IMHO, unless it's something blatantly illegal such as kiddie porn and
Keegan Holley Network Engineer, Network Managed Services SunGard Availability Services Mezzanine Level MC-95 401 N. Broad St. Philadelphia, PA 19108 215.446.1242 (office) 609.670.2149 (cell) Keegan.Holley@sungard.com ___________________________________________ Keeping People and Information Connected® http://www.availability.sungard.com Mark Smith <nanog@fa1c52f96c54f7450e1ffb215f29991e.nosense.org> 06/11/2007 09:01 AM To Keegan.Holley@sungard.com cc Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>, nanog@merit.edu Subject Re: UK ISPs v. US ISPs (was RE: Network Level Content Blocking) On Sat, 9 Jun 2007 17:38:20 -0400 Keegan.Holley@sungard.com wrote: the
like I don't think content filtering is the responsibility of the ISP's.
Besides all of the conspiracy theories that are bound to surface, I think forcing ISP's to block content is a bit like forcing car makers to police what can be played on the radio. I think that giving parents the option
of manually turning off porn sites would be an improvement. Although still not within the responsibility of the ISP they are in the best place to implement such a technology. However, I don't like the idea of a mandatory global traffic filtering initiative.
I think in the home is the best place to implement the technology - a power switch or BIOS password. I guess that would go for the cell phone and the computer at the friends house as well... Here is a true analogy. My father worked for a TV station, so you'd think we'd have the TV on all the time, yet right through up until after I left high school, my parents wanted to limit my TV watching ... significantly. Did you ever have to do homework or check you grades on the TV? Did your mother ever pay bills with the TV? Also, did any child molesters ever try contacting you during the commercials. How did they do it ? (a) they didn't buy a TV set and put it in my bedroom - the TV was in a common area of the house i.e. the lounge and/or dining room (b) they didn't allow me to watch the TV unsupervised And you never got up after they went to bed to see what you were missing.. So what I don't understand is why parents put computers in their childrens' bedrooms and don't supervise their children's Internet use. Substituting a piece of filtering software that won't ever do as good a job as a parent in enforcing parental responsibility is just bad parenting in my opinion, and not the responsibility of government or ISPs. I agree but there are many houses where both parents work and the kids for better or worse spend alot of time alone. I think it would be a good thing to give them a way to filter what comes into their living rooms. I'm probably showing my age with this one but my parents actually caught me downloading porn and tried some of those filters. I actually found a website that explained how to disable it. I think we have come a long way from cable TV, both in terms of accessibility and what is deemed appropriate content. Also I think teenagers are different now then they were a few years ago. While a content filtering solution will never be able to replace good parenting and plain common sense. I have no objections to having all three in the same household. Keegan