Free speech debate on MSN Encarta

[Raph Levien <raph@cs.berkeley.edu>]

First, a heads-up on the free speech debate on MSN Encarta this month. I
found out about it because it was featured (sans URL, of course) on the
NBC Nightly News. Here's the URL they missed:

      http://www.msn.com/encarta/otr/mar/otthis.htm

One of the major axes of debate is whether programs like SurfWatch are
sufficient to keep pornography out of the hands of children. One concern
that was raised more than once is that children tend to be more
technically sophisticated ("computer-literate") than parents. I think
there is a point there.

My dad just got Internet access this afternoon. Basically, all he needed
was to install a PPP dialer and Netscape on his Mac, but it was a bit
too much for him, so he had a friend come over and help him out. I had
tried to guide him over the phone, but that just didn't work out (among
other things, Netscape really needs to change their "DNS failure on the
following hosts" error message to "you don't have a connection to the
Internet, dummy"). Adding SurfWatch or something similar might not have
been possible at all.

So here's a random idea: have an ISP that essentially firewalls the
Internet connection to the house, so that it is very difficult to get
unwanted stuff over the wire at all. The ISP can maintain and update the
latest high-tech tools, including filtering by URL, filtering by
keyword, and other stuff like detecting proxies. While they're at it,
they can filter out junk email.

Just a random thought.

Raph (whose son, Alan Mathison, was born Sunday morning at 5:01 am)