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April 20, 2006 11:35 PM PDT
Gonzales calls for mandatory Web labeling law
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A mandatory rating system will "prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at an event in Alexandria, Va.
The Bush administration's proposal would require commercial Web sites to place "marks and notices" to be devised by the Federal Trade Commission on each sexually explicit page. The definition of sexually explicit broadly covers depictions of everything from sexual intercourse and masturbation to "sadistic abuse" and close-ups of fully clothed genital regions.
"I hope that Congress will take up this legislation promptly," said Gonzales, who gave a speech about child exploitation and the Internet to the federally funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The proposed law is called the Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006.
A second new crime would threaten with imprisonment Web site operators who mislead visitors about sex with deceptive "words or digital images" in their source code--for instance, a site that might pop up in searches for Barbie dolls or Teletubbies but actually features sexually explicit photographs. A third new crime appears to require that commercial Web sites not post sexually explicit material on their home page if it can be seen "absent any further actions by the viewer."
A critic of the proposal said that its requirements amount to an unreasonable imposition on Americans' rights to free expression. In particular, a mandatory rating system backed by criminal penalties is "antithetical to the First Amendment," said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.
During his speech, Gonzales also warned that Internet service providers must begin to retain records of their customers' activities to aid in future criminal prosecutions--a position first reported by CNET News.com--and indicated that legislation might be necessary there as well. Internet service providers say they already cooperate with police and appear to be girding for a political battle on Capitol Hill over new regulations they view as intrusive.
An idea once proposed by Democrats
The Bush administration's embrace of a rating system backed by criminal penalties is uncannily reminiscent of where the Clinton administration and a Democratic member of Congress were a decade ago.
In the mid-1990s, the then-nascent Internet industry began backing the Platform for Internet Content Selection, or PICS. The idea was simple: let Web sites self-rate, or let a third-party service offer ratings, and permit parents to set their browsers to never show certain types of content. Netscape and Microsoft soon agreed to support it in their browsers.
At a White House summit in July 1997 hosted by President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, the head of the Lycos search engine proposed that only rated pages would be indexed. (Bob Davis, the president of Lycos at the time, said: "I threw a gauntlet to other search engines in today's meeting saying that collectively we should require a rating before we index pages.") Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state, suggested that misrating a Web site should be a federal crime. And Australian government officials began talking about making self-rating mandatory.
See more CNET content tagged:
Alberto Gonzales,
Bush Administration,
crime,
Lycos Inc.,
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Links to Barbie doll sites.
I hate when the government exagerates to create scare tactics for passing unnecessary laws.
I suspect Gonzales has alterior motives.
You want your kids to be safe? Spend more time with them, you people!
Get a life is right!
gawdess
Now almost all spam is sent from China.
There's been an INCREASE in spam since the anti-spam law became effective.
I just don't like the insuler attitude countries take because it gets us nowhere in this global age.
First they try to sound like they care (with no global standards) and then one country abuses it too much because they are clueless. Then are labeled a terrorist and more resource wars. Illegal immigrant s are taken advantage of to avoid cross-border laws etc...
The Bush admin, like previous admins, continues to ignore the rest of the world.
?The only times courts allow product labeling is with commercial speech?advertisements."
I am not sure what this persons definition of 'product' is and this is what they allow now so I don't understand how that means the law would be 'struck down.'
Anything put up on the Internet is being produced as a product UNLESS it is not really being given to you under an EULA (End User License Agreement). A sniggle room contract that lets companies not really give you the product.
enough clue you are at a sexually-driven website.
People don't stumble on it because they aren't looking for it, and if
they aren't they leave. As for kids getting on to sites, it still should
be a parental issue and not a goverment mandate.
Gonzales should be tried for war crimes in the hague.
Are you regretting voting for these people yet?
I don't understand why America is the land of the prudes. If you look to our European counterparts, they have nudity and "porn" all over the place, yet have a lower rate of sex related crimes. How does that work? Why is it that we scoff at the human body sans clothes? For a "Christian" administration, they should surely understand that what we have was given by God. And judging by the fact that the first humans ran naked through the garden of eden, apparently God wasn't concerned with it. So what gives?
</rant>
By GUY TREBAY
Published: April 20, 2006
IT would probably require a stopwatch to clock the lag time between sin and redemption lately, as media disgrace is transformed into a bargaining chip in a celebrity's career often before a bad boy or girl has stumbled home from the crime scene and showered off the taint of shame.
[http://Nikon Inc. After rehab, Kate Moss came back to advertising campaigns.|http://Nikon Inc. After rehab, Kate Moss came back to advertising campaigns.]
What seems evident is that public humiliation has lost its barb. There might have been a time when being caught on camera in flagrante delicto or hoovering up lines of coke would have ended a career. But as Paris Hilton proved, being videotaped by one's boyfriend in a zonked-out state and naked on all fours does not put a hitch in one's five-year plan. If anything, the bubble-gum divinity apotheosized on the basis of a homemade pornography loop, a moronic catchphrase and a mental vacancy cavernous enough for storing yellowcake appears set to enjoy a media half-life about as long as that of a spent plutonium rod.
All this will do, is to force the website operators to operate offshore, just like the gambling does now.
If this goes through, then ALL media will probably be next, including all MEDICAL books, library books, MOVIES rated "R" and so forth .... so just require all Computer and Browser Vendors to require the equivalent of a "V" chip in the computer or software .... WAIT ... I think that someone already does that with a ... nanny ... software or something ...
We just do not need Government getting into the World morality structure and pass their values and force them upon everyone.
It is time that each person regain their own responsibility for themselves and quit being responsible for everyone BUT themselves.
Laws and actions like this proposed law are designed to punish persons running a business, from parents that do not know what their kids are doing and have not given them proper guidance as to what and how they should conduct their lives.
Laws like this will never solve that problem and only will make criminals out of people that "break the law" because someone STUPID looked at their wares.
Time to rethink how the U.S. should dictate to the world, proper American values.
Just my $0.02
You can google images for the most innocent of intentions and get a surprise, so will we send Page and Brin to the Hoosgow also?
Howsabout we just take responsibility for our own kids, no computers in the bedroom, laptops are in Mom and Dad's room for the night, and if we, as adults, stumble on something nasty, just hit the back button.
proposed legislation does nothing to impede our personal
freedom. Anyone can still access all the pornographic material
they want, but parents now have a tool for blocking such
material from their children. This is just common sense, and
really nothing new. For example, we require that adult
businesses cannot admit minors within their premises, and may
not be located within a certain distance of a church or school.
Any adult, however is completely free to patronize such
businesses. We prohibit the sale of pornographic magazines to
minors, and require that their covers be obscured on the news
stand if they feature any pornographic image. Any adult,
however, is still completely free to buy such magazines. We
prohibit minors from purchasing alcohol and tobacco, and
prohibit them from entering any establishment that serves
alcohol. Yet such businesses still thrive, based on patronage
from legally adult customers. The legislation proposed by
Gonzales just gives us more choice, if we choose not to be
bombarded with porn. On the flip side, it could be good for
adult businesses, because now anyone who is seeking porn will
be able to more easily find it! I fail to see how this is any crimp
on freedom of speech, unless you are talking about the freedom
to send porn to minors over the objection of their parents.
Gary Coryer
adding features to phones to conceal the fact that they still SUCK
for talking on.
Seems to me, spammers and phishers are much bigger problems.
Focus on catching them and you'll net most of the smut peddlers
as a bonus.
Otherwise this proposal smacks of a faith-based internet.
Also the hit today & are gone tomorrow in many cases. So wakeup & take responsibility of your children's actions & most of all keep your eye on them at all times!!! If you can't do that then get rid of the Internet connection that you're/ they're using!
- International application of websites labelling
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by
April 21, 2006 9:00 AM PDT
- Even I fully agree to support the idea to protect children, imposing such labelling internationaly is going to demonstrate the US Government extending its dominance in a new field (same for passing data to the CIA and NSA !) Guess that Verisign will propose to be the business providing the label (for a fee ? ) or carriers justifying additional charges for such services !
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