OFF: READ THIS AND SEND FWD

[M Holmes]

Ted O. Jackson writes:

> Yes, but there are very strong penalties against hardcore
> pornography, kiddie porn etc being sent in the mail.  If we were
> talking about simple nudity I don';t think there'd be much of an
> issue.  I think the stuff paul was talking about was truly disgusting
> stuff without any merit or 'art' value.  And I'm all for censoring
> shit like that too.

Fairny Nuff. However, if you accord yourself the right to censor someone
else's "reading" choices then you have no moral ground to stand on if
someone else decides to censor yours. That given, the odds are that'
it'll be someone else censoring what you get to see and they may not
like your viewing choices, reading choices, politics, religion, choice
of football team, or whatever. It really is an all or nothing thing:
once you give a politician the right to censor anything, you've condeded
the principle that they can censor everything.

> > I think the basic argument here is that, if you choose to subscribe
> > to the Sun in the UK, you get a picture of a topless woman on Page 3,
> > and it's your responsibility to keep your kid from seeing it.  Similarly,

> Totally agree here.  Parents want to duck their responsibility and
> have the gov't do their job for them.  If you're a parent you need to
> be extra careful to keep stuff like that from your kids.  On the
> other hand, you can't be everywhere at once.  It's impossible to
> screen everything that choldren see...

So it;s tough being a parent? It's not compulsory. If folks figure the
job is too difficult then they don't need to apply for the post.

[...]

> True.  The rabic pro-censorship types are into control. period.  They
> often hide behind the issue of protecting children to disguise their
> own need to control the 'morality' of others they deem threatening to
> their precious turf.

"They eat babies" is historically a rallying cry when one group is set
to be marginalised. The end of the story varies between discrimination
and out and out genocide. Whenever someone claims to be protecting
children it's a sound idea to ask youself what they're really after.

[...]

> Yeah, and gov't ratings systems have gaping holes.  Look at the
> arbitrary application of the film ratings [not a gov't body, I know].
> Rating Internet stuff just creates another huge organ of bureauacracy
> of dubious value.

Do self-rating with penalties for those who get it clearly wrong. All we
really need to worry about is someone deliberately rating something
adult as suitable for juniors.

>
> > But how do you define "community standards" on the Internet?  About a
> > year ago, the Amateur Action BBS in California was shut down and its
> > operators arrested because a sheriff in Tenn. called the BBS up,
> > and found that it violated *his* community standards.  Using that
> > as precedent, it appears that "community standards" means that the
> > standards are that of the most restrictive community that the internet
> > connects, which is more than a little problematic.  I'd be more than
> > willing to bet that various BOC lyrics violate the community standards of
> > some Southern communities :-).

Some of the criticisms of government that have been posted here would
get us *shot* in some places that have Internet access. I note that
there's some international debate going on about applying laws
extra-territorially. As usual the excuse for this is to protect the
children (viz: the debate on child sex tourism to Thailand and the
concept of applying laws in the Uk to behaviour of people in Thailand.)

Anyone for an internet comprising the political tolerance of the
chinese, the religious tolerance of the iranians, the sexual tolerance
of the british, and the artistic tolerance of the french?

> >             David Zeiger              dzeiger at netcom.com

FoFP