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> Things have never worked that way for any other medium. they've been working that way for every other medium. Some movies are good for kids, some are full of

> Things have never worked that way for any other medium. they've been working that way for every other medium. Some movies are good for kids, some are full of sex and gore. Parents have the responsibility to keep their kids from watching movies with content they don't want their kids to see. It's the same with TV shows and video games and books and music and plays and puppet shows. All of those mediums exist, and some content will be good for kids and other content is not intended for them. It has always been the job of parents to make sure they aren't sitting in their kids in front of things they don't want them to see/hear. >Many parents are going to a bad job at monitoring their kid's internet... As a strict parent, it sucks being stricter than all the other parents, "Being a parent is hard and some people do it better than others" is not a valid reason to censor content for everyone regardless of their age, or for forcing everyone to hand over personal information and identify themselves to access uncensored content.

kube-system 4y ago
All of your examples are situations where the law in many countries does require content providers to safeguard children from consuming adult content regardless of the intervention of their parents.
- autoexec 4y ago
  I can't speak to non-US countries, but there is no law in the US that requires a bookstore, a used video game store, or a cable TV provider to prevent children from seeing things their parents don't want them exposed to. Neither Comcast or HBO are going around checking IDs before airing Game of Thrones. I'm curious about which countries would require such a thing.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    V-CHIP and ratings information in broadcasts are required by law. Comcast and HBO refuse to sell their services to minors, and their products all support parental controls. Brick and mortar stores open to children do not display pornography, and those that do, prohibit entry to children. Providing this material to them is a crime. Some places in the US did have laws regarding ESRB ratings on video games until SCOTUS recently overturned them. etc.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      > V-CHIP and ratings information in broadcasts are required by law. Ratings and V-chip use aren't enforced by law however. Ratings are intended to help parents decide what to allow their kids to watch, not to make the choice for adults or require adults to prove they are over a certain age to access content. V-chips give parents a tool to help block some things when and if they decide to, but most people never use it. > Comcast and HBO refuse to sell their services to minors ISPs don't sell their services to minors either. Adults sign up for services and it's their job to decide what their own children see on those services. > Brick and mortar stores open to children do not display pornography They do in the US. Any child can walk into Barnes & Noble and see porn on the shelves for sale, or open a book and read graphic descriptions of any number of sexual and violent acts. At the Barnes & Noble near me, porn is kept closer to the children's books than bibles are. Actually, any kid can walk into the store and open a bible and read descriptions of sexual and violent acts. Libraries also do not police what content children can access within their walls. > Providing this material to them is a crime. Not at all, as shown above. > Some places in the US did have laws regarding ESRB ratings on video games until SCOTUS recently overturned them. etc. Another example of an overbroad and dangerous California law designed to "protect the children" and it's a damn good thing it was struck down by the courts. The government has no business policing what media I can see as an adult or in policing what media I can show to my own children.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        My claim was simply that some safeguards exist by law, which is the case. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/v-chip-putting-restrictions-what-your-children-watch https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/v-chip-putting-restrict... https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-profane-broadcasts https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr... https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470 https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2009/title-2c/2c-34/2c-34-3 https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2009/title-2c/2c-34/...
yamtaddle 4y ago
> they've been working that way for every other medium. Some movies are good, some are full of sex and gore. Parents have the responsibility to keep their kids from watching movies with content they don't want their kids to see. Movie theaters and video rental places tend to refuse to serve minors for X or R material, and (if they look quite young) even PG-13 films. Stores may and often do refuse to sell R-rated films to minors. It may require active parental assistance for a minor to see those kinds of things (before the Internet, anyway—which is kinda the point of this whole discussion) and, even if enforcement is imperfect, surely serves to limit how much of that material even a very motivated kid can practically see (again, pre Internet, I mean). Also, kids have to get to those kinds of places, which can be pretty damn hard for them to do without a parent at least knowing they're out doing something, if not specifically what. Broadcast TV stations risk FCC action if they show anything too outrageous when kids may be around, and have further restrictions even in night-time hours. These behaviors are due to a combination of actual government regulation, and ongoing or historical credible threats of regulation if these industries didn't police themselves well-enough, which prompted the creation and enforcement of things like the MPAA's rating system (plus some now-defunct frameworks like the Comic Books Code or the Hays Code, both of which were much stricter than anything we'd likely accept these days—but for the "what's historically been within the Overton window of the freedom-loving United States?" perspective, those aren't that old and did co-exist with and apply to modern mass media, so still have some relevance). The closest analog we have that I can think of is cable TV, since it's in the home and offers a whole lot of content, and even that tends to self-censor to a substantial degree and doesn't offer many of the worst things the Internet does at all—even on premium channels, which are another thing an adult has to actively work to bring into their house, totally separable from the rest of what cable offers. Libraries are less-restricted and librarians seem to enjoy providing things a bit subversive (which is great) but I bet even lots of librarians would ask to talk to a parent before lending out certain books, let alone R-rated films, to young kids. Support from outside entities—including, and largely, due to government action or threat of same—for parents to control what their kids see and hear is, as far as I can tell, the norm since fairly early in the days of modern mass media. It's the Internet's model that's an aberration, requiring parents to take active steps to keep prevent kids from seeing hardcore porn or extreme violence or whatever on the same device they have to use to do homework, rather than having to take active steps to enable seeing those things, as they'd have to in most other contexts. Isn't it? Which doesn't necessarily mean these kinds of measures are a good idea, but I don't think "parents have always had to actively work to keep their kids from being exposed to awful stuff without substantial help from government and the private sector" really holds up, unless I'm missing something. The Internet's unprecedented in its reach and being something that's basically required in a modern household, and required to allow kids some access to (again, it's not really optional for school anymore), but even other far less necessary media have had effective, if not perfectly iron-clad and universal, age restrictions imposed by businesses and the government. Right?

kube-system 4y ago

All of your examples are situations where the law in many countries does require content providers to safeguard children from consuming adult content regardless of the intervention of their parents.

autoexec 4y ago
I can't speak to non-US countries, but there is no law in the US that requires a bookstore, a used video game store, or a cable TV provider to prevent children from seeing things their parents don't want them exposed to. Neither Comcast or HBO are going around checking IDs before airing Game of Thrones. I'm curious about which countries would require such a thing.
- kube-system 4y ago
  V-CHIP and ratings information in broadcasts are required by law. Comcast and HBO refuse to sell their services to minors, and their products all support parental controls. Brick and mortar stores open to children do not display pornography, and those that do, prohibit entry to children. Providing this material to them is a crime. Some places in the US did have laws regarding ESRB ratings on video games until SCOTUS recently overturned them. etc.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > V-CHIP and ratings information in broadcasts are required by law. Ratings and V-chip use aren't enforced by law however. Ratings are intended to help parents decide what to allow their kids to watch, not to make the choice for adults or require adults to prove they are over a certain age to access content. V-chips give parents a tool to help block some things when and if they decide to, but most people never use it. > Comcast and HBO refuse to sell their services to minors ISPs don't sell their services to minors either. Adults sign up for services and it's their job to decide what their own children see on those services. > Brick and mortar stores open to children do not display pornography They do in the US. Any child can walk into Barnes & Noble and see porn on the shelves for sale, or open a book and read graphic descriptions of any number of sexual and violent acts. At the Barnes & Noble near me, porn is kept closer to the children's books than bibles are. Actually, any kid can walk into the store and open a bible and read descriptions of sexual and violent acts. Libraries also do not police what content children can access within their walls. > Providing this material to them is a crime. Not at all, as shown above. > Some places in the US did have laws regarding ESRB ratings on video games until SCOTUS recently overturned them. etc. Another example of an overbroad and dangerous California law designed to "protect the children" and it's a damn good thing it was struck down by the courts. The government has no business policing what media I can see as an adult or in policing what media I can show to my own children.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      My claim was simply that some safeguards exist by law, which is the case. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/v-chip-putting-restrictions-what-your-children-watch https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/v-chip-putting-restrict... https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-profane-broadcasts https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr... https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470 https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2009/title-2c/2c-34/2c-34-3 https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2009/title-2c/2c-34/...

yamtaddle 4y ago

> they've been working that way for every other medium. Some movies are good, some are full of sex and gore. Parents have the responsibility to keep their kids from watching movies with content they don't want their kids to see. Movie theaters and video rental places tend to refuse to serve minors for X or R material, and (if they look quite young) even PG-13 films. Stores may and often do refuse to sell R-rated films to minors. It may require active parental assistance for a minor to see those kinds of things (before the Internet, anyway—which is kinda the point of this whole discussion) and, even if enforcement is imperfect, surely serves to limit how much of that material even a very motivated kid can practically see (again, pre Internet, I mean). Also, kids have to get to those kinds of places, which can be pretty damn hard for them to do without a parent at least knowing they're out doing something, if not specifically what. Broadcast TV stations risk FCC action if they show anything too outrageous when kids may be around, and have further restrictions even in night-time hours. These behaviors are due to a combination of actual government regulation, and ongoing or historical credible threats of regulation if these industries didn't police themselves well-enough, which prompted the creation and enforcement of things like the MPAA's rating system (plus some now-defunct frameworks like the Comic Books Code or the Hays Code, both of which were much stricter than anything we'd likely accept these days—but for the "what's historically been within the Overton window of the freedom-loving United States?" perspective, those aren't that old and did co-exist with and apply to modern mass media, so still have some relevance). The closest analog we have that I can think of is cable TV, since it's in the home and offers a whole lot of content, and even that tends to self-censor to a substantial degree and doesn't offer many of the worst things the Internet does at all—even on premium channels, which are another thing an adult has to actively work to bring into their house, totally separable from the rest of what cable offers. Libraries are less-restricted and librarians seem to enjoy providing things a bit subversive (which is great) but I bet even lots of librarians would ask to talk to a parent before lending out certain books, let alone R-rated films, to young kids. Support from outside entities—including, and largely, due to government action or threat of same—for parents to control what their kids see and hear is, as far as I can tell, the norm since fairly early in the days of modern mass media. It's the Internet's model that's an aberration, requiring parents to take active steps to keep prevent kids from seeing hardcore porn or extreme violence or whatever on the same device they have to use to do homework, rather than having to take active steps to enable seeing those things, as they'd have to in most other contexts. Isn't it? Which doesn't necessarily mean these kinds of measures are a good idea, but I don't think "parents have always had to actively work to keep their kids from being exposed to awful stuff without substantial help from government and the private sector" really holds up, unless I'm missing something. The Internet's unprecedented in its reach and being something that's basically required in a modern household, and required to allow kids some access to (again, it's not really optional for school anymore), but even other far less necessary media have had effective, if not perfectly iron-clad and universal, age restrictions imposed by businesses and the government. Right?