- Related Stories
-
Web labeling mandate surfaces in Senate
June 14, 2006 -
Gonzales calls for mandatory Web labeling law
April 20, 2006 -
Judge: Google must give feds limited access to records
March 17, 2006 -
Supreme Court keeps Net porn law on ice
June 29, 2004 -
Google's chastity belt too tight
April 23, 2004
(continued from previous page)
Another piece of the Web labeling rules would require site operators to ensure that any matter that is "initially viewable, absent any further actions by the viewer," does not include sexually explicit material. That provision is intended to apply only to a site's "home page," an aide to Kyl wrote in an e-mail interview. But some said such a demand could in practice be nearly impossible to meet.
"The only way to do that would be for a Web site to have a drastically more controlled interface," such as the log-in prompts used by online publications that withhold linked content until registration or payment occurs, said the CDT's Morris.
A commercial Web operator who subscribes to a no-frills hosting service likely wouldn't have the ability to do such screening and, facing the possibility of criminal penalties, would have no choice but to remove any content that could be deemed sexually explicit, he added.
Previous attempts by the Justice Department and Congress to block access to adult-oriented Internet content have been stymied by First Amendment challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court indicated in 2004 that the Child Online Protection Act, which restricts the use of sexually explicit material deemed "harmful to minors" on commercial Web sites, may be overbroad and sent it back to a federal court for further review.
The justices also suggested that Internet filtering software may prove to be a more effective way of protecting children. The Internet Safety Act appears to be an attempt to cater to that idea.
Part of the problem with the new bill is that it proposes regulating speech in a way that could transcend the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the landmark case of Miller v. California, First Amendment experts said.
That 1973 ruling established a three-part test for determining whether sexually oriented content enjoys full First Amendment protection. Among the factors courts must consider are whether an "average person" would find that the entire work "appeals to the prurient interest" and whether it "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."
"Imagine then that I am NPR or CBS thinking about covering the use of rape as an instrument of terror in Darfur," said James Boyle, a Duke University law professor who teaches a course called the "Constitution in Cyberspace." "I may lose an entire element of my viewing public whose smart filtering software picks up the key word."
To be fair, it's unclear whether the Bush administration or Congress intended such a broad sweep.
Assistant Attorney General William Moschella wrote in a letter to congressional leaders that the system is designed to "prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet."
The Senate bill also would exempt situations in which the sexually explicit material composes a "small and insignificant part of the whole," though civil liberties advocates questioned how such a determination would be made.
The aide to Sen. Kyl said he thought it was "very unlikely that federal prosecutors would devote time to pursuing operators of unlabeled Web sites with a patently nonpornographic purpose."
Whatever the government's intentions may be, the bill's definition of sexually explicit material is "not sharply bounded," said Jonathan Weinberg, a law professor at Wayne State University. All marked pages would be "instantly inaccessible to a huge portion of the American public," such as those with filtering features enabled on their browsers, subscribers to "family-friendly" Internet access services and Web surfers at schools and libraries, Weinberg said.
A recipe for self-censorship?By restricting the requirements to commercial sites, the law may not apply to nonprofit organizations like Planned Parenthood, which routinely disclose information about sex. But some said that exemption is far from certain.
See more CNET content tagged:
access control
sheesh... The Bush Administration need to stay off the juice...
In theory, it should be easy to make sure that students cannot use proxy services and the like by using programs like Dansguardian or any commercial alternatives. These programs use a context-based approach to identifying bad websites, in addition to blacklists. It means that even if students use a web-based proxy service, they won't be able to browse MOST porn websites.
Remember, the goal is not to make sure that tech-savvy kids can't surf porn websites (they probably will, if not at school, at least at home) but to prevent regular children from either stumbling accross objectionable content or being able to access it from school.
In addition, that would allow the government to force websites like Myspace.com or youtube to flag objectionable content as such if they do not want to be held responsible. At least, these websites will be coerced to be a little more proactive and stop profiting from such disgusting material).
http://www.techknowcafe.com/content/view/540/42/
but surely this is simply going to mean a large number of
companies publish/host their web sites in a foreign country, which
doesn't fall under US law, rather than risk falling foul of this
ridiculous law?
Or have I missed something?
Yes. Politicians are stupid.
But on a more serious note, the big legit US-based porn sites have already complied with a bunch of online regulation acts, so I don't think the US Congress thinks they're going to run for cover after this one either.
Yeah, let's offshore more.
There was NO part of the proposal to force porn to that domain, it just opened another domain that they major porn sites could also use. They would still have their .com domains as well.
The flagging is not for child porn but rather to make sure that kids cannot access websites that contain sexually-explicit material. Forcing the people who operate smut websites to include some sort of tag in their webpage will make it easier for internet content filters to determine whether to block the page and hopefully make them more accurate.
It does not suprise me that the ACLU is opposing this piece of legislation, since they seem to consider that it is a constitutional rights for children to be exposed to images that could very well endanger their well-being (maybe they should also side with NAMBLA on this one ?).
I like their example though : Victoria's secret's website would be considered obscene under this new law. Well, I would not want my children going to this website, even if the models are not really nude. So it's a good thing if it's flagged as potentially offensive (which it is).
Same thing for the artist : I don't quite get the "it's art, not porn stuff". Even though I understand that this guy paints adults,... it's the exact same argument pedophiles use when they get caught ("yeah, I jerk off to these pictures of naked children but it's not porn, it's art).
Come on, how does this one infringe on anyone's freedom ? You're still free to go to sites you should not go to if you want, it's not like they're trying to prevent everyone from accessing them.
Pedophilia is wrong - period, and we should do everything in our power to stop it. However, I fail to see how anyone could believe that a minor paging through a lingerie catalog (or a National Geographic, for that matter) would be mentally scarred for life, or how anyone could make the mental connection that hindering the internet publication of medical information websites, National Geographic or lingerie catalogs will stop pedophilia.
Pornography and child porn are two seperate things, noone thinks child porn should be protected, well except for the scumbags that collect and make it. Don't trample on legal material that has every right to exist trying to kill off a scourge, or you create a bigger problem than you fix.
The rest of your argument mostly makes sense, except you are too close to see the big picture. It has been extremely obvious that this administration is on an anti-porn run. The laws have become so convuluted that it is almost impossible to comply with them all. That was very intentional. Of course there would be very little public support if this was just about getting rid of porn, so they can't say that, so they have to throw kiddie porn in everytime they talk about it. Same way they throw "terrorism" in EVERYTHING else.
The post before this was right, if this administration really wanted to control porn, pushing it all to a .xxx TLD was the answer.
If you don't want your kids to see sexually explicit material, it is your look out, not the government's. Your prudery does not trump my first amendment rights.
However I have a message for THEM (if you are one, then please
read carefully). The definition of being a christian is to follow
the teachings (and examples) set out by your leader Jesus Christ.
Did he go to the "government" to seek laws for his teachings!
NO!!!!!
In fact he compared politicians to ******. Why do these so
called christians try to legislate morality (as if it is their duty),
while totally ignoring their leader, and trampling on a
fundamental give of God...freedom of choice. (whether good or
bad).
And for those of you who may agree with this point, why do so
many of you continue to vote for these bozos (like BUSH) who
only propagate this thinking??? Nothing will change if you don't
vote your concience... Vote Libertarian! www.lp.org
The only thing that would happen is that they would open NEW websites with the .xxx TLD in addition to the ones they already operate.
Only good thing would be that you could tell you filtering software to block all the .xxx sites (but that would not solve the current problem).
So, what are they doing? Just creating laws that will affect only American companies.
Thank you in the name of the rest of world. :)
Your children will stay safe. From now on, they will only see art, porn, etc., from other countries. Maybe this well help actually the new generations in america to be less US centric. ;)
The only thig we are protecting teenagers from here is the consequences of their actions. Oh yeah, and locking up old geezers who think that a young girl in hip huggers and a halter top is cute to look at.
Meanwhile, out of sight and out of mind, (and off the news) the crips, the bloods, the MS-13 are all shooting up the inner cities ... let's see congress find a cure for that!!
what's going on.
But are you saying that you consider laws to prevent CHILDREN
from accessing adult materials "stupid"?
There's a lot of great stuff on the Internet and a lot of really bad
stuff. Personally, I'm for seeing some of the bad (but still LEGAL)
stuff made available ONLY to adults through some pretty strict
verification. That way, it's still available to them but not
children.
It's not an issue of "freedom of speech" and it's not an issue of
being "US Centric", it's an issue of not allowing access to certain
types of material to people who aren't of an age that's legal to
access it. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?
Perhaps some people don't care if their 12 year old sees people
having sex on a website - I sure as heck do and I seriously don't
care what anybody thinks about me for not wanting that to
happen.
Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com
what's going on.
But are you saying that you consider laws to prevent CHILDREN
from accessing adult materials "stupid"?
There's a lot of great stuff on the Internet and a lot of really bad
stuff. Personally, I'm for seeing some of the bad (but still LEGAL)
stuff made available ONLY to adults through some pretty strict
verification. That way, it's still available to them but not
children.
It's not an issue of "freedom of speech" and it's not an issue of
being "US Centric", it's an issue of not allowing access to certain
types of material to people who aren't of an age that's legal to
access it. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?
Perhaps some people don't care if their 12 year old sees people
having sex on a website - I sure as heck do and I seriously don't
care what anybody thinks about me for not wanting that to
happen.
Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com
Just wrap anything anyone could find objectionable in this tag. That way the browser could hide this content, kind of like the <noscript> tag for sex. If people had the decency to wrap objectionable content in this tag then parents could filter the net this way.
BMR777
http://www.webringamerica.com
Seeing bible thumpers display pictures of aborted fetuses offends me, but I don't call for a law telling them they can't. That is a problem with free speech. But it is one I will gladly live with. The First AmenDment must remain whole. Freedom isn't always pretty but it is better than the alternative.
Who has their priorities wrong here?
Vote in November so that the current members of Congress can handle the "porn on the net" problem on their own time. This country has some big issues to tackle but porn on the internet is not one of them - it's a "wag the dog" issue.
By the way, child porn is terrible, dangerous and highly illegal already. Criminals that traffic child porn will not follow any new regulation or law set by Congress. Law enforcement will have to round those wackos up the old fashioned way, with solid police detective work.
This is hardly in-depth, so who knows, but my initial reaction follows.
It's an attempt to use child porn as an umbrella to get a bunch of other things the far right wants done.
Anyone engaging in child porn should be executed as far as I'm concerned. However, what does that have to do with labeling web sites with explicit material? Who determines what is explicit? Is a site that promotes safe-sex explicit? The far right would certainly like to filter/ban those as well? What about sites that promote or even just discuss abortion rights? What about sights that are about biology, science, and how the body works? Those have images as well, never mind language.
As far as art, it is certainly true that there are those that try to put porn under the art umbrella when we all know it doesn't belong there. Most of it is just smut. But it's hard to draw a line anywhere. Most of know whether it's art or porn, whether we want to admit or not, but we have a hard time setting an explicit list of what is and isn't. Many times it's because of HOW something is depicted, not THAT it's depicted.
As someone else has stated, they had their chance with the .xxx domain and blew it. The only problem with that proposal would have been it would not have forced porn sites to use it. Of course most would have since it would have been best for everyone. Those that want it would know where to go, those that don't would know where not to go, the domain could have been a simple filtering technique for kids computers. But no, that would have been like condoning porn and we can't have that. But again, there would have been those that would have forced sites that had nothing to do with porn into the domain as well just because they didn't like them.
In an attempt to get around extremists on both sides we end up with at best 'advisory' bills that in the end do nothing anyways. So what's the diff.
Much ado ...
responsible for keeping your children from viewing obsene
content online, nor is it the government's responsibility to teach
your children right from wrong. This is nothing more than more
political maneuvering designed to allow "them" to persecute
whomever they want whenever they want.
It's your job to raise your kids, parents - you signed on for this
when you had unprotected sex and decided to have the child.
The government isn't responsible for that decision you made
either.
People tend to remember that we have great freedoms in this
country, but curiously they also tend to forget that with freedom
comes responsiblity. Nice role model for your kids, isn't it.
those engaging in those activities should be prosecuted. But this
law would not effect child porn sites, it would only keep kids from
seeing porn on the internet.
So my question is what exactly is the consequence of a kid looking
at porn?
Does it make them turn to a life of crime?
Is it psychologically scarring somehow?
It's of course more of a problem for religious fundamentalists, and to parents who don't want to deal with the fact that their 14-year-old son isn't a little kid anymore.
http://www.techknowcafe.com/content/view/484/42/
It wasn't in reference to the INTERNET but, I think it applies just the same...
They started asking me about restricting what children could see on TV..I immediately told them that if these children's Parents didn't just let them do whatever they wanted without supervision then what was on TV would be of little concern since the Parents would be keeping them away from what they deemed inappropriate...They started to tell me what it was they thought should be done and, kept trying to ask me different questions geared to get the answer they wanted even if that wasn't what I thought....
I finally got tired of this and told them that they weren't listening to me and hung up...
These people doing what their doing now have probably got a lot of backing from people who think they know whats going on and what is intended when in reality they probably have no clue...
The basic gist of what I'm trying to say here is this, PARENTS are supposed to raise their children!!! Not the INTERNET, Not the TV, Not the DVD Player, so on and so forth...If Parents do their jobs, then the children will be watched over and, will maybe develop a sense of right and wrong from that...Enough so as too turn away from a show on TV or Web Page of questionable content without being told to do so...
I don't want my choices limited by people who can't raise their own children...I raised mine and watched what they did all the while...Kept me busy mind you but, that is being a Parent!
Naturally, when every .htm is flagged "just to be safe", the flag itself will become completely and utterly useless for the purpose the moralist busybodies intended.
Here's the good part--we were blocked by our company's own filter, which did not allow us to go to Dick Gebhardt's website, and in some cases not send email or content, either! BTW, Gebhardt at that time was the congressman for most of our headquarters people in St. Louis--about 12000 or so. So, it was a significant number of people who were blocked.
Bottom line--maybe it WOULD have been better to name him "Sue"!
- WWJD
- by robot999 June 21, 2006 11:25 AM PDT
- The definition of being a christian is to follow
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- It's government off our backs!! Except for...
- by mgreere June 21, 2006 12:21 PM PDT
- "Christian values" (whether clearly spelled out in the Bible or not)
- Like this View reply
Processing -
- bush propagates nothing
- by newcreation June 22, 2006 5:39 AM PDT
- guess you dont know about how are country was started?..most of the signers of the constitution where christian?...by the way many laws do already have religious origins.as in thieft
- Like this View reply
Processing -
Showing 1 of 2 pages (70 Comments)the teachings (and examples) set out by your leader Jesus Christ.
Did he go to the "government" to seek laws for his teachings!
NO!!!!!
In fact he compared politicians to ******. Why do these so
called christians try to legislate morality (as if it is their duty),
while totally ignoring their leader's example, and trampling on a
fundamental give of God...freedom of choice. (whether good or
bad).
And for those of you who may agree with this point, why do so
many of you continue to vote for these bozos (like BUSH) who
only propagate this thinking??? Nothing will change if you don't
vote your conscience... Vote Libertarian! www.lp.org
i.e., abortion, homosexulaity, porn (was porn mentioned in the
Bible?)
and
"National security"
In those cases, by all means invade the personal lives of the
"evil-doers."
Why can't some people understand separation of church and
state and personal freedom, and grasp how those ideals
separate us from theocratic dictatorships?
Then again, if that's what people want, it makes perfect sense --
the US as an aggressively Christian nation.