Congress vs Misleading Meta Tags 473
Krishna Dagli writes "The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would make it a federal felony for Webmasters to use innocent words like "Barbie" or "Furby" but actually feature sexual content on their sites. Anyone who includes misleading "words" or "images" intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined, the bill says." Terrible news for the Barbie/Furbie fetishists out there, to say nothing about being completely impossible to enforce globally.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
What? It's precisely because it can't be codified globally that it's pointless to do anything about it here. Do you honestly think that anyone outside the US is going to voluntarily conform to this law? Do you think anyone inside the US can't get around it by moving their content outside the US?
As usual, Congress is meddling in things it does not understand. They want to look like they are doing something to protect children, yet at every turn the things they come up with are ludicrous. And they've also dropped the ball on the whole Net Neutrality issue. It's clear Congress doesn't understand what the Internet is ("a series of tubes" said the learned Congressman) or how it works, or the fact that it's a global resource, far outside the realm of their ability to control it.
They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:3)
While it's true that they cannot control the content on the Internet, they can block certain websites at the borders and/or punish consumers of the content. Reminds me of another country that often appears in Slashdot headlines...
Of course, just because they can do it (and they can using terrorism / savethechildren as an excuse) doesn't mean that they should do it. Guard your rights carefully so that you lose them (phonetapping without warrant).
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, this is completely irrelevant anyway. Subcultures of any form will always use the majority language in unexpected ways. To legislate this is way over the threshold of being a police state. And even regular everyday use of words is ambiguous. What's next, legal teen porn sites can't use the word teen anymore?
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:5, Insightful)
And you seem to lack imagination. There is no way to legislate this because the English language simply has too few words to express all there is to express. What if it is a site where not the model is called Barbie, but it's about a person's fantasies about Barbie. What about the keyword "Hamster"? Knitwork? Farm? And so on and so forth. Go to the usenet binary groups some time to get an idea of how broad a field human sexuality is.
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:5, Funny)
Do you realize how silly you sound not defending freedom of speech?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Get Google to delist it. (Score:5, Insightful)
What if the guy is called Barney, the woman is called Barbie, and... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
You're missing the point though. Trying to censor content based on fuzzy guidelines is not helping promote freedom. If a pornography site is number 1 in Google for the keyword Barbie, complain to Google that it's keyword matching rules are broken and get them to delist the site. Don't just get your government to go round censoring things you disagree with. Once they start on that path, where will they stop? If porn can be censored what about pro-Muslim sites using words like 'Jesus' in their keywords? Oh the horror! It must be censored too!
By the way, I'm not American so I don't really care, I'm just making some suggestions that you can choose to ignore if you wish.
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:2)
It's quite easy to find sites where Pokemon and pornography would be both quite valid descriptive tags. For instance, Google gave this: "www.rusmysl.ru/pics/pokemon.html" (NB: NSFW, may be infected with popups, etc, take care) as the first of 5 million hits for "pokemon nude".
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They can block and/or punish consumption (Score:2)
Re:So? (Score:2)
Ted Stevens is a United States Senator.
You're clearly not qualified to choose your own elected representatives. You should just give up.
Re:So? (Score:2)
Re:So? (Score:2)
And it's clear that you don't know semantics: Congress is divided into two branches: the Senate and the House of Representatives. A member of the Senate is a "Senator", while a member of the House is a "Representative". Any member of Congress is considered a "Congressman," althought the term has come to be generally to be
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
If you two are finished tossing verbal grenades, you might want to stop and notice that you're both right -- and both wrong. Congressman as a noun means a member of congress. That applies to both senators and members of the House. As a title, it refers specifically to a member of the House, as in Congressman Foo (as opposed to Senator Bar). That makes the GP right and you wrong.
Having said that, the GP capitalized the word which, while wrong in the specific usage, at least implies the word's use as a title. That makes you right and the GP wrong.
In the long run, I suppose it doesn't really matter. This is /., which makes it far more interesting to dip each other's hair in inkwells, or shoot spitballs, or whatever the hell the drive-by jerk behavior d'jour is. By all means, stay as far as hell away from a meaningful discussion of the topic as possible.
Re:So? (Score:2)
Not really. The sickos aren't luring kids to nasty sites for the pageviews. They're typically luring them there to establish a relationship, and possibly lead to a real-world meet-up. Which, from the US perspecti
the internet is not a big truck! (Score:2)
Re:So? (Score:2)
Wire fraud is enforced globally
But is there actually a problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many porn sites try to attract minors anyway? Minors don't have credit cards.
Re:So? (Score:2)
It will also be punishable... (Score:5, Funny)
...to use the META tags "Congress" and "intelligent" on the same web page.
Re:It will also be punishable... (Score:2)
Even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even better.. (Score:2)
I doubt they'd go for it... they'd hate to have their "tubes" tied.
This is ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It will also be punishable... (Score:4, Insightful)
as to enforcability, just wait til the death star comes flying along trying to enforce this thing. cause frankly, that's the kind of weapon congress would need to enforce this galactically.
is the bill intended to be good? yeah, but it's no substitute for parents actually taking an active role in their kids life. personally if i were speaking for jesus i think I'd have to say that barbie dolls are as evil as porn. do little girls need a plastic figurehead of 'beauty' and 'fashion' any more than they need access to a triple x porn site? I sick of people calling little pink boxed pieces of plastic and calling that 'good.'
now speaking for myself i'd have to say that plastic dolls are quite an ironic way to 'preserve' and 'expand' an empire of 'pretending to do good things for girls' try asking a little girl if she'd rather have a parent or family member at home, being there for them, or if they'd rather have a piece of plastic. frankly i think that for every barbie doll sold, that question needs to be asked at least once.
Re:It will also be punishable... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It will also be punishable... (Score:4, Insightful)
All kidding aside, how about legimate uses for such words in sexual sites. I remember a pair of models called the Barbie Twins about 5-10 years ago. Would webmasters not be allowed to use that just because Barbie is a toy? How about a Chippendales dancer in rip-off fatigues who markets himself as G.I. Joe?
I think if a web site uses LEGITIMATE keywords, including those of toy names, AND uses the voluntary web filtering keywords, they have a case that they are giving the people the ability to screen.
A more basic problem, one I think they were trying to solve, is the problem of misleading keywords. Why should I get a useless link farm page with ad banners when I am doing research on something completely unrelated just because the person that put up the page wants more banner downloads?
Of course, if you outlaw misleading keywords, people will work around the rules to achieve the same end goals.
The only thing this legislation does is give politicians a way of saying "Look! I'm being proactive about this!" (when they are being stupidly reactive in truth... isn't that misleading as well? Can we outlaw misleading political statements???)
What about all the other Barbies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:2)
Well, if this passes, there's your first test case. Anyone know a porn star named Barbie with a web site?
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:2)
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:2)
Small and furry? Try searching for "french porn"
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:2)
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the summary:
Anyone who includes misleading "words" or "images" intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site...
I hilited the key word there, "intended". So a porn star named Barbie (which is like what, 25% of them all?) would be fine as long as there wasn't other material there (say the word Matel, intentionally mispelled to catch kids who might not know how to sp
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:5, Insightful)
I draw retouch with a computer and render with 3D-software erotic images as a hobby and because it provides sufficient motivation to scale the Himalaya-like learning curve of 3D programs. They aren't good enough yet to put up anywhere, but they'll likely be someday. So, I'll likely have an erotic website someday.
When I put the pics up, where can I get a list of what specific words I'll have to avoid, and how much time do I have to update my page when the word list changes (as it must, to keep up with the latest fads in youth culture) ? And if I happen to be on a vacation when the list changes and don't get back before the deadline, and get charged, is the difference between walking free and spending 20 years in the jail whether the judge happens to like my face or not - because I don't think he can read my intentions from my mind, even if he is honest and not drunk on power or on some kind of personal crusade against filthy porn ?
Disclaimer: I don't live in the USA, but you know as well as I do that the rest of the world is going to copy this bad law, just like they did the US-style copyright laws.
No, this leads to problems for everyone who's website acknowledges the existence of human sexuality. Ironically, it has the potential of increasing the profits of for-pay porn sites, since they can afford to hire people to keep watching the wordlist for changes, and are at least somewhat shielded from personal responsibility by incorporation; it's the free sites that are going to be hit by this.
This is an extraordinarily stupid idea for a law, even for the US congress.
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:5, Funny)
What about all the pron stars named Furby?
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about all the other Barbies? (Score:3, Funny)
Step in the right direction (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Step in the right direction (Score:5, Insightful)
For example in IE you can set an option on the Advanced tab to not search from the address bar. Or you could install NetNanny or something similar. I know these aren't perfect options but a little public education and parental responsibility seems to me to be a better place to start then passing laws like this.
Again the cries of "someone needs to think of the children" seem to drown out all common sense and parental responsibility. As long as people insist on Congress playing guardians to their children we will continue to see our rights eroded as legislation such is this is eventually used for other then the intended purpose.
Re:Step in the right direction (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it happen all that much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does it happen all that much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Step in the right direction (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Step in the right direction (Score:5, Funny)
'Innocent' words (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you define what makes a word 'innocent'? Are they going to make a list of all "innocent" words, or what?
The 163-page Child Protection and Safety Act represents the most extensive rewriting of federal laws relating to child pornography, sex offender registration and child exploitation in a decade.
Ah, I see...
The Actual Text of Section 703 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Actual Text of Section 703 (Score:2)
IANAL (Score:2)
One of my favorite pastimes when I was 24 or so was trying to get friends to open goatse.cx from work. The standard trick was to href it into something like "Yahoo! News: Free Beer in NYC" or something like that, and then laugh and laugh when they opened it.
So does that qualify as a felony now? That would totally ruin my christmas cards.
Re:'Innocent' words (Score:2)
If I advertised a brand new BMW Z5 for $12,999 and you came to my dealership and found out that I only had Z5 Hotwheels for which I was asking the exhorberent price of $12,999 but I could show you a real nice Chevy Cobalt for $11,999. I'd be guilty of false advertising.
The other day I miss-typed Craigslist.com and found myself at an porn portal. With my wife beside me. Ooops!!! Luckily my wife is net-savvy enough to understand what
Re:'Innocent' words (Score:2)
Who is saying that porn peddlers are terrorists?
I don't think the Founders meant that free speech would include using the names of children's toys to intentionally and deceptively lure kids to porn sites. That's like saying that "Hey little girl, you want some candy? Step into my van." on
META (Score:3, Funny)
Re:META (Score:3, Insightful)
If I wrote a classified ad of myself saying I was a 150 lb white guy when I was really a 500 lb black guy, should that be punishable by 10 years in prison?
Does it work the other way? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does it work the other way? (Score:4, Funny)
The origin of the term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours controlled human health and emotion.
A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, a quality which all people share, although the extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including, but not limited to geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education and context. For example, young children (of any background) particularly favour slapstick, while satire tends to appeal to more mature audiences.
Reality Distortion Field... (Score:2)
Anybody want to start an over/under on how much... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oops (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anybody want to start an over/under on how much (Score:2)
I dunno, but I know a number of web sites that will show you lots of PORK being stuffed into things...
(I wonder if PORK is a forbidden meta-tag...?)
Yup, it's an election year (Score:2)
Congress Once Again Addressing Our Biggest Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
With respectable, upright, and moral leaders like these, we will all be safe from accidentally looking at pr)n - we are saved!
Re:Congress Once Again Addressing Our Biggest Prob (Score:3, Funny)
Well, web developers have been abusing them for years. I personally hope a lot of these web developing scum are locked up... to make the Internet safe for us application programmers.
How will this affect Barbie Linux (Score:3, Funny)
Related Stories
Linux: OMG BARBIE LINUX LOL!!1!!!! [slashdot.org]
I hope they remove the pictures of Linus Torvalds from the Barbie Linux ISOs after this announcement.
Meta tags? Does this even matter? (Score:2)
Give It Time, My Brother, Give It Time (Score:2)
Now. Impossible to enforce globally now. Coupla pesky theocracies to overthrow, a handful of socialist democracies already undermining themselves needing just a teensy-weensy push, that oil/energy thing we got some of our best people working on, and then *BAM* our single global government is good-to-go. One Nation, Under Bilderberg [wikipedia.org].
Don't know about you, but I, for one, welcome our Barbie-Banishing Overlords.
The sad truth of this law will be... (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably should post this as AC... (Score:4, Funny)
Soooo last millennium... (Score:3, Insightful)
to say nothing about being completely impossible to enforce globally
National sovereignty. How quaint.
Re:Soooo last millennium... (Score:3, Insightful)
National sovereignty is no match of the power of the globalized economy. And national governments of a lot of countries have already proved that they pass whatever legislation the US asks of them.
It would take the revival of nationalism to restore nation-states to their proper place as an instrument capable and willing of protecting their citizens from the predations of global corporations and foreign governments. But unfortunately nationalism lead to militariaism the
Good news (Score:4, Funny)
Congresscritter mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
From the wording in the summary, this speaks to the mentality of the congresscritter. I mean, some right-wingers have this idea stuck in their head that the pr0n on the internet is there for the children, that people are trying to lure kids to the porn sites for some reason which I (nor they) cannot imagine. What benefit is there in that for anybody? It's not as if the kids have any purchasing power! Hell, it's not even as if webmasters can capture some parents income with porn!
"Daddy, will you buy me a membership to this website! It's only $2.99 for three days!"
Valacosa to congress: children are not the "target audience" for pornography!
Re:Congresscritter mentality (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, "save the children" is extremely popular with the left, too. From a FA linked in TFA:
*- out of context, but are those "controversial issues" some pork projects hidden in the 163-page bill?
Re:Congresscritter mentality (Score:3, Funny)
The leftists want more Gore, and the rightists want more Bush.
Thank you. I'll be here all night. Try the veal.
Re:Congresscritter mentality (Score:2)
I seem to remember a site called "Whitehouse.com" (not
Re:Congresscritter mentality (Score:4, Funny)
Bill Clinton?
Re:Congresscritter mentality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Congresscritter mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
Valacosa to congress: children are not the "target audience" for pornography!
This has got to be the funniest thing that I've read today. If my boy was really interested in it, then he should be able to find my storage directory that has gigs of that type of data. My son shouldn't have to search the internet for what is already on the local computer!
Hard at work I see (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't wait for november.
Stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
And who judges whether a tag is valid or not? While there may be a few that are clear cut, most will be highly ambiguous and down to some arbitrary decision process, and likely used backwards (i.e. find a site you do not like, then see if you can find some law it breaks, such as this one).
Again, it used 'think of the children' to role in crappy, unenforceable laws which steal away people freedom, and solve a non-existent problem. I have two daughters, and frequently searched various keywords such as Barbie, and never encountered any pron sites. The only, and obvious, solution to the minor problem of children accessing inappropriate content is for parents to be responsible in how their children can access the net.
but what about (Score:3, Funny)
Sex != Harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
Just how screwed up do you have to be to consider a nipple to be threat to a child's development?
Better to concentrate on ensuring that child can grow up in a world that has freedom of speech, a clean environment and open minds than one that views sex as somehow dirty.
Sex or Society? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen published claims that exposing children to sex (and things related to sex - at least in some minds -- porn, nudity in the home, seeing their parents have sex, hearing people talk about sex, reading about sex...) is invariably harmful. I always wonder about such claims - is the research funded by people with an agenda? is the research specific to the US where it may not be the sexual exposure itself that is harmful, but rather the response of society to children who know things that the puritans
What is harmful is the cognitive dissonance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of the product being sold (shaving cream, butter, cars, liquor, beer, computers, clothing, soft drinks, food, etc), the advertisement will almost invariably have a sexual element to it. Why? Because sex sells products. The advertisers know this, we know this - because it works (unless you're a bastard like me who simply buys whatever is cheapest or works best, regardless of adverts). The actors and actresses involved in making those advertise
Re:Sex or Society? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is so much to disagree with in that particular comment.. where to begin?
A. You have no business telling anyone what sex "should" be. Who made you the grand poobah? And don't you dare quote the bible to me... it isn't a book of laws for this country yet (despite the efforts of the Christian Taliban).
B. Sex doesn't have to include love, and love doesn't have to include sex. They often work in conjunction, but neither
Re:Sex != Harmful (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe me. I was one of the "innocents".
DAMMIT! (Score:3, Funny)
Is DOOMED!
AdSense "shotgunning" (Score:2)
Adsense shotgunning. AdSense ads that appear on landing pages of domain names that have expired, and subsequentially bought by individuals or companies, showing a listing of related links, and targeted AdSense ads, designed for the sole purpose of getting AdSense clicks. We've all seen these when doing searches. What looks like a directory page turns out to be one massive AdSense page.
As an example, a domain Miraclewebva.com [miraclewebva.com] I owned some years ago,
Twenty years for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to have start committing crimes with lighter punishments, like murder and rape.
Re:Twenty years for this? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm glad to s
If you just actually have furby porn on your site (Score:2, Interesting)
Lemonparty (Score:2)
20 Years? (Score:3, Informative)
The real problem... (Score:5, Funny)
Baby Jesus hating homosexual perverts... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what slays me more, that the same dimwits who think the internet is made of tubes are legislating meta tags, or that these morons believe there are a bunch of deviants on the web trying to give porn to children. These idiots wouldn't know a meta tag if one bit them in the ass.
Porn didn't become a multi-billion dollar industry by marketing to people without the means to pay for it. This legislation "for the children" is nothing more than trying to stave off the ultra right wing fundamentalist wackos that aren't bright enough to realize their kids won't be protected by this at all. These are the same nutjobs who protest at movies they could totally prevent their kids from watching just by being good parents. If you don't want your kid watching porn buy a porn filter. Otherwise your kid will find porn. Christian fundamentalists have huge sexual hang-ups and make things like porn so taboo how could kids not be drawn to it? Tell a kid not to look at something fervently enough and eventually he will look just to see what the fuss is about.
I guess it is better they pass a bill that essentially does nothing instead of completely pandering to whack job hatemongers like Pat Robertson. Imagine if someone like him were in power. Anyone not in church on Sunday would be labeled a perverted homosexual Baby Jesus hater and put on the NSA watch list.
Think of the children... (Score:3, Funny)
Indeed - the poor dears might be scarred for life if they are exposed to images containing great tits [wikipedia.org], penduline tits [wikipedia.org], or even boobies [wikipedia.org]. (And the less said about knockers [wikipedia.org], the better.)
Re:Isn't it a bit late for that? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Idiots (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes [wikipedia.org]
Ugh, I'm so ashamed!