Namespace issues aside, internet filtering software at present is a joke. This is an amusing summary of some egregious examples of filtering incompetence. For better or worse, I don’t think that reasonable internet filtering software will be technically feasible in the near future.
I have the perfect internet filter - they’re called parents.
Not only should parents monitor what their children access on the internet, they should have the skills at hand to instill some common sense and (dare I say) morals in their children. A little education goes a long way.
If parents let their pubescent children find out about sex from the internet, these children will be in big trouble when dealing with it for real. On the other hand, if a child is educated about the realities of sex, when he does run accross objectionable material, he will see it for what it is - objectionable.
<blush>
Thank you. We are proud. 
And Jack Batty: RIGHT ON! I get so tired of people wanting the world to conform to the limitations of children! If I were a parent, my kids would not be permitted to surf when I was not home until I felt they were old enough to handle whatever they found there. You know…just like in the real world?
stoid
I’m a parent and I don’t ever allow my kids on the computer unsupervised. If I have looked at something I don’t want them to look at, I remove it from the history file. I am extremely careful with the kids because well, that’s my job.
In my years on the web, I have very rarely found stuff that I would not be happy for the kids to see. I am amazed by people who ‘accidentally’ find porn - I’ve never found it without looking for it.
I don’t use net nanny or anything like that. They block too much stuff which I am cool with.
Primaflora you sound like a overprotective parent:)
Though I guess its ok if your kids are like 5 years old. Protecting your kids from the world always seemed to me as a good way to hurt them once you can’t.
I should know as my mom still considers me about 3 years old.
Good posts here. I was half-expecting to get my blood pressure jacked up by some moron, but everyone here has been very reasonable. I know that filters are a waste of time: CyberPatrol blocked the Nizkor website, a Holocaust memorial site, for no apparent reason. The NRA’s website was given an ‘adult’ rating by Net Shepherd. And the internet changes so quickly no piece of software could make filtering it worthwhile. That is not a fixable flaw. It is a permanent fatal flaw that exists in all software filters.
I got the facts about blocked sites from here: http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/censored-sites.shtml
You can find blocked sites organized by program here: http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/
Asmodean
my kids are 7 and 3 ;)… it’s currently my role in life to be overprotective. My kids will remain this age in my mind indefinitely, I think.
My kids are fully acquainted with the facts of life and really are not overly protected from the hard stuff. i just don’t want them looking at porn. Not on my dollar 
Pornography on the internet should be censored in much the same way that any book which uses the letter A should be censored.
Selfcensorship is the only way to do this! … the thing is, how the hell are you going to censor my site when it is hosted on a webserver orbiting the earth? … come into my house and check my history files? … why not frisk me everytime I cross the street to see if I am carrying any illicit substances?
Lazarus - point taken, but don’t freak out. I’m on your side.
However, I don’t think anybody here has advocated that illegal material be available on the internet. If your server is hosting such material, I don’t care if it was orbiting Uranus, it should be shut down.
In short there are things that should be censored. Fine line, I know, but we currently have laws which make certain images illegal. But that’s neither here nor there. To get back on the track that I think we’re both on. I don’t want to censor anybody’s web site. Adults should be responsible for their own actions and for their childrens well-being. End of story.
I believe that there should be some way of keeping kids from wandering into porn sites, just the way we don’t let them wander into strip joints IRL. And I believe that’s the appropriate analogy - not to books or whatever, but to the streets of a city.
We don’t say, “Parents should keep their 12-yeear-olds from going into those places,” we say the places must keep the under-18 set out. And we don’t consider that to be a restriction on the First Amendment. I don’t see why the Web should be any different.
Two comments about the ‘parental responsibility’ argument:
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Our society, and most advanced societies (and a lot of primitive ones, for that matter), believe in limiting in many ways the consequences of parental neglect or inattention. (The example I gave above is just one of many.) As Hillary said, it takes a village.
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While we all benefit from having a well-brought-up next generation, increasingly we’re privatizing the burden of doing so. One of the ways we do this is by saying about a zillion different things, “parents ought to protect their kids from this” where our society used to play an active role.
(I highly recommend The War Against Parents by Cornel West and Sylvia Ann Hewlett for a more detailed treatment of the subject. Good reading for pro-family lefties. :))
I hardly want to go back to the era of “Leave it to Beaver”, but as one considering parenthood, I sure wish there were a few less things that I’ll be expected to guard my kids from. Each of the assignments we palm off on parents is, by itself, quite reasonable; the problem is that nobody hesitates to add to the list.
This is becoming more and more difficult and less and less plausible to do.
Do US officials shut down the drug shops in the Netherlands as they are “illegal” under US law? … of course they do not as it is well outside their jurisdiction.
So whose jurisdiction does my satellite fall under? … or how about my lunar station? …
Lazarus7:
The answer is that your webserver should be used as evidence of the crimes that you commited to produce the material. If you take pictures of children, that should be used to put you in jail for child molestation. Having the pictures shouldn’t be a crime, taking the pictures is and should be a crime. And you would be prosecuted by whatever jurisdiction the crime took place in.
Mattk: Hmmmm. I disagree because I imagine that these marginal clickfarm sites aren’t going to be able to make money in the future, once ecommerce is more mature.
Let’s separate legitimate free sites from scam sites. Most free sites make money through ads for subscription sites. They get paid for views of the ad, and paid more if a link is followed. Or, they are themselves ads…for videos or 900 numbers or whatever. Now, I imagine that they would want a .xxx, since they are legitimate and a .xxx attracts the viewers. What advantage would they have with a .com?
Then we have scam sites that are merely clickfarms. How can they make money? Why should a legitimate subscription porn site pay them any money? Especially since they might be sued. And the subscription sites have a hard time disappearing, since then they lose their subscribers. I understand that there would still be “trojan horse” scams that promise porn if you enter a credit card number, but shouldn’t the scam sites also want a .xxx?
Let’s say that I’m a scammer. I still don’t see what advantage I’d have with a .com over a .xxx, since the whole point is to trick people into believing they’ll get porn.
Part of the trouble is that today’s “legitimate” porn sites don’t see themselves as legitimate, they see themselves as scams even though they are not. As the industry matures this attitude will change, sites will be less willing to jeopardize future revenues through shady practices, just like Vegas cleaned itself up.
Having society try to block porn leads to things like the CDA: Legislation that either completely destroys free speech in the nation that follows it and is ignored everywhere else or is completely ignored everywhere, period. The CDA was falling into the first camp, especially since the legislation was so vague it would have banned things like sex education and gay-bi-lesbian sites. We do not want that, I think we can agree. Besides, who is the government to say what I can and cannot look at online? Any legislation aimed at minors will hurt adults unless there is face-to-face contact, something the internet does not provide.
Censorship, no matter how well-intentioned, ends up turning harmful. Witness the Butler decision here in Canada, that banned pornography degrading to women from being imported. It’s now being used to ban shipments to women’s bookstores, for crying out loud. To talk with the staff of L’Androgyne, you’d think we were living in 1800’s Boston.
Lemur866 … where did I commit something illegal?.. first of all we were not talking about child porn, but, for the sake of arguement, let us suppose that we are.
Could I not have taken these supposed child porn pics in Upper Lebonia, which has a total acceptance of this art form?
As far as searching my orbiting webserver … does the country in question have extradition rights to my server? Given its orbital status, I would love to see that stand up in a world court !!!
Lazarus:
Of course not YOU you, I meant a generic person. But, let’s say that you took the pictures legally, according to the laws of Lebonia. Well, since we have no jurisdiction you cannot be prosecuted.
And I imagine that your sever will be “searched” the same way that I “search” SDMB. A cop will visit your site, and see if you’ve posted things like: “Here is a picture of my counterfeiting operation at 333 west haverstrom street”, or “Here is how I murdered Nicole and disposed of the bloody glove” or “Last night I manufactured 10 kilos of meth”. Since your website is broadcast to the public, it is not private and anything you say on it can be used as evidence against you. Presumably, most criminals wouldn’t post evidence of their crimes on their websites, BUT child pornographers would. Just having the pictures isn’t/shouldn’t be enough to convict you, but it could be evidence against you.
Seizing your physical server would depend on the laws of where it was located. If you have a server in Belize, the Belize authorities would have to sieze it. If you have a server in Belize full of pictures taken in Belize, and you live in Belize, then Belize must prosecute you even if your site can be accessed anywhere in the world.
But back to my question: What advantage would a porn site have by not voluntarily accepting a .xxx extension? And is there anything wrong with a .xxx if it is voluntary?
mattk’s question hits the nail on the head, because to answer it you need to come up with a definition of “pornography”. Without a definition you can’t decide which sites have to use the domain and which don’t. This leads us back into the gray area that makes this sort of thing unenforceable.
You can debate the merits of the idea 'til the cows come home but you can’t hope to enforce it.
I have to laugh at some parents out there. I can understand being extremely cautious with a 3 and 7 yr old… my son is 6 and the cool thing is, he could care LESS about porn on the internet. He wants to play shockwave games and surf CartoonNetwork.com. I try to give him as much leeway as I can, which I believe is a good thing. A. It shows that I trust him and B. His computer skills far outweigh most adults that I deal with on a daily basis.
That being said, I work help desk for an ISP… and we constantly have people calling up with such tragic problems as “I think my 15 yr old son found some “questionable” pictures on the internet… how do I keep him from looking at that sort of thing?”
Its a rough job, because I -want- to smack them back into reality… “He’s 15. He -will- find pornography… Then he will masturbate. Its what they do at this age. Its normal and you did the same thing. Cut the boy some slack and be glad he’s not going into dumpy porn establishments to purchase magazines that would make Larry Flynt blush.”
When I was 12-13… I didnt have access to a computer at home and NO one had access to the internet… But you bet your ass I found pornography. Children are curious. Im not going to teach my child to masturbate or buy him adult magazines when he comes of age or anything, (Mostly because if my parents did that to me, I would have been extremely creeped out)… but Im certainly not going to try to stop him. He has every right to be a normal, healthy, hormone charged teenager as every last one of us.
Education is so much more important than censorship.
If you spoke to your child in an honest, matter-of-fact way and trusted them enough to define their own morality… weighing the benifits and consequences of sex, I bet my bottom dollar that you would be pleasantly surprised by their reaction.
Another problem is that the filter programs done by third parties are often used for political- and corporate-motivated censorsip, like the Mattel internet filter filtering out Hasbro and Pokemon sites. The other filter programs also censor ACLU and NOW sites.