Gonzales wants web labeling
 

I caught a little bit of him on CNN, but he kept referring to C.P. as a reason.|huh
http://news.com.com/Gonzales+calls+f...?tag=nefd.lede

The comments at the bottom are worth a read also.

Tickler, it is those comments that he makes why this industry needs to push hard to seperate ourselves from the CP factor. It is too easy for num-nuts like Gonzales to lump us all into the same pile.

Alex

It doesn't matter - they deliberately do that anyway since the real goal is the criminalization of legal, adult porn. It's like the pagans trying to tell the fundies "We're not Satanists." But the Fundies hate tree-hugging pagans just as much, so the protest is ultimately futile.


Here's a follow up, btw:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04...on_smut_sites/

You notice that even ICRA is coming out against it.

Anybody care to translate this bit of double-speak:|huh
Gonzales said it will help ensure that ISPs report the presence of child porn on their systems by strengthening the penalties for failing to report it. But this appears to stop short of requiring ISPs to monitor their systems. Instead, according to an accompanying Department of Justice statement, "the legislation would triple the current criminal fines levied against providers for knowing and wilful failures to report, making the available fines $150,000 for the initial violation and $300,000 for each subsequent violation."

I'll give it a shot:

"We want to outsource the job of policing the web to the ISP's, and in return they can pay us huge sums of money for the service we allow them to provide."

ICRA fears that their "business model" will get wiped out by the government coming in and mandating some tag other than theirs. If that happens, ICRA tags will go the same way as Archie and Veronica (not the cartoons, but the information access systems before browsers).

If the government came in with simple "rating porn" type tags, I actually think they could get the industry on side and in the game.

Alex

If everybody who did adult online biz in the US had to put a standardized gvernmentally mandated code on their pages, I don't think I would have much a problem with that.

It would depend a bit on the code, but only a bit.

Of course, everybody here already puts some kind of an adult identifier code on their websites, so it's just a publicity gimmick by the administration anyway.

But a universal code sounds okay to me, at first thought.

Bill, more importantly, if Gonzales actually worked WITH the industry, he could even potentially get programs and such to madate that ALL pages with their sponsor stuff on it (ads, content, whatever) should have it, which would extend it through much of the industry even outside of the US. Imagine CCBill, Paycom, and other processors making it a requirement... the spread would be fast and solid.

You get much more working WITH people rather than against them.

Alex

I have to weigh in as agreeing with the last two fine and honorable gentlemen. I already feel compelled to label my pages. Whether I'm compelled morally or legally makes no difference. We all need to accept that certain changes are going to occur as the industry matures. Regulation is, in some form, going to happen no matter who is residing on Pennsylvania Avenue. I'd much rather be labelled and filter than corralled and slaughtered.

Absolutely UW...as well as the other fine gentlemen you reference |thumb

A simple adult meta would get huge acceptance and quickly.

A second thought is a universal code could be blocked at the ISP level or higher, much like the .XXX or portXXX concepts.

I like meta tags. They're reliable, they're efficient... and the surfers don't even have to know they're there, they can just continue to do what they've been doing since the birth of the internet. |thumb

tickler, while that is true, functionally speaking, we can be blocked anyway, or at least I assume we can, using keyword blocks, or blocks based on meta or icra tagging.

I figure that my pages, which are fairly explicitly pornographic and based on clearly adult named domains, could be blocked, if only by the meta tags already on them.

Would a tagging system that allowed text and non-pornographic pages go untagged cause a huge growth in text pages for the SE's? Yeah, I think it would.

I'm not saying I approve of it, I'm saying I don't see a lot of reason to fight it. It will have a far harsher impact on news and health pages than on porn pages.

Politically, it's clearly a gimmick, meant to allow the pols to pretend they are doing something.

So you're saying it'll just create one more way for cheaters to gain market share?

What's going to hurt us is a Bill in the Senate that'll sneak up on us.
That'll make everyone prove their age before looking at any page of porn.
And that isn't stepping on any 1st ammendment or any other rights.

The courts have already struck down age verification rules, because not everybody has credit cards. "Only the rich would get access to porn"

The bill doen't say anything about CC's.
You don't have to have them to buy Liquor or cigarettes, nor to rent adult videos but you do have to prove your age..

Read these links..
http://www.third-way.com/press/release/10

PDF
http://www.third-way.com/products/14

PDF
http://www.third-way.com/products/19

Tickler, ISP level blocking would very likely get a very strong court challenge. Blocking legal material would be a very risky way to do business. I think that some companies in New Zealand or somewhere in that area have tried to do it, but it makes surfing very slow (each page has to get processed by the system before it goes to you... a real big buffer!).

Any attempts by an ISP to block adult material (especially if that ISP is the only company providing DSL or cable access in an area) would lead to an instant and very strong court challenge, and the ISP would likely back down. It would be the first step on a slippery slope of blocking other objectionable sites like abortion, birth control, muslim sites, anything that says bad things against the US, etc. The Surpreme Court doesn't love porn, but they could easily sniff out the implications.

Filtering has to be an individual end user computer making decisions based on the settings made by the owner of that computer. In the same way that TV's can block out adult material (VChip style), the internet would be good going down that sort of road.

Bill, as for "text only" unranked, I think that adult keywords are still adult material. You couldn't have a page filled with "MILFs sucking cock and getting fucked in the ass" and consider it to be anything other than adult. It wouldn't be just about the images, more the content as whole.

Alex

I'm all for some type of labeling that's simple and easy to use but as a parent I want the same type of labeling to be applied to news articles pertaining to violence, guns, tobacco, alcohol, religion, etc ....

I would much rather have only people willing and able to buy porn looking at it.

I don't know about that one. Traffic may go down, sure, but it trains people to keep their wallet on them when they want to look at porn, and it sifts out the serious consumer from the window shopper. Where's the harm in that?

I like this bit .......
"The definition of sexually explicit broadly covers depictions of everything from sexual intercourse and masturbation to "sadistic abuse" and close-ups of fully clothed genital regions. "

Close-ups of fully clothed genital regions are sexually explicit? Hmmmmmmmmm. They might possibly be suggestive, but they certainly aren't explicit.

I think perhaps the term "fully-clothed" must mean different things to different people. Anything short of three stout layers of sackcloth could well be unacceptable.

I was referring to COPA, and I don't see much difference now.
http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/
In February 1999, the federal district court in Philadelphia issued an injunction preventing the government from enforcing COPA. That court held that COPA was invalid because there is no way for Web speakers to prevent minors from harmful material on the Web without also burdening adults from access to protected speech. Although COPA contains a defense if Web speakers restrict access by requiring a credit card or adult access code, the evidence clearly established that either defense would burden free speech, for at least five reasons:
1. they deny access to all adults without credit cards;
2. they require all interactive speech on the Web to be placed behind verification screens, even speech that is not "harmful to minors";
3. they deter adults from accessing protected speech because they impose costs on content that would be free, eliminate privacy, and stigmatize content;
4. they allow hostile users to drive up costs to speakers; and
5. they impose financial burdens on speakers that will cause them to self-censor rather than incur those burdens.