[8364] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: New Internet Draft on protecting children AND free speech
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Darren New)
Thu Jun 8 12:37:39 1995
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 12:30:38 +0500
Errors-To: procmaster@www19.w3.org
Reply-To: dnew@sgf.fv.com
From: Darren New <dnew@sgf.fv.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www10.w3.org>
> For example, suppose I have a big collection of art on the Web. While
> many of the pictures would offend no one, suppose figure painting are
> represented, including Manet's "Olympia". Should I be required by
> threat of government censorship to label or move "Olympia" to an
> adult-materials ghetto?
The KidCode proposal is a technical mechanism for allowing cooperating
servers and browser vendors to allow parents to restrict access by their
children to adult-only materials. Just as you can go to a movie theater
showing Lion King on one screen and Indecent Proposal on another screen
(Fatal Attraction? One of them.), there's nothing that keeps people from
showing "nice" pictures beside "evil" ones.
However, notice that the KidCode proposal is to *prevent* government
censorship. If anyone makes you move Olympia somewhere, it certainly
won't be the IETF or First Virtual.
KidCode gives you a way of telling people that the U of Illinois paper
contains the word "fuck" without them having to actually read the paper
to find out. That's all. If you chose not to warn people, that too is
your business. If you do chose to warn people, then anyone capable of
installing a browser can read it anyway.
> Books like _American Psycho_ and _Joy of Sex_ (and the many variations
> of the book) are available in most general interest book stores. Do
> you really think segregating _Joy of Sex_ to adult bookstores would
> have no effect on its readership?
So don't. Honestly, I don't see your gripe. If you want to put _Joy of
Sex_ in your non-KidCode URLs, I don't see that as a problem.
Wrap your head around this concept: VOLUNTARY. Censorship is NOT
VOLUNTARY. KidCode is VOLUNTARY. Hence KidCode is NOT CENSORSHIP.
Got it?
I personally think that by establishing a VOLUNTARY standard before the
governments of the world that claim to support free speach establish a
NOT VOLUNTARY set of rules, we can delay the NOT VOLUNTARY set of rules,
hopefully indefinitely. Much like the movie rating system.
> 5. _It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept
> with any book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the
> book or author as subversive or dangerous._
But if the author himself puts on the back cover of the book "Not
suitable for young children" does that make it bad? Look, there's that
word again: FORCE! That means NON VOLUNTARY.
> The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or
> groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad
> for the citizen.
Yes. They're all over. It's called "Courts of Law" in the USA. You
know, the same folks who keep you from saying 7 words on the radio, and
who prevent you from showing homoerotic art by painting it on the side of
the buildings facing the Lincoln Tunnel.
Face it, they *have* the authority. Much as you'd like them not to, they
can come and drag you off, beat you up, and put you in jail if you insist
on artistically showing off your privates in a public part, free speach
notwithstanding.
What I'd like is to keep the folks whose job that is to not pay too much
attention to what goes on in one of the last bastions of free speach
still growing around the world.
> It presupposes that individuals must be
> directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine.
> But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.
Well, except perhaps for children. Else why the mandatory education?
> 6. _It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as
> guardians of the people's freedom to read, to contest
> encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups
> seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the
> community at large._
And it's the responsibility of authors to take responsibility for their
own works.
> another individual or group. In a free society individuals are
> free to determine for themselves what they wish to read, and each
> group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely
> associated members.
Hey look! There's the word "Free". That's almost like VOLUNTARY!
Sorry if this is sarcastic, but it really peeves me when I try to do
something to promote and protect freedom of speach and someone thinks I'm
trying to force something on them at gunpoint. Cut me a break. --Darren
