There is a steady stream of these sorts of things almost every day it seems. More and more restrictions, more and more rules, more and more barriers… all these kinds of things just hamstring all the benefits that can come from a fully wired world. (Not that they don’t mess around with too much with the unwired world too.) Sigh. And most of these things happen with almost no resistance too, that is the sad part.
New bill: Cyber Safety For KidsAct of 2006
(Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing)
Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Max Baucus, (D-MT) have proposed a bill that would require all commercial websites with material “harmful to minors” (in other words, sexually explicit content) to move to a .xxx domain within 6 months of this bill becoming law — or face civil penalties. Under the terms of the proposed law, the US Commerce Department secretary would be required to develop a domain name for adult sites (presumably .xxx) with ICANN.
Europe seeking to make open mapping impossible – help!
(Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing)
The EU’s INSPIRE directive is supposed to harmonize the way that European mapping agencies share their geo-data, but the process has been hijacked. Now it looks more like a proprietary, restrictive, monopoly pricing policy that guts open access.
Geographic data is a key to unlocking information collected by government on behalf of the public – census, voting, planning, utilities, environmental, transport information. Google Maps/Earth mashups are just starting to show us what can be done by overlaying different kinds of environmental and social information over freely available base maps.
The Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee of the European Parliament gets the chance to roll back some of these changes next Tuesday (21st March).
Who determines what’s “harmful to minors” anyway?
And while we’re at it, can all the fanatical religious sites be forces to go to .god? Shopping to .buy? How would shopping sites that ling various place, some of whom might sell um, adult toys handle that? And how about blogs? Blogs are often just opinion and some of the people who write them might have opinions that differ from say, your average 60 year old closet adulteror senator. Could I be blacklisted?
i have the word “drunk” in my title, and of course, to be for a fourth grader to be drunk that woudl be bad, and a kid hearing the word drunk would be inpired to GET drunk because it’s all about the power of suggestion baby.
Parents should just get off their buts and check out what the kids rae looking at. Our children don’t need protection from all deemed “evil” so much as they could benefit from guidance. PARENTAL guidance, I mean, not governmental control.