ALA on Filtering

[Jerry Kuntz]

earl young wrote:
> 
> Who will pay for development of "secure, ad-free" search engines?  The
> major engine people have no reason to do it - they are in the ad
> business, after all.

I was imagining (!) that the search engine vendors could easily set up a
secure web site--password verified--available to schools, libraries, and
other educational institutions that would present their search interface
without ads. Why would they do it? To help market their search engine
software to the educational field, for one thing. Public pressure, for
another--analagous to the mimimal limits that public pressure has led to
limit the most pernicious Saturday morning TV advertising.
  
>And why do ads scare you more than some of the
> other stuff on the net?  I am not trying to be argumentative - I just do
> not understand how ads cause "concern."

Again, imagine Saturday morning TV advertising, which pitches things
that don't work well at kids that don't them that costs money they don't
have. Now imagine that advertising exponentially magnified in its effect
through the magic of interactive media. Plenty of reason for concern.

			Jerry Kuntz
			Ramapo Catskill Library System
			jkuntz at rcls.org