RE: [TCLUG:8245] FidoNet

[Christopher Palmer <reid@pconline.com>]

On Mon, 13 Sep 1999, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:

>         as for censorship for the children's sake, I think the biggest
> hurdle is the gap beween those who object to the technology, and those who
> actually understand the technology. there has been at least one good
> proposal for protecting the children from _some_ 'harmful material'; but
> perhaps this has been (?) too technical for most people to grasp. 

Too technical for people to grasp: proper parenting ('Hey there, son,
whatcha lookin' at on the computer? Let's talk about that...'). I agree
100% that that's too tough for parents to grasp. Parents of the Boomer
generation are complete idiots.

For this reason, I advocate parenting licenses. Think about it. Everything
else that is dangerous requires a license: owning a gun, driving, hunting,
boating, et c. Raising a child is extremely dangerous -- far, far more so
than owning a gun. Guns can only kill people, but children can grow up to
be Hitler (eek) or Ghandi (yay). The Boomers have already raised more than
a few would-be Hitlers (how many school massacres have we seen in the last
few years?) (yes, I know that many factors played into the development of
those kids), but I sure as hell don't see any Ghandis.


>         the proposal I like is the creation of top-level domains based on
> content; for instance the creation of a '.xxx' domain for commercial sex
> sites. it would be fairly easy to block sites based on that extension; and
> sites should take to it reasonably voluntarily, as there is no good reason
> for them to want underage visitors, who likely don't have credit cards. 

A good start, as long as the site owners get to decide on the TLD to use.
Some sites containing horrible, nasty, evil sex (bad dirty bad sick) are
better off with .org TLDs... If the gubmint gets to decide that a site
gets the .xxx TLD, then it's censorship and I'm against it.


>         of course, this won't be a universal blocking solution; but nothing
> will do that anyway. this one seems to make the most sense to me. it won't
> catch 'objectionable speech' for instance; but I belive that objectionable
> speech is the very thing that should *not* be censored. this country was
> founded by a bunch of people who made a lot of 'objectionable speech'.

Yes, but the people that squeak about 'The Children' are often using The
Children as a smokescreen to conceal the fact that want to squelch
'objectionable speech', and not so much to save The Children.

No matter what the name of their fund is.


-- Chris

  Christopher Reid Palmer : www.innerfireworks.com