nzook@math.utexas.edu writes:
NYET-- Non-Youths Exhibit Temperance. [...] As the Internet community continues to grow, the differences of conviction that exists generally in the world find their way into the community. Some demand that newcomers to the net adapt to the mores of this society. Some demand that the net, as a newcomer to the world, adapt to the outside. As recent events have demonstrated, the less reasonable, on both sides, may be endangering the integrity and availablity of the net. Calls for net censorship, it may be expected, will continue to grow unless the net can find some way to police itself. Yet "police itself" is a term that sends the net into fits. My solution, NYET, is for the appropriate users to directly censor the data that they might legitmately lay claim to censoring--data that flows to minors over which they have legal authority and responsibility.
[ proposed laws to prevent minors from accessing questionable material deleted ] Your basic idea is excellent, so excellent in fact that you could probably make some money by providing the service. As a parent of a soon-to-be netsurfer, I would be willing to pay more for an account that gave me some control over my daughter's access than I would for a standard netcom style account. Let me know when such accounts are available. In the meantime, there is no need for force. The immediate reaction of "there ought to be a law" is a direct contradiction to the net "policing itself". Regards, Patrick May ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "A contract programmer is always intense." pjm@gasco.com