[9023] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: sleaze
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Douglas Barnes)
Tue Dec 14 21:30:25 1993
From: cman@caffeine.io.com (Douglas Barnes)
To: rmholt@u.washington.edu (Rose Marie Holt)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1993 20:15:31 -0600 (CST)
Cc: bzs@world.std.com, bachmann@austin.ibm.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9312141627.F23180-0100000@stein1.u.washington.edu> from "Rose Marie Holt" at Dec 14, 93 04:52:27 pm
We've been wrestling with the adult content of the net for some
time here at IO; one of our partners is a former administrator from
a large school district thought he saw a great marketing opportunity
to kids and families for the undisputed good things about the net.
Reality, however slowly, is beginning to set in. I'm curious how
long you've been on the net, Ms. Holt. Not long, I would guess.
There are so many different transport mechanisms for information,
so many different encodings, so many different ways to both passively
offer and broadcast, so many intertwining, mutually incompatabile
jurisdictions...
If you're going to let kids surf the net, you can't make guarantees
about their safety and protection from unwholesome influences than
if you, say, dropped them off in front of the Library of Congress with
lunch money while you went to work for the day. It's not an inherently
bad idea, but you've got to trust the kids, they need to be responsible
and mature, both for their sake and the library's :)
Let's say you set up a MOO or MUSH for the kids. Only kids allowed on.
Well, just like "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", one the
Internet, nobody knows you're a pedophile. So they're vulnerable that
way. You've just created an online theme park for that element, and they're
liable to spoof or hack their way in. Suppose you let kids from Finland on.
_They've_ got access to porno GIFs, and will certainly trade them for,
say, help with their English compositions (although I dunno, given US
students these days, might do more harm than good). Suppose you let the
kids at gopher -- all of a sudden you find them using a telnet link to
a freenet, reading alt.sex.joy.of.rubber on Usenet.
As absurd as the $100/hr. service flyer spoof was, it may very well
take the creation of an entirely new net, more secure even than the
existing mililtary nets, to completely shield determined young-uns from
"adult content". Unless you read their email (incoming _and_ outgoing),
screen all the news, prohibit tools like gopher, telnet, and ftp, forbid
them to port software that opens a network socket, etc., then you can't
guarrantee that they won't get into this stuff. (Note that _emacs_ has
all the tools you need to get into anything that can be gotten into.)
We'd love to wave a magic wand and be able to create an environment
that only contained the best of the net, and none of the sleeze, and
junk (and get rid of about 90% of the flames, too, while we're at
it...). I don't see this happening anytime soon, and I think that
you fail to appreciate the sheer enormity of the task.
--
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Douglas Barnes cman@illuminati.io.com / \
Chief Wizard (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v) / () \
Illuminati Online metaverse.io.com 7777 /______\
--
---------------- /\
Douglas Barnes cman@illuminati.io.com / \
Chief Wizard (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v) / () \
Illuminati Online metaverse.io.com 7777 /______\
