Re: EPIC letter to CNET.COM and the Internet Community (fwd)

[Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>]

>   A number of groups, including the
>   American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic
>   Privacy Information Center, support the use of such
>   software on principle. 

Then they have no principles worth speaking of.


>   But they also point out that
>   filtering software can be used to block any kind of
>   content, not just sexually explicit material, and so
>   it can end up restricting free speech.

So sexually explicit material is no longer classified as speech?

> could be used as easily by governments against citizens and employers
> against employees as they could by parents against children, as was
> made clear by one of the PICS creators in an early paper on the
> topic.

This is not a valid point, parents restricting what their children learn 
about is the best way to fuck a child up.

> We further recognize that there is indeed some material on the Internet
> that is genuinely abhorrent.  But we do not believe you can hide
> the world from your children. We should help our children to
> understand the world, and then help them make it better. Good
> parenting is not something found in a software filter; it takes
> time, effort, and interest. And it takes trust in young people to
> develop within themselves judgment and reason, and the ability to
> tell right from wrong.

Quite so, this is why I never have seen the viewpoint which says that 
parents should not allow children to view sexually explicit material, 
which I can under no circumstances see as being harmful (with the 
possible exception of violent pornography). However, no material is 
harmful in and of itself, it is the attitude the child has towards such 
material that defines it`s worth, if a child sees a picture of a violent 
rape and finds it unpleasant and distasteful that says a lot for the way 
the child has been educated, if the child is interested by it and finds 
the material in good taste then I`m sure I can leave it to you to draw 
your own conslusions as to the success level of the parent in educating 
the child.

Of course any violent material can be harmful, but only if the child is 
brought up to find it acceptable to carry out real violent acts.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
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