Just say NYET to censors

[Patrick J. May]

nzook at math.utexas.edu writes:
 > NYET-- Non-Youths Exhibit Temperance.
 > [...]
 > As the Internet community continues to grow, the differences of conviction
 > that exists generally in the world find their way into the community.  Some
 > demand that newcomers to the net adapt to the mores of this society.  Some
 > demand that the net, as a newcomer to the world, adapt to the outside.  As
 > recent events have demonstrated, the less reasonable, on both sides, may be
 > endangering the integrity and availablity of the net.  Calls for net
 > censorship, it may be expected, will continue to grow unless the net can
 > find some way to police itself.  Yet "police itself" is a term that sends
 > the net into fits.  My solution, NYET, is for the appropriate users to
 > directly censor the data that they might legitmately lay claim to
 > censoring--data that flows to minors over which they have legal authority
 > and responsibility.

[ proposed laws to prevent minors from accessing questionable material
  deleted ]

     Your basic idea is excellent, so excellent in fact that you could
probably make some money by providing the service.  As a parent of a
soon-to-be netsurfer, I would be willing to pay more for an account
that gave me some control over my daughter's access than I would for a
standard netcom style account.  Let me know when such accounts are
available.

     In the meantime, there is no need for force.  The immediate
reaction of "there ought to be a law" is a direct contradiction to the
net "policing itself".

Regards,

Patrick May
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              "A contract programmer is always intense."
pjm at gasco.com