nzook@math.utexas.edu writes:

Specifically, this is a plan to create two sorts of accounts to the net-- adult and minor. Adult accounts may only be obtained by persons of age eighteen. Minor accounts may only be obtained as adjuncts to adult accounts, refered to as supervisor accounts. Adult accounts would have full access to anything on the net. News readers, telnet, ftp and like software being operated from a minor account would check a file in the adult account to allow access. Newsreaders, in particular, would censor any posts crossed from a non-allowed account. The control files in the supervisory accounts would default to allow-only mode, but could be selected to deny-only.

As a parent, I can sympathize with the desire to shield our children from some of the raunchier material on the net. Many parts of the net are more "Animal House" than "Public Library", and you don't necessarily want a nine-year-old girl learning about sex from a.s.b. I think there are real problems with Nathan's proposal, though. Questionable material on the net is not tagged with an R rating. Newsgroup categories could be rated by the parent, but there is nothing to stop cross-posting. Trying to put ratings on each email message, news posting, web site, MUD (although some MUDs do have adult areas), IRC channel, etc., is just not practical. No censor has that much free time. Another problem is that even the "safe havens" where minors congregate may not stay as pure as we would like. Believe it or not, teenagers of below the age of 18 are actually interested in sex. In fact, many, perhaps even a majority, are not virgins. It's going to be necessary to censor the kids' posts more than any others if you want to keep them from talking about what they want to talk about. For a good example of these problems, see that paragon of censorship, Prodigy. My kids use Prodigy a lot. They are pre-teens and I don't worry too much about what they will see on this family-oriented service. Still, the "Teen" BBS on Prodigy gets a little steamy sometimes, even though each and every message is reviewed by a Prodigy censor before it can be posted (at least, that is how it worked at one time. They may have auto- mated filters now.). The "fashion" topic, for example, often degenerates into discussions of how the girls look in their hot lingerie. Basically, the kids are constantly pushing the limits. Since every parent has their own ideas of where these limits should be, Prodigy ends up with sort of a "least common denominator". I'd like to turn my kids loose on the Internet, let them surf the Web and the other resources available. They are very computer-aware and I know they would get a lot out of it. But the way the net is now I don't think it would be responsible parenting to just let them loose, at least not for a few years. So, as I said, I sympathize with Nathan's problem, but I don't think a good solution is at hand. For now I think private, family-oriented networks are a better place for young kids. Hal Finney