Re: "Voluntary Censorship" vs. Govt Legislation

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Wed, Aug 06, 1997 at 12:39:54PM -0600, Jim Burnes wrote:
[...]
> Can you imagine going into a library and
> having censorship ratings stamped on the
> bindings of all the books there?

This is not a good analogy at all.  Have you ever noticed that there
are "childrens books" sections in the library? In fact, books in
libraries *do* have ratings -- they just use a different technique
than stamping it on the book.

The fact is that realspace allows categorization (censorship, in your
terminology) by spatial location -- something that cyberspace doesn't
support.  You don't complain about physical segregation of children's books,
or keeping children out of bars.

So presumably you wouldn't complain about some technical means of
creating an analog in cyberspace?

If so, then voluntary labelling is not so bad.  Most sites that cater 
to "adult" tastes will label themselves; most sites that explicitly 
cater to children will label themselves; but the vast majority of 
sites won't bother.  The fact that this system is not perfect is not 
an issue -- realspace separation is not perfect either.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html