🚀 go-pugleaf

In <4mphgd$13mc@piglet.cc.uic.edu>, Tommy the Terrorist <u58563@uic.edu> writes:
>In article <318F5A28.936@nowhere.no-domain> Jonathon Tidswell,
>nobody@nowhere.no-domain writes:
>>That all authors of general distribution documents (ie not private email) are >required to >include a content descriptor, which amoungst other attributes includes a >government defined >'rating'.
>
>   This is *not* the PICS system.  The PICS system is supposed to be
>voluntary; even then, it is hard to be enthusiastic about something which
>at BEST will be used to maintain the ignorance of those children whose
>parents are brainburned idiots.

Not so. The parents who are producing citizens of the future won't do 
this - and the others don't really matter, as this is only one more area of 
ignorance.

>
>   You see, outside of Australia, people have, or at least are trained to
>think they have, the freedom to transmit documents even though they are
>not rated by some government bureaucrat, or, to save labor costs, rated
>by you in the fear that some government bureaucrat will second-guess you
>later and prosecute.  Unrated material is not banned, therefore, under
>the U.S. version of the PICS system; it is simply unrated.  Special
>censored access would be for those who actually want it.  (which is why
>it is so hard to imagine the system _really_ being voluntary, because,
>who wants it?)

Many Australians believe the same. Just because you know little about us, you
are not necessarily correct, you know. Is this the sort of ignorance you are
deploring? It seems appropriate, somehow....

Many sites are already rating themselves, and if these are the only ones that
kids can see, so what? Under a PICS compliant browser it is up to the parent
to decide what, if anything, is going to be filtered at their machine.

Shutting up the religious crackpots is a great idea. Merkins shouldn't be
preaching anti-censorship to the rest of us, seeing it was Exon and the CDA
that has allowed this obscenity to get off the ground in so many countries.

>
>   However, I continue to take issue with the notion that children are
>best kept ignorant.  Maybe it would be easier to swallow if the stuff
>they censored was stuff like war footage and Holocaust films. 

What a load of rubbish. That's the sort of censorship that will lead to
another war and another Holocaust. How stupid can you get?

 But any
>kid can look at this on the television, and I bet I wasn't the only kid
>who ever cried...  There is nothing dangerous at all about stuff like sex
>pictures, that diverge from being *completely* natural only by virtue of
>being somewhat implausibly innovative.
>   A well educated child is one who learns to be able to handle himself
>in open communication with anyone; who is mindful of his personal
>security and privacy; who has made up his own mind on religious matters
>and is capable of holding to those ethics in which he believes; who has
>learned to be skeptical.  Children don't start out this way, of course,
>but the way to teach them is NOT by withholding the written material for
>the lesson, but by providing them with instruction to make sense out of
>it.  In other words, by parenting --- not policing.

So why is the religious right banning the teaching of evolution in merka, 
*again*?

>
>   Those who are most vociferous about "protecting children" don't want
>educated children --- they want ignorant children.  

Not so. They are using the 'protect the kids' slogan as a way to stop anything
*they* don't want. Wake up!

They want their kids
>to "know" that gays are Bad, but never to have seen any.  They want their
>kids to "know" that Marijuana is Bad, but not to know that it is also
>called "hemp".  They want for their children to be as ignorant as they
>are, so that they will have perpetuated themselves in their own wretched
>image.  You may believe that is their right, but it is NOT their right to
>enforce that on others.  YOUR children should have the right to the
>truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Can you handle that?

My children have had that right - under guidance. As a parent that was my
responsibility. I accepted that responsibility. They have grown up as 
responsible adults who have a damned good idea of the world, and the way
people work.

You sound like a minor, who is lashing out at us, for what the CDA is doing
to you. If that is the case, get into some of the anti-CDA groups, and
do something constructive. Oz-bashing is *not* constructive, and can be
extremely counter-productive.

For heaven's sake, can't you see how silly you are being? I am pro-censorship,
absolutely. I am also pro-America, usually. Yet your arguments are turning
mine into anti-American sentiments, and you are putting me on the defensive
about what we re doing.

Are you *trying* to divide the Net community here, or is that just a bonus?

Go home, and tell your mother to restrict your Net access, before you start 
a civil, or even global, war, you silly child.

TTYL,

Rev. Marjorie, DD
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/
http://www.netprophet.co.nz/
*coming soon!* http://www.netfreedom.org.au/ *at an ISP near you*
To intrusive govts: Am I a sea or a whale that thou settest a watch 
over me? Job 7:11