Food for Thought

Wed Nov 6 02:28:17 CST 2002

This gets into how you define censorship.  When all those rock stars 
were screaming censorship back in the '80s, I didn't call that 
censorship.  I called that good business.  They knew a huge chunk of 
their clientele was under 18 and those artists didn't want to depend on 
a parental OK to get the sale.  

The closer you get to the boundaries of "decency," the more of a 
judgement call you have.  But, I still think you can draw some pretty 
distinctive lines around porn.  Every other entertainment venue can come 
to a consensus on what's questionable content, I don't think it's any 
more difficult on the internet.

KRFinch at dstsystems.com wrote:

>I agree.
>
>As a commentary that relates this to an earlier topic, this sort of first
>amendment freedom could easily extend to prevent forcing all companies with
>adult content to adhere to a particular top level domain.  Playing the
>devil's advocate for the moment, the government doesn't have a right to
>tell someone what they can name their business.  If I want to name my
>enterprise "obscenes.com" I should be able to (unless someone else already
>has that same name and prevents it).  Forcing me to place my business at
>obscenes.adult or the like could potentially damage my business by making
>it difficult for customers to locate my business.
>
>Furthermore, that name might have nothing to do with anything anyone could
>consider offensive, but it could be censored unjustly under a domain-naming
>censorship scheme.  Let's say that my business is actually a coffee shop in
>a theatre district of a city that actually has one.  I could call my coffee
>shop "Off Broadway Scenes", playing off of the theme of the neighborhood,
>and trying to appeal to a given clientele.  "OBScenes" is a reasonable web
>abbreviation for the on-line location of my business, and is the sort of
>abbreviation that is commonplace on the web with businesses with long
>names.  Such a name would never get past the censorware, even though the
>most obscene thing about the business could be the price of a
>double-mocha-half-caf.
>
>I think government sponsored censorship in any form is just a bad idea,
>even if it is good intentioned, because it sets a dangerous precedent.  I'm
>sure most of the signers of the constitution would agree with me.  Just
>adding my 2 pesetas...
>
>- Kevin
>
>
>
>
>                                                                                                   

>                    Jason Clinton                                                                  

>                    <clintonj at umkc.edu>          To:     Marvin GodfatherofSoul Bellamy 
<mbellamy at kc.rr.com>       
>                    Sent by:                     cc:     "'kclug at kclug.org'" <kclug at kclug.org>     

>                    owner-kclug at marauder.i       Subject:     Re: Food for Thought                 

>                    lliana.net                                                                     

>                                                                                                   

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>                    11/05/2002 04:48 PM                                                            

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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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