I have already been labeling the headers/packets of all my sites using mod_headers for many years now.

The label generator at icra.org is fully compliant with all major browsers, all content filtering programs, and many other things.

If they come up with a new system, I WONT DO IT. That would be retarded. Many webmasters have already been using the ICRA label system for many years.

There IS NO REASON to come up with a new system.

Don't most porn sites do this already? This just sounds like some more campaigning to the base at election time. Congress might want to deal with real issues instead of playing porn-hound all day.

Politics aside, I think it would have made more sense to use the .xxx domain. Then parents could have simply blocked the domain.

I think this is a little too broad to be applicable. For instance... my personal archive ( http://www.idbeholda.tk ). Offensive? Yes. Obscene? Oh, God, Yes! Pornographic? Depends on your perspective of duality. The problem with this idea is that anyone who has ever posted anything that somebody could potentially find offensive in some way *MUST* put up a warning label. That sounds fairly innocuous enough, until you see where I'm headed with this. In the long run, if the law's wording were followed to a T, chances are, 90% of the population that comprises the internet community could technically have a felony charge on their hands, including the largely popular and widely known internet community of USENET. Whether or not the material contained within is actually *deemed* offensive, which doesn't just include pictures or even movies, is an entirely different matter because what is deemed as offensive to one person may not be to another individual.

This new law could even be broadly determined that the wording in text files or even anonymous posts could be "offensive" to someone, therefore since there is no "prewarning" that perceived objectionable material could be provided to someone at little to no cost, who is responsible? The host, webmaster, poster, or even the person who came across material that they found either pornographic or offensive. So at what cost do we say enough is enough, and that parents need to start watching their kids? But even more importantly, what would be the percentage needed to determine if said material should be deemed objectionable, and by whom? This could even be argued down to what sort of census would be needed to determine an accurate summary of said material. While it may be a good idea to make a law that is genuinely good-hearted in nature, the broad spectrum and closed-mindedness of the issue at hand is what really makes this idea less than suitable for any person or group of people to accurately handle.

I am all for any reasonable means of regulating access to porn by children and eliminating child porn. However, I don't see where a warning is going to stop a 10 year old from accessing porn if he/she intends to go there and it is pretty clear that parents are unable or unwilling to effectively monitor kids on the computer.

If an adult wishes to access porn that is his/her business, but surely someone can polish out some legislation that shields children from the onslaught of porn sites and promotion on the web. An adult accessing legal porn by choice is one thing. Children being subjected to porn by mearly searching a keyword or visiting what appears to be a legitimate website is entirely unacceptable in my opinion.

The problem is reaching a balance and using restraint so that a bunch of zealots don't over legislate. This is a society where it is perfectly acceptable for TV to show someone getting their brains blown out or being thrown off a ten story building, but if you show someone making love it is often labeled as indecent. Certianly we need to shield children, but I don't think it is acceptable to see the next step becoming eliminating liquor ads, tobacco ads, gunsmith's ads, you name it.

Just My 2 1/2 cents!

So how does this pertain to things like google image search? Are they going to have to show a warning if a user places an image search some nudity shows up? How can google programmatically determine if an image is porn or not. I'd like to see how that algorithm works. I like the idea of the law, but I don't think that it is completely enforcable.

That's it, I don't have pictures of naked women, I have collections of pixels that happen to look like naked women. :)

Makes me want to look for some naughty Escher pics.

Some say the proposals are a direct violation of the First Amendment rights of the owners of the Web sites, which likely means any passed law would be challenged in court.

Bull.

The websites are still allowed to "say" all they want, they just have to let kids know before they shove it in their faces.

Laws that impede the excercise of free speech unreasonably are also considered 1st Amendment violators.

The websites are still allowed to "say" all they want, they just have to let kids know before they shove it in their faces.
What about remote linking?

"What about remote linking?"

I guess sites would have to institute a 'Yes, I've seen the warning' cookie and redirect 'remote' entries to the warning if the cookie is absent.

So I must know how to set cookies before I can express myself on the net?

It's when society starts controlling speech (pornography is speech and that has been upheld multiple times by the US Supreme Court), you start getting into trouble.

As a person I should be able to look at or say anything I want as long as it doesn't put people in direct danger. Now it seems that the US government is saying that the act of conceiving the child would harm the child if they saw it. There's a certain irony to that.

the act of conceiving the child would harm the child if they saw it.

Ack, I know it would mentally scar me if I saw my own conception. lol

there has always been restriction on childrens access to porn, this is nothing different.
most porn is vulgar, most people don't want to submit themselves to such things. this is only a way to warn people about what they are about to see.
i think it's a great idea
:-)

i think it's a great idea
Except when people find the warning offensive.

"This site contains acts of..."

What... the... hell?

You're telling me you would actually find a "This site contains nudity" warning offensive?

Sure.

No, I wouldn't find it offensive; but why limit the warning to "nudity". Maybe I don't find nudity offensive; but want to be warned about pics of a "donkey show".

what?
this isn't about the circus
:-p

Maybe my warning should be more detailed? O_o

I don't get you.

Wouldn't that be a hell of a lot less offensive than the content itself?

O_o

lol,

seriously though, it doesn't need to be a detailed warning. "you are about to enter a pornographic site" or "you must be 18 years or older to enter this site" will do.

Those warnings already exist.

Ewwwwwwwww! Agreed!

they don't all have them

should they have to spend up to 5 years in prison if they don't?

How is this going to stop a kid from finding porn on the web? I guess if they have good parents that install a filter on their web browser, but short of that, this does absolutely nothing.

How is this going to stop a kid from finding porn on the web?
I am pretty sure that is not the point. I think the purpose is more to keep them from stumbling across it. Especially when it is hard to say "what about the children" when 13 year old Billy got to the page by doing a search for "hot naked 16 year old girls playing with each other"...because he is interested in older women :P

It is like the internet equivalent of the bookstore practice of putting the porn mags on a higher, obfuscated, rack. The problem is, it can imprison the bookstore owner for not doing this, and it is unclear if there are any provisions for remote-linking. (The bookstore equivalent of another customer stashing Hustler inside MAD)

This is hysterically funny and utterly impractical.

In short, it's a typical shortsighted American moralistic "solution".

Good GAWD, the stupidity. Parental controls for this, labels for that, tax dollars at play creating useless rating systems that can never be effectively enforced...

They could at least *pretend* to think.

But the erstwhile do-gooders will sleep smug, er, snug in their beds and that's what matters, right? And politicians can hold their heads high and sanctimoniously claim (without a shred of practical proof, of course) to have solved a "problem", right?

Suuuuure, Jim...

Well said.

And, if they are going to waste my tax dollars, why don't they just buy Net Nanny and give it to every parent in the country. Then the parents can control the situation instead of the government.

it's a typical shortsighted American moralistic "solution".^W^WPolitics.

There. Fixed that for ya. ;)

What, kids can't search Google or Yahoo! for "sex" or "boobs" or whatever?

Come on. That page will not stop a dang thing.

That's whats wrong with non-tech people trying to change stuff in a tech based world.

All Porn needs to be only allowed on a .xxx domain. That is what needs to happen. That way you can just block anything *.xxx. Easy.

What they smoke is beyond me. We all need some.

whoo, stop now...

we can't go having common sense and simplicity entering into the world of parental control and child protection.

the .xxx domain is impractical and largely unenforcable... especialy in a global internet. we get itno problems of what is defined as pornographic and what is not. each community and country will have different standards for this.

i don't think a warning page is really an impediment to free speech, since they can still express what they want to say, they just have to let people know what they want to say first. of course, i think it will be useless in terms of "protecting the children," and thus a waste of time and money)... but i don't think it's that harmful...

The .xxx domain may have issues, but I'm not sure they are insurmountable. I'm betting that all a warning page does is confirm for Little Johnny that he found exactly what he was looking for.

How would placing an extra page in between the user and the material "prevent children from seeing indecent material inadvertently"? Kids who know how to use a web browser are going to know how to find a "Yes" or "Continue" button.

Google sometimes returns unexpected results for common phrases. A couple times I've ended up on pages with a "Click here to continue to the porn." link, rather than what I was actually searching for. It's even more annoying when the porn site has relevent descriptions.

Ex: Burning hot GPU 100C

You wouldn't expect that to bring up porn. Actually, I just checked it, and it doesn't anymore, so maybe google made some changes too.

finally, someone with some common sense.
i would hope most of us raise our kids right, so they wouldn't WANT to click yes/continue.
as for teenagers, well, if they really want to see porn, there's more places than just the internet they can find it.

i would hope most of us raise our kids right, so they wouldn't WANT to click yes/continue

That assumes all "porn" is wrong, doesn't it?

for children?
yes
don't you?

Depends on how well "porn" is defined. If a thirteen year old biology student is trying to learn anatomy, then they shouldn't find an educational site blocked as porn. Again, the distinction between the .edu and .xxx domain would be useful.

Depends on how well "porn" is defined
exactly

the distinction between the .edu and .xxx domain would be useful.
but the xxx domain still assumes you can define porn precisely.

What is the difference between a less repressed society's SexEd and a more repressed ones porn?

"What is the difference between a less repressed society's SexEd and a more repressed ones porn?"

intent

haven't you heard of edutainment?

So, intent to entertain is inherently wrong?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/porn

porn

n : creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire

That's the intent he's talking about.

literary or artistic value

When everyone can agree on what that is, then there won't be a problem.

You. Are. Thick.

Look at the phrase right after that: other than to stimulate sexual desire

Could you at least try to comprehend what you read (assuming you actually read it in the first place)?

...

"Some say the proposals
are a direct violation
of the First Amendment
rights of the owners of
the Web sites"

...

There's no ~absolute~ right of Freedom of Speech,
just like there's no absolute right to ANYTHING.

Certainly there's no "right" to disseminate obscene
material !

...

The Computer Rodent

...

Yes, but as far as I am concerned, no one has the right to define "obscene" for anyone but themselves.

...

"as I am concerned,
no one has the right
to define 'obscene'
for anyone but
themselves"

...

That'd work if everyone lived alone on their own
isolated island. But we live in a society, and what
we do affects others.

Civilized peoples have always insisted on regulating
behavior that has an effect on the larger culture.

Only adolescent boys suppose they have a "right"
to do whatever they want whenever they want.

...

The Computer Rodent

...

We're talking about ideas here, not actions. Thought not behavior.

The problem is "obscenity" is basically code for "free [expression] I find offensive and would like to take protections away from so I do not have to see/hear it".

Try defining "obscenity" without using the words "I", "me", "my", "majority", "offensive"; or the phrase "a group".

if 51% or more of society decide something is obsene, and should be censored, there's nothing the other 49% or less can do about it(unless you want to start another revolution). that's why we live in a democratic country. it's what defines our society. heck, the bill of rights was created by the people, therefore can be interpreted by the people.

This is wrong on so many levels it is not even funny. We do not live in a true democracy. The founders of our country and the rest of the world at the time frowned upon true democracy, as it was too vulnerable to mob mentality. All attempts at true democracy outside of very small societies fail miserably. One of the principles this country was founded on was protecting the minority from the majority.

Or do you think if 51% of society thinks we should reinstate slavery or legalize murdering a certain ethnicity then that means we should?

isn't that what happened in the revolution?
(except the opposite way around)
it IS the way america works

No, not really, it takes a two-thirds vote to accomplish any significant changes.

And actually, the events following the revolution were much more interesting. People wanted a very weak central government, but it failed miserably without the power to levy taxes...or at least without the power to enforce its taxes. A stronger central government was seen as a necessary evil. I can tell you that the people of that day would have never stood for the government limiting their ability to express ideas.

the internet doesn't live in a democratic country though. it's global.

Back to class. We live in a republic.

It always cracks me up/scares me when a geography-based government tries to legislate the internet.

What if my website is just link page to internal pages of other sites? Can I just label the links A, B, C, D, etc?

"require Web site owners who include sexual content to place warning labels alerting vistors to the material."

I wonder how well this was thought through.
Is this warning supposed to show up right above the nudy pictures. I would think if I saw the nudy pictures I would know that this site has sexual content. But thanks for stating the obvious. Or are they suppose to have a page with no sexual content and then a redirect. If so who's to say that the search engines won't link directly to the redirect page.

No, the warning page can't have any nudity.

It'll just look like a GGW promo.

but like I also said. who's to say that search engines are only going to link to the warning page and not pages within the web.

If the site isn't run by an idiot they should not allow search engines to index their content pages anyway. Of course we don't live in an ideal world.

True. Hotbot used to do that and the porn sites lost a ton of money.

yea at some point parents won't have any reponsibility cause the goverment will do it all

No, that is not what this is doing. This is basically saying websites would need to have a page saying "click here to see sexually explicit content". There is nothing stopping children from clicking it. Parents are still responsible, this just prevents inadvertent exposure and could also help adults who are offended by such websites.

We can't have people in public places being exposed to ideas they are offended by now can we?

I'm not saying you can stop people from being offended, but if all it takes is one extra click to offend a lot less people, why not add it?

How do I absolutely guarantee that everyone who comes to the site goes to the "click here for porn" page first? Am I responsible for remote linking too? That is why I object. Yes, it is a nice idea, and considerate webmasters do this already. Those that don't are at worst jerks. A law not worded carefully enough can put that jerk in prison for 5 years, as well as the well-meaning but less tech savvy webmaster who couldn't prevent remote linking.

You bring up a good point. I have not read the bill yet, but I would hope it addresses those kinds of issues.

I as a firm believer that no person should ever be imprisoned for the expression of ideas...even if I am offended by them. Now, perhaps business licenses could be required for pay sites, and such warnings could be required for those licenses. But I'm not sure I would want those to be required for ad supported sites, as those ads could be how person pays for that avenue of expression (i.e. webhosting)

Why involve business licenses in this? Am I missing something in this bill? I don't have the full text, so I'm still going off the BetaNews summary.

"Commercial" speech is historically much less protected than normal speech. I am saying as an alternative to fines and prison, just require businesses to obtain licenses that have warning pages as requirements. That way, someones always on webcam isn't treated the same as a pornsite with an armada of paid camgirls when they just happen to be doing something.

I am saying this if "they" feel they must make some legislation.

The whole world must be dumbed-down to the level of children, so they won't see a naked human, or can't open a bottle top, or ride in a car, or anything that a parent used to do.

Must be election season again.

But they can watch people riddling each other full of bullet holes...how else are we going to prepare them for their future life in the new crusade^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H war on terror.

Yea, I'd say nudity is harmless compared to murder. Republicans love to teach people to be ashamed of their bodies (unless you're Rush Limbaugh drug-running sex pills to and from the Dominican Republic)! But then I grew up watching Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam blow each other up with dynamite every 30 seconds.