[9037] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: sleaze
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Costlow)
Wed Dec 15 00:18:36 1993
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 93 20:43:54 MST
From: bbx!kitsune!cheeks@cs.unm.edu (Mark Costlow)
To: bbx!mimbres!world.std.com!bzs
Cc: jamii@cs.unm.edu
Cc: com-priv@cs.unm.edu
In-Reply-To: <199312142005.AA22583@world.std.com> (bbx!mimbres!world.std.com!bzs)
On Tue, 14 Dec 1993 15:05:01 -0500,
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) said:
Barry> Consider again the (true) example I gave where someone posted incest
Barry> porn to a k12 group.
I read sometime in the last 6 months about a problem some people in
California had with something like this. People would rent a video tape
from the local rental store, record a porn movie over the original movie,
and return the tape. So the next person who rented the tape got a big
surprise. These were typically family-oriented movies, and they
left the first 1/2 hour or so of the movie in tact so as to be sure to
catch the whole family on the couch and make sure Jr. gets an eye-full
before Dad can find the remote.
The local government eventually got a law passed that made such behavior
illegal, punishable by at least a stiff fine (I don't recall if you could be
put in jail for it or not). Apparently the mayor (or some other
influential figure) was the owner of the video store where these tapes had
been rented.
My point is that the precedent in our society seems to be to punish the
perpetrators of such things. Of course, finding them is not always easy.
Speaking as someone about to become a service provider, I'm *very*
interested in finding a solution to this problem. I have to agree with
Barry in that I don't see any good ones other than restricting accounts to
users >18 years (or as Stephen Williams from LIG suggested, having the
person buying the account sign a waiver).
... BUT ...
I also agree with Ed Tully - 5% of 30,000 is a *lot* of accounts! I would
really like to get lots of <18 year-olds interested in and using the
internet, for my own selfish purposes as well as the fact that I think it
would be immensely valuable to them. Doesn't it seem a shame that we have
to treat the entire net like an adult book store because 1% of the traffic
is smut?!? (Actually, I suspect 1% is a gross over-estimate).
Mark
--
Mark Costlow
Southwest Cyberport
cheeks@kitsune.abq.nm.us or ...mimbres.cs.unm.edu!bbx!kitsune!cheeks
