Responses To Counter-Arguments

Responses to Counter-Arguments

(Last revised 1/23)

You want government censorship...

No, I don't. My point is simply that companies should be responsible about the content they give to children using the Web. Most young children are not "looking for trouble," but trying to navigate the Web for learning and fun. Every company providing Web services used by children as well as adults has editorial standards. None of them would run ads for Playboy. I'm just advocating for higher standards than those that resulted in that Redbook ad popping up on children's computer screens in October.

Censorship is unnecessary if children can explore age-appropriate educational and entertaining Web sites, maintained by service providers who make a "good faith" effort not to run ads with sexual or violent material or links to any inappropriate material. This is a moderate and targeted proposal for responsible self-regulation.

Technology is available now, and more is on the way, to enable responsible parents and educators to filter such material from children. There's no need for businesses to self-censor...

Some very responsible parents and educators have decided that, at least in classrooms where teachers are present, it can be better not to filter out content behind the scenes. In this way, children can learn to take responsibility for making judgements about inappropriate content, and for immediately stopping and backing out of any such page.

And again, though we may not want to think about this, there are children whose parents will not use filtering technologies. They shouldn't be abandoned further and left to defend themselves against the actions of irresponsible business people who fail to exercise simple good judgement.

Calling editorial standards "self-censorship" is no substitute for reasoned debate about corporate responsibility and appropriate content for services used by children.

It's up to parents to protect their children, and if some aren't doing so, it's not the rest of society's responsibility to make up for it--or be punished with businesses' self-censorship...

Of course parents are responsible for their children. But the children whose parents do not or cannot live up to their responsibility should not be exposed to sexually provocative or violent ads, or solicitations to visit Web pages with sexual or violent material as they, for example, do their homework.

Is it punishment, or responsible adherence to minimum standards of decency, for us adults to forgo displaying and looking at a few gratuitously provocative ads so that children will not be unnecessarily upset--especially those children using the Web to seek refuge from abusive situations at home?

Children don't HAVE to use these services to use the Web...

You might try deleting your bookmarks and using no search services for a couple of days. Maybe children's Web search services will exist in the future, but for now there are none. And children in schools around the country, as young as eight years old, are already being taught to use these services.

You're blowing this out of proportion. This is the least of the problems kids face on the Web. The real problem is individuals who post pornography, or try to entrap children, and don't care at all what anyone thinks. Corporations, after all, do have to worry about public relations.

True, this isn't pornography. But it's material that is inappropriate for young children nonetheless.

It's important not to be heavy-handed when it comes to ensuring the Web is safe for children. Certainly some individuals put up pages with much worse material than the Redbook ad, and children can accidentally find pornographic material. But we don't need heavy-handed interventions. We shouldn't wield the blunt instrument of government censorship and punish everyone for the actions of a few irresponsible individuals. However, neither should we tolerate it when children, minding their own business and conducting innocent searches, have inappropriate material pushed on them by business people who ought to know better.

It's important not to be naive about threats to children's safety on the Web. A mere glance at the history of increasing sex and violence in television programming reveals the error of imagining that corporations don't threaten the welfare of children on the Internet. Indeed, the invasions of privacy and targeted advertising already being implimented provide ample evidence of potential new abuses of power, some of which could hit vulnerable children particularly hard.

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