CDR: Re: Re: <nettime> Rebirth of Guilds

Sampo A Syreeni ssyreeni at cc.helsinki.fi
Mon Sep 25 01:06:42 PDT 2000


On Sat, 23 Sep 2000, Jim Choate wrote:

>> To whom something is marketed makes no difference when it comes
>> to censorship.  It is no one's right to stop Teletubbies from
>> hawking Marlboros.  Freedom of speech is not compromisable.
>
>Yes, it is the right of their parents to protect their children. They have
>a right to demand that products and services targeted at their children
>conform to the parents desires. The business has no say in it, and
>shouldn't.

Since 'targeting' a product at someone usually only implies dissemination of
information of some kind, it is difficult to justify any restrictions. I've
yet to see any proper reason for treating 'commercial' speech as separate
from the traditional highly protected kind. Besides, advertising is a mass
thing, which implies that giving a single parent any control over what is
targeted at his/her children would given him/her pretty much the same
control over what all chilren get. This is even harder to justify.

>Labeling products as to target audiences and requring parents ok to allow
>children to buy adult products is NOT

So what is an 'adult' product? I find Penthouse highly suitable for the
12-16 year age range. You?

>The failure of capitalism is the failure to recognize that human beings
>have rights and that business is simply an expression of individual
>rights. Rights allow one to pursue an activity until that behaviour
>infringes anothers right to engage in their activity (in this case raising
>their children).

There is no such conflict. You can always go live in the woods if the urban
culture doesn't please you. Who said people have a right to all the comforts
of modern society without paying the price of reduced control over the
upbringing of their children?

Sampo Syreeni <decoy at iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university





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