49% Say Government Should Regulate Internet

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... e_internet

Nearly half of Americans (49%) believe that the federal government should regulate the Internet the same way it does radio and television, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey.

Thirty-five percent (35%) disagree, and 16% are undecided.

Wonderful. This is one of instances where the ill informed public should be educating themselves. Next thing is the government will be stepping in and laying down all kinds of rules and regulations that will only harm U.S. sites allowing off-shore companies to take up the slack. The internet after all is not "owned" by the U.S. I think many people do not fully understand exactly what it is. There is a reason WWW stands for World Wide Web.

And along with regulation comes taxes. Those SOB's take enough of our money already.

As an educator and parent I woudl love if all pornography was moved to an .adult designation. The problem is deciding what is porno and what isn't. Kids today see some really brutal things on the net.

traderfjp wrote:I woudl love if all pornography was moved to a .adult designation.

Won't work because it wouldn't be mandatory for overseas sites plus the cat is out of the bag already. How do you compensate sites that have spent years or even a decade getting inbound links, advertising etc. It's like telling a business they have to change their phone number and the old one is simply not going to work anymore. In addition Domain names themselves have value, for example sex.com would have very high value as would any other relevant names.

In any event it's my opinion this is something the parent needs to take of.

"Won't work because it wouldn't be mandatory for overseas sites plus the cat is out of the bag already. How do you compensate sites that have spent years or even a decade getting inbound links, advertising etc. It's like telling a business they have to change their phone number and the old one is simply not going to work anymore. "

I really wouldn't feel sorry for sites that make their money exploiting women who are drug addicts, nymphos or lost souls. Who cares if sex.com doesn't make money on their domain. It's like sayig we shouldn't ban handguns because gun shops will lose revenue. Oh well. Do u really want your 6 year old to know what a BJ is, how to perform cunnilingus, or even how to have sex with animals. I think as a society we need to protect our children. Children today spend countless hours on the Internet and it's way too easy for them to stumble on porno sites. Many parents are uneducated about computers and locking out sites and wouldn't know how to even install the correct software. Our government could require that all Internet providers filter out porno from all of the world. If a site wants to show grandmothers having sex with animals then they would have to have an .adult designation or their site wouldn't be seen in the US. To access an .adult domain you would need to have a credit card and prove your age some how.

In addition Domain names themselves have value, for example sex.com would have very high value as would any other relevant names.

Like I said I really don't care if some slime ball loses a few dollars selling flesh.

In any event it's my opinion this is something the parent needs to take of.

I think as a society we need to combat this problem and not leave it to the ignorance of many parents.

Sorry but I disagree, you want to place a parents responsibility onto someone else.

You can't legislate morality. Like it or not it's a legal business and just like any other business they have rights. Attempting to filter sites is an impossible task, it can't be done. There's already sites that run into issues with Google and other SE's marking their content as adult when its not. That's besides the censorship issues and other things as to who is going to decide what is pornography and what isn't. The music/movie industry has been fighting the pirating of music for almost a decade now and they have not stopped it AND they have the law on their side in the U.S. and other countries.

For example: http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?st ... 3220908807

If you want to protect your children from online material like that there's plenty of tools out there, IE even has one built in. You can whitelist sites and block them from all other sites and/or block them based on rating. Surprise, surprise, yes there is rating system. High tiered pornography sites will be on this rating system but that's really besides the point because certainly sites aimed at children and teens will have a rating. It's on the honor system but AFAIK there is no abuse of this and many sites use it so you can whitelist appropriate sites with the appropriate rating.

Well in this country we do censor morality. You can't show certain things on network television. I really wish we could count on the integrity of people to do the right thing but people are greedy bastards and that is why our country is where it's today. What ever happened to helping our neighbors. Granted I wouldn't want to live anywhere else and I love America but with the right leadership we could be so much more. I agree that pornography on the Internet is a legal business and they should have rights but I would love to see legislature to ban these sights from the Internet. You wouldn't be for XXX games on the Ninteno, Wii or XBOX because they are platforms marketed to children. Well the Internet is too. I don't think you can have a Barney games and then have a porno site a click away. It's like having a liquor and cigar store in every elementary school. In contrast if you wanted to subscribe to porno then be my guest but don't make it accesible to our children. The Internet is an incredible tool. I've been on it before anyone knew what the Net was but it has a very ugly side. I don't condone or sit in judgement of what adults want to engage in or view, as long as it's not hurting anyone but when these activities enter our homes for all our children to see - I think it is a huge problem. There is technology today that will fitler out porno. In our school we subscribe to a very powerful filter and it works great. However, it's costly. Maybe the Government could give incentive for Bill gates and company to install a powerful filter with each copy of windows and make it backwards compatible with older operating system and other platforms. The IE rating system and filter is a joke. As an American I don't want to loose rights but we have already lost many rights do to the patriot act and other new laws intended (perhaps) to fight terrorists. I don't know but I do know that if Americans don't get their heads out of their butts and start thinking about the futurte this country is going to be in lots of trouble. Look at the price of oil. I believe that the Middle East is using the price of oil as a terrorist act so they can hurt us. I wouldn't be too suprised if they aren't taking the BIllions of dollars we give them on a weekly basis and are using those dollars to bid up their own commodity. I respect your opinion but I can't see any benefit to society to allow porno sites into the homes of Americans.

traderfjp wrote: You wouldn't be for XXX games on the Ninteno, Wii or XBOX because they are platforms marketed to children.

Those are private companies that have the ability to filter what is available because anyone that wants to use their system has to license the technology from them. The only reason they are successful at keeping porn out is because they are primarily meant for children, if their was market for pornography based video games another system would emerge for it . Pornography is often cited as one of the reasons the Betamax format failed (not the only reason). Sony refused to allow porn on the Betamax format but VHS had no restrictions.

There is technology today that will fitler out porno. In our school we subscribe to a very powerful filter and it works great. However, it's costly.

You're filter only works because websites are not trying to circumvent it. There's simply too many ways to get around it, let me in there and I'll have porn up in a few seconds. . For every technology there is counter technology. Just as a quick example I could zip up some files and put a password on it, the filter will never see that content. The password would simply be available right next to the link.... And that's really just a very basic example.

The only thing that really works is human reviewed whitelists that are maintained.

The point I'm trying to make is this, if you have site determined to offer porn and a child that is looking for it without parent involvement they are going to find it.

This poll is a reflection of people not understanding the nature of the internet (it is 40 parts "normal" depravity, 40 parts extreme depravity, 10 parts mall, 5 parts library, 2 parts TV, 1 part political rally, 1 part music concert, 1 part other) and not wanting to take responsibility for their children. They don't want to take on the work (and negative blowback from their kids) to provide supervised internet access. It's also a reflection of far too many people in this country not understanding what the purpose of government, particularly federal government, is supposed to be.

Trader, you mention that the government regulates TV. This is true, kind of. They actually depend on broadcasters to regulate themselves according to the rules they set. They don't actively filter broadcast signals' content or cut transmissions or anything like that. The regulation is entirely up to the broadcaster to comply with and its only force is that which is afforded the government under legal challenges, the willingness of the broadcaster to comply with those legal decisions, and ultimately the government's ability to destroy the broadcast transmitter(s) if push came to shove. Same goes for cable and dish broadcasters and networks. And the V-Chip almost didn't make it into law. It has to be disabled by default and the ratings of shows and the system's administration are entirely done by non-government groups. I also think it is not a requirement that a broadcast have a V-Chip readable signal embedded in it for any given content (likely would be considered high rating content as a default), but I'm not sure about that.

So TV is really far less regulated than you may think, at least in terms of "mandate" and enforability that you suggest be applied to the internet and operating system software.

That aside, the Internet is not TV or radio. If you want to apply a TV broadcast metaphor to it, then it is much more akin to raw satellite feeds (not Dish or the small sat variants that have shown up in recent years, I'm talking the old 5-10ft sat dish in the backyard). There are literally thousands of channels from all over the world available with no standards except those from where the channel originates (and sometimes not even then). The US government has no control over it at all. Another good example would be ham radio. Worldwide reach, no real standards except those that a transmitter choses to abide by (mostly tech heads and old timer geeks doing it though, so it is pretty tame), and impossible to filter for content on a national basis without draconian and highly expensive measures.

If you're talking about mandating nothing more than a pre-installed content filter, what's the point? People that care about it now have free and pay software available to do this already. Web browsers have some capability built in already. If it is turned on by default, what's to stop an irresponsible parent (or one that trusts their kid, rightly or wrongly) from simply turning it off. You aren't really any further ahead than you are not. If it is turned off by default, you really aren't any further ahead than you are now. If it is undefeatable (always on, can't be turned off), then it is a 1st amendment violation on its face and just forces people to move to "hacker" OS's like Linux where no one is going to be adding any filters, mandated or otherwise.

Richard this is not meant to challenge you but it's a little funny that you are against regulation but some words are cencored on this site. We are all adults and if we want to express ourselves we should be able to. I guess you are for some regulation because you're playing big brother too. think it all boils down to that none of us trust the government to regulate the Internet, health, etc. However there are 49% who participated in the poll that believe the government should regulate the Net. I would be interested in finding out why they voted for regulation. I would bet that it's to circumvent the ugly side of the net which is spam, and porno. I guarantee it wasn't to raise revenue. We should be proud of our government and their accomplishments but instead I think many of us see the government as a large entity that screws things up and makes them worse. We see the government as Larry, Curly and Moe running things. In NY they are already taxing out of state web sites and I'm sure other states will follow suit. When people hear about regulation they thing of taxes going up, red tape and chaos. The coal mines in PA are a perfect example. The government should be promoting Anthracite and bagged coal should be shipping around the country but instead they are shutting down mines. How dumb is that. Don't you think after the oil embargo of the 70's we would have opened up more lands for drilling, invested in other technologies and made more fuel efficient cars by now. This country doesn't seem to wake up unless our backs are to the wall.

traderfjp wrote:Richard this is not meant to challenge you but it's a little funny that you are against regulation but some words are cencored on this site.

That's a good point...for me. I've made that choice, I don't *have* to censor words. It's the same argument I used for the smoking ban, this site is owned privately but can be used by he public. I don't need the government to tell me what I can and cannot do with it. If the members don't like the rules then they can request a change but the final decision rests with me. You don't have to use this free service I'm offering.

Additionally that filter can be tunned on or off by users in the control panel, so your only censoring things yourself. Just to add one other reason for the censor goes back to the limitations of filtering, "obscene" words have a tendency to set off filters like the ones your school is employing. We certainly don't want one of the students at your school not being able to access this site to find out the great advantages of coal because someone used the f-bomb and I didn't see it.

traderfjp wrote:In NY they are already taxing out of state web sites and I'm sure other states will follow suit.

And they are being sued for it:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... ailer.html

And there is lot of business's in N.Y. that have lost a lot of business over it:

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/05 ... k-tax.html


Still think its good idea? This is a nightmare for the online business community. What's next, local government going to start imposing taxes on sales?

I read both articles and found them to be intersting. NY found a loop hole so they could tax companies like Buy.com and Amazon.com to raise revenue. Not suprising.

If the government is to regulate the internet content who decides what is ok and what is not? The uptight Christian Republican who thinks Pat Robertson is the new messiah or the godless liberal Democrat who thinks Pat Robertson is a dottering old fool.

Having a .adult or .xxx or whatever is not going to stop an underage web surfer from finding undesirable content if he or she wants to find it. Neither are the current web filters. The answer is for parents to monitor what their child is doing on the internet. Put the computer in a common room where parents can see what the child is doing and check on him/her, NOT in the kids bedroom with the door closed and actually teach the kid what is and is not appropriate.

How many times have you read about some kid on a chat site talking with some perv that wants to do more than have ice cream and cookies or how about the problems with facebook and myspace? Putting all the adult web sites in a separate domain will not stop that. Only the parents careful monitoring will stop or at least slow that down.

How many times have you heard someone say " my kid can operate the computer better than I could, I hardly know how to turn one on"? Well shame on them, they should learn how to operate it rather than complain about what thier child sees on the internet.

I realize that requires a lot of commitment on the part of parents and some are not up to the task but, to expect the government to to the job is unrealistic.

"Our government could require that all Internet providers filter out porno from all of the world."

Scary, scary, scary. Countries like communist China and North Korea do their best to regulate the Internet. Shall we aspire to be like them? I don't trust our pandering politicians to regulate my communications any more than I trust them to regulate what books and newspapers I read. My Mother In Law, a British citizen by birth, had two terms to describe the 49 per cent sheep that are so easily led to surrender their rights: "The muffin-faced multitude" and "The great unwashed". God help us that we should be governed by that crowd.

And this polling business is such total male bo vine excrmnt (trying to avoid the censor!). Seriously, go to this link and see the questions that led up to the 49% question. The survey, LIKE SO MANY WE SEE REPORTED, was designed to elicit a specific answer to the "regulation" question. If instead of citing Internet abuse, the survey had started with a couple questions about citizens of North Korea or Burma organizing successful resistance against their dictators, the exact same third question would have gotten a far lower "yes" response.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... 16_17_2008

Yep, and they want a Nanny State. The other 51% are Conservatives that cling to their guns and religion.