Internet Police

DaveTheMiller · Post by **DaveTheMiller** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 1:45 am

Ok heres a subject I think we will all disagree on, policing the internet.
The internet has certainly revolutionised the world, it has made it possible to converse with people on the other side of the world without being charged £8 a minute by BT, and we can write to one another without worrying the postman is going to dump the mail in someones garden.
As a learning tool it is magnificent, if I was at school now I'd be a straight A student because anything and everything can be researched online.
The plus points of the net are remarkable however there is a flip side. For example there are nasty porn and gore sites in existence, also sites that promote racism and show photographs of people being executed as though its something funny, and of course the fact anybody can pose as someone else, enter a forum and woo some impressionable teenager into meeting them which is highly dangerous.
So how do we police the net? Could ISP's like AOL and search engines like Google do more to flush out the scumbag element that make the net a dangerous place?
Or would that be an invasion of a persons rights?
Discuss.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:41 am

Putting out anythign you want no matter what = leave alone
All hacking, spamming, malware, viruses = police

Selie · Post by **Selie** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:39 am

Parents need to have a clue and know what their children are up to. Everyone I know who has run into problems with people on the internet did so because their parents weren't aware of what was going on in the children's lives enough to catch the problem. I speak from personal experience here. Way too many parents either forbid their children from using the internet or else allow complete freedom. I think it's a good idea for parents to go on the internet with their children, learn about what their children like on the internet (without making fun of them) and actually listen when their children talk about various online communities and interests, as well as discussing the reality of danger on the internet. Because it is very real. The internet is a place where children and young adults who feel out of touch with their lives can go to escape, a place where they can reach out to others like them and feel a sense of community that may be absent in their real life, but it's also a form of escapism and people need to be aware that if a child is spending too much time online, it may indicate problems in that child's real life. Internet isn't the source of the problem. It can be a symptom. It can also be an aid (for painfully shy children, it can give them a base of friends - but, in my experience, an often volatile one).

As for the subject of pornography - as long as everyone in the pornography is at the legal age of consent and consented to the acts and the recording of the acts, I don't care about it. I do object to young children being exposed to pornography, because it can be emotionally scarring to them. But again, I think parents need to teach their children to be web-savvy, and if their children are young enough, the parents should stay with them while they surf the internet. Net Nannies aren't very good; when I was in high school, my classmates could look at various pornographic sites online but hotmail was inaccessable. Nothing can adequately replace good hands-on parenting. But I don't object to porn being online, or as prominent and prevalent as it is. Clearly, our society wants porn. Lots of porn. Getting rid of the porn is just pretending that society doesn't want porn. I think the sooner we can accept that pornography appeals greatly to the vast majority of our population, the sooner we'll be able to form healthier attitudes about sex and possibly even form better relationships with people. That's just my opinion, coming from one of the .02% of the over-15 world who doesn't actually like porn - so maybe I'm putting words into the mouths of other people, I don't know.

As for the "scumbag element that make[s] the net a dangerous place," I don't agree that we can do this the way you're suggesting. You can complain all you want to about racist sites, but the sad truth is that once we start forbidding racist content, we're doing away with free speech. I guess that doesn't mean as much to you guys because the UK doesn't have the same rules, but once I start telling someone that he can't make a site about his beliefs because they offend me, then it's opened up for someone else to tell me that I can't mention something about my beliefs on my site because they offend her. You can't just shut something down because you don't like it or agree with it. That isn't right or fair.

But I'm getting into morality and stuff here, so I think I'll cut off before I go onto ANOTHER tangent.

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 8:24 am

I don't think the vast majority of people like porn. There are many people who do, but many of them are the same people. I know this because I was briefly into Internet security, especially how pay sites (like porn) handled their user base. Most usernames and passwords are interchangeable between several sites. People recycle their UN's/PW's, which is unwise but most people just don't know any better, and crackers use this ignorance against them.

I was surfing the Net a long time ago, and I inadvertantly stumbled across a site maintained by a young white supremacist. Racism offends me more than just about anything, but you would have been shocked to see how nonchalantly this kid talked about it. It was perfectly natural to him, and he voiced his opinions in such a calm, unassuming way that it was almost possible to believe him. His matter-of-fact attitude outraged me even more. I mean, he was condoning a nationwide ethnic cleansing! The first thing I thought was, this kid needs to be shut down before he influences anyone else. . . but that would be ludicrous. Free speech is guaranteed in this country (unless you make a Bush-hate site; then you get shut down the next day).

You may not like it, but you can usually ignore it. That's how the world works.

Florent · Post by **Florent** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 12:31 pm

Nazis + child porn : police.

All the rest is OK.

Disclaimer : I may have forgotten a few things

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 12:32 pm

Basically to police the internet is to police speech. You don't block access to the kiddie porn, you completely take out the poeple behind it and burn and destroy all their filth at the source - that's for the actual police. You don't try and spend millions blocking children from sites and information exchanges and forums just incase there is a bad element, you actually teach the children to be savy. You don't block anyone from saying what they want to say, you actually educate children so they have the tools and confidence to find their own voice and ideas, and not be influenced by hate and ignorance and the opinions of others.

After all, all this can be done in other medium too. Do we regulate or ban cameras, do we regulate or ban the paper and pen?. No. The scale is what scares people about the internet I think, but then again all it is doing is highlighting and magnifying the problems of our societies by letting them all intermingle and have a voice visible to all.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 12:36 pm

Flourent: Then Tom's post in the harry thread would jsut have been deleted because it would be safer to do that for this site than to leave it open to prosecution and try to explian the complex point he was making and why it shoudl be kept around! First casuality of free speech right there. : )

Florent · Post by **Florent** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 1:10 pm

Sure. I was just being overly schematic (see my mini disclaimer

). I totally agree with the educationnal approach you explained in your previous post.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 1:42 pm

i noted the disclaimer, don't worry : )

Florent · Post by **Florent** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:45 pm

good thing :)

DaveTheMiller · Post by **DaveTheMiller** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 8:06 pm

When I referred to that "scumbag element who make the net a dangerous place" I was thinking more on the lines of people who use chat rooms and forums to meet people in real life, but have bad motives for doing so.
I agree with Beowuuf about tracking down kiddie porn traders at the source and burning their filth, but I read a report in the paper some while back that the police were powerless to do this because most of these disgusting vile sites are created outside of this country.
Surely there should be some sort of international agreement and incentive to close these kinds of sites down and arrest the people involved.
I take the point about good parenting, that would be a great start, but how many parents do you think bought their kids a computer so they could get some peace and quiet while their child surfed away?
It's a tough subject all round but I definitely agree any sort of solution should start with parents.

BloodFromStone · Post by **BloodFromStone** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 8:54 pm

Just about all of the problems out there can be solved by good parenting, in my opinion. People try to point fingers and pass blame when kids kill each other, get pregnant, do drugs, or any number of other things that can ruin or take someone's life. It's not video games, it's not the internet, it's not movies... It's family and friends that make someone.