response 151 of 382:

Jan 3 05:07 UTC 1996

Re 149 - Bingo.  Prodigy lost its course case ONLY BECAUSE they
were attempting to police the material on their system, and had
stated that they were.

response 153 of 382:

Jan 3 18:28 UTC 1996

  Re 148, I called Borders a few months ago to ask about their policy.
The person I talked to said they'd sell any book to minors, regardless
of sexual content.  She said there had been discussion of banning sales
of certain musical recordings to minors, based on the recording industry's
rating system, but there had was no policy regarding that at the time.
 
  Re 149/151, indeed, Prodigy was sued because a user posted damaging
information about a company, which adversely impacted their stock.
The court ruled against Prodigy, saying that they exercised tight
editorial control (though primarily against "bad" words and ideas),
and were thus responsible for what they allowed to be "published."
 
  A rating/censorship policy would open up Grex to new risks.  However,
no policy is risk-free.  I think there's a false notion that Grex can
take certain steps and then be "legal," with no chance of lawsuits or
criminal action.  Efforts should be made at reducing risk, but there
are no perfect solutions to the issues being discussed.

response 155 of 382:

Jan 4 08:55 UTC 1996

mdw says we are in a defensible position because they don't check ID at the
public library? I don't think so.

The public library does not offer stories like brandi.

The library offers a different ID card to children unless they have their
parents permission. And this is to protect against milder material.

I am somewhat comforted to know that Grex is not the only system on the 
internet that is making pornography available to anyone who wants to look 
for it. My comfort comes in knowing that we are not likely to be singled out 
for this behavior because their are far worse examples of it, not from 
any belief that this is proper.

I am not-at-all comforted to think that it is a matter of time before a 
webcrawler indexes that page, so that the rest of the world can easily find 
it. I wonder how many people type "sex" into search engines in a given day.

I am not talking about editorial control, like AOL imposed, which got them
into a pickle. I don't think banning smut introduces even the slightest 
extra risk.

If borders sells pornography to children, as implied by what Rob Argy wrote,
I'm shocked. I don't think they sell explicit sex fantasies, or if they do,
they are careful to whom they sell it. Since I do trust Rob to relate
correctly what he heard their policy to be, I doubt that they have anything
as controversial as this. Their decision was made to permit perhaps some 
indecent material on soundtracks. I would allow that stuff too. I would not
sit here and try to argue against providing dirty words. Kids learn those 
in school no matter what you try to do. That was a point I made in the letter 
I wrote to congressmen regarding the Exon amendment, which I find despicable.

I get a sense that many of you who disagree with me feel you can say that
parents should do a better job of supervising their children and then 
shirk your responsibility to the community. Please think 
what this means. I think you are placing your heads in the sand like an
ostrich, and refusing to recognize what is plain. It will not go away.
Our society DEMANDS that children be protected. You ignore this at your peril.

Exon is a bad overreaction. It is a reaction to a problem perceived by
society, but it seems not by some of you. Even the hated Exon amendment
applies only to what can be shown to minors.

Each board member will have to come to a personal decision about how to 
react. I believe Mary has a legitimate worry that board members might feel
unable to serve under certain circumstances. I can only speak for myself on 
this question, and I choose not to speculate on what I might do if such 
and such happened. I said I was uncomfortable. I hope that message is loud 
and clear.

response 157 of 382:

Jan 4 12:02 UTC 1996

A question: The public library may not let a minor check out a sexually
explicit book, and Border's may not let a minor buy sucj a thing, but does
either establish prevent a minor from looking at said material while they
are on the premisis? I think not. I don't think Border's or the Library
has "morality police" that wander around and take books out of the hands
of minors. Do either put such books up on high shelves? Do either put
such books in locked cases that require a customer/patron to ask for
them specially? I don't think so.

response 159 of 382:

Jan 4 22:30 UTC 1996

I have been trying to understand Steve's (srw) clearly heightened concerns
about the exposure of minor to pornography here (or in other venues). It
is as though he knows what is pornographic and what is not. I'm not sure I
do. I know what I *think* some *others* might consider pornographic and -
with a very wide gap between - what I think no one would (maybe), but I
can't draw a clear line. What I can think I can distinguish is well done
pornography (literary, artistic, skillful) and childish (!) pornography.
The latter I would like to see less prevalent everywhere - along with
other badly written, inartistic, expression. 

I think the best defense against junk literature is early exposure to fine
literature. I have never taken any steps to prevent my children from being
exposed to junk, but I have taken steps (because I enjoy it so much) to
enhance their exposure to better literature. I am therefore puzzled by the
seeming campaign to minimize the contact of children with junk literature
in the name of "decency" etc: the same effect can be gained in a positive
manner, with less injury to freedom of expression, by providing more
access (and encouragement) to the best. 

response 161 of 382:

Jan 5 04:07 UTC 1996

I stopped by Barnes & Noble today and asked about their policy.  They
won't sell certain books to minors without parental consent.  They have
a list of some books, and also allow the sales staff to judge what's
appropriate.

response 163 of 382:

Jan 5 07:26 UTC 1996

Thank you, Arnold, for taking the time to formulate that request.
I will be interested in seeing the answer. Thanks, also, Rob, for continuing
to canvas bookstores. I am pondering this question, and don't have a
definite answer worked out.

My posts have been more strident than usual, because I continue to get 
the sense that so many here dismiss this problem. Rane, I do not
know how to decide with any certainty what is pornographic to the extent that
we need to be concerned that children can view it. The court rulings have 
made it very hard to figure this out. One has to guess what a jury will 
consider to be within community standards. I do know that there is a fuzzy
line which we should not cross, as far as freely displaying
explicit material. While there is certainly stuff much worse than brandi out
there, this seemed to me a clear cut example.

The poster himself admits it would cause problems if seen by children. 
What safeguards do we have to prevent this. New HTML standards perhaps will 
allow tagging inappropriate material. This would be a boon, because instead
of relying on voluntary compliance by curious youngsters (low effectiveness),
we would be able to give the parents back the control they should have, by 
permitting them to require their kids to use filtering browsers, sensitive
to such tags. We don't have this today, though. Parents have no control.

response 165 of 382:

Jan 5 23:40 UTC 1996

  I don't agree with either reason, Steve.  If its bandwidth consumption
were higher, exceeding what Grex considers "too much bandwidth" (by some
objective measurement), I'd support its removal.  But saying this one
consumes too much, while the comparable #1 bandwidth consumer a couple
weeks ago did not consume too much, is capricious.  As to the content-
based reason, some people have proposed ratings rather than removal,
with age verification to access "adult" material.
 
  Anyone is welcome to ask the owner to remove the web page, and cite
whatever reasons they want.  But if "Grex" removes it, I don't think it
should be done without a consistent policy that could also be applied to
other web pages.

response 167 of 382:

Jan 6 08:10 UTC 1996

The band width consumption for brandi for the period from 1/1 to 1/5 was 
1.48 MB/day

I agree with Rob Argy that we must have a consistent policy. 
You will recall that when I first mentioned this page it was in the context
that I felt we needed to reconsider the "Acceptable Use Policy" for Grex.

In fact, we have no stated policy for bandwidth limitation either.
Let's state it, at least.  The second hoggiest page is 
/u/nmarrale/www/ampfaq.html with 281K / day, about one fifth the amount.
However, if we are going to have limits, they should be absolute ones, and not
relative ones.

I certainly support ratings in preference to removal, but for now there is
no way to limit the audience of web pages. So we are discussing removal, in the
sense of being no longer visible over the web.  It is a related question
whether it should be visible to youngsters who log in here  and look around. 

I believe that below a certain age this material is harmless, as it will 
not be understood at all. By the time kids are entering puberty, it is 
much harder to argue that they will turn away in disgust, or fail to 
understand what it is talking about.

response 169 of 382:

Jan 6 11:30 UTC 1996

<robh is in 100% agreement with rcurl on that one>

So once again, the question is:  If we do impose bandwidth
limitations, what do we do when someone exceeds them?
Deactivate the page?  Delete the page?  Delete the account?
Run in circles, scream and shout?

response 171 of 382:

Jan 6 16:39 UTC 1996

  I also agree with scg's & rcurl's opinions about "protecting our
children."  Morally, I don't have a prob with minors who choose to
read Brandi.  Legally, I can see where a problem arises for Grex.

response 173 of 382:

Jan 7 00:00 UTC 1996

Are you suggesting that there is more pornography on Grex than is
present in general society in conformance with community standards (in
the libraries, being passed around in schools, on the idiot-box, etc)?

In regard to bandwidth - I suggest that an up/down load be terminated
when it reaches a certain byte limit. This will tend to decrease the
placing of excessive files on Grex (exception as permitted by staff -
and I would encourage them to restrict exceptions to mostly clearly
educational materials).