Tell me whats wrong with this section of the telecom bill. I have a six year old boy I am trying to raise and it is hard enough to teach him respect and values without explaining why Ned Beatty is being bungholed in the woods by Billy Bob or why the Terminator splattered this guys brains all over the wall. Tell me why parents should not be able to censor their OWN television so that they may raise their children the way THEY see fit...................Did your dad give you his old playboys?.........NOOOOO............

<snip> A note here...my dad also did not go to jail for two years and get fined $100,000 when I weasled my way into his closet, without his knowledge, and found his Playboys at age five!

All I'm saying is it's tough to raise a child these days without the added distortion of modern programing and parents need not be denied any tool that can help them achieve success.

<rm for brevity> I didn't see anything really wrong with that part of the bill. What it will encourage is advertisers to withdraw from the more violent shows, and in turn will encourage television producers to prefer funding less violent shows. Since I don't watch television that often anyhow, it won't affect me very much. I do see where it will deny those who wish to see such shows the violence they wish to see. This is an issue, and it is indirectly caused by the bill, but it can not be used effectively against the govt. because they did not directly outlaw violence. It is particularly the CDA which boils my blood. One other concern, however, is that the lifting of restrictions on who can compete for what will result in mergers and buyouts of internet providers and that when only a few major companies own the bulk of the industry, the consumers will suffer from content restriction, technological lag and possibly price gouging. I note the car, oil, software and media industries as a few examples. For example, journalists have traditionally been in support of free speech and civil rights; they are, for the most part, rather liberal. However, they, particularly those in television journalism, have been notably absent in this battle over net censorship and have definitely not been there to support us. In fact, they have even spoken to our cause's detriment on many occasions, by the slant of their pieces! I can only attribute this logically to the fact that the internet takes attention away from their industry. The internet competes with television and print as an information source, and this the owners of the media do not want. It's sort of an unspoken conspiricy (appologies, I've already been accused of turning this into ConspiricyPunks once before:-) Nontheless, those are some of my concerns over the telcom bill aside from the obvious CDA. lunaslide On the meridian of time there is no injustice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. Henry Miller