Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Internet Safety In and Out
With the constant influx of new material onto the Internet, community, family and individual safety can no longer be maintained by a one-sided approach. We must step up the pressure for international laws penalizing the authors of soul-numbing Internet trash: I refer chiefly to pornography. At the bare minimum, we must insist that morally controversial material be easily filterable by requiring it to bear a distinctive tag (such as .xxx). At the same time, we must intensify our commitment to a personal moral standard so that we can recognize and leave dangerous and corrupting sites instantly. Only a serious, sustained effort on both the individual and the community front will be enough to overcome the undesirable effects of a bottomless fountain of digital information.
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2 comments:
I agree. I do hope the pornography industry, with all their billions of dollars, decides to at least protect children through more creative means.
Have you heard of Covenant Eyes monitoring and filtering programs? It is a unique program on the market because it gives the user flexibility to filter or simply monitor the Internet or both. A good filtering program is very helpful for children and families, but a good monitoring program is great for adults and children alike who want to be accountable to others about where they go online.
Covenant Eyes monitoring program simply tracks (without blocking) everywhere someone goes online. Then each part of each web page is rated and scored for its content (scores are based on obscene or pornographic material). Users choose 2 or 3 people that they want to receive a detailed "accountability report" of all their online activity (emails to them or available to see online 24/7). What this does is it allows complete freedom to the person using the Internet, but it takes away the anonymity of online activity; people are more likely to exorcise self-control when they know that others will be reviewing their whereabouts online.
I hadn't heard about that - it sounds like a great tool. Again, I think we need to hit this issue on many fronts.
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