|
|||
A poster on Metafilter put it well: "Congress makes its annual re-discovery that not everything on the Internet is child-friendly." I don't think it's really news, of course. What it actually is is posturing. Politicians need headlines at home, and they don't want headlines which are negative or mixed. Controversy isn't needed; what they want is to make a strong stand on a safe subject, so that the people back home can see that Representative Donkey Is Working For US or Senator Elephant Is Serving Our Needs and so we better vote for him at the next election. Heh. Which is why so much attention is being paid in Congress to such useless subjects as child porn (there just ain't that many active pedophiles out there, folks; this is an example of misleading vividness) or access to porn by kids. Yup, it happens. Horny teenage boys like to look at pictures of tits. (Hell, so do I.) Laws won't change that, nor will technology. This is an issue of trust between kids and parents, and the kids will always cheat, some anyway. That's what kids do; there is always a struggle between parents and kids where the parents try to maintain control and the kids try to gain freedom. Thus has it always been. But that makes it a good subject for a demagogue, who can be shocked (shocked!) to find that there are actually pictures of naked women out there and that sometimes kids get to see them. Sheesh. Hasn't Representative Waxman got anything better to do, like say balancing the federal budget and getting it passed on time? (discuss) |
|||
