On Mon, 2 Sep 1996, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:

I would suggest that support for "parental empowerment" and for any sort of mandated rating system (e.g., PICS with a requirement to rate pages for parental censorship use) be a down-rating.

No arguments here. Check out the latest article to follow up on the CyberWire Dispatch story in which Brock and I revealed what the "smut-blockers" *really* block. It's in Internet World Online, at the URL below. -Declan // declan@eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan@well.com // Linkname: Who Will Watch the Watchmen? Filename: http://www.iw.com/current/feature3.html WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHMEN? By Eric Berlin and Andrew Kantor Porno-filtering software may be blocking out more than most people realize. Porno-filtering software or "censorware" is a big thing these days. It lets parents make sure their kids aren't seeing Bad Things on the Net -- things like pornography, violence, and information about drugs. Oh, and did we mention AIDS, Judaism, fascism, and some guy named Fred? How about any Web site in the crl.com domain? Thanks to an apparent philosophy of "block first, ask questions later" -- plus a combination of overzealousness, with a little laziness and ignorance tossed in -- some filtering software is screening out more than most people expect. To top it off, often neither users of the software nor owners of the blocked sites know about it. [...]