[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] CIPA unconstitutional

Wesley Leonard advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
Tue, 04 Jun 2002 12:05:57 -0400


Randall, you made some very interesting points.

I think a decent solution would be to have public terminals (out in the open,
within plain view of the library staff) that are filtered and have a separate
room for adults with unfiltered internet.  That should keep both sides happy.

As for pedophiles and the like (the 14 year old with the internet porn
addiction), those people have problems that are not related to the internet. 
Breaking down a neighbor's door to get at something (be it money for crack,
internet porn, or a victim) is a sign of deeper psychological problems that need
to be dealt with.

Oh... and I think pedophiles in prison get more than free cable and room and
board (the other prisoners see to that).

l8er

Randall Perry wrote:
> 
> >>I would hope that most schools would keep that filtering intact.
> >Why?
> The W3C has defined certain meta tags that allow authors to self rate
> their content, but you know there are pedophiles that would
> intentionally misdirect children to their site.   Filtering on content
> is hard to keep categories straight, so what side do you err on?
> Yes, you can defeat them by going to anonymizer.com (so do you block
> that URL?)  To filter you don't have to use a proxy.  I have used
> commercial filtering software that boils down to being a packet sniffer
> with auto response.  When it rips off the wire a destination (IP or
> domain name) of a banned site, it simply responds to the request first
> before it can hit the router.  Works pretty well.
> 
> Filters should be applied.  I know I would not want my OWN access to be
> filtered, but someone has take responsibility for society's problems.
> It is fine to talk about things like freedom of speech, but there is NO
> FREEDOM.  Free speech comes at a cost. Without responsibility and
> guidance too much information just becomes useless sewage and fuel for
> disaster.  I am not advocating "thought police" or trying to control the
> influences in media.  Some stuff needs to be categorized as garbage. It
> is not right for young children to watch violent movies, listen to
> explicit lyrics or share racially based jokes.  The parents are
> ultimately responsible to see that kids understand that "it is just a
> movie" or that there are consequences to your actions.  But, parents are
> around less and no one is there to define what norm is.  I personally
> know a couple of families whose young teenagers have had problems with
> pornography (both male and female).  It is so bad, that the 14 year old
> boy broke into a neighbors house (tried kicking door in, but only dented
> it so he threw something through a window) just to get on their computer
> to get to internet porn.  He has also been caught as he was taking a 6
> year old girl into a closet. This will take years to heal and try to
> make right.  How about adults who are fueling a building obsession with
> kiddie porn.  Soon that adult will not be satisfied with computer
> graphics and will seek out a child.  If the adult gets caught, big deal
> free cable, room and board for a couple of years.  Of if you are in the
> sacerdotal, a vacation and coverup.
> 
> Some control is necessary, if no options are volunteered, the government
> will come to a point of implementing their own rating and ranking system
> "for your protection".
> 
> This problem has a very wide base with residual impact with any
> decision.  There really is no easy answer.
> 
> Randall Perry
> www.domain-logic.com
> 
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-- 
Wesley Leonard

marshall@pacdemon.org                   http://pacdemon.org
marshall@westmichigancomputing.com      http://westmichigancomputing.com

"Rather than form a federation with Microsoft and work with what we had already
created, there was this notion that the world should be offered an alternative." 
    -- Craig Mundie, CTO of Microsoft Corporation