Kid-Safe Domain Created 657
Jadecristal writes "The Washington Post announces that President Bush has signed legislation to create a .kids.us domain. The legislation mandates that those with a .kids.us site not be allowed to link to any site outside the .kids.us domain." At the very least, it makes filtering easy.
Bad solution. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, this will probably end up in a flurry of anti-cybersquatting legislation, as companies vie with individuals to grab all of the good names in the new subdivision.
All in all, the wrong idea.
Now taking bets.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I have an idea! (Score:2, Insightful)
Christ - the problem of protecting children from offensive or adult content lies with the parents, not one some new-fangled US legislation. Educate your children, monitor their internet usage, but for goodness sakes, do NOT lock them into a pisspoor subset of the internet - a new domain suffix is NOT a suitable substitute for responsible adult supervision.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason for the creation of a
This is a "good thing"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just by the fact that the name is "kids.us" I don't think this is something that is targetting more general audiences such as those accessing the internet in public libraries.
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, who'll do it? What happens if a kid is doing a report on, say, Djbouti, but Encyclopedia Onlineica didn't believe it would be cost effective to go through the effort?
Speaking of that, who decides what content of Encyclopedia Onlineica is safe? After all, everyone knows that the *good* encyclopedias have lengthy sections detailing how and why humans rock the casbah.
Man, that was sad. I used to read volume S quite a bit. *sigh*
Pathetic events of my childhood aside, how effective is this going to be? Is this just the feel-good I'm-not-bombing-anyone-right-now event of the political season, or will this actually work?
I guess it boils down to - will Little Johnny still be able to get the information he needs for school work without being bombarded by porn pop-ups, or will he just say, "Screw it!" and use the 'regular' 'net?
Re:Community thinks? (Score:2, Insightful)
Although I think that it would be much better to go the other way around... allow parents to censor for their children by requiring that potentially offensive material have a domain like .adult. Censored only by the choice of that particular subscriber.
Message Boards (Score:5, Insightful)
Overall though I think it is a good idea. Assuming websites targetted at children, (such as Disney, schools, and knowledge databases), take advantage of this it could be very beneficial. I think many of those who could take advantage of this will have to create dual sites: one for the domain and one for outside of it, as many schools and knowledge databases benefit from refrencing information that will not be in the domain.
Re:for those who read... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is indeed the case, how long before this domain is as impossible to oversee or manage as the rest of the Internet is today? I see scalability issues. You can always enforce the requirement of no outside links by supplementing the system with software, but moderating the contents? Good luck.
How on earth is this going to work?? (Score:5, Insightful)
And also how the hell are they going to to stop the pedo's abusing this. Domain name and IP spoofing as well as email and the rest could lead to a situation no one wants to see.
The answer is not ham fisted attempts such as this one, its parental supervision. I know that my son is not allowed to go on the computer unless there is an adult present.
Re:This is just a whitelist (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
is this a stupid question? (Score:5, Insightful)
can these sites explain mommy's breast cancer?
can these sites explain mommy's breast enhancements?
can these sites explain daddy's breast enhancements?
where's that arbitrary line drawn?
Re:Hey, I have an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now most (but not all) parents will be able to trust the kids.us filter _as a baseline_. If they want their kids to see additional stuff they are always empowered to do so, and the time required to do that is managable.
Where this won't work well is for some parents who find some of the accepted kids.us content unacceptable. (And to be honest, I'm not all that worried about them.)
Re:Well (Score:2, Insightful)
That is, no child will get really harmed just by accidentally browsing to a page that contains "adult" content. They may get scared because of the reaction of their parents ("what the FUCK are you doing browsing those dirty sites"), or perhaps they've already been messed by zealous parents. But normal human being want be harmed by web pages, especially since it's easy to just close the browser.
I just have never understood the special american complex towards nudity or erotic material. And although I despise violence in all its forms, I don't think it's worth censoring either.
This is *GREAT*. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) It does not seek to regulate the whole internet.
2) The domain is
3) Those who RUN kids.us set the rules for using that domain. The fact that it's a presidential order does not make it bad.... I could say the same thing about my domain, and set whatever terms I *WANT* for you to hafve a subdomain, and I am the law.
THis is the RIGHT approach to the problem.
How will this work? (Score:2, Insightful)
By linking, are they referring to hyperlinks, or any sort of reference to sites outside .kids.us? What if you want to have graphics on your site from another (primary) site on an outside domain? Is all access to domains outside .kids.us going to be blocked? Is this technically possible? What about pop-ups? Will Java also be banned? Who is going to be in charge of the domain, and hence selling it? I'm sure someone like McDonalds, Disney, or Mattel would kindly volunteer...
Sorry, but it just seems like this hasn't been thought through terribly well.
Certifying Sites for .kids (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion, all you have to do is check that the content of all of these sites is kid-safe. That's going to require periodic human checks anyway. However, there's nothing to stop them from putting up links to non-kids sites, like this [teletubbies.com] one.
The real bonus of the
That way, if you have an adult surfing, they can actually follow links to relevant
Great, now just another domain everyone will need. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ban advertising too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now taking bets.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm imagining there won't be much of a take up on it and it will die off after a bit (probably after the next election).
Re:This is a "good thing"... (Score:3, Insightful)
I once heard about an ongoing project of finding paths through the web. The objective was to take any web site and within seven clicks on links arrive at a porn site. Last I heard, the government of New Zealand web site was the only one for which they hadn't succeeded. Adjusting the content (removing links that aren't on the whitelist, to satisfy the link requirement) of a web site based on which TLD the domain was requested as isn't terribly difficult to do, but will the adoption of this be so widespread as to warrant very many sites doing it? In my opinion, no. I like the idea of a non-kid friendly TLD much better; at that point filtering in large part becomes trivial.
Another thing, how does the government determine what material is acceptible for children? Obviously some things are right out, but what about for instance a Tom and Jerry cartoon with animated violence? How much is too much? What about the purists that say "I'd rather have my child watch two people making love than two people trying to kill each other"? The definition of 'acceptable' varies widely from parent to parent, culture to culture, and I don't think you can appease them all at once, not by a long way. Better to organize things into catagories such as ".xxx" and let parents figure out what they want their kids to see.
Re:uh, gee (Score:3, Insightful)
Kids-safe news? I wish it were possible...
Re:uh, gee (Score:3, Insightful)
Organization (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus, how is anyone going to know about other kids.us sites? Oh, wait:
http://www.google.kids.us
I can see it now: "Over 3423 pages indexed"
What difference does that make? (Score:4, Insightful)
AFAIK there is nothing to stop Pokimon from having a pokimon.kids.us website which can be linked to from advertisments within the kids.us domain.
As far as I am concerned, Pokimon is a cynical manipulation of children for profit. Marketing to children seeks to brainwash them into thinking that happiness is having the latest Nike trainers and drinking Pepsi.
Looking at countries like the US, and the frequency with which I hear the words "I want" whenever I am around American kids - I guess it is working beautifully.
What's an advertisement? (Score:1, Insightful)
How do you distinguish what is and isn't advertising?
If mysite.kids.us has no banner ads, but says at one point "hey, here's a great site where you can buy lots of cool toys!" and links to http://www.toys.r.kids.us, and this is because toys r us paid me some money, is that advertising?
What if i am www.sore-hands.kids.us, and my site says "hey kids, mattell treats its employees unethically, so you should buy Bob the Builder toys instead, here's a link to toys.r.kids.us." and i mean that?
What if i am six years old, and i just like Toys R Us and get nothing whatsoever out of linking them?
If nickelodeon.kids.us is doing a new movie, and they're selling toys as part of a tie-in deal, can't they have a little banner up that says "click here to buy our new jimmy neutron action figures!" and link to toys r us.kids.us? Isn't that just an ad?
If they can't do that, can they physically embed part of toys 'r' us.com into their website in a frame, or do some kind of complex backend where you use and order stuff from the toys 'r' us website through nickelodeon.kids.us, perhaps through some kind of distributed object system? If nickelodeon can do that, why can't toys r us pay Random J Site from embedding bits of toysrus.kids.us? Isn't that worse than a banner ad?
Now, if you answer that any of the above are "not okay", or that a banner ad isn't, then what on earth makes http://www.toys.kids.r.us/ okay in the first place?? all that a toys 'r' us website would be is trying to sell things, and nothing else. It is both an advertisement for the toys r us chain of stores, an advertisement for the products they sell, and a commercial extention of their commercial business. The entire purpose of such a site is to manipulate children for profit.
What's an advertisement?
Face it. No one is going to set up a website under kids.us without SOME sort of commercial intent. Servers and domain names cost money. If you're setting up a website, you in some way are selling something, perhaps just the website itself. One way or another. We Are All Advertisements. [negativland.com]
p.s. negativland.kids.us would be awesome, and it is my opinion that public policy should be arranged such that as few people as possible listen to www.sorehands.com
Re:Hey, I have an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
For the most part, I agree with you, but then, most of society doesn't. I have two children and one is old enough to use our computer, and I monitor her Internet usage. In fact, I have raised my daughter in such a way that she self-censors. She knows when she's stumbled across something that may be questionable and asks me if it's okay. However, not everyone is as good a parent as I am (sorry to sound snotty, but it's the truth.) Consider how this will inevitably boomerang back on our asses if we don't provide a safe "sandbox" for the rest of the parents out there who can't get it together. I don't want to see legislation that attempts to outlaw content and punish people for viewing certain things because some inattentive parent out there can't get the first clue on how to raise their child. I'd much rather accept this "lesser evil."
I'm surprised to see any carping about it as any attempts to make the Internet more kid-friendly without legislation would seem to find favor with most readers of Slashdot.
I think *you're* missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the posts I've read seem to miss the point...No one is going to pretend that the kids have access to the 'net at large -- that's not what they want. They just want a guaranteed 'safe' way to expose their kids to some educational resources.
Now, I think that you're the one missing the point of the others. Yes, I think we all understand that this isn't meant to be an ideal solution but I would argue that it's not a solution at all. Worse, it's a non-solution pretending to be a solution. I would argue there is no "guaranteed safe way" to provide information to children since there will never be a concensus on what is "safe". Invariably there will be some stuff on kids.us that someone will decide is inappropriate and we'll be right back where we started from. I think it's best to force parents to realize that there will never be a "guaranteed safe" way to surf the web and not to use this kids.us to give them a warm, fuzzy feeling.
You have to realize that a lot of us here also get goosebumps whenever the government is given the job of "approving" any information source, even if it's in the name of the children. The whole idea of government-approved information sources (consciously or not) stirs up bad images of communist and totalitarian regimes.
GMD
Re:Community thinks? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is what is considered "offensive".
Things like The Bible, factual information about sex, contraception, diseases and the like have routinely been blocked by various censorware programs. Would these all be offensive?
To somebody, sure. To most rational people? No.
The idea of a "safe zone" is really the only one consistent with allowing for differing opinions.
Now, since there are people out there who are offended by just about everything, I expect to see them bitching about most of the things in the new domain and getting them taken down, but that's a different topic.
Re:is this a stupid question? (Score:5, Insightful)
There'll also be those that think the line is drawn to wide, like those that think the teletubbies are a subversive plot to make children gay.
Let them play, let them have fun, for fuck sakes. I really wish people would stop using them as pawns to push their own philosophical agendas.
We expect them to understand the world as we do at the ripe old ages of 6 or 7.
The cruelest thing we do in this day and age is rob kids of their childhood. It makes me sick.
Re:What about IP addresses? (Score:2, Insightful)
The cops don't enforce speeding laws by putting devices in cars that limit their maximum speed to the posted limit. If they catch you speeding, they give you a ticket.
Just because you're dealing with a computer or the Internet, doesn't mean "enforcement" is going to be necessarily technological. They'll enforce it the same way they enforce other laws; if they catch you doing something illegal, you'll be punished for it.
(Although I wouldn't doubt that they'll use technological means to find out who's breaking the regulations - they could employ a webspider that checks every page on every page under the domain to make sure no anchors point outward.)
Re:Bad solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear hear!
Like cities, the Internet is a "place" that was created BY adults FOR adults. As such it contains hazardous-to-kids analogs of traffic, industrial plants, political battlegrounds, pickup bars, red-light districts, casinos, marketplaces for dangerous items, and other attractive nuisances. Indeed, these produce much of its value and utility.
If a child is not mature enough to be allowed unescorted in the seamier neighborhoods of your local downtown, that kid is also not mature enough to be unsecorted on the internet. And trying to childproof the entirety of the internet (or all but a reserved area) is just as futile, damaging, and illegal as trying to childproof the entirety of adult society.
Creating an explicit childproof fenced-in playground, on the other hand, is just fine. With one possible exception...
I hope that either the prohibition on linking out of kids.us is relaxed to allow linking to kids. of any country that sets up a similar domain with compatable rules, or (perhaps better) that sites in other countries that are willing to abide by the US rules are allowed to register in kids.us.
Re:How on earth is this going to work?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they can offer a contract to Google [google.com] to spider the whole domain, but in addition offering a kids friendly search engine [google.kids.us], Google could also do the cross checks by having the special bots that spider it also check all the links for anything that isn't kids.us, lock those out of the kids.us search engine database, and report them to the appropriate agency handling it. When a link is found that goes to a non-kids.us site, the domain owner is called up by that agency (their emergency contact info might be part of the registration requirement) and told to remove it within the hour, or their domain name gets disabled (which could be done faster if the kids.us zone file has short TTL settings on all the delegations). Since the technology exists to isolate the upper level domain names, such as Slashdot uses to optionally show them to you in postings, it could easily be extended to totally block out the link if it's not to kids.us, or even reject the posting altogether. The problem is more a social one of making people actually do it since way too many people (adults here) are too clueless to understand how to make things right. So we shouldn't be seeing a goatse.cx or urinalpoop.org showing up if they do it right.
There are lots of different kinds of spoofing, so I don't know which you are referring to, so I can't give a specific example of how to prevent it. But the obvious part is that there are at least 2 levels of protection parents can engage. The light level is simply make sure the kids start on a kids.us portal. Then as long as the site operators do what they are supposed to, the kids will be safe. The stronger level is to configure the browser so that when the kids are logged in to the computer, it won't allow access to any web content (including images, Java, CSS, whatever) which isn't found by means of a kids.us domain lookup. So the URLs with IP addresses won't work, either.
One form of spoofing you may be referring to is stuff like emailed URLs that look like a kids.us URL, but in fact go to somewhere else. But that's an issue of whether the parents allow the kids to use software that would access some other domain. By using the stronger level of protection, even opening spam with these links will fail, as long as the program displaying it goes through the same mechanisms to find the site (which I believe is the case on Windows). The content actually in that mail is another issue. Since almost everything in email can be forged, you might not want to allow your kids access to email unless you have some stronger protection to ensure they are getting it only from other kids you approve of. Restricting kids to web based email on a kids.us webmail site, that by extension of the law should only communicate with other such sites and not to any outside of the kids.us domain, and not by SMTP which could spoof that, should keep your kids safe.
I don't believe the law is requiring you as a parent to restrict your kids to this domain, but rather, is giving you this as an option, so that if you choose to, you can set up the computer to limit itself to kids.us and actually leave your child unattended for a while at the computer with more confidence than you would have today. My worry, though, is that this might be just the first step to more laws, or case law, in the future. Consider a court deciding to take children away from their parents and the fact that the parents didn't restrict their kids to kids.us on the computer was what tipped the scale in the case. That would open up a whole lot of new problems that I can see. And I'm afraid a case like that will happen within a few years.
Hopefully librarians. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I recommend "Farenheit 451", "Lies my Teacher Told Me" and "Welcome to the Monkey House" for starters.
Indeed, any librarian who isn't doint this isn't a libraian at all, just a book filing clerk, and should find some other line of work.
KFG
Re:so? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it. Why is this society so obsessed with the concept that children are some sort of retarded subhuman species?
I grew up with intelligent parents that cared. I was never denied any soure of information, regardless of how ridiculous and/or "innapropriate", but was taught to use my brain to discard garbage on my own.
My children will get the same opportunity.
I've grown up to be a responsible, sane adult who isn't mind-controled by the media. Obviously, being able to use one's own jugment to qualify what's out there is not a desired objective of the governments.
They'd much rather have drones who consume the information that was deemed good for them without question.
-- MG
Re:How on earth is this going to work?? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right -- technical solutions shouldn't be a substitute for good parenting and supervision. But a little bit of technical wizardry does help. You do keep the cookie jar out of their reach, right?
As for how it's going to be enforced, it's the responsibility of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration [doc.gov] according to the HR Bill [loc.gov].
Re:uh, gee (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ban advertising too (Score:3, Insightful)
This is crap - betrayal of WWW's purpose. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now no
I don't know about you, but I wasn't exactly interested in seeing all my kid friendly information about "Lydia" or whatever crap book I had to read back when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and I sure as hell don't want my children hanging around these labotomized websites.
This is just another excuse to push doctrine on kids - because I GARUNTEE you, no
We need to be USING this wealth of knowledge that we have created for ourselves and our children. We need to be exposing them to powerful ideas at young ages; we need those kids who want to learn about the lies of their history to be able to learn about them, we need kids to be able to access information about draft dogders, we need to let our children be able to listen to dirty music, and yes, we need to let them see hate literature, to make what they will of it - and hopefully it generates disgust, but they damned well need the CHOICE to be disgusted.
WE MADE A DREAM of knowledge - we were spoonfed knowledge and WE WERE TIRED of it - BBS's, USENET,
Our kids must grow up in this world we have created for them - this INFORMATION world. This kid-safe subsection - it's crap. No offense, but if this
That being said, I make a final plea -
You want to protect your libraries? Look at your homes first - how can you claim to respect knowledge when you block it out of the very place you live in, and shield your young, your curious from the wealth they seek? If you buy into this
I'm sorry I ranted but this is one of the few times in my life that something bad has happened that is unlikely to be overturned, despite the efforts of everyone out there. Tonight, I praise all of you with bloody knuckles because of the pent up fury of this attrocity against knowledge, learning, and the betterment of our society.
May the world weep.
Re:I think *you're* missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue there is no "guaranteed safe way" to provide information to children since there will never be a concensus on what is "safe".
Come down out of your ivory tower and take a look at the real world -- it's messy, has no problems that have 100% perfect solutions, is mostly run by boneheads who make compromises based on tradeoffs about things they don't understand -- and it works pretty well anyway, by and large.
Who *cares* if the kids.us solution isn't 100% perfect? What is? Sure there will be some controversy and some argument about what is and is not "safe", but the result will be content that 95% of the population agrees is just fine for their kids, or at least not too bad. That's compared to about 0.001% of the population that currently believes the same statement about the Internet.
It doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
Re:so? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's my point! Why the hell not?
For one, most 8 year olds will, when faced with typical porn, go either "Ewww" or laugh out; but if they understand the basic idea of sexuality will understand what it's all about and just not be interrested in such imagery.
I can assure you that if some kid is digging for stuff on Harry Potter, and stumbles on some porn site, he'll just do like most of us and curse at the stupidity of not finding what he's after.
Unless, of course, you want to pretend that sex doesn't exist to your kids until it's much too late. Or perhaps you prefer to think that all humans are asexuate drones until some arbitary age?
Your kids will learn about sex. They will get access to imagery and texts. They will experiment amongst themselves.
Would you rather they understood nothing and be unprepared to make critical and moral judgement on their own?
I knew what sex was, and how it worked, and why people were so interrested in it young enough that I can't possibly remember being told specifically. That made me an accepting adult who is not completely fscked up with what is arguably the principal function of a living being.
While I don't particularly enjoy porn myself, I understand many do, and cannot think of single reason why that would be "bad" in any way.
My kids will be taught that some people like to be entertained by watching depictions of monsters horribly mutilating stupid teenagers, some by depicions of crime fighters doing impossible stunts to defeat the nefarious nemesis, and some by depictions of sexual activity both mundane and off-the-wall. All of them carfuly scripted (for the high quality stuff) fiction.
They'll get to decide which (if any) they enjoy for themselves.
-- MG
Few problems. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I think that creating a dot kids domain isn't necessarily a bad thing, there may be a few problems.
The first, and perhaps most obvious problem is classifying something as "kids safe" or "not kids safe". "kids" is a very broad definition. I mean, would you seriously apply the same standards to a 16 year old as you would an 8 year old? Some things (like goatse) are obviously "not kids safe", and some things are obviously "kids safe". Unfortunately, probably 90% of websites are in the grey area.
It really depends on an individual view-point. Some people [capalert.com] would consider even the most mild things offensive, and some wouldn't. All it takes is one single curse word on some page of a site(more or less), and the site potentially could fall into the grey area between "kids safe" and "not kids safe".
Sites with some dynamic interactive content(i.e. forums, comment boards, guestbooks, etc...) would be automatically in the grey area, since who knows what could appear there, although they are forbidden by the bill anyway.
But what will the standards be? Even if they are relatively simple, you run into all sorts of problems. For example, say the only rule is "no porn". Okay, how do you really define porn? Thats a very broad definition. As I said before, some thing are definitely porn, and some are not, but many are in between. Okay, say you make the rule simpler. No nudity. Well, even thats a bit broader, and could have many problems. So you define exactly what is meant by nudity. Well, then you run into the problem that nudity alone is not harmful. You could have pornographic pictures that do not meet the definition of nudity. Okay, so no pictures with nudity or sexual acts/references. By the time you're done with a good definition, you've already excluded most of the websites on the internet. In fact, I can't think of a single website I frequently visit that wouldn't fail a test like that.
There probably won't be many useful sites there at all.
Secondly, back to the issue with age groups. Saying absolutely no possibly offensive material is okay for little kids, but what about teenagers. I remember having to do a school report about the Holocaust, and I think many people would consider sites about the Holocaust unsafe for little kids. I also had to do several reports dealing with science/medicine. Even a relatively simple no-nudity rule has problems then. Remember that the WHOLE site has to be "kids safe". Many medical sites have nudity somewhere to some degree.
Although its not 100% related, I think I should also bring up the idea of creating a
Anyways, back to the
Oh well, at least its not a mandatory
I give it 2 weeks (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this government-controlled? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is an excellent example of why governments should not get their hands involved.
I simply do not see why the government needs to run something like this, or put laws in place. It's quite easy for a private company to build (and spider) a *.kids.com domain or something similar. A DNS server, and a bit of spider code, maybe a few months of work. You resell DNS service to ISPs, ISPs sell it as a value-added bit to add appeal. No government intervention required.
Aside from sucking up to Republican conservatives, this simply doesn't have much point.
Furthermore, it's going to open a whole can of worms. If my tax dollars are going to support the company with the contract, what if my definition of what's "appropriate" differs from someone else? I can already see fights and lawsuits brewing over this, all of which would not be a problem if this was simply handled in the private sector.
If you want responsible citizens tomorrow, America, teach the children of today to be responsible. Let them see whatever content they want -- and teach them to deal with it responsibly.
Re:uh, gee (Score:2, Insightful)
As for protecting the safety of children, I'd rather tell them simply "don't take candy from strangers" rather than "don't take candy from strangers because they might abduct you, then rape and kill you."
-a
Re:Why is this government-controlled? (Score:4, Insightful)
So why hasn't a private company done this yet?
Because there's no profit in it. A private company is not about to invest in a venture like this unless they have some assurance of making a profit from it, which these days usually requires popup ads for XXX sites and penis enlargement products.
The government, as crappy and corrupt as it is, at least makes some passing attempt at doing things for the public good. A private company, on the other hand, will only do what's good for them, and not one iota more.
Let them see whatever content they want -- and teach them to deal with it responsibly.
You obviously have no children of your own.
Re:Why is this government-controlled? (Score:3, Insightful)
I just described how a reasonable profit could be made. An ISP ships censorware combined with DNS service from this company. Not that difficult.
You obviously have no children of your own
You are correct, though your insinuation that this disqualifies me from having valid opinions on the matter is simply stupid. My ideas are based on my own childhood. My parents were always quite honest with me. They did not go out of their way to expose me to violence or nudity or deaths in the family, but they never attempted to hide it or lie about it. Whenever possible, they'd go over something like this with me. If they said that driving a car without a seat belt was a bad idea, they'd justify it.
I have tremendous respect for my parents because of this. I think that this is not something innate. Parents that say that children should simply follow their morals and instructions because they "are their parents" *might* have gratitude or at least control over rewards and punishments to the child to try to force them to follow their own ideals. They might succeed, at least in the short term. But I think that such a parent could never achieve the same sense of trust that I had with my parents.
Children follow their parents' lead best when their parents have shown themselves to be consistently right, not when they try to force children to follow their lead. If you want a child who will be a leader, who will be responsible and independent, then I think you need to raise him in such an environment.
I know this will probably rankle a few parents -- everyone has their own ideas on what is best for a child. I still think that honesty really *is* the best policy. Let your children know the weaker, less perfect side of people. Let them see their parents as human -- loving humans, someone that they can be friends with as well as child to. A parent shouldn't try to be a God-like being that issues edicts from on high.
Re:Community thinks? (Score:1, Insightful)
Most of them, no. The Bible! Of course!!!
Most rational people would block a web page that dealt with murder, incest, rape, and bloody handed sacrifices on a stone altar, at least for their children.
Unless, of course, it's the Bible. It's got all of the above, plus the slow torture of an innocent man shot through the second half.
But it's all considered "child safe", as is the notion of being bathed in animal blood(!!!), as long is it's "The Blood of the Lamb". It's apparently not supposed to be a disgusting metaphor if it's "religious"!
As a child, I was chilled at the story of God's commandment to his "devoted follower", Abraham. He told him to go and kill his son, Issac, and cut him open on a stone altar as a human sacrifice. Abraham is willing to murder his own son on the altar when so commanded by the invisible voice of God.
He's the hero, not the villain of the piece. Think about that notion for a while, and tell me how good that makes a ten year old feel.
Remember the story of "David" vs. "Golliath"?
Ever know that when he grew up, "little David" raped his own cousin, Bathsheba, thinking she was one of the temple prostitutes? He's known in the Bible as "Good King David", because rape isn't such a bad thing, apparently.
And there's the nice, father figure of God, who, despite being all powerful, decides that it's a good idea for his Son to be murdered in the perhaps most painful way imaginable.
Hey, nice father figure, huh? And then the churches compound it by calling kids "God's Children!" Yes, you, too, kids, can die in a horrible way, just like Jesus!!!
But wait, there's more! We can tell kids that things come back from the dead, and that God can heal anything, if they just have faith!
They'll feel really happy when the find out that that's a lie, and the things they kill die forever.
Or maybe just feel miserable for the rest of their lives because they didn't "pray enough" to cure their mommy's cancer.
Maybe they'll think they hear the voice of God calling them, in their imagination, and wonder if it's a "test of faith" to see if they really are devout enough to kill Mommy and Daddy, just like Abraham was supposed to for Issac! He probably won't really make them go through with it, and if they die, well God can raise people from the dead, like Jesus and Lazarus!
The ugliest stuff I've heard of isn't satanism, which tends to be pathetic and comical -- it's the so-called "Good Book" itself. It's a disturbing read for adults, but brainwashing kids with it should be a crime.
If anyone tries to expose my kids to that filth, I'll sue his creepy little ass off.
--
AC
Think with your brains people (Score:1, Insightful)
First of all, you can be damn sure your parents DID withhold things from you. Were your parents having sex in front of you? Swearing in front of you? Did your parents let you watch XXX movies, smoke pot and do heroin at age 3? Probably not.
Yes, taking care of kids is a parent's responsibility. But, the obvious inescapable truth is that parents cannot hope to spend every second of every day with every child they have, while also doing everything else they need to do. (It's provable!)
Parents need tools to help them. Parents are supposed to read every book their child reads? Go to every website their child goes to *before* the child does? (Impossible of course)
The way the web works it is impossible to know where you can end up 2 minutes from now. You can literally go from BarneyIsMyFriend.com to a xxx site in 10 seconds.
This is an OPT-IN network. It isn't any different than ratings on movies. Now you may say who needs ratings? Well, do you want to watch two hours of "The Happy Little Elves" to be 100% sure that the last 2 minutes isn't a crazy orgy? No. Do you want to go see Pokemon the movie in theaters once to make sure it is ok, then go AGAIN with your kids?
And at least with movies you know that if your kid is at home they aren't watching movies in the theater. You know what tapes you have, what DVDs you have, what is on TV at that time on the channels you get, etc. Its just a lot easier to manage than a system you can use on your computer that lets you see *anything* at *anytime.*
If you really can't stand the domain, don't use it. If you hate ratings don't use those either.
It isn't censorship or a free speech issue. If companies want they can opt-in, if you want you can limit your kids to only using that domain. If a company wants to make a broader version of their site they can just put it up under a new domain. Nobody is stopping your kids from using the internet the way they normally do.
Re:is this a stupid question? (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that our personalities are shaped during this childhood period. If we are only subjected to harmless (in general opinion, not necessarily in my) things, in this case sites, we are generally not equipped to cope with the not-so-harmless (again in general opinion) ones when we reach that magic age - be it 16, 18, 21 or whatever.
Another problem in your argument is that kids ask questions of all kinds - some of which fall into the not-harmless category. Should we just ignore these? I think children can cope with these questions, and for their own good they should be allowed to.
Re:Why is this government-controlled? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bla...bla....bla....
if is soo easy for it to happen then why didn't it?
usually the government steps in when industry fails.. and yes the "internet" industry has failed miserably to control it's self. with pors sites intentionally popping up with similar names to kids toys and sites the kids would go to. just have your 10 year old daughter type in www.bratzdolls.com and have your porn full.
I as a father am sick and tired of the idiots and morons like you screaming "there isn't a need! there isn't any trouble!" and I am sick and tired of having to chase my daughter out of the room so I can search and find what she wants so she isnt attacked by the ration of 2 to one of porn on topics she wants information on.
when she searches for britiney spears... she shoud not get 60 porn sites
I personally think that they should force all porn to
the internet is a information trading tool... not a porn entertainment center, unfortunately it's becoming that first and foremost. Having
Re:How on earth is this going to work?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course they will. The objective here (like any non-core function of government) is (a) to spend tax money and (b) to acquire more power. What good would a new government program be if there wasn't something in it for the ruling class? As always, expansion of government equates to more "responsibility" (wealth and/or power) for those in the ruling class.
Oh the sanctimonious holier than thou hath spoken. (Score:3, Insightful)
My niece who is 5 years old asked me yesterday why those two gentlemen in the train were kissing.
Now, oh wise one, guardian of the moral rectitude and the correct free speech, tell me how do we hide the real world [tm] from children without somehow explaining it (in the kindergarten, the train or at home).
Re:Why is this government-controlled? (Score:3, Insightful)
funny how the idiots try and call others idiot when they makes themselves look like FOOLS.
if you would have actually read my entire post and made a educated and though out decision before you posted you would have seen that I never EVER said that porn is evil. I firmly do believe that porn needs to be handled differently.
Many people like you scream that it's opression... well is it opression that they don't place the playboy magazines next to the childrens magazines at the store? how dare they not put the porn videos out with the rest of the other videos! Debbie does dallas belongs on the same shelf as dumbo!
Porn needs to be put in the
Like a Bookstore (Score:2, Insightful)