[9141] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re Naughty Bits on the Net
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (thosstew@aol.com)
Sat Dec 18 22:09:42 1993
Errors-To: <thosstew@aol.com>
Errors-To: <thosstew@aol.com>
From: thosstew@aol.com
Errors-To: <thosstew@aol.com>
Reply-To: <thosstew@aol.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 93 22:08:16 EST
Clay Shirky writes "This would of course filter James Joyce, Kurt Vonnegut,
and (in our mammary-obsessed culture) the Song of Solomon. "
No it wouldn't. The software I've suggested would be installed at the
receiving end, at home on your very own PC, by parents (or prudes) who wanted
it. Anything that tripped it would be locked until the parent (or whoever
possessed the key) unlocked it. That's entirely reasonable. If it flagged
Joyce, parents would presumably unlock it, but not many 12 year olds would be
likely to read Ulysses with pleasure. (It probably wouldn't catch Lady
Chatterly's Lover, incidentally.)
And any child who really wanted that could GO FIND IT HIMSELF, either on the
Net (if it was there) or in the public library. The idea, Clay, is to create
a defense against people who might want to send pornography to those who
don't want it, not to keep people from FINDING it.
