roundtable: Re: Censorship and pornography

roundtable: Re: Censorship and pornography

Re: Censorship and pornography

W. Curtiss Priest (BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu)
Tue, 21 Mar 95 06:08:48 EST 

Message-Id: <9503211109.AA07166@a.cni.org>
Date:         Tue, 21 Mar 95 06:08:48 EST
From: "W. Curtiss Priest" <BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject:      Re: Censorship and pornography
To: Telecommunications Policy Roundtable <roundtable@cni.org>
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 20 Mar 1995 21:38:02 -0500 from


Date:         Tue, 21 Mar 95 05:23:46 EST
From:         "W. Curtiss Priest" <BMSLIB@MITVMA>
Subject:      Re: Censorship and pornography
To:           Telecomm Policy Roundtable - Northeast <TPR-NE@MITVMA>
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 20 Mar 1995 07:20:22 -0800 from
 <nelson@NORTHCOAST.COM>

>way the directories of sensitive material arenamed. Any newsgroup with 
>often quetionable material should have in itsname ".X.". So, 
> ALT.SEX.BANANAS would be renamed ...

I laud this suggestion.  If we look at the story of X rated films and 
the legacy of the Surgeon General's warnings on cigaretts, this would 
fit well with our liberty of free speech and our concern for informing
users.

The music industry has been an interesting case.  Tipper Gore suggested
some form of censorship in the 1980's.  In particular, some rap music
had become very explicit.  I haven't seen, however, that the musicc
industry went to any rating system (have they?)

Certainly one of the first questions when we talk about community access
to the Internet is, "will my kid be able to download pornography?"

A "very reliable" solution is necessary and, as Nelson suggests, this
should be done in advance of government censorship which is likely to
be more onerous.

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