Who Pays For It?
The Attorney General, who managed to make it through law school without learning the plain meaning of the Bill of Rights, has another stupid idea to divert attention from the reality that Patrick Fitzgerald is the only one in the Department doing their job: Gonzales calls for mandatory Web labeling law.
I would suggest he read The Internet for Dummies, if I thought he could master the long words. He obviously is under the misconception that the US controls the World Wide Web. The “community standards” of the Internet would scandalize most demons [and not a few daemons…sorry, geek joke].
The Platform for Internet Content Selection [PICS] was started back in 1997 by the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C] to make it easier for people to filter “offensive material”, but it is totally voluntary, like most things on the Web.
Since ex post facto laws are prohibited by the Constitution, I would assume this proposed law only applies to new web pages and the Department of Justice will be tasked to create some colored stickers, if Homeland Security hasn’t eaten all of the crayons.
I know that they’ll want to treat web site owners exactly the same as the power companies that pump pollutants into the air: you only have to add the sticker if you change more than 20% of a web page, otherwise, this would be another unfunded Federal mandate on the private sector.
It seems to me that this labeling will just make it easier for low-IQ perverts to find porn, but maybe that’s the point.
2 comments
Weren’t these the same people who said no to the dot XXX domain because it would be too easy to find porn? I thought it would make it easier for a parent, suspicious spouse, or employer to find out who actually downloaded porn. It would have also cut down on accidentally find a porn sites like the old whitehouse.com. Besides, most adult websites have a page where you (wink) have to confirm that you are 18 before you enter, not that it stops a teenager from lying about his (or her) age. And does this mean I have to change my blog name? Because I do get people looking for porn on it. Makes me glad I didn’t name it “Ignorant slut”.
I feel out of the mainstream because I don’t think I have ever “stumbled upon” a porn site. When I type in whitehouse.gov [that is snark, not a typo] I know what I’m going to find and brace myself.
These people obviously don’t read the tags at Google, or whatever search engine they use. They don’t use the parental filters already in place. They don’t invest in any of the filtering software.
Another dose of pandering to the “base”, which is about as base as it gets.
The .XXX was a reasonable move that was highjacked for political purposes. PICS was another reasonable move that got political.