“While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child’s online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material," Sen. {Daniel] Inouye said. “In that context, we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections."This report could mean anything from nothing, to pulling the plug on the whole thing. Or maybe just a nice government bug in every switch and router chip produced. It wouldn't be hard, technically. We could also add a government managed IP filter in every router sold. But probably it's just about protecting Inoye and Stevens from being called King Porkers at the next election. I can almost guarantee that it would not significantly slow spam or porn. Not than anyone cares."Given the increasingly important role of the Internet in education and commerce, it differs from other media like TV and cable because parents cannot prevent their children from using the Internet altogether," Sen. [Ted] Stevens said. "The headlines continue to tell us of children who are victimized online. While the issues are difficult, I believe Congress has an important role to play to ensure that the protections available in other parts of our society find their way to the Internet."
The measures they are calling for include directing the Federal Communications Commission to identify industry practices "that can limit the transmission of child pornography" and requiring the Federal Trade Commission to form a working group to identify blocking and filtering technologies in use and "identify, what, if anything could be done to improve the process and better enable parents to proactively protect their children online."
"In its zeal to protect kids from predators and potentially inappropriate content, Congress must not trample the First Amendment rights of Internet users," Center for Democracy and Technology said in a statement submitted to the Committee today.The last thing we need is an Internet designed by Congress. Unfortunately the various bodies that used to handle these things are missing in action.
Many domains in the US have implemented some form of reverse MX to stop spam, but until it actually mandated by the powers-that-be (Google, AOL, MS, Yahoo) [GAMY? shut up] it will have no effect. Reverse MX would indicate that the stuff you are getting came from the domain indicated on the envelope, allowing you to have meaningful filters. If AOL or Yahoo were to insist, however, rejecting all non-complying mail, everyone would fix it up fast, and likely before Der Tag.
Both a .xxx and a .kids domain have been proposed. Both in an attempt to stop porn, and in the latter to make an internet "playground" for kids. One could even imagine acceptable government controls on content sent to a ".kids" domain email address, or posted on a ".kids" website. However, the current domain proposal calls for private regulation by entities benefiting from the "safe" kids domain. Seems reasonable as the government never looks after your sick pig, to paraphrase Jimmy Carter. There are some, though, who find any censorship -- even consensual censorship for minors -- to be anathema and oppose ".kids" on free-speech grounds. They oppose limits on porn as well, joined oddly by people who oppose *any* porn.
A lot of talk, nothing done. Can't ICANN act? Or Hotmail turn on their reverse-MX insister? Is Congress really going to make the choices? Are we really that stupid?
Posted by Kevin Murphy at July 25, 2007 08:36 PM | TrackBack