New Law: How Good, How Bad?

[luvnaturism]

According to this news item, Congress has passed a law that will create a new internet domain that will be restricted to content deemed appropriate for children 12 and under. President Bush is expected to sign.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/1037443359200950.xml

Obviously to some extent this is good news, but there are some concerns also. Nudity is equated with sex and both are banned. The article did not suggest that violence programmed for children is restricted, but I don't know whether that's an oversight or not.

My feelings are mixed about this. It will surely be a help for parents of small children who don't take much responsibility for what their kids see: they can just put them in a "safe room." Parents who want their kids to grow up feeling good about themselves and their bodies will still have to be proactive, but probably they haven't lost anything with this new development. If my children were small, I'd probably be glad for this additional resource up to about age 9, but above that I 'd want to provide supervised access to a broader range of material.

Knowing what I know now about children's development (which is a lot more than I knew when I was actually raising kids), I'd much prefer they have exposure to loving?not pornographic?sexuality than to violence.

But all this is just me. What do others think?

[luvnaturism]

According to this news item, Congress has passed a law that will create a new internet domain that will be restricted to content deemed appropriate for children 12 and under. President Bush is expected to sign.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/1037443359200950.xml

Obviously to some extent this is good news, but there are some concerns also. Nudity is equated with sex and both are banned. The article did not suggest that violence programmed for children is restricted, but I don't know whether that's an oversight or not.

My feelings are mixed about this. It will surely be a help for parents of small children who don't take much responsibility for what their kids see: they can just put them in a "safe room." Parents who want their kids to grow up feeling good about themselves and their bodies will still have to be proactive, but probably they haven't lost anything with this new development. If my children were small, I'd probably be glad for this additional resource up to about age 9, but above that I 'd want to provide supervised access to a broader range of material.

Knowing what I know now about children's development (which is a lot more than I knew when I was actually raising kids), I'd much prefer they have exposure to loving?not pornographic?sexuality than to violence.

But all this is just me. What do others think?

I can certainly understand protecting impressionable children from porn. My concern is that this law could "protect" them from innocent, clean social naturism. Could this law be the beginning of parents not being allowed to be nude in front of their children? Could it eventually prevent parents from even taking their children to a nudist club or resort? Could this be the first step to all nudist areas becoming "adults only"? What a shame it would be if children are allowed to grow up thinking that their bodies are shameful and should be kept hidden. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif /infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif

[Bob S.]

I actually agree with it. This law is actually for those negligent parents who are not willing to spend the time with their children even while surfing the web. Better have a .kids.us domain than to just sanitize the whole internet so it is all G rated.

But really, this is just window dressing. It will not stop kids from going into .com, .net, .edu, etc. domain sites and downloading something that they shouldn't be seeing.

And plus, shouldn't parents have a place on the net where they know their children will be safe? On TV, they know that there will be no nudity or sexual situations on the Disney Channel. So what that nudity is banned from .kids.us? Why shouldn't it?

Bob S.

[Rik]

Looking at this from across the pond it strikes me as being a further excuse for parents to devolve even more responsibility for their children's welfare to government officials. I guess if that's what they want that's what they'll get.

It's not clear how kids might be prevented from visiting other domains although I guess someone (Micro$oft for example) will develop a piece of software and make a suitably large sum of money out of it.

Not that I'm cynical of course. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[dbickin]

Its not foolproof, but you could simply point the computer to a DNS server that only includes the kids.us domains. (The DNS server is what translates the domain name into the ip address.)

I suppose the domain would be somewhat useful for libraries, where they can have internet stations restricted to kids.us for use by children. Adults, could then have full access.

So long as kids who have approving parents could also have full access to the internet, I wouldhave no problem with that.

David

[TXK NUDE]

I guess my question would be why would a child under 12 be interested in porn or naturism? Any child that age who is interested in naturism probably comes from a naturist home--so why look at it on the internet? Interest in porn at that age is often a sign of sexual abuse, and should probably be investigated by proper authorities. Maybe I am skewed in my views...or maybe I don't understand what this is all about. I don't know. I feel so old lately.

[Rik]

http://www.fusionwerx.com/smilies/soapbox.gif
To me it's the erosion of civil liberties which is the issue. Although my children are now grown up (well most of the time anyway) I have always valued my right to bring them up as I see fit and according to my values. Obviously there's a limit as to what I should be allowed to do - that limit being where parenting becomes abuse - but if I am happy letting my children see naturist words and images then that is my right.

Sure, on the face of it this new domain thing seems perfectly benign and wouldn't take away rights I currently have but with a little imagination you can start to see how this official meddling (for want of a better expression) could eventually lead to suggestions of abuse directed at those parents who choose not to support the initiative and allow their children to view images which the government thinks they shouldn't.

The trouble with all these do-gooding initiatives is that in isolation they're very hard to argue against but when you stack them all up they begin to look like an intrusion.

An analogy I often use is the exponential growth of CCTV. I guess it's the same in the US as in the UK where you can expect to be photgraphed many times a day just going about your normal business. People say "CCTV fights crime. If you've got nothing to hide then so what?" to which I answer "well why not have cameras in every home as a means of detecting child abuse (which is where it mostly happens) - if you've got nothing to hide then why not?"

Of course any right minded person would be outraged at such a suggestion but think back 10 or 20 years and if I'd then said "Would you be happy to be photgraphed 40 or 50 times a day whenever you leave your house?" without doubt you would have thought such a scenario unthinkable. CCTV in every home is more of a possibility than most people care to believe.

So this is why I believe that initiatives such as kid.us - no matter how good they appear at first sight - should be challenged before they slip them in by the back door as they have with CCTV.

/soapbox mode off

Rik

[Bob S.]

Children about the age of 12 (give or take) are usually starting puberty and sometimes have an interest in the naked body (unless they are nudist, of course). Sometimes, as was the case for me, their father's stash of mags is their first taste of the nude body. For me, it was National Geographic and later, Playboy.

In the present day of the web, the child could come upon their father's fave porn site while using his computer to surf the web. And seeing naked women may appeal to this textile boy, whether abused or not.

Now for Rik's concerns. I've always been interested in creating a kid-freiendly part of the internet. So far, it has been akin to dropping your children off in an unknown part of the city (for those parents who don't closely monitor their children's web life) and telling them to stay in only certain stores.

Now parents can have a place where they can be sure their children won't see anything inappropriate. This is about as far as I believe it will be taken and I do not have the Farenheit 451 viewpoint of extreme government intervention in our lives. The people would never put up with it. Heck, in the USA, we are not even willing to put any of our rights on hold, lest "we let the terrorists win."

We are definitely changed from the WWII generation who allowed for some altertions in their lives to help with the war effort. Nowadays, there is the "my rights first" attitude which will not let for too many rights to fall by the wayside.

Bob S.