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Actually, this is pretty funny: The reasons that the bud site don't work is the reason why a java or user end script style system is not a functional idea for protecting both minors and free speech - it often doesn't work exactly right.
Re-writing huge numbers of websites and pages to check a script for login status at every turn is going to require much more server horsepower (imaging every gallery hit from the hun having to run a php session cookie... yowsa!) and very likely small errors will creep in that will either disable pages or block client access without reason.
Assume for a minute that the population of the US is exactly evenly spread over the age groups (it isn't because of the baby boomers, but we wil play nice). Let us also assume that the only people under 18 with unrestricted and unmonitored web access are over 12 years of age.
Let's say everyone over 72 doesn't surf the web at all.
60 year time frame. 12-13-14-15-16-17 are all unacceptable ages to view porn. 6 out of 60 years, or 10% of the potential surfers are not legally allowed to view porn. Walters (and many other) idea is to make a system that enforces special rules on 90% of the people, and on top of it won't stop the other 10% from lying and seeing porn anyway.
Let's take this a little further. Average gallery type por surfer maybe visits 50 pages on his way around on any day. Average underage surfer is sneaking over to see porn when nobody is looking, maybe looks at 25 pages. So now you are also looking at only 50% page views by 10% of the population... so now you are going to make a big system to control 95% of your total page views to protect 5% of the page views....
... and that is without considering the effects that this sort of system would have on search engine rankings, traffic flow patterns, and such. Most current browsers (way more than 95%, I am sure) have parental controls built in already. Make page labelling manditory, make the fines for not labelling adult material to be very high, and the issue resolves itself ongoing. Then nobody has to make major ongoing and endless efforts to cotrol 5% of page views while pissing off the 95% that are from valid and acceptable clients.
As a side note, I am confident that the number there is far below 5%... I would suspect that number to be closer to 1-2%, as I suspect most minors are obtaining porn from downloads, file trading, picture hosts, friends, and other "non-industry" sources.
Defining the problem and refining the message based on who really is affected by change is important.
Alex
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