[9024] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: sleaze
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Tully)
Tue Dec 14 21:58:52 1993
From: tully@cscns.com (Ed Tully)
To: postman@lists.psi.com (Douglas Barnes)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 93 19:54:40 MST
Cc: rmholt@u.washington.edu, bzs@world.std.com, bachmann@austin.ibm.com,
In-Reply-To: <199312150215.UAA08468@caffeine.caffeine.io.com>; from "Douglas Barnes" at Dec 14, 93 8:15 pm
The point that is being missed -- or avoided -- is that NO ONE IS EVEN
ATTEMPTING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. We spend all our time worrying about
advertising and the CIX and... and... We all have solutions tothese
problems. We threaten those who dare to send us advertising with
extinction; the sleaze of the net we just let them go on.
I will now get flamed about what is sleaze and who is the judge of what is
sleaze. I think we can all agree that nude and provocative poses by 12
year-olds performing oral sex is sleaze. Do it in the printed media, you go to
jail. There are social norms in our society. why is the net excused from
adhering to them? Why are we not working on some way to deal with it as we
are trying to work on advertising? That doesn't say ban it - it says deal
with it -- don't continually come up with excuses to not deal with it.
This isnot said in the spirit of admonition and tsk, tsk! it said in the
spirit of trying to reach a market that could explode or die real quick -
the education market. Looked at strictly in those terms - the average
school district has about 33,000 students and 1500 to 2000 tachers and
administrators. When they tell me they won't come on the net because of
too much sleaze, I pucker! and I haven't been told this once; I have been
told it three times by three different school districts. That is a lot of
lost accounts! even 10% of that is a lot of accounts! 5% is a lot of lost
accounts! If you don't believe it, try and sell in the education market at
the district level. Administrators and teachers have enough trouble - they
don't need to invite lawsuits in the door. they can generally find their
own way.
>
>
> 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.
>
> --
> ---------------- /\
> 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 /______\
>
--
Edward J. Tully
Network Training & Consulting
Community News Service
Colorado Springs, CO
719-592-1241 719-592-1204 fax xx
