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Not the government's job to block porn.

It's yours. If you don't trust your child, install a client-side tool.

Well f*cking said. I'll grab my free, every-day fresh porn from the Web, thank you very much.

In normal world your statement would be a truism but to my (and may others) despair it is not.

Maybe there is a need for another blackout - this time for moron league *).

*) moron league - growing group of people who want to move all responsibility for every aspect of their lives to others and the same time keep independence and freedom.

The government might develop an optional program for parents, which they can use for the measures you mentioned. If they did this, I'd support them.

(And as far as I know, they already have such systems implemented for public schools).

However the important keyword is optional, otherwise it becomes outright censorship.

Either install a porn filter, or keep internet access limited to communal places, such a the living room. Each of those cost nothing while allowing you full control without imposing your will on other consenting adults.

The thing is, the Internet was designed to be relatively anarchic - and there's both good and bad that comes with it. Those that participated in the design of the modern Internet accepted that.

Would you let your kid out unsupervised in a bad part of town? Probably not.

Well, the Internet has some elements of that bad part of town. So, don't let your kid out unsupervised (at least not without a restrictive whitelist filter). The Internet as a whole is for adults, or supervised or sufficiently mature children.

Oh, and seeing a naked woman or man probably won't scar your kid, especially if what they saw is put in proper context. (I'm not saying to show your kid some porn, I'm saying that if your kid sees some porn, it's no big deal, and it'll happen eventually whether you like it or not.) It is only natural, after all.

You mean kids might run into a pair of titties while doing a Google search? The HORROR!!!! Kids these days have it easy... I had to resort to softcore R-rated movies on Cinemax in the middle of the night while my parents were asleep

Edited 2012-01-19 02:11 UTC

Bah, you young folks. We barely had movies, we had to make do with magazines of varying quality and wear (and...uhm..staining..).
Now that I think about it, I remember porn magazines being quite prominently on display in pretty much any store when I grew up (Sweden, 70's-80's). I guess it's a small miracle that I am not a raving,cross-dressing serial rapist who hides bodies in my backyard. Someone call the Pope.

Edited 2012-01-19 06:07 UTC

You had it easy! I had to bribe my buddy to sneak in to his big-brothers room to pick up one of his crappy quality (and I mean CRAPPY) vhs porn tapes and bring it over to our house and then I had to watch it with him hovering (very uncomfortable situation) as he was shit-scared that his brother would find out and just wanted to return ASAP, I still recall the title of the movie: 'Flesh Gordon' which was some softcore spoof of (yeah, you'll figure it out).

Curiosity concerning sex is part of human nature, and during a certain period of our young lives it's pretty much the only thing occupying our brains, kids will find ways to expose themselves to sex and I can think of several ways infinitely worse than through the relatively safe venue of watching internet porn.

This isn't an Internet problem, it is a parenting problem. If you have young children with Internet access, you supervise them. As they get older you teach them of possible dangers, and at some point you're just going to have to trust that you've raised them right.



Most schools and libraries with Internet access do filter for such things. It is entirely possible to set up such systems in one's own home. In fact, both Windows (Vista and newer) and Mac OS X (since forever?) include the tools you need to do just that. If you're adept enough to install and maintain non-mainstream alternatives, this whole situation should be even less of a problem.



This is not the porn industry's problem, anymore than it is Clorox's problem if your kids decide to drink bleach.



Anthropomorphizing the Internet does not make it capable of good or evil. That's the reality.



If one's source of income is so fragile as to require over-reaching laws be put into place just to make them viable, you've got bigger problems than file-sharing IMHO.

Edited 2012-01-19 02:15 UTC

Deciding what content should and should not appear on websites is not the job of the United States government. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_C... . As the siblings mentioned, client-side tools exist for filtering internet content. They aren't perfect. Realistically, if you do not want your children to have unrestricted access to information, then don't let them have internet access without supervision. No remotely reasonable law nor technical measure will change that.

The DMCA already provides a way for copyright owners to get cooperating sites to take down infringing content. Pirates aren't going to follow the law. If Congress manages to draft a law that actually forbids American ISPs from routing packets to/from The Pirate Bay, then BitTorrent software developers will probably just finally get around to developing/agreeing on a protocol for DHT search, so they don't need a website. Legal measures may force intentional copyright infringement to switch protocols (and possibly prevent anyone from profiting off of it via ad money) but they won't stop copyright infringement. Sorry.

Trolling comment has trolled...

Parents have the responsibility to police their children, not the Government.

But the goverment has the responsability to make the work of the parents easier and not harder. So your excuse is lame.

Edited 2012-01-19 04:13 UTC

Oh my, why don't someone think about the *children*???
One small problem with your argument: SOPA and IPA is not about protecting children from porn. In fact, the people behind this will gladly have your children watch porn as long as it's their porn and it wasn't pirated.

Yeah well, the Internet is global and does not obey to america (or any country).


And who should control it? The US? the Netherlands? Russia? The UAE?



And unfortunately SOPA/PIPA does not do that.

the (sic) Netherlands

Not to toot our own horn, but we have always been very practical and we are pretty freedom loving and tolerant. If a controlling party had to be apppointed, going with The Netherlands would probably be the least bad choice in your list of options.

Then again, I'd like the Internet to become less centralized, not more.

Duh, China of course - with all the resolve they demonstrated so far... ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China search "porn" - but it's more, also "superstitious, [...] violence-related, gambling and other harmful information." what could be better for the children?)

"Won't somebody please think of the children?"

I think internet does need control. Not the kind of normal new censoring. But the use of internet has become equally good and evil. That's the reality.

Congratulations, you have just discovered that the world isn't just filled with Care Bears, candy cotton and rainbows. And it's not just the Internet either.

I squarely reject your notion of the need for a nanny state, Jason Bourne. If you can't be bothered to raise your kids under your own supervision, why should someone else care? We are not going to break the Internet, just so you can abscond your own responsibilities.

I don't know how old your kids are, but if they feel the need to actively go looking for porn, they are probably in the stages of discovering their sexuality. In that case, a good, open and honest talk about human sexuality is in order. Don't let your kids "learn" about sex from porn (be it internet or dirty magazines). If you don't give them the info, someone or something else will.

No need for (largely) ineffective filters, just so you can live in the oblivious delusion that your kids won't see some smut somewhere on tha Intarwebs. Which, if they really are techie, they will see online if they really want to. Even if they can't, there are still magazines...

What a full decayed world. Mankind is utterly lost. Comments from cold-hearted IT parents. Well, let's just wait when your daughter loses her virginity at 12, I want to see your faces... and then you come here, to support some kind of control over something you couldn't control yourself from a wider aspect point of view. You can keep your home PCs protected, but you don't know your neighbors' parental control situation, do you? And I bet they are totally morons who have no clue what a ten year old child is able to access on the internet and pass it on.

SOPA may not have anything to do with this, but it helps to start the talk about this.

I'm not american, but who HERE are to defy the most powerful & influential nation in the world at present time?

Nevertheless, these rules need to be done collective between nations. 80% of downloadable porn is hosted in the USA. We should think better. There are major society problems we need to deal with instead of going on about liberty.

Edited 2012-01-19 13:22 UTC

So when a 12 year old girl loses her virginity it is because there is internet porn? What a wonderfully simple world you must live in.

Truth be told that if I were a decision maker I would have enforced porn by demanding search engines and major websites to randomly change one in ten search results or links in links to porn sites. I would have made it mandatory for DNS servers to randomly reply with porn sites for one in ten requests.

People need MORE porn not LESS.

Please excuse the external link, but this best illustrates said subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg