From: IN%"frantz@netcom.com" 6-APR-1996 16:21:56.32
I am less worried about this possibility than most. PICS scrubbers will be as easy to produce as any other web intermediary. (e.g. The one which replaces "bad" words with "censored".)
Quite... as will ones that flip-flop the various packet bits that people are discussing.
I do not make these comments publicly, because I don't want to poke holes in network self censorship while the courts are grinding on the CDA. (Note that true self censorship, where the viewer wants the filtering would not be impacted. Those viewers would just not use that kind of intermediary.)
I don't plan on mentioning it on CuDigest, either... just that any imposition of this standard will leave countries where it isn't imposed.
I applaud the ACLU's position in not rating their web page. I will also note that it is possible for a PICS filter to refuse to pass unrated pages.
Yes... and it would be possible for a PICS unrating filter to simply set all of them to child-OK. With the current discussion of packet-based censorship, it would appear possible for the bit in question to be reset by _any_ of the systems it passes over at least as easily as those systems could use this bit for filtration. I would suggest a "Trojan Horse" program to do this, in order to A. get governmental systems and B. give SYSOPs an excuse to run the flipping program. This flipping could produce either child-visible or child-invisible material, depending on what result the system in question wished to produce. Child-visible would help the children; child-invisible would make the Net unusable for children whose parents weren't sensible enough to not use such software. The latter, applied to technical material, would also drive China, Singapore, et al nuts.
If much of the technical information on the net is unrated, China, Singapore etc. will be between a rock and a hard place with the anti-censorship intermediaries.
-Allen