Also, you commit a dangerous fallacy in your last paragraph: the point is not to protect obscenity, but to protect speech which some think obscene and some think not. For example, early atheist communication was found blasphemous and obscene. Material that is almost obscene but is not, in fact, obscene deserves as much protection as any other speech. If you try to blur the line and say that any such material is as cheap and tawdry as obscene material, you’ve really just moved the line.

What you’ve really said is this: “Putting something that’s almost obscenity, but isn’t obscenity, on the
same level as [important speech] cheapens the purposes for which they are protected.” By that reasoning, nothing but registered political, religious, or artistic speech, approved by a judge, would be protected.

It seems that the legality of operations for businesses specializing in obscenity would generally be aware that their products might be found objectionable in certain areas. I don’t mean that I side with the court completely in the Thomas ruling where one complaint led to an investigation which was enough to find the Thomases guilty of criminal offenses, but is it completely unreasonable to take the context of a crime into account (community standards)? I wouldn’t say so.

Putting obscenity on the same level as political speech, religious speech, and artistic expression (and the lines between indecency and artistic expression are sometimes fuzzy but that’s for another essay) cheapens the purposes for which they are protected.

I do agree with you that children gaining access to pornography can be harmful. However, I do believe that that harm can be mitigated best not by ignoring a very much existent feature of our culture (poor word choice, I know), but rather, by parents teaching kids that while this stuff does exist, they should not indulge in it because it is wrong. I think that this can work. Sheilding children from the real world does not make them moral. Teaching does. Life experience does.

I don’t belive that parents should sit their kids down in front of a computer screen ladden with obsence images. However, I do not believe that the government should completely absolve them from ever having to confront the issue. This is content that kids will ineveitably be exposed to at some point, and maybe via non-ideal means. For example, many parents struggel with when to teach their kids about the birds and the bees. Some never do. Some wait toolong, and by the time they are ready, it’s too late because little Jonny down the block already took care of it, and now Suzy needs maternity wear.

A tagging system would be fantastic; parents could explain the moral issues with obscenity, and instruct their kids not to visit such sites because to do so would be wrong. They could subsequently effectively block their children from accessing such sites, and if any effort were made to reach the obscene material, presumably the filterware would report such attempts. And then parent and child can reopen the dialoge.

Yes. I think human nature is naturally rebellious, and a primal curiosity can lead children to reject mom and dad. We should provide more tools to help parents raise their own kids the way that they want in the changing technological landscape.

I disagree that accidental access to pornography is free from dangers. This is especially true for people who believe browsing prurient material is wrong in itself - apart from consequences of sex crimes, STDs, and pregnancies. Accidental viwing can lead to habits and addiction. Even some adults would appreciate safeguards against accessing pornography.

Would a tagging system satisfy you in keeping government entirely out of the home, yet aiding parents in teaching moral values?

I appreciate your final paragraph, decrying the hypocrisy of parents who want their Sex and the City yet also want to limit their child’s access to smut. You are also right about the irresponsible inconsistency of decrying homosexuality while embracing sexual immorality.

…you don’t really propose anything better. In that last poriton of your post, you simply suggest that it should be governed by some sort of international body instead of a non-profit with oversight from the DOC. That’s all fine and dandy, although I don’t see how you can call anyone else an idealist when you propose such a solution; let me point out that you use the words “international consensus.”

First, “idealist” is a term you will find nowhere in my post with regard to explicit proposals (either my own, or those made by others). My only references to idealism are in stating that the current structure of ICANN, as well as any proposal that Americans should dominate internet governance merely because they founded the internet, do not live up to the often-heralded ideals of American democracy. If this does anything, it situates me, as the author, in a more idealist position than the advocates of the proposals that I criticize, not in a position — as you imply — to presume that I am so secure in my own allegedly “practicalist” proposal as to scoff at the excessive idealism of others.

I contend that my post does, in fact, advance a definite proposal (at least to the extent that other posts on this board do). When you say “you don’t really propose anything better,” I am not sure if you mean that I don’t propose any well-defined plan of action (period), or that I simply do not propose anything better than the various suggested reforms that I question. If your intention is the former, I would argue that my suggestion that ICANN continue in a functionally similar role under the mandate of an international agreement is indeed a proposal. In fact, this is virtually the same solution proposed by Stacy and Harlan in their posts this week.

Under the second interpretation of your allegation that I propose no better alternative, we merely disagree about the merits of the solution that I advance. I am not sure why you find my suggestion of “international consensus” so patently absurd. You seem to suggest, by evoking the term without any further explanation, that the notion of “international consensus” is inherently such an oxymoron that the very fact that I make use of it defeats my arguement. Obviously, I disagree. I hardly feel compelled to stand up and defend the fact that international agreements do, in fact, exist. It seems to me that international agreements, the product of that supposedly laughable notion of “international consensus,” are the primary means through which the world handles such weighty issues as trade, economic development, and world health.

Until someone explains to me why intricacies of DNS management are so complex and controversial that they cannot be handled by the same forces that deal with world hunger and AIDS, I prefer not to take you at your word that international agreement is impossible within “a reasonable timeframe” and throw up my hands in premature defeat.

Somebody is feeding you a pile of misinformation. You wrote that ICANN’s directors lack “international diversity”? ICANN’s Board currently includes directors and liaisons from fourteen different countries: Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Senegal, and the United States.

http://www.icann.org/general/board.html

Suppose that broadcast is the only way to get television, and that there are four channels. I, as a consumer, can buy a TV and watch the shows of my choice, or I can choose not to have a TV. But my only options are to get all of the channels or to get none of them. This is pretty much how things were in the early years of TV.

Now suppose Channel One starts broadcasting porn. I don’t want my kid to see porn, and I can’t perfectly supervise my kid’s viewing, so I decide to get rid of my TV. Remember, that’s the only way to keep my kid from watching porn.

Channel One’s decision to start showing porn created a negative externality, which harmed the other stations. The externality arose because porn has negative value for me, even if I don’t personally watch it, and I couldn’t get rid of it without cutting off my business with the other stations. But Channel One didn’t take the harm to the other stations into account in its decision to broadcast porn.

A solution to this externality problem, the argument goes, is to use regulation to prevent stations from broadcasting content whose very availability has negative value to significant numbers of viewers. And that means banning porn.

Of course, this argument fails if I can control which stations my TV can tune in, which is generally the case with cable and satellite TV, or even with many modern TVs.

Does this argument apply to the Internet? It’s an interesting question. With old-fashioned TV, the bundling of content availability arose because of the physics of broadcasting and the state of electronics technology — there was just no way to get one station without getting them all. Do parents have a realistic way to let their kids see some of the Internet without letting the kids see the nasty parts?

There is substantial sociological and psychological evidence that so-called “scare tactics” in regards to large societies just simply do not have the desired long-term effects. Wouldn’t prison be enough of a “scary” place that former-inmates would never want to return upon their release? Then why is the re-incarceration rate so high?

To liken spam to the “war on drugs” is a perfect analogy because both are a waste of time for our legal system. I’m not advocating drug use, nor am I encouraging spammers to flood my inbox. I believe though that there are just simply “too many” spammers or drug users that to put them all behind bars is absurd. What can we do instead? I believe the answer is a technical solution, not a legal one. I want my ISP to continually compile data on what is and isn’t considered a spam message. Artificial intelligence bots can easily spot spam on my computer once it comes down the pipe; surely it can be caught at the server end (or maybe even source!). The only legal action I would support would be legal action against companies that employ spamming techniques to hawk their wares (of course there is no centralized “prescription meds for cheap” company, so it becomes a moot point).

The bigger moral of the story is that if there is money to be made of any sort of social annoyance, someone somewhere will be interested in that as their “profession.” Need proof, look at telemarketers. Do you think they enjoy being called at dinner time and asked if they wanna switch long distance carriers?

Given that more people are using email and more people are getting spam, it seems odd from a rational standpoint that people would be less concerned by something they come in contact with everyday. Or, maybe that’s just it: because users are coming in contact with spam messages everyday they have grown to feel like its “no big deal” and “part of the internet.” I merely suggested that while nine years in prison for spammers may make ISPs happy, it’s not so obvious that users feel the same way.

Me personally, I hate spam and do everything I can from filter it at my client to report blacklist-able addresses to my ISP. ISPs need to up their technical attacks on spam because there is still plenty more that can be done.

On the web, a user sends a request to the website. The website has the ability to choose to respond to that request or not. The sending of a request, unless done with malicious intent (malformed, exploit, DOS), is not an act of tresspass. Neither is recieving a response. The website owner does not have the right to retroactively say “I didn’t want to respond to that request”, and charge the requestor with tresspass - they should have denied the request in the first place.

If you don’t want your content viewable to web users, don’t put it on the web. If you want to restrict access, then do so using authentication, private networks, or any of a host of other tools available.

Frankly, if the courts weren’t actually making decisions based upon this twisted misapplication of the law, it would seem laughable.

If Ford figures out how to engineer the Taurus so it only runs on Exxon gasoline, then I have no issue with that. But on why should Ford be allowed to use some ridiculous “copyright” claim to force people to use Exxon gasoline? When was that ever the intent of copyright?

I also echo Brian’s question: what entitles a businessman to get government protection for his business model? We have a legal system that permits a fair and equitable marketplace. Business models should work within the confines of this system. If a business model can only succeed if given special government protection, this is exactly the statist and socialist situation that you bemoan. As Jeff points out, this puts the government in the “business of protecting Lexmark from third parties who want to offer interoperable products.” Lexmark’s business model tried to take advantage of an apparent loophole in the DMCA to secure a special monopoly on toner cartridges; isn’t this special government protection unfair?

It’s very hard to pin down the “more spam/less spam” statistics to a single root cause. Many people change ISPs, which changes their filter profile. Many just get e-mail through work - at my company, we are on our third filtering solution in the past 2 years, trying to find something that works right. Then there is the issue that many spammers are getting better at dodging blocks. And also weighing the factor of more internet users vs. the users with more experience getting savvy to keeping their addresses off the lists.

It’s just too complex an issue to boil down to “Americans just don’t care about spam”. I think that’s a headline grabber more than an accurate assesment.

“Lies, damn lies and statistics” is still a good rule to keep in mind.

Bayesian filters work very well on blocking spam once it reaches my Thunderbird mail client. I am not sure if any ISPs use such filtering techniques at the server end, but I do know that many have non-adaptive methods like black lists, non-forwarding, content scoring, and false header denials.

In fact, couldn’t Bayesian filters be set on SMTP servers to check multi-recipient messages for spam before the get bounced around the net? …just an idea

If ISPs wanted Americans to rally behind them and get on board with the legal prosecution of spammers, then yes, a filtering holiday may be just the ticket. I think that it is just a waste of resources for the America Online’s to go after spammers with such harsh punishment especially considering that hardly the majority of American internet users aren’t even interested.

This has reduced the sense of urgency that most users feel about spam. Meanwhile, System Admins are facing an every greater challenge in filtering out new spam campaigns designed to bypass the blocks that are in place.

The spam burdon hasn’t lessened at all, it has just shifted. It may be a good idea for ISP’s to occasionally have a “blocking holiday”, during which the filters are disabled. Then the users would see the extent of the problem, and maybe regain the sense of “something has to be done”.

So I find little to back up the hopes in your last paragraph, and you have presented no evidence that your hopes are correct. But I’m most curious about your first sentence: why is it within the rights of a businessman to get government protection for his business model? Once he sells a device—player, printer, book, or bedspread—it is the property of the consumer. Why is the government obliged to enter my home and ensure that I am using those in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions? Do I really own the object if a manufacturer can demand this? If a manufacturer *does* have the right to this protection, can he sell it? What would we call it when he did sell me this right?

I think we’d call it “sale” and what I had afterwards “ownership”. That is, a manufacturer does have the rights you describe with respect to products he owns. Once he sells them, he sells the right to control their future use. I can smash or burn a Lexmark printer I have purchased, or scribble on it, or use any ink I like. Manufacturers who do not wish to sell these rights should not sell ownership of their goods, but instead lease them. Indeed, there are manufacturers who do this (IBM, for example, has a lucrative printer-leasing business). It’s not popular with consumers because of the extra paperwork.