Bush Wants YOUR Google Records

[Luke T.]

Am I crazy, or would it just be a lot easier, and avoid any kind of First Amendment threats, to just tell parents to watch their damn kids? You don't want little Suzy watching "Nip/Tuck"? Don't put a TV in her room. You don't want little Johnny looking up "panda suit fetish" online? Don't give him his own computer. You don't want Suzy and Johnny playing "Grand Theft Auto"? Don't buy it for them! And yes, they might try to do all these things elsewhere. So? Forbid it, and make it stick! It's called "parenting". If you can't manage that, then your kids have a lot more serious problems than seeing Janet Jackson's nipple.

If I were a legislator who was hellbent on crafting a law to stop kids from seeing porn on the internet, here's how I would approach the problem:

1. I must realize I will never stop non-US porn sites from abiding by US law or from being accessible to kids.

2. Write a law that US-based commercial porno suppliers must register their URL with a government database. That database would be available for free to all net nanny software providers.

3. Then it is on the parents to get the net nanny software.

4. It would be up to the net nanny software companies to compete on who has the best blocks to foreign porn sites.

 

[TragicMonkey]

If I were a legislator who was hellbent on crafting a law to stop kids from seeing porn on the internet, here's how I would approach the problem:

1. I must realize I will never stop non-US porn sites from abiding by US law or from being accessible to kids.

2. Write a law that US-based commercial porno suppliers must register their URL with a government database. That database would be available for free to all net nanny software providers.

3. Then it is on the parents to get the net nanny software.

4. It would be up to the net nanny software companies to compete on who has the best blocks to foreign porn sites.

It sounds pretty fair, except #2 has a couple of huge hurdles: who determines what is, and isn't, porn and therefore should register their URL? Yeah, it's fairly clear that Hot Girl-On-Girl Schoolgirl Oil Wrestling is probably porn. But what about the not-so-clear cases? An unusually candid blog, the online catalog for exotic swimwear, a racy Harry Potter fanfic, an art museum with an online sampling of their exhibits which might be anything from Maplethorpe to Rubens to Greek statuary....who has to register, who doesn't?

eta: Yeah, it's a pain. But at the root of all pornography/obscenity laws is going to be the question of definition. It's never been answered satisfactorily yet, and until it is, all such legislation is doomed to be unjust to somebody.

 

[Manny]

Yeah. On a completely unrelated matter:



This kind of "lump all the bad guys together, because bad is just bad" pseudo-"thinking" is what got us into the Gulf War in the first place. (Oh, gee, there are Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan? Quick, let's invade Iraq!) It's also directly contrary to the nature of the rule of law.... but that doesn't seem to bother contemporary Republican neo-fascists much.

Oh, sure, he's no Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar or even a Mohammed Hamdi Al-Ahdal. But post-release, he, like them, has been a bad, bad boy and as a result will not be available to carry out the terror attack you are so desparately hoping for.

 

[Luke T.]

Oh, sure, he's no Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar or even a Mohammed Hamdi Al-Ahdal. But post-release, he, like them, has been a bad, bad boy and as a result will not be available to carry out the terror attack you are so desparately hoping for.

We will return to our regularly scheduled topic on the government vs. Google right after this:

WTF are you doing, Manny?

 

[Manny]

Growing extremely weary of being called a neofascist.

 

[Luke T.]

Ah, I've been reading the Supreme Court's decision on Ashcroft v. ACLU from 2001.

There was another one in 2004. Found something here.

I'm going to paste bits and pieces which collectively should summarize the summary.

Congress’ first attempt to make the Internet safe for minors by criminalizing certain Internet speech, was unconstitutional because it was not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest and because less restrictive alternatives were available.

Net nanny filters are less restrictive than COPA, and maybe even more effective, in other words.

The District Court’s conclusion that respondents were likely to prevail was not an abuse of discretion, because, on the record, the Government has not met its burden. Most importantly, respondents propose that blocking and filtering software is a less restrictive alternative, and the Government had not shown it would be likely to disprove that contention at trial. Filters impose selective restrictions on speech at the receiving end, not universal restrictions at the source.

Under a filtering regime, childless adults may gain access to speech they have a right to see without having to identify themselves or provide their credit card information.

Filters, moreover, may well be more effective than COPA. First, the record demonstrates that a filter can prevent minors from seeing all pornography, not just pornography posted to the Web from America. That COPA does not prevent minors from accessing foreign harmful materials alone makes it possible that filtering software might be more effective in serving Congress’ goals. COPA’s effectiveness is likely to diminish even further if it is upheld, because providers of the materials covered by the statute simply can move their operations overseas.

Filtering’s superiority to COPA is confirmed by the explicit findings of the Commission on Child Online Protection, which Congress created to evaluate the relative merits of different means of restricting minors’ ability to gain access to harmful materials on the Internet.

Although filtering software is not a perfect solution because it may block some materials not harmful to minors and fail to catch some that are, the Government has not satisfied its burden to introduce specific evidence proving that filters are less effective.

So. How would you go about proving filters are ineffective?

(edited to fix link)

 

[Luke T.]

Or conversely, how would you prove they are just as, if not more, effective?

 

[TragicMonkey]

In the era of identity theft and credit card fraud, I find it hard to believe someone seriously proposes using credit cards to verify age. Unless, of course, their real agenda is that porn is universally bad, and therefore people who view it deserve to be defrauded.

And, of course, what stops Little Johnny from using his dad's Visa card?

Plus, won't someone stand up for the porn addicts without credit cards? If people can argue against requiring ID to vote on the basis that not everyone can afford a driver's license, surely they must realize that not everyone has credit cards!

 

[Luke T.]

It sounds pretty fair, except #2 has a couple of huge hurdles: who determines what is, and isn't, porn and therefore should register their URL? Yeah, it's fairly clear that Hot Girl-On-Girl Schoolgirl Oil Wrestling is probably porn. But what about the not-so-clear cases? An unusually candid blog, the online catalog for exotic swimwear, a racy Harry Potter fanfic, an art museum with an online sampling of their exhibits which might be anything from Maplethorpe to Rubens to Greek statuary....who has to register, who doesn't?

That's the second problem COPA is faced with. The predecessor to COPA (called CDA) was challenged by the ACLU and it was struck down by the Supremes for being to broad in its definitions of indecent subject matter. COPA was the answer to that Supreme Court decision. They narrowed it down to sites that make money off porn.

Aside from "community standards" problems, COPA is also suffering from too broad definitions.

I can just see this all coming down to a bunch of lawyers from each side arguing over a Google search term like "breasts" or "suck" and whether or not that counts as a porn term and should be caught by a net nanny filter to prove the filter's effectiveness.

 

[Luke T.]

In the era of identity theft and credit card fraud, I find it hard to believe someone seriously proposes using credit cards to verify age. Unless, of course, their real agenda is that porn is universally bad, and therefore people who view it deserve to be defrauded.

And, of course, what stops Little Johnny from using his dad's Visa card?

Plus, won't someone stand up for the porn addicts without credit cards? If people can argue against requiring ID to vote on the basis that not everyone can afford a driver's license, surely they must realize that not everyone has credit cards!

All of those arguments have been made to the Supremes. I just haven't pasted them all.

From my last link:

In addition, the District Court found that verification systems may be subject to evasion and circumvention, e.g., by minors who have their own credit cards.

And I believe somewhere in one of manny's links is where I saw the "what about the adult with no credit card" argument.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I can just see this all coming down to a bunch of lawyers from each side arguing over a Google search term like "breasts" or "suck" and whether or not that counts as a porn term and should be caught by a net nanny filter to prove the filter's effectiveness.

I think it's going to take a thousand hours of programmers' testimony as to what is, and isn't, possible with computer programs. I've had experience trying to explain the limitations of programming to non technical people, and it's not fun. "But I saw in a movie once..." The only way to really get it across is to teach them all programming.

That would occupy Congress for a bit. "First, we make a flowchart"...