More regulation by the big-government-favoring Utah Legislature.
They propose making ISPs who block kids from accessing porn be able to get a certificate of wholsomeness.
The problem isn't with ISPs. If an ISP is knowingly allowing kids to access porn, they are breaking the law as it is.
However, the problems aren't what the "experts" they had at the meeting said:
Ralph Yarro, a parent volunteering his time to stem what he calls a crisis of inappropriate material flowing over an unregulated Internet, understands the confusion lawmakers face, saying there is a huge "generation gap" between what teens and pre-teens can do on the Internet and what their parents understand.
Cheryl Preston, a law professor at Brigham Young University who has been studying various legal methods to keeping Internet porn out of the reach of minors, said when she discusses the problem she often hears the argument: "What are these kids' mothers doing" and why are they not watching what their children are doing on the computer?
But many parents aren't tech savvy, she said. "The mothers are just glad to see their kids doing their homework on the home computer."
Beyond that, however, is that many teens know how to get around filters in the home computer — or know where they can get open-access wireless Internet "where they can watch porn all day long," said Yarro, who heads a group called CP80, which advocates congressional action to set up family-friendly Internet groupings that would filter out porn Internet addresses.
The problem is that parent's aren't keeping an eye on their kids. They are letting them have computers in their rooms. I hate to tell Mr Yarro this, but in order to get to open-access wireless internet, they need someone to provide them with a computer to get the internet. They can't just stand there and have the images magically appear. Who is providing them with the computer?
Oh, and annother problem that we have in our big government doing this:
The discussion in the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Study Committee was often technical, with committee members having to be brought up to speed on various terms and applications.
"My brain is on the edge of frying, trying to understand" the technology involved, said committee co-chairman Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City.
-Bob
(All quotes from Deseret News, 4/19/07)
2 comments:
We have four computers in our house of various ages, all networked together. I guess I'm a little more tech savvy than the parents referenced because I run the network and the security. I run the firewall. I can easily discover what anyone on the network is hitting on the Internet connection.
That's all fine and dandy. I often find that crap can get through my precautions anyway. So we have all four computers in public areas. It looks funny to visitors when they see a desktop and an old laptop sitting on a table in the living room, but we have a pretty good idea of what is going on when anyone is using one of the computers.
The Jazz are going to lose Bob, can you go ahead and put the colors back the way they used to be please?
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