[8949] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
What Will It Take To Educate TV About the Net?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Mon Dec 13 19:58:53 1993
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 19:57:57 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: tully@cscns.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Ed Tully's message of Sat, 11 Dec 93 2:09:41 MST <9312110909.AA21183@cns.cscns.com>
>From: tully@cscns.com (Ed Tully)
>Access providers should begin
>offering access only to 18 year olds on some of the newsgroups. And
>further require access to them by anybody with a written request and
>feedback verification.
A few thoughts from an access provider...
A huge problem is that access providers do not control what's out
there or reachable.
If you can run telnet or irc or any other number of programs you've
just moved out of the domain of control of the access provider, it's
like asking a pay phone provider to control who can be phoned by
content.
About the only way I can imagine controlling any of this from the
access provider's locus is to cut off virtually all access to anything
remote, and perhaps limit access to, I dunno, a few newsgroups and
maybe e-mail, but no subscribing to mailing lists? Or verification of
appropriateness? Should a young person be allowed to subscribe to
com-priv? I've seen some pretty raunchy language here.
Even that's not safe, about two years ago some sick-o decided it would
be funny to post very, very explicit incest pornography to a kids'
chat network (k12.*).
So I know you can't tell what's safe just by the expressed purpose of
a newsgroup or mail list. Someone would actually have to hand-filter
every message a kid might see. That's an expensive proposition that
might be better handled by some interested parents, perhaps with the
resources provided by an access provider (tho you seem dim on the idea
of "interested parents", ie, later remarks on "latchkey kids".)
One underlying problem is that even the appearance of doing this kind
of screening would imply a liability to do it up to some "reasonable"
level of expectation, and that's a real problem.
For example, take a not atypical parent: Basically ignorant of the net
but signing away that it's ok for their kid to have an "under-18"
account. They might well be outraged to find out that same kid
telnet'd to an open (no login verification, they exist) news server
and began pulling down alt.sex.kitchen-appliances. But kids will be
kids, and they'll pass about recipes for doing this sort of naughty
thing.
Unfortunately, perhaps, in our litigious society I think I'd rather be
in a position where I made no such claim until I know I can actually
deliver on it.
Neither position is great, but at least no one can say to me ``but you
made me sign for my kid etc, doesn't that imply some kind of
liability???'' I think they'd be right in that specific situation.
Whereas in the situation of just letting their kid wander about
unsupervised at least leaves some question open as to whose
responsibility it is exactly, no claim has been made even if both of
us wishes nothing negative had occurred.
>Our society has
>a majority of latchkey kids. parents cannot watch them 24 hours a day.
But if their parents can't watch them how can we?
There's a little bit of a difference between something like 900 call
blocking and the net, just like there's a little bit of a difference
between what we can expect when a kid runs down the hall of a school
vs runs out into traffic. We can expect the former (a school) to at
least try to remove sharp and dangerous objects in that relatively
controlled environment, but if we just let a child run free out in
public at least some amount of blame might be directed towards a
parent. The net is the public, it doesn't claim to be a controlled
environment. That a controlled environment doesn't yet really exist
(or doesn't exist in a form you are wishing for) isn't really a good
reason to try to demand something else be made child-safe.
Isn't this just a futile attempt to shift the responsibility around to
someone else? There must be a better way to approach this. Generally
we try to protect our children by putting them into environments
designed for children, not by trying to make the whole planet
child-safe.
We're admitting we can't be bothered to adjust our lifestyles or
whatever to keep the kid from running out into traffic, so maybe we
can just set the speed limits to 5MPH etc? We're going to ask access
providers to watch their kids? How can we do this? Let's not be too
vague here and just state an idea, it's a hard question and deserves
some serious examination.
Anyhow, I can certainly understand the attraction of the idea;
risk-free electronic babysitters, less responsibility, shuffle it off
to someone else.
But I think when you look at the idea a little more closely about all
we can really do is hope that someone sees a market for a (true)
kidsnet, or some parents work with an access provider to provide the
labor (how much more would you pay for the provider to filter the
messages? nothing? you mean you want it free by dint of law? not
very fair is it?), which probably will resemble the net about as much
as one of those kid's cellular phones that just goes beep-beep
resembles the real thing, but does allow a very few, focused services
that sort of gives the kids the idea of what the net is about. Maybe
lets them send a little e-mail, real-time chat on the system only with
other kids (even that's fraught with peril, one wise-guy 12-year old
with cut and paste and some explicit text squirrelled away or even
self-manufactured...), a few things in a very controlled environment.
But this medium is too wide open to control access as you describe
without specific effort, and that specific effort will cost money.
The only possible solution I can see is no access to anyone under 18.
Is that what people want? Is that fair to the parent who is willing to
supervise their children?
-Barry Shein
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