Food for Thought

[Jason Clinton]

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Marvin GodfatherofSoul Bellamy wrote:
| I need to make a distinction between what I think is a good idea for
| filtering and what exists today.  If there's a law that states that
| pornographic sites and content have to be marked (headers, domain name,
| etc.), then your filtering is absolutely inclusive.  It's not the bogus
| filtering schemes that these commercial products rely on.  Also, it
| makes it easier to prosecute and monitor sites.  Is the site adhering to
| the law by indicating the nature of its content? No? Then penalize.  My
| guess is librarians don't want patrons whacking off in the stacks, but
| are most concerned with the objective nature of filtering by current
| commercial products.

Suppose there's a nude artist in San Francisco. The San Franciscian and everyone
he's ever met in his city believes that nude art is speech and is not adult
content and under no circumstances be blocked on school computers.

In Little Rock, Arkansas there is a family that just got dial-up who's twelve
year old daughter stumbled on to the San Franian's site while surfing for
contemporary art for a paper she was writting. The Arkansasian family sues the
San Franian for not declairing his site 'lewd'. Under a federal court, who is
right? These things should never be implemented at the federal level. The moral
climate in this huge country cannot be controlled or legistlated from the
federal government or any government for that matter accross such a diverse and
geographically large nation.

If, however, a coalition of Arkansas 'family values' organizations wants to set
up a filter cache and provide free software from which adults can filter and add
sites to be filtered to their database, more power to them. They could even set
up a moderation system where domains get 'voted to be blocked by geographic
location' by concerned adults. When you install the software, you enter your zip
code and it accesses moderations done by people near you. If Arkansas wants to
implement the filtering software in Libraries, that should be up to individual
communitites.

| The law should only be enforced in cases where a web site has spammed or
| broadcast links to its content without the indicators.  No need for a
| Porn Patrol snooping around any old porn site (but I'd volunteer).

"Selective" enforcement is never a good idea:
~   "I've never heard of anyone getting prosecuted under this law so I just
~   thought it was okay to not spend the extra time implementent content
~   declarations."
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