At 7:11 AM 3/8/96, Bill Frantz wrote:

I agree fully so far. However, when your TimWatch software takes action based on your opinions, you may have crossed the line between speech and action. Since you made the decision, rather than just provided an opinion, you might, in our current legal climate, have caused a tort.

So, when someone downloads the Siskel and Ebert list of thumbs up/thumbs down ratings, and then "lets the software decide" which movies to see, a tort has possibly occurred? I don't buy it. SurfWatch is just a ratings service. They aren't coercing people to use it.

It would be interesting to see if a HIV positive teen could sue SurfWatch because it blocked him from getting information on safe sex.

Presumably the owners of the machine he is using--maybe his parents, maybe his Catholic school, maybe his company--installed the SurfWatch or similar program and programmed the ratings. The teen should look to them. (Not that matters, but I really dislike using AIDS education as an example. Any person who claims to not know about AIDS prevention probably is either uneducable or doesn't want to know. A Web site isn't going to make a difference. I'm not arguing for censorship, nor would I ever install SurfWatch in my home, just saying that the hype about AIDS education is a hot button being used by arguers of all stripes to push their policy agendas. More heat than light.)

IMO our society has tilted too far away from caveat emptor toward "it's someone else's fault". People who let a machine censor their data deserve what they get. Parents who consistantly hide reality from their children, instead of helping them learn how to deal with it, are crippling their children.

Well, they're my children to educate as I see fit. I view religions as more crippling than denying a child access to "The Gay Men's Safe Sex Site," but, fortunately, I cannot interfere with the upbringings others give their children. We may dislike the "programming choices" that the current instance of SurfWatch provides, but the solution is _competing_ ratings services, not talk of suing SurfWatch on the basis that it creates a tort, or denies children access to proper exposure to Gay Sex Lifestyles. Let a thousand ratings systems, including the No Rating System, bloom. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."