Posted on 08/15/2007 1:58:32 PM PDT by LightedCandle
Ed Meese, former attorney general under Ronald Reagan and Judith Reisman, noted author and scholar kick off "FamilyFragments.com" a website dedicated to fighting pornogrpahy.
Until we installed Firefox, my 10 yo daughter and two teenaged sons were “enjoying” xxx porn pop ups that we could not get rid of.
I think the real question is that should the internet be considered public activity?
There are several aspects to the issue. A web page may be considered public, or it may be in a password protected area available only to subscribers. Email may be considered private as well as instant messaging and VOIP. However, what if your computer has it’s files world readable over the internet? What if something happens accidentally and it causes you to violate community standards without willful intent?
I think a local law requiring ISPs to offer filtered public internet activity (websites, file sharing) as their cheapest option would be a good solution that doesn’t violate anyone’s rights. If you want unfiltered internet, just pay slightly more (it might only be a penny). If you want filtered internet, you don’t have to pay a price premium to get it. and community standards would only be enforced on the filtered tier.
Same here. I really like Firefox for that reason. I don't know how it works, but it seems to work a lot better than some of the others. Limiting my kid's experience online is unapologetically censorship on my part, but then I'm not the government & my home is not a democracy. I refer to it as a "benign dictatorship" :)
I never said it was.
POST #40 WELL SAID!
Firefox isn’t perfect though, and you can still end up going down a blind corner with popup blocking enabled.
Personally, I purchased a router with filtering software built in. That way, no matter who connects to the internet gets filtered—including devices that don’t have filtering capabilities like our Nintendo Wii. It actually contacts a central server first and if it is greenlighted, then the web transfer goes through.
The biggest benefit is that it protects from unscrupulous sites that install spyware or malware without warning. Just in case there is a real need to look at what’s behind the block page though, there is always a password parents can type in to unblock just once or for a set amount of time.
How do you feel about public lewdness laws, or public decency standards?
So how do you explain all of us libertarians that don’t smoke pot, don’t have a porn fetish, and don’t gamble?
Probably just as Conservatives are prudish hypocrites who want to use the government’s lethal power to control everyone else’s lives, right?
Wouldn’t it just be better to avoid looking at pornography if you don’t like it?
But on certain web sites, or in certain magazines, or in certain films, I have no such expectation, especially when films are rated and web sites are clear as to what is there and magazines are clearly marked. I haven't opened "Woman's Day" or "Martha Stewart Living" to find anything naughty lately. There was nothing untoward on this afternoon's episode of "The Andy Griffith Show".
Please make no mistake - pornography marketed to children or produced by individuals using the underaged should be punished severely. I don't care how severely. But what adults do with other adults that doesn't directly affect me is not my business.
As for public decency standards... if it is for adult consumption, produced by adults, and children aren't involved, I just don't have much of an issue with it. I don't like it, but luckily, I don't find it difficult to avoid. Honestly, just this week I've been grocery shopping, on the internet, out to buy a new shower curtain, to the bookstore, and to the mall, and so far, my exposure to porn has been hovering around zero. If it is kept away from the unwilling & is produced for and by adults, I don't like it, but I don't think it is my business. I also think that it is a dangerous, slippery slope to go down when we say that we are too weak to resist whatever.
Now my question: can you point to any society which has used censorship successfully - where the censorship worked as designed and wasn't applied in an overreaching manner?
The sodomites, pimps and whoremongers get all hot and bothered when conservatives start talking about taking our country back from the perverted freaks who have corrupted our courts, banishing God from the public square while at the same time ruling that obscene filmed and photographed acts of prostitution are what the First Amendment really protects. Morality must be returned to government by turning out of power the sick depraved deviants who have been degrading American culture.
“You’re going to need to provide a little more meat”
There’s an awkward choice of words.
Interesting discussion. I’d only point out that whitehouse.com isn’t a porn portal anymore. It’s worse. It’s now about...politics...
Obscenity is not protected by the first amendment.
All technological hurdles aside, I want to start with principles first. If it is not okay to have sex in the street downtown, is the reason why because it is viewable only to people within that community or because the community has a right to regulate what is publicly viewable within their borders?
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