From: IN%"alano@teleport.com" "Alan Olsen" 26-JAN-1996 16:31:41.98

The purpose of all the ratings, and the filters and all the other stuff is not to "protect kids". It is to protect the prejudices of the adults. They do not want to see it anywhere in the world, not just inflicting some sort of imaginary harm on their children. I expect the first people to use the "reversed filters" will be the kids themselves. (Behind the parents back, of course.)

I have known too many adults that believe that by restricting their kids access to information, they can prevent them from growing up. In these parent's minds, such information is what makes them want to hump their little brains out. Biology has nothing to do with it in their limited way of thinking. Cluelessness does not just cover computers with these people. It also covers any other topic that required more than two brain cells to understand. ----------------- Strongly agreed. Why should parents be able to determine what information their children receive? Are children the property of the parents? I can see some rights of parents over children, since they have responsibilities over their children also (and thus need the rights to fulfill those responsibilities), but censorship is not one of them. No study has ever shown actually harmful effects from viewing pornography. Crypto relevance? A lot of the same people wanting to restrict children's access to information are also against cryptography, anonymnity, etcetera- see the "CyberAngels" for an instance. Incidentally, they also tend to want to restrict people (or at least minors) from viewing other information opposing them. "SafeSurf", the censorship-by-rating site that the CyberAngels are associated with, has as one of its categories of stuff to restrict access to any advocacy of illegal drug usage. Translation- NORML and anyone else working for drug legalization. Of course, the anti-some-drugs biases of the Guardian Angels are well known... -Allen