On Sat, 23 Sep 2000, Jim Choate wrote:
To whom something is marketed makes no difference when it comes to censorship. It is no one's right to stop Teletubbies from hawking Marlboros. Freedom of speech is not compromisable.
Yes, it is the right of their parents to protect their children. They have a right to demand that products and services targeted at their children conform to the parents desires. The business has no say in it, and shouldn't.
Since 'targeting' a product at someone usually only implies dissemination of information of some kind, it is difficult to justify any restrictions. I've yet to see any proper reason for treating 'commercial' speech as separate from the traditional highly protected kind. Besides, advertising is a mass thing, which implies that giving a single parent any control over what is targeted at his/her children would given him/her pretty much the same control over what all chilren get. This is even harder to justify.
Labeling products as to target audiences and requring parents ok to allow children to buy adult products is NOT
So what is an 'adult' product? I find Penthouse highly suitable for the 12-16 year age range. You?
The failure of capitalism is the failure to recognize that human beings have rights and that business is simply an expression of individual rights. Rights allow one to pursue an activity until that behaviour infringes anothers right to engage in their activity (in this case raising their children).
There is no such conflict. You can always go live in the woods if the urban culture doesn't please you. Who said people have a right to all the comforts of modern society without paying the price of reduced control over the upbringing of their children? Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university