was never
really communist anyway)
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?
porn not the problem (Score:2)
Why did I do this? Because my parents were of this "american family values" slant that says the naked human body is a nasty sinful thing. Well, I don't think so. The *real* problem is that parents don't know how to share with their kids any healthy attitudes about sex and nature. This "unnatural" attitude about the human body and sex is what makes kids curious in the first place. If nudity and discussion of sex were more a part of normal everyday life, porn would loose much of it's appeal.
Come on now. I know what you have under those clothes your wearing. Why is it such a "nasty" mystery? We accept other things that are much less natural *so* easily. An Example: Shortly after my first son was born, my sister invited us over to her place for dinner. While we were waiting in the living room for dinner to get done, my wife started breast-feeding my son. My sister went balistic. She started shooing her 3 sons out of the room and made my wife very uncomfortable and embarrassed. However that same evening, one of my sisters son was playing with a toy rifle and pointing it at my wife and son and pretending to shoot them. No fuss was made at all. Man! Talk about twisted values!!! I'll take my kids playing with porn over playing with guns anyday!
Re:Porn != Free Speech (Score:2)
I find your statement to be obscene and demand that it be removed from the forum immediately before some impressionable free-speach activist sees it and is permanently scarred.
And just in case you didn't understand the point of that, WHO DECIDES WHAT IS OBSCENE?
Enjoy,
Kintanon
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!
Consumer Fraud (Score:2)
If I buy a bottle of powder that says it will kill my cat's fleas, and it does -- and makes her hair fall out -- I'd sue the crooks who sold it. I'd win, too, provided that I presented convincing evidence that 1)the powder was indeed the cause of the feline defoliation and 2)that this side effect had not been disclosed.
Why don't the same laws apply if you buy a box that says it contains software that will block pornsites, and it does -- and blocks politically-incorrect sites?
/.
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
EXACTLY (Score:2)
I'm taking this to mean "Why not try and be a better parent for your kids?" This is precisely why filtering software IS needed. A trip to the library should not have to be a supervised thing. I send my kids to the library because I know the printed material isn't going to have smut in it.
GIVE ME THE OPTION TO PARENT MY OWN CHILDREN. I should be able to make the determination ON MY OWN as to whether or not my kids are mature enough to have access to sexually explicit material (among other things). Do not take away my abilities to parent just because YOU think EVERYONE is mature enough to handle that type of material in our public libraries.
Additionally (and perhaps counter to some people's filtering recommendations), I WANT the ability to be able to say, "My child is mature enough to have access to these materials," and be able to disable filtering for them. Unfortunately this seems a bit difficult to handle logistically, so I'm content with letting my kids use my own dialup connection for that sort of thing.
The idea that all information should be required to be made equally available to all people of all ages is not good. By forcing me to accept that, you are taking away my ability to parent my own child, and that is unacceptable. I will give my kids permission to have access to this kind of material when *I* feel they are mature enough to handle it. You have no right to make that determination for me.
Presidence for disclosure (Score:2)
Politicans will destroy the ability (Score:2)
WTF??? what about open source projects like squid?? and all the rest that work 900% better than the $3,589.00 program they purchased for our network?
There's the key... they will have to BUY it.. further showing us that the politicians are in the pockets of yuet another lobby..
Last decade it was the tobbaco companies, this decade? Government is owned by software companies.
(USA: the best government money can buy!)
Re:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
Libraries presently do not tend to carry porn or bomb-making instructions. These are things deliberately filtered out of their selection for printed materials. Thus, I feel safe letting my kids go to the public library (as I should) by themselves.
If these materials were suddenly required to be present, I would not give my kids permission to visit the library.
If my kids are at home browsing the 'Net, you can bet they're supervised in some form. If I feel my child is mature enough to handle certain types of online materials, I have no problem with letting him/her explore those topics.
In other words, let me have the option to parent my own children. A trip to the public library should NOT have to be a supervised one. The whole point behind a public library is that so anyone -- young or old -- can browse its contents without having people looking over your shoulder. This is the way public libraries have been for countless years, because it's worked, and it's put the parent's wishes ahead of the child's (as it should be).
If I feel my kids are mature enough to handle questionable material, I should also be able to allow them to have access to it (preferably via the public library, in the form of an "adult" library card, for example). If nothing else, they can come home and use my personal 'Net connection to do their surfing for what the libraries forbid them to view.
Give local communities the abilities to set their own standards as to what belongs in their public libraries and what doesn't. This is currently how things work as far as printed materials go. Why must we force online material to be totally free and unrestricted?
If my local library were prevented from exercising restrictive policies as far as what age groups get access to what materials, I have doubts that I would ever send my child to the public library anymore (at least not without me with them). That truly saddens me. All in the name of "free speech."
Who's money is being spent? (Score:2)
First of all, whose money is being spent? If it is money that has been generated by the library, then did this same money used to be used for paying salaries, buying books, maintaining magazine subscriptions, or organizing public literacy programs. If it is money that has been given to them by local or federal goverment, then that is my money that is being spent on something that I don't approve of at all, is also being thrown away on products that have been show to not work and is taking away from all of the items noted above.
I have a real problem with this whole 'get rid of the pornography' issue. I believe it's generally agreed upon that Playboy magazine is not pornography. All it shows is naked airbrushed women ... there is never a sexual act shown in any of the pictorals. So would http://www.playboy.com be blocked? How about sites that put up erotic stories? Is that pornography? If I read about some male putting his member inside some female, am I being exposed to mind-bending words that will make me sodomize the family cat and obsessively call the neighbor's daughter just to breath hard on the phone ... I think not.
There seems to be a lot of sabre rattling about how pornography does all these evil things to young and adult minds. I just don't buy it. Porn sites are the most profitable sites on the internet. Hundreds of millions of god-fearing Americans either frequent or have frequented pornography-containing internet sites, bars, or magazines. And there are obviously not hundreds of millions of sex-crazed mind-warped individuals out there.
And why is this a Presidental issue? Is it the President's job to field this quagmire of insecurity? I don't think so, it's the job of the house and the senate ... but how many people who will fervently not vote for a particular presidental candidate simply because of his/her stance on pornography have also written their representatives in congress eloquently expressing their views and the reasons behind them. Damn few I'd say.
This is the same kind of nonsense that has been used to get people in an uproar for the past 20 years, and sooner or later it will quit working. I just hope that happens before some ultimately damaging legislation is allowed to pass.
But perhaps that's why I'm in favor or the Reform party. http://www.reformparty.org
Sean
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Accually there was a court case concerning just that, and the court decided in favor of allowing libraries to censor, by the choice of not carrying, but the simple fact that it was impossible for them to carry every single book/mag in the world. So that they were allowed to censor in the means on not carrying. But this judgement hung on the contention that it was impossible for them to carry all the book of the world. This is in exactly the opposite where the internet is concerned.
I can't find the exact court case to back my claim? Can anyone back me up on this?
Re:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
That's pretty naive, for somebody that claims to have kids of his own.
You're absolutely right, though, my job is to prepare my child for the real world. That means giving me the ability to PARENT my child and decide MYSELF what materials and information he should and should not have access to. As my child becomes mature enough to handle more questionable topics, I will allow him to explore those topics. What you don't seem to realize is that every child is different in the ways and the time he takes to mature psychologically. Some kids are able to handle the beauty of the human body at an early age. Some can't handle it until they're considerably older. Making a child "prepared" for the real world does not magically happen the year before his class starts making trips to the library.
Do not force my local public library to carry materials in an unrestrictive fashion that I do not wish my child to have access to. Filtering software should be an option at the community level, with the community giving input on what should and should not be filtered for what age groups (acting quite conservatively).
Without the ability to selectively determine what my child sees when he's at the library on his own, I will be forced to simply forbid him access to the library until such a time as he is mature enough to handle all of the content, or at least until he's responsible enough to understand what's crap and what's not. This is a fundamental shift in the ideas behind having a public library in the first place.
Do It To Julia! (Score:2)
If you don't want all personal liberties to be ultimately destroyed by divide-and-conquer attack, you should not give aid and comfort to the dividers and conquerors.
/.
Re:I do disagree, but this is not a flame (Score:2)
I agree, parents need the ability to parent their child and make decisions as to what materials they are mature enough to handle and what materials they are not. That means we need some mechanism in place (filtering software) to allow the parents to exercise those decisions.
A visit to the library should not have to be a supervised thing. My kids should be able to visit the library whenever they like, but until they're mature or responsible enough to handle the availability of content I don't want them to see, I don't want them to have access to it.
At the same time (and this does run counter to proposed filtering legislation/guidelines), I want the ability to GIVE my child access to materials he wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to see. Think of it as an "adult" library card. Another poster mentioned a card carrying filtering preferences. All good ideas.
I do agree with you that a requirement for filtering software is a bad thing. This should CERTAINLY be a local community decision, not a state one, and not a national one.
Censorship (Score:2)
Realistically we can't expect kids to monitor themselves. Some teenage boy sees "All Naked - All The Time" ad, odds are he's going to have a look. Libraries and other public access places are institutes we encourage students and minors to go to. To grant them access to places where they can see pornography, and then condemn them when they explore, seems a little hypocritical.
I noticed on peacefire that they give menthods for disabling the censorship software. This I think is stupid, depending on where the software is installed. I think that a place like schools and libraries should be locked down for this. Sure there are adults that should be able to access this, but provision should be made for them. I doubt the majority of the people using library systems for net access are surfing for smut. Put a couple of PC's in a controlled area where age can be verified. If people dont' like this, tough...Protecting kids from porn in public places is more important than giving access to people wanting to search for porn, be it a legit reason or not.
When it comes to college and work access, things get a little more complicated. There are various courses at college which *require* research into sexual matters. However, *VERY* few of them will require that to be on "horny young teens" or "live lesbian videos". Sadly, there's no real way to distinguish between the two without actively viewing the content. That's just impractical. At college level, I think they should block out vulgarity, while leaving sexual content. True, some vulgar sites will get through, but that's the price for freedom of speech. As for companies, if you are using their systems, you play by their rules. They pay for the lines, the computers and the access. Therefor, they get to dicate what you view. Similarly, if you *hate* classical music, what right does a guest have to come into your home and monopolize your system to listen to the Classical masterpieces, without your permission? You wouldn't allow that, but you still want to use work systems to allow you to view what you want? I don't think so.
We have to take resposibility for what we want others to see. Yes, you have a right to view *anything* you want to. I'm not denying that. I'll even fight for it. However, you do not have the right to make that material available to others.
Censorship is a good and necessary thing. It just needs to be handled better. I do agree that the "blacklist" should be open. If I install the software, I want to be able to modify what gets banned and what doesn't. The censors do not have *that* right. I'm an adult. Treat me like one.
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:2)
Just not responsible. Have you ever tried to explain to a two year old why he shouldn't color on the walls? Its rather difficult.
I think the real problem is that our societ has defined childhood as ending at an absurdly high age (18 or 21). In most past societies, childhood ended at around 14. It is not reasonable to force the same rules on an 17 year old that I would on a six year old.
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
My point, though, is that what a library carries and makes available should be a community decision, and should respect an adult's requirement for information in addition to a parent's right to parent their child.
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:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
Why not?
I'm sure you looked at porn when you were a kid, as every (lucky) kid has. The only thing the internet really does to kids is takes the 'adventure' out of trying to get there hands on porn.
Yes children are impressionable, but what does porn teach them? That sex is fun? Since when has that not been true? Porn doesn't try to "impress" any ideas at all (although A lot of the porn mags I read when I was a kid were very pro free-speech). I mean unless you really want you child to grow up as a Homosexual, or being ashamed of their bodies, porn isn't going to hurt them.
I agree about the Spam, and also about the search engines, however. At this point it isn't even an issue of decency, it's an issue of annoyance. But, Spam is on its way to becoming illegal (if not so already), and the search engine issue is something that the search engines should handle themselves (perhaps an 'exclude pornographic information' checkbox on the main page, how hard could it be? Just include a hidden -sex -pussy in the search string)
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
Re:porn not the problem (Score:2)
Why did I do this? Because my parents were of this "american family values" slant that says the naked human body is a nasty sinful thing. Well, I don't think so. The *real* problem is that parents don't know how to share with their kids any healthy attitudes about sex and nature. This "unnatural" attitude about the human body and sex is what makes kids curious in the first place. If nudity and discussion of sex were more a part of normal everyday life, porn would loose much of it's appeal.
If the only thing on the internet was naked bodies, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. But there is also kiddie porn, and beastiality, and rape pictures, and pictures of people eating crap, etc. I agree people are way to uptight about nudity, but there is a LOT more than nudity available on the net, and that's what I worry about my kids getting a hold of.
False Advertising Suit (Score:2)
A small national media blitz, and voila, censorware disappears from the library.
(O.K., I admit, there a lots of flaws with this one. But, given that censorware is already being installed, this seems like another tactic that could be used in addition to the current ones.)
(And yes, I agree, opening the blocking list to public scrutiny and review would alievate most of the problems. It would certainly reduce false postitives, but would prob not reduce false negitives)
-Nick
Re:Very level headed (Score:2)
This is exactly what I tell people. I'm in no way in favor of governmental regulation of what goes around on the net but you have to have a little common sense. No library I've ever been to carries even Playboy, which is a little kid's reader compared to some of the stuff on the net. Libraries make these kinds of choices on what to carry all the time and I see no reason why they should be forced to carry porn just because it's on the net.
There should be some filters in place for library computers that are accessable to kids but I agree that whatever filter is chosen needs to be open and whoever administers it needs to keep track of what it's filtering out. It would be an even worse travesty for some filter to block a site on Anne Sexton (if I might overuse this example a little more) in a library if some kid were doing a report on poetry for school.
What reasons do the censorware people give for encrypting the lists from even the parents? It seems like a good market to get into, a censorware program with full control over the filter lists. Of course, you have to be the kind of parent who A) cares enough to actually use the filter lists for their intended use or B) wishes to abdicate all responsibility for their children to a computer program and just block everything they don't like.
Re:Organized Slashdot Writein (Score:2)
I think a "tech party" might be a little too limited in scope. But I do think that Slashdotters could have a lot of influence--not necessarily with politicians directly, but with the people they deal with everyday--based on their ability to understand issues and communicate with others about them.
Coming up with a common candidate that most of us support would be helpful. When election time rolls around and people in RL want to talk about candidates, it would be nice if all of us had something to say that would help "our" candidate.
I'm not talking about Slashdot picking an "official Slashdot candidate." I'd rather see the readers moderate up the best explanations of which candidate would help our combined causes the most. Also, the best answers to opposing views would be nice as well. A couple articles a month on Slashdot that specifically debate candidates would be really nice IMHO.
The fact is, I can debate the relative merits of different technologies all day long and never run out of breath. But when it comes to politics I run out of steam rather quickly. I learn more everytime I read people's arguments here on Slashdot, which helps to an extent.
The key here is this: if we (readers of Slashdot) work together to find the candidates we agree on and learn how to formulate our best arguments, we can then educate others. I'm not implying that everyone here needs to be more well-rounded when it comes to politics...just that I'm not the only one here that might be lacking.
If we could all debate politics as cleary, and with as much fervor as we debate technology, we would make a difference.
numb
PS: Some issues that will influence my vote:
EFF [eff.org] and NORML [norml.org]
Re:Organized Slashdot Writein (Score:2)
I think a "tech party" might be a little too limited in scope. But I do think that Slashdotters could have a lot of influence--not necessarily with politicians directly, but with the people they deal with everyday--based on their ability to understand issues and communicate with others about them.
Coming up with a common candidate that most of us support would be helpful. When election time rolls around and people in RL want to talk about candidates, it would be nice if all of us had something to say that would help "our" candidate.
I'm not talking about Slashdot picking an "official Slashdot candidate." I'd rather see the readers moderate up the best explanations of which candidate would help our combined causes the most. Also, the best answers to opposing views would be nice as well. A couple articles a month on Slashdot that specifically debate candidates would be really nice IMHO.
The fact is, I can debate the relative merits of different technologies all day long and never run out of breath. But when it comes to politics I run out of steam rather quickly. I learn more everytime I read people's arguments here on Slashdot, which helps to an extent.
The key here is this: if we (readers of Slashdot) work together to find the candidates we agree on and learn how to formulate our best arguments, we can then educate others. I'm not implying that everyone here needs to be more well-rounded when it comes to politics...just that I'm not the only one here that might be lacking.
If we could all debate politics as cleary, and with as much fervor as we debate technology, we would make a difference.
numb
PS: Some issues that influence my vote:
EFF and [eff.org]NORML [norml.org]
Re:Rating Does Not Work (Score:2)
Where content providers don't feel it is of benefit to label their content and the related possibility of mislabeling- wheter deliberately or unintentionally.
In fast paced/free flowing mediums - such as slashdot, IRC, and USENET.
For webhosting communities such as geocities where a vast number of users post individual pages that may not be categorized.
When a site has not been rated by others than the creator.
differing standards among groups and individuals
metric problems (related to above...)
trusted recipient - ie can the client disable the filter
dynamically genereated content versus static pages
Third party ratings...
*****
For the first case, using more than one source for the labeling system with independant labelers. Contention cases can be flagged and sent to a trusted independent reviewer
For free flowing mediums- they cannot be rated quickly enough, but they can be categorically rated as generally safe or unsafe if the discussion forum is longer lasting. Also, most forums have trends. Admittedly, inappropriate content can be posted to any of these mediums, but some are more likely than others. This must be left to the viewers discretion... There isn't really any good solution (Slashdot moderation works, but Usenet rarely has the critical masss for any specific forum, and IRC/Chatrooms are to fast response...)
Geocities etc. - the content can vary frequently on these sites and deliberate deciet of the moderators is trivial (ie posting something innocent one day, then pRon the next...). Depending on how critical that the 'offensive' material be avoided, blocking or not of these sites must be up to the individual. A spider that rescans after each content change might help, but a sufficiently crafty individual can easily defeat them.
Unrated sites- upon desire to access, these can be flagged, and sent to an appropriate reviewer for immediate review. This probably is not quick enough response for a site which is desired immediate access. This will be dependent upon the immportance of protecting the viewer from 'harmful' content, and the number of reviewers available. Also, a fallback of a spider can be used, but this has the same problems as noted above.
Differing standards/deliberate deciet- this can be handled in part by multiple independant reviewers, combined with a random audit by a trusted reviewer. Not perfect but should catch many/most of the contention cases. Also, a system similar to that used by Amazon.com whereby your known biases are matched with the known biases of other reviewers and a good match your preferences on unviewed content can be determined. Again, not perfect, but useful...
metric problems- this problem can be minimized by the directory based filtering approach, combined with the bias filters, and a contention flag.
trusted recipient- Windows security does make problems for this, however the ability to disable the filter requires a certain skill set that is generally only acheived at a more mature age. Also, much of the concern here is in avoiding unintentional viewing of innapropriate material. The case of deliberate subversion to access the material is of less concern.
dynamic content- much of the objectionable material is based at URLs specifically designed to present that material thus URL based filters are likely appropriate for the majority of cases. Marginal cases can again be caught by the contention device.
Third party ratings- this is addressed to commercial systems, the current proposal is community based and hence the criticisms are largely irrelevant...
Nonenforeability- Since the proposed solution is not intented to be legally forced, and is instead an individual choice, again irellevant
Nonscalability- The scalability of my system increases with the number of users willing to participate similar to Slashdot... while its usefulness in early stages will be limited, as distribution grows it will likely scale appropriately.
Well... that's enough response
So, while ACS & R is certainly not perfect, it can be implemented in such a way that for that majority of content it can provide useful and accurate decision making information. A 98% effective solution is certainly better than no solution
LettterRip
Tom M.
Re:Organized Slashdot Writein (Score:2)
I think a "tech party" might be a little too limited in scope. But I do think that Slashdotters could have a lot of influence--not necessarily with politicians directly, but with the people they deal with everyday--based on their ability to understand issues and communicate with others about them.
Coming up with a common candidate that most of us support would be helpful. When election time rolls around and people in RL want to talk about candidates, it would be nice if all of us had something to say that would help "our" candidate.
I'm not talking about Slashdot picking an "official Slashdot candidate." I'd rather see the readers moderate up the best explanations of which candidate would help our combined causes the most. Also, the best answers to opposing views would be nice as well. A couple articles a month on Slashdot that specifically debate candidates would be really nice IMHO.
The fact is, I can debate the relative merits of different technologies all day long and never run out of breath. But when it comes to politics I run out of steam rather quickly. I learn more everytime I read people's arguments here on Slashdot, which helps to an extent.
The key here is this: if we (readers of Slashdot) work together to find the candidates we agree on and learn how to formulate our best arguments, we can then educate others. I'm not implying that everyone here needs to be more well-rounded when it comes to politics...just that I'm not the only one here that might be lacking.
If we could all debate politics as cleary, and with as much fervor as we debate technology, we would make a difference.
numb
PS: Some issues that influence my vote:
EFF [eff.org] and NORML [norml.org]
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
I don't think that's right... why would they unanomously decide against the CDA then?
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
Re:EXACTLY (Score:2)
Really? then you must be pretty stupid. Our library had Madonna's SEX book on the shelves (well not really on the shelves, there were about 92 people qued up to checkout the book. and a checkout period is 2 weeks...)
I'm sure your library has some "objectionable" material there, at least if there doing there job.
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
Re:blah (and click-through discussion) (Score:2)
What classes as XXX material?
Mainly I'm talking about hardcore porn, i.e. penetration, oral sex, bestiality, cum-splattered faces, ya'know HARDCORE PORN. I don't think we need to marginalize anything that is R-rated, not in the least, but I think it becomes more clear what is "porn" the farther you go.
Who judges it?
You do. If you find pr0n outside it's expected place submit the URL to the pr0npatr0l (perhaps a division of Internic or a seperate entity) who then check it against an open defintion of standards (displayed on a web page) and then decides on a course of action, leading up to a forced TLD name change if necessary.
The state/country of the sender/reciever?
Yes each country will have to deal with this on its own. Policing the Internet as a global medium is destined to failure, from the massive amounts of resource it would involve, the opaque slippery nature of determined pr0nmasters, and even localized moral and belief systems. There will always be a fringe (just as there is now), but the idea is to move the fringe far enough away from the mainstream as to keep accidental exposure at a minimun.
At what ages do you become an adult? 16/18/21?
This is immaterial, I'm arguing for a strategic change, not a tactical one. Under the current system you already have to lie if you are under age, changing this wouldn't matter.
Who is prosecutable and by whom, under which countries laws?
again, it must be done on a country by country basis. It won't be perfect, but improvement is the goal.
This begs the question of a definition of 'XXX material'. Keep in mind that you need a definition that would be acceptable world wide.
Not for this idea we don't
And how would you prosecute? Do you apply the same laws to people in Iran, New Guinea, Tanzania, Burma, Alabama and Cuba? How to manage to get extradition treaties in place?
All you need to get are the names, e-mails of their registrars and the political will to make law. No plan for controlling the Internet is going to work all the way, nor would I want it to. But something needs to be done to silence the "sky is falling so hide the kids" freaks, and this would do it. I'm not even talking about limiting pr0n or controlling access to it, I'm just saying that putting it all into some type of "Red Light Top Level Domain" would help to appease what I see as rational complaints from a different perspective. Locally (by country) it is decided what should belong there. Yes, you will have countries and servers in those countries outside normal channels, but the hope is for improvement not perfection.
and finally
Remove the pay per page load model, and I believe a lot of the lower problems will also be solved. Plus, it's easy to takcle the model, as it has *nothing* to do with porn, persay, it's just a business model to refute.
This model was developed BY the pr0n industry as they were trying and defining viable business models. I don't see another one other than direct kickbacks, which still relies on massive traffic to make a few bucks.
(I responded to more than one post here, in the interests of confusion)
Re:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
Most parents believe that their kids can do no wrong. And I seriously doubt that your kids would be able to get their hands on the materials needed to build a pipe bomb. If they did, they did they probably wouldn't need any instructions.
Me and friends in Texas (when I visited my dad) would go around making grenades out of M60's -- very small bombs, sold at fireworks stores -- and legos. It's not that hard.
As far as unpopular political opinion, just teach your kids what's wrong and what's right. If you tell them enough times, they won't be swayed by BS websites. Filtering the pages and never mentioning it isn't going to do much good.
As far as porn goes? Come on, we all looked at porn when we were kids. The only thing it teaches them is that sex is fun, witch they will figure out eventually...
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
John McCain (Score:2)
Now, I don't agree with most censorware. But I DO think that children should be supervised when doing all sorts of things, including using the Internet.
Children absorb lots of stuff. Look at how we can see this: children with parents who are racist tend to be racist. Children tought to steal things or to lie tend to think it's OK later on in life. Social norms are leanrned from your surroundings.
And, frankly, as much as I want uncensored speech on the internet, there are lots of sites that I wouldn't want small children watching. I don't think that a young child should watch videos of women being raped like it's a good thing, or a funny thing. I don't think that they should watch 40-year-old men and 9-year-old girls doing naughty things. But there are definitely things that are caught up in over-conservative filters that I think my children should have access to.
I think that the best solution is just what John McCain said -- that the Parents should know what their children are doing. If my son wants to learn fencing, that's great. If he wants to learn how to shoot a gun, that's fine, too. If he wants to kill people, that's bad. And knowing that sort of thing is something that you can know if you spend enough time with your children and have communication with them.
But how can you supervise your children while they are at school? How can a librarian or a teacher look at 40 computers at the same time? I think that censorware provides a useful purpose in these situations -- although it should certainly be easy for a teacher to bypass the product in situations where it has nabbed a site that is important for education.
John McCain (Score:2)
Now, I don't agree with most censorware. But I DO think that children should be supervised when doing all sorts of things, including using the Internet.
Children absorb lots of stuff. Look at how we can see this: children with parents who are racist tend to be racist. Children tought to steal things or to lie tend to think it's OK later on in life. Social norms are leanrned from your surroundings.
And, frankly, as much as I want uncensored speech on the internet, there are lots of sites that I wouldn't want small children watching. I don't think that a young child should watch videos of women being raped like it's a good thing, or a funny thing. I don't think that they should watch 40-year-old men and 9-year-old girls doing naughty things. But there are definitely things that are caught up in over-conservative filters that I think my children should have access to.
I think that the best solution is just what John McCain said -- that the Parents should know what their children are doing. If my son wants to learn fencing, that's great. If he wants to learn how to shoot a gun, that's fine, too. If he wants to kill people, that's bad. And knowing that sort of thing is something that you can know if you spend enough time with your children and have communication with them.
But how can you supervise your children while they are at school? How can a librarian or a teacher look at 40 computers at the same time? I think that censorware provides a useful purpose in these situations -- although it should certainly be easy for a teacher to bypass the product in situations where it has nabbed a site that is important for education.
And I certainly think that John McCain is closer to knowing what is right than many other current political figures [mailto]
Mayberry USA (Score:2)
(I don't work for them, it just seemed relevant to this debate.)
_________________________
Re:Age and Responsibility (Score:2)
Personally I reached sentient thought at the age of 10. I know this 'cause that's when I knew what it meant.
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
parents should educate their kids, that's obvious. they can allow or not allow them to do/see certain things. that's all OK and well within the duties of parents.
it is not OK the whole public to be censored. check the history of almost any totalitarian regime (specifically the ones that developed in previously democratic countries) to see where this leads to.
I am not really against not allowing children to view unsuitable material but not at cost of diminishing rights of adults. the obvious solution would be to turn on or off the filtering software depending the age of person using it. there is number of solutions, but for some reason they choose the one that interferes with general public the most. that should be a hint on what they are up to.
erik
Re:blah (and click-through discussion) (Score:2)
This is straight out of an Andrea Dworkin book. Can you provide hard data for any of it? Ed Meese couldn't, and he spent years trying. If you can show me how pornography plays a "direct role" in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, I'll give you a dollar.
The average child molester has "nearly always" been "influenced" by pornography? Fine, I'll let that stand. But I'd say that the average person in the United States has been "influenced" by pornography--what percentage of the population hasn't seen a Playboy or a stag film?
I'm actually all for blocking software, although not installing it in libraries; parents can't always be by their kids, and if they've got a strong objection to letting their children see naked people and don't trust them to do the right thing, filterware is a legit solution. But when you start blocking out things in a public library--including, inevitably, innocent sites (and, in the case of some of the filterware, sites like Peacefire that have political stances antithetical to those of NetNanny and the like)--I want a better rationale than a bunch of presuppositions about what porn does to society. Until then, I'm sticking with the consensus of research. [See, as a brief Google search tells me, Padgett et al's "Pornography, erotica, and attitudes toward women: The effects of repeated exposure" (Journal of Sex Research, Nov 1989) and Langevin et al's "Pornography and sexual offences" (Annals of Sex Research, 1988), for just two examples.]
I'd say that violence, specifically sexualized violence, in the general media is much more of a factor, but no library in the world is going to (or should) take "The Collector" or "Rising Sun" off their shelves.
--
Incentives To Maintain Lists of URLs (Score:2)
Until the craze for URL-filtering burns itself out (I'm not holding my breath), it might be possible to make the filtering less monolithic and arbitrary. What Republican would publicly oppose free-market competition? Let the filtering lists compete!
Let the hard core guys maintain their own list and cull out everything that would dilute their category. The list would be downloadable from their trade association, to save their customers' time.
Let the mainstream skin purveyors keep the kinkier stuff off their own list. And Playboy could make sure that consumer merchandise is always closely associated with images of bare titties, to keep the economic ball rolling.
The need to maintain the Christian Coalition list would give lots of smug prigs the cover they need to justify their own porn viewing. I really shouldn't criticize these people, because, after all, it was to appease them that President Bush installed the only serious porn conoisseur we have on the Surpreme Court: Clarence Thomas, who Bush called "the most qualified person in the country".
The American Public Health Association could make sure that information sites on their list remained accessible.
The American Civil Liberties Union could have a free-speech list of sites erroneously included by the censors in their porn lists. The constant attempt by the right-wingers to conflate birth control, freedom, etc. with Evil Sex would be easy to expose by daily comparing the lists.
You get the idea. People with a stake in differest aspects of the "problem" would have an incentive to avoid category error in their own lists.
Comparing the lists would easily disclose the abuses of classification. Then the American Library Association, in their wisdom and experience, could decide how to use the lists in a constitutionally acceptable manner. Individuals could download their preferreed list for filtering at home.
Re:well great! (Score:2)
- The government could buy a censor-ware company or its product and open-source it.
- The government could hold a competition, say with the American Library Association as the judging body, and award a prize for the best filter (which is then open-sourced).
- The government could fund an open-source development effort.
There are a ton of issues around those things, though. Can you imagine what the ruckus would be if someone cracked the library computers and messed with people's smart cards? Better add Counterpane Systems to the list of judges. And the ACLU, and the American Psychological Association, and....--
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Are you then in favor of allowing printed porn and graphic violence in sections of our public libraries accessible to children?
The community should have a right when it's community areas that are affected. Do you think you can walk up and down downtown pasting up posters with graphic sexual depictions? The community has decided it doesn't want these things in public places.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from getting a 'Net connection at home and giving your kid a bunch of porn bookmarks. The community isn't saying you can't do this.
if the kids are to be protected for unsuitable material, do it without constraining adult users.
This is essentially the point I was trying (badly, it seems) to make. We have two sides we have to appease here, the parents that don't want their kids having access to stuff they don't want them to have access to, and the adults, that want unrestricted access to everything.
The solution: Do both. Either use a library card tailored to filtering preferences of the user (and under the control of the parent in a child's case), or if nothing else, give out "adult" vs "child" library cards. If a parent thinks their kid is mature enough, they can request that they be given an adult card. Problem solved.
Kids arn't sentient? (Score:2)
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).
I must accept this as truth, but isn't it wrong? Kids are not treated as citizens because we don't believe they can make a decision on their own. Yet in reguards to the internet, we leave it up to them to make many decisions, such as which links to click or which sites to visit.
If we really want to "protect" kids why don't we pay someone else to watch them 24 / 7. We can pay to have our car or our home watched like that, why not our kids. Afterall, our kids are our most important piece of property.
Its absurd, the lack of responsibility parents have today. Most expect the government to provide services for everything from health care, schools, and laws to "protection" but we constantly complain that our kids are not safe. That they can be exposed to the real world too easily. How easy? Even our grandparents can get access to this unadulterated information within minutes with software like AOL that's shipped to everyone's front door.
And what about us adults? Why should we only protect the kids? I have a computer in my living room that is on the net 24/7. That means anyone could accidentally sit down and be flooded with tons of unadulterated information, such as porn, that could hurt them.
There are two ways around this problem. We can either try to "protect" everyone. Govern the information that every person is allowed to view, hear and think. I think there have been books written about this... or at the very least burned. OR We could try to accept the world the way it is and accept responsibility for ourselves and our children. And keep information and society free.
I don't have kids. I'm just a kid myself, 22, but I'm on my own, learning a few things about the world, mostly bad. But I have thought long and hard about having kids and how I'd raise them. I'd first start by making sure I had enough money to support them and myself and a job that would allow me to be with them. I would pay attention to my children, putting myself in their place, teach them about the world we live in and try to ecourage them to learn and think for themselves. This means we have to teach them about the birds and the bees a little earlier, and even those sections that our parents left out about the birds and the birds or the bees and the bees. These are topics we are scared to discuss with our children, but reguardless of what we do they will find out someday... what makes you think they haven't already? But at least my kids would grow up knowing what life is really like. Not whatever fantasy world the average US citizen thinks they still live in with apple pie and the buffalo and the little house on the prairy. Come on people, wake up.
I think parents around the world need to grow up and start acting like parents (that word should be synonymous to teacher).
Re:EXACTLY (Score:2)
This is good and how it should be, as it gives maximum control to the local community (the people *using* the library) as to what should be in it and how their library funds should be spent.
I know exactly what's in my library, and, if I had kids, I would feel relatively safe letting them browse freely. I'm not saying libraries are 100% safe and free from anything you might consider questionable, but they don't have a "porn" section and they don't have a "how to make bombs" section, so I feel relatively comfortable.
Without these filtering policies of the library board, I don't know if I'd be comfortable sending my kids there.
Re:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
I found this information online (well, on a BBS) inside of 5 minutes when I was 12 years old. Don't tell me stuff like this is hard to find.
As far as unpopular political opinion, just teach your kids what's wrong and what's right.
I agree with this totally. The problem is that you can't just teach a child this bit of information overnight. You can't just say one day, "Hmm, let's go to the public library," and then proceed to teach your kid morality and responsibility the next day. It takes time for kids to learn this, and I would really like them to have access to public library resources (without requiring my supervision) between the time they're old enough to go outside on their own and the time I'm confident they've matured to the point where they can responsibly handle the information made available to them. Without the help of libraries in shielding my kids from stuff I don't necessarily want them seeing just yet, the library itself becomes almost useless to me during this phase of my child's development.
Re:GOP frontrunner?? and more... (Score:2)
That's why he's Big Media's darling. "Campaign Finance Reform" == "Big Media gets effective monopoly on political discussion".
/.
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:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
Yet you seem to wish for the government to ban outright the use of filtering software? Why not let these policies fall to the *local* communities? The ones who actually go to these libraries? Let them decide for themselves what they wish to put in their libraries and how they wish to make Internet access available.
Note that I've been trying not to advocate total filtering here. I would very much like to distinguish between adult and child access in libraries, with the parent having the option of giving their child more access to materials they wouldn't ordinarily have access to. This should include material available online.
Do you find this evil as well?
Go with your kid to the library - be an active parent. There are far too few these days...
So what, you think that 50 years ago everyone's parents went along with them whenever they wanted to go to the library? Get real -- the library has *always* been meant as a place where anyone -- young *or* old -- could browse its contents in peace and without needing a parent's supervision to do so. The books in our libraries were either deemed safe for the ages of children that would be in there, or the librarians were there to keep an eye on what the kids were up to.
And now we have the Internet, and want to take away a library's right to monitor and filter the content it makes available to its patrons? Something like this might go over fine where you're from, but don't force all libraries in all towns in the country to be prohibited from making that decision on their own.
You completely missed the point (Score:2)
That comment about Jews wasn't bigotry or "hate speech", it was sarcasm.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Re:I Disagree... Flame me. I know you will. (Score:2)
So basically because you don't keep information from your children, you feel that other parents shouldn't have the ability to do so?
Kind of silly that you're advocating parental involvement versus government involvement but you don't want to give other parents the ability to shield their child from (what they might consider) harmful information. Just because you parent your children the way you do doesn't it's the correct or only way children should be raised.
I refuse to allow the "community" to determine how my children will be raised. They are mine.
One of the major points I was trying to push (which either didn't get made in the post you're responding to or you didn't notice it) was that I'm NOT against total filtering of content. Ideally, I would like to see a separation of availability. In a simple form, a "child" versus "adult" library card, with a child card having filtering options when using online resources and restrictions as far as what they can/can't check out. A parent could override these items should they so desire, or request that their child be given an adult card if they feel their kid is responsible enough for one.
THAT, in my opinion, would be the most ideal of solutions, but if that won't happen, I'd prefer my library have the ability to filter online content EXACTLY as they filter printed content. If I want my kids to have access to unfiltered Internet material, I can always sit them down in front of my PC at home and supervise them myself (or not). By forcing all libraries to carry all online material, you're taking my abilities to parent my children away from me, unless I accompany my kids to the library every time they want to go, which totally changes the very nature of public libraries, in my opinion.
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Re:blah (Score:2)
> States was founded on they think about the topic
> at hand namely freedom of speech. What most
> people here appear to have forgotten is that the
> US was founded on the idea of freedom of
> religion just as much (if not more) as it was on
> the freedom of speech.
I agree tottally. Which is why religious arguments
must NEVER be allowed to dictate policy. It is
the job of the government as concieved to protect
the right to religion. As soon as it beings
ENFORCING religious beliefs or allowing
the religious beliefs of a group to dictate
policy, then the freedom of others religion
suffers.
This is exactly why sanctioned prayer is not
allowed in public schools. Its not that students
are not allowed to pray, its that they should not
be forced to be subject to praying by government
run institutions.
The Library generally *IS* an agent of the
government. As such, a library making the
determination of whether something is "Porn"
and or harmful to childrens "morals" is
equivalent of the government at large doing it.
It is the job of a library to be a respository
of information. They hold books for people to
read. They ARE huge databases of knowledge. It is
*NOT* the job of a library to judge information.
It is *NOT* the librarians job to decide who
can be allowed to read the Marquis de Sade any
more than the bible. They simply hold the
information and make it available to all.
You argue that impressionable children should be
protected? What if a child of an Islamic fammily
decides to read the Bible? What if his parents
find that offensive or feel that it might
be detrimental to his "moral development"?
The simple fact is that all they are doing is
providing access. Letting people who WISH to
seek out this information find it. If you don't
want your child to get subversive ideas then do
not send him to the library. Simple as that.
He could just as easily find the Marquis de Sade.
Or the works of Marx and Engles, maybe Hitler's
Mein Kampf, they are all books that any self
respecting library carries. Not to mention the
Koran, Torah, Bible, Vedas, and many other books
that may be "Subversive" depending on your point
of view.
Re:Okay, here's my take... (Score:2)
> with each other, qualify as a social, legal,
> technical, or philosophical hack?
There is a huge problem here.
first philosophical:
The library is an agent of the government. I
believe strongly that the governments job is to
protect individual rights, as such it must NEVER
make any stance on "Decency". It is the job
of parents, not the government to raise children.
Lest we start banning the Bible (afterall, as an
atheist, I would consider it a corrupting
influence on my children) and a host of other
books.
Secondly, it begins a slippery slope. It will
quickly become a battle of proxier vs fundie
They will fight, new proxies going up and getting
blocks. Soon it will be "We need a law to stop
thse proxies" afterall, the only reason to setup
a proxie is to "Hurt children".
Sorry...it just wont work.
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:2)
So much news is kept from us because it's not in the best interest of the corporations, it's easy enough for corporations to sponsor the censorship software in ways that prevents access to certain companies websites or information which might incriminate the corporation. It would lower the cost of the software and the public wouldn't be the wiser, they'd just think they got a good deal.
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.
True as that may be, children also need to have positive rolemodels, if a child is in a healthy environment they will grow and prosper properly. Any kid can get access to a porn magazine to hide under his bed. If he really wants to access porn, he'll find a way. And it would be fine if they were just censoring porn, but I think it's going beyond censorship of porn. It's becoming censorship of ideas. Do we really want to live like this? Children learn from experience just as much as they learn from books, the internet etc.
And as far as having a bunch of "selfish sex-obsessed teenage boys running the world", as a woman I could say that is most men!
Software companies have no morals, they're out to get the money. They can't physically go through every site they censor, so it's easier for them to make profound censorship mistakes.
Re:Very level headed (Score:2)
Libraries, Censorware and ALA Code of Ethics (Score:2)
The ACPL already had a policy that stated that children should be under responsible adult supervision. This includes their use of the internet terminals. Handy posters next to every terminal reiterated this fact.
As a member of the American Library Association, the ACPL had a responsibility to prevent any kind of censorship of library resources. See the ALA Code of ethics at http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/ethics.html [ala.org] it's right up there in item II.
Remember, the ALA has a long history of fighting censorship. They were even the chief plaintiff in opposing the Communications Decency Act.
And if you work for a public library, there are some ALA prepared resources including a Q&A about why the ALA opposed filtering software at http://www.ala.org/pio/cyber/cando.html [ala.org]
Re:Kids arn't sentient (Score:3)