Friday, April 20, 2007

Pornography Police Pursue Chilling Statute

"I provide free access to Salt Lake City and to the city library. They can do that, and I'll just shut down my free access zones, and Utah's reputation will be damaged as a place that is restricting technology rather than expanding it."
Pete Ashdown, Founder, Owner of Xmission
Lawmakers need to understand the distinction between the possible implications of regulating the technology and stemming the message. Restricting global pornography by regulating, exclusively, local providers is ludicrous.

Desnews:Lawmakers seek ways to block Net porn

5 comments:

Jesse Harris said...

It's shameful to be a techie in Utah these days and see our state constantly looking like the north end of a southbound horse in front of the Slashdot crowd. We need fewer lawyers and developers and more geeks on the hill.

George said...

I found it somewhat disturbing that Centerville City's web site had links to at least a thousand plus hard core porn sites and they did not know it. I contacted the mayor and city manager and the links have been removed. The stuff can be pernicious and needs to stay out of the hands of curious little boys.

Tyler Farrer said...

Wp,

Of course, we need to fight pornography, especially if it surfaces on a city website, but the Lege is going about it all wrong.

What the Lege is trying to do is akin to ticketing the road for allowing a parking violation to occur on its surface.

Natalie Gordon said...

I think the CP80 idea has some merit. What do you computer-savvy people think? Will it work?

Tyler Farrer said...

Natalie,

While it sounds good, the problem just isn't that simple. I see two problems with this approach.

First, it is an attempt to have the government do something that it is
bad at doing. Its wise to know what you know and what you don't know.

Second, it pretends to be a total solution to the problem. There can be no perfect solution to the pornography problem.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Here is another take on this.

The best way to approach this is to leave parents in charge, and to not punish those who have little or nothing to do with causing the problem.

1) Leave the Computer in a public room--not behind closed doors.

2) Install firewall, antivirus, and filter software that meets the parents guidelines

3) Respect the fact that children can, and will, outstrip their parents in their technical prowess, so assume the whole system is broken from the start.