From: "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 15:15:24 +0800
To: Troy Denkinger <troy_d@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Filtering out Queers is OK
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960719154550.0073d960@popd.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.94.960719171450.359A-100000@gak>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Fri, 19 Jul 1996, Troy Denkinger wrote:

> We have an interesting problem here, though.  You say that the government
> has no right to tell you how to set your filter; no doubt about that, imo.
> However, most people who use these filters are going to be quite happy to
> allow some corporate entity the privilege of setting their filters for them
> and, if the consumer should ask about criteria and such, they are told that
> that's a trade secret.  So, people will be allowing a corporate entity that
> exists for profit to set their filters for them.  This is a very scary thing
> and perhaps even more frightening than having the government do it.  I think
> that the people on this list tend to maintain a healthy scepticism toward
> the various TLAs, but we have to remember that a large, multinational
> corporation has not even got a sense of a greater "national good" or even
> "national security" to guide it.

However, parents are free not to purchase filtering software that claims that
their criteria is a trade secret.  I don't see this as a threat at all.  The
parents who refuse to buy this software don't have to worry about the filtering
software preventing little Johnny from visiting a site that has information
on homosexuality or subscribing to a computer science mailing list (which are
apparently blocked by some filtering software for some reason).

- -- Mark

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