CDA

[Ronnie Morgan]

At 11:18 AM 6/26/97 -0700, you wrote:
>This was more or less expected.  Any opinions on how this affects the
>filtering movement?

No change here, filtering is currently the most effective way of protecting
our children.  

The CDA will most likely be modified to deal with the freedom of speech
issue.  And I'm beginning to see why "freedom of speech" is even an issue.
It appears that the arguement is, if an adult is accidently banned from a
particular site because they were unable to prove that they were an adult,
then that persons "freedom of speech" is being stomped on (to paraphase, of
course).  Pretty lame excuse, if you ask me.  (It's about as lame as saying
that because filtering will not be 100% effective, it is not worth anyones
time.)  I don't believe this would ever happen, an adult is going to have
the required information needed to prove he/she is an adult.  If anything,
the chances of a child getting access is much MUCH greater than an adult
getting blocked to a site.

One thing I did agree with in the judgement is about the word "indecent".
It certainly will need to be defined better in CDA2.

But it was agreed that children should be protected, the government just
has to come up with a better way.  

Actually, *we* should come up with a better way, but most people don't want
to talk about that aspect of the filtering issue...  (At least now I can't
be accused of stifling the debate since the debate has been dead for some
time now, at least on this list it has.)

Ronnie