Re: KidCode: Next steps

> In other words, you provide the legislators with some technology that
> they can decide to enforce instead of censorship. Suddenly, an
> interim quick solution might became the legislated standard. Thus it
> is somewhat contrasting when you write:

Folks:  Reality check.  THERE IS ALREADY CENSORSHIP ON THE WEB.  In the 
USA, it is ILLEGAL to show pictures of people engaging in sex to minors 
over the web.  REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU LABEL IT OR NOT.  (Sorry for 
shouting, but I get the impression people think we're trying to do 
something to encourage censorship.)  (P.S., I'm not a lawyer.)

It already gets enforced.  KidCode is a naming convention.  It says 
nothing about what you have to name.

It is already legal and has repeatedly been confirmed as legal that 
adults can talk to adults about things they can't say to children.

All KidCode does is allow you to say "this material is suitable for 
children" or "this material is suitable for adults". The ability for a 
browser to automatically recognise this is not going to make people want 
to censor the net *more* than it is.  The lack of any way to recognise it 
is going to make people have no defense when told some child got their 
dirty pictures. 

Now, if you can actually explain what it means to "enforce" KidCode, then 
feel free to follow up.  If you're just going to babble FUD, then you're 
just in the way of anything *except* legislation to restrict your freedom 
and mine.

If you actually have some constructive criticism, please make it and 
include me in the CC.  :-)

> The quickest way to get a solution in place should not necesarrily be
> the way that is legislated. This is not the moment to provide legislators
> with some simple quick solution they can embrace.

What legislation?  What's a quick simple solution they can embrace?  
"Dirty pictures should be marked as dirty pictures"? Why are you so 
against giving people the opportunity of explicitly marking whether 
something is suitable for children? Do you go into your local newstand 
and protest that Playboy and Hustler are on the top shelf, out of reach 
of the 12-year-olds?

> That is, if you limit the net to the US. However, smart content providers
> might just move the content to a more liberal country, and it is basically
> outside US jurisdiction.

Until you retrieve it in the USA.  How would you like UUNet or PSI to cut 
their foreign links after getting a summons from the FBI for delivering 
porn over the wires?

You don't honestly think that just because the pictures are on a computer 
outside the USA and come in over international phone lines that's going 
to stop a country that invades foreign countries and kidnaps their heads 
of state with our army for telling others to break our laws?

> May be censorship of content providers has already lost, given the global
> nature of this medium. However, voluntarly restrictions can't hurt, just
> as long as they don't become legislation. What would you do to avoid that
> it does?

I would ask you to explain what it means to enforce KidCode.  So far, 
everyone who has worried about KidCode somehow becoming law hasn't 
actually said anything coherent about what the law would say.  Please 
state an example of what "legislation" about KidCode might say. 
Otherwise, you're just FUDding.    --Darren

Received on Monday, 19 June 1995 16:32:48 UTC