[9046] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: sleaze
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Clay Shirky)
Wed Dec 15 09:42:19 1993
From: Clay Shirky <clays@panix.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 09:41:21 -0500 (EST)
> >
> > 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.
> [.....]
> >
> > 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.
I think the important point here is that no one proposed punishing the
owners of the video store, whose situation is analogous to that of system
owners and administrators.
> > 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).
By doing this you are implicitly suggesting that you can be held accountable
for the content of material not only stored on but retrieved from your
system. To me this seems a dangerous precedent. *Far* more sexually explicit
material is available by phone, but NYNEX doesn't require a waiver before
installing a phone. Service providers should not be in the business of
bowdlerizing the net; those of us with concerns for K-12 education should
place the burden of censorship on the point of purchase, developing proto-
cols for acceptable use.
> > 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).
There is a Luddite cast to this concern with smut which happens to come
over a T-1 line. If I were to get up from my terminal and run out to the
first news stand I could find, I could bring back more pornographic images
in five minutes than I could download in an hour, but no one is suggesting
closing down news stands, even though their adherence to the under 18 laws
is minimal, and the checks which exist at news stands look rigourous compare
to those used for phone sex.
It is important to remember that the supreme court recently struck
down the proposed 24/7 ban on adult material on TV, ruling that concern for
children could not be used to deny adult's access to it.
I too am concerned about children's access to the adult material
(I am in the middle of drafting a proposal for 7-12 Internet instruction at
a local school) but I think the solution is squarely in the hands of those
acting _in loco parentis_. This is a social problem, not a technological
problem.
--
Clay Shirky
