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To: Doe Eyes
Only those with wanting to protect their children would have to use these "select" Providers. Those without children wouldn't need them and would be spared the additional expense.

There's a couple of problems with this scenario though.

1)Tier 2 ISPs are not going to want this - they could afford to have filtered/censored access by spreading the costs between their customers, but their costs would still be substantial, and they risk losing a large number of customers. Tier 3 ISPs, most of which are actually leasing bandwidth from Tier 2 ISPs (Tier 1 ISPs don't bother with individual customers - they handle large companies, or lease out to Tier 2 ISPs) are in the best shape to do this, since they are small enough to specialize in this kind of access - i.e. have a targeted audience (in theory somebody could sell them a packaged managed setup for filtering/censoring), but their costs are still going to be through the roof, and they don't have a large enough user-base to spread it out.

2)Is it going to be mandatory that if you have children, you must use only government-approved filtered/censored ISPs?

3)If it's optional whether or not to use government-approved filtered/censored ISPs, how would you convince a parent to spend 3x (or more) the cost of a normal, unfiltered/uncensored ISP account for filtered/censored content.

4)If it is mandatory, how are you going to enforce it? Is the federal government going to track everybody with a child to insure they are only using government-approved, filtered/censored ISPs?

5)If somebody with children can't afford the government-approved filtered/censored ISPs (going from $10-20 a month to $60 a month could hurt a lot of people financially), and they go with the regular ISP, are they going to be fined, thrown in jail, etc.

6)How do you deal with the fact that many people would rather save the $40 or more a month and go with a regular ISP and just watch their kids' access? If you say "well the government can subsidize it" in order to keep costs lower, you would still be passing on the costs to those without children, not to mention we would have yet more government spending.

7)Finally, if it was mandatory, as a Conservative, how would you feel with granting the government more power over our personal lives, and how do you deal with First Amendment issues, and how would you prevent the government from expanding this in the future to things such as firearms or political organizations (such as FR)?

We wouldn't be having this discussion if parents were more responsible for their kids.

I would love to see ISPs voluntarily target parents with filtered/censored content but most won't be able to afford it and so won't.

Having the government involved at this level scares the hell out of me, because once you give them that power, they are just one step behind China's views and power over the internet.
52 posted on 01/19/2006 1:31:55 PM PST by af_vet_rr
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To: af_vet_rr
If somebody with children can't afford the government-approved filtered/censored ISPs (going from $10-20 a month to $60 a month could hurt a lot of people financially), and they go with the regular ISP, are they going to be fined, thrown in jail, etc.

No, silly. You're going to pay the extra $40-$50 in higher taxes.

54 posted on 01/19/2006 11:00:56 PM PST by steve-b (A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
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