Get Your Story Straight…
Don’t you hate it when reporters aren’t paying attention to the story? They end up coming out with biased articles like this:
Wireless industry association CTIA has just announced its “Wireless Content Guidelines,” a set of standards/procedures crafted in conjunction with the major carriers that aims to give parents more flexibility in limiting their children’s wireless internet access. The Guidlines consist of two parts: 1. A pledge by carriers to divide their portals into “General” and “Restricted” (i.e. dirty) content, with carriers promising not to offer restricted content until parental controls are in place, and 2. A plan to implement SurfNanny-type controls on mobile handsets that block certain sites or restrict usage altogether. While on the surface this seems to be an altruistic gesture on the part of the wireless industry, we have a sneaking suspicion that much like the adult industry’s push for a .xxx domain (under the guise of protecting children), the carriers are actually just getting all their ducks in a row so they can finally start unleashing all sorts of pornographic content on the unsuspecting public.
It’s not that the reporting on the actual decision of CTIA to create guidelines that makes this article false, but the ’suspicion’ raised about the adult industry. In mid September, I made a post about the .xxx domain stating that “Both anti-porn advocates and porn sites have objected to the new domain“. So, why then is Engadget claiming that the adult industry ever pushed for a .xxx domain?
For the real story behind the move to create an .xxx domain, click here. You will find that the idea was not pitched by anyone in the adult industry nor was it supported as such. The truth is, pornographers know that if the .xxx domain exists, they may eventually be segregated by the government to operate strictly within the domain and they will be banished from the mainstream Internet. Unlike the guy that pitched the idea, pornographers aren’t that stupid.
I have no opinion on the new Wireless Content Guidelines unless it affects Kitkast. Kitka out.
November 9th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
I think Sam Sugar offered the best reply to the whole .xxx fiasco. He likened it to a library. You build a kids wing that all the books contained within are screened to be kids appropriate [his solution was a .kids domain] and then rather than attempting to block adult sites and the various questionably explicit or pornographic that don’t qualify for .xxx or break the rules, you can feel free to let your kids wonder unsupervised through the .kids internet world [or in this analogy the kids wing of the library] because there is nothing wrong for them to see.
Unlike a movie rental place where all the explicit stuff is in a back room, but there are plenty of R and PG13 box covers that may not show sex and complete nudity but are shocking enough that most parents wouldn’t want their kids looking at them.
It just makes so much more sense to section off kid safe stuff than adult only stuff. Rather than fighting a daily assult over what is decent for EVERY new webpage, its easier to have kid friendly sites submit for review. Its a much more elegant solution.
If only Sam Sugar were in politics. I think we’d all be more satisfied.
November 9th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
I hearfully agree with you, robber_baron. In fact if you link to my previous post on the subject you’ll see that I actually trackbacked to Sam Sugar’s entry about the .kids domain! Smart minds think alike…
November 10th, 2005 at 11:40 am
The debate on both sides is, IMHO, moot.
When you create a walled garden, if it’s got something inside that people want, they’ll go inside and get it. Prohibition for something like “sex entertainment” simply doesn’t work, no matter how hard you try to make it to get. Simply walling off the fruity garden and putting a sign out front to tell people what’s inside the walls will only make it more identifiable, more accessable, and more attractive to the audience that consumes it. In the end you can’t keep people away from what they want by building a wall around it and saying, in effect, don’t eat the forbidden fruit inside.
Incedentally, Blockbuster has “Youth Restricted Viewing” stickers that closely resemble bullzeye targets in bright red and white colors on soft-porn offerings right alongside the usual R, PG-13, etc. offerings. To me, that’s hardly a “walled garden,” it’s more of a bright and flashy neon sign saying “sex inside, rent me, sex inside…”
The .xxx domain is a fiasco for several reasons, mostly due to the technical structure of the Internet. We can legislate all we want about the Internet, but I (or anyone else) can point a browser at non-.xxx’d sites in Amsterdam and get live streaming sex shows with a credit card. How do you legislate against that? Start putting filters on all the IP points of entry to the US? That’s *exactly* what China does.
There’s a flip side to creating a “walled garden” for xxx type entertainment. It creates a “safe and approved” place for it to happen. In effect, the efforts to “contain” porn and sex work only legitimize it for adults that consume it. It makes it *explicitly legal*.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
[…] What the USA Today article neglects to mention is that the Wireless industry association CTIA has already announced its “Wireless Content Guidelines” which is meant to solve this problem. So, it seems all we have left barking about the danger of porn is right-wing activists hunting for new things to boycott: Pick a cause and join a boycott. […]