mdw
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Question for the Candidates - CDA III
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Dec 14 04:03 UTC 1998 |
My second question for the candidates has to do with CDA II. At least
for the moment, CDA II appears to be heading for oblivion. The
temporary restraining order has been extended to 1 feb 1999, with every
likelyhood of its being found unconstitutional early next year.
Nevertheless, it is quite likely that the people who put forward CDA and
CDA II will try again. Past and present board members have been
somewhat wishy-washy on this issue. At least one board member, while
professing every belief in free speech, was unwilling to risk personal
liberty and sacrifice private life in the protection of free speech on
grex. Another board member has indicated comfort with the notion of
eliminating certain forms of expression on the internet, those that some
might deem harmful to minors.
So my question for the candidates is, when CDA III happens, what will
you do? If there were a significant risk that continuing to operate grex
as an open access system would result in the possibility of you're
having to spend time in court, would you be willing to do so? What if
the risk were more serious, that you might personally be liable to jail
time for the actions of others on grex? One of the things that makes
grex different from much of the internet is our notion of open access
with no verification coupled with the notion of publishing and having a
long-term identification with those words. At what degree of personal
or corporate liability would you be willing to sacrifice our notion of
open registration and go to some form of closed registration or age
verification? You may, like most people, be partially sympathetic to the
ostensible purpose of CDA II and III, "protecting minors". If so, what
forms of expression do you think minors should be protected from seeing?
How would you craft CDA III to secure those protections, and what impact
would this have on grex?
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steve
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response 1 of 12:
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Dec 14 04:30 UTC 1998 |
This has to be the disaster scenario for Grex.
My personal feelings are such that I would be willing to fight
such a draconian law in every way possible. I am aware that doing
such could entail a certain amount of personal risk, and I am willing
to accept that.
However, the stance that Grex would ultimately make on such an
issue would have to come from the membership. If a vote on taking
some form of stance was not forthcoming by the membership I'd be
very uneasy about things. I would *hope* that I would not be in a
distinct minority on this, but I suppose I might be.
As for protecting minors, I simply do not think it is the job
of Grex to engage in this activity. Our protecing a minor who
comes from a deeply religious family is very likely to be different
from the child of parents who encourage open access to the net.
Thus there is nothing we could do to "protect" children where some
potential subset of parents would not scream.
I firmly believe that this is an area where parental control
is needed. Just as parents in the 50's checked out which playgrounds
their children played on, so today's parent need to look after the
current playgrounds, be they real or electronic.
In the end Grex might have to fold on this issue to remain
alive; if that happened Grex could become a focal point for
further protest. That could be a viable form of longer-term
strategy on this issue.
I wish I could be more specific on this issue, but the specifics
of "CDA version n.n" are going to matter very much.
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