In response to a query on what EFF wa doing to stop the Exon mess

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 19:25:49 -0400
From: John Perry Barlow <barlow () eff org>


God, it seems to me I've been doing little else. I must not be coming over
your loudspeaker.


Here's a column I wrote for Infoworld, to give just one example:


Passing the Buck on Porn


Infoworld editor Bob Metcalfe recently wrote an editorial in which he
claims that the Electronic Frontier Foundation "like the very many other
civil liberties groups crowding opportunistically around the Internet, has
thought little about decency beyond stopping Exon."


In fact, we have had considerable internal discussion and debate about how
we might help prevent the Net from becoming a virtual Combat Zone. We are
all uneasy with that so far unrealized possibility and have looked at
ratings systems, filters, and even laws. So he is incorrect in claiming
that we have given the matter little thought. But the practical realities
are challenging.


For starters, there is the simple matter of enforcability. The Internet, in
the words of another EFF co-founder John Gilmore, "deals with censorship as
though it were a malfunction and routes around it." What is removed from
one Net-connected hard disk may easily appear on another. And will.


There will always be places in the physical world where materials offensive
to one or another of the world's cultures may find refuge from their police
while remaining accessible to their constituents. If the government of,
say, Alabama won't let me store dirty pictures on a site in that state, I
can always rent space on a server in, say, Belize which would be open to
world-wide access.


And it does seem there is something characteristically arrogant about the
government of the United States believing it can legislate what the rest of
the planet may or may not behold. It is a classic case of "Think Locally,
Act Globally." Are we prepared for similar efforts on the part of the
government of Saudi Arabia? Whose culture is to define planetary morality?


Furthermore, his allegation that one cannot cruise the Net without have
"pornographic billboards in your face" makes me wonder what parts of the
Net he's cruising. My own efforts...purely academic, of course...to find
porn on the Web have largely been met with "server busy or not responding"
messages every time I thought I was about to open a digital cesspool. Far
from being in my face, these billboards are almost always invisible.


The reality is that children have far readier access to pornographic
material at their neighborhood 7-11 than they do on the Internet. It is my
perception that most kids still learn about pornography by discovering
their parents' own secret caches  and distributing it among themselves, on
paper, not in bits, in treehouses and not through computers. I suspect this
will go on being true for some time.


I think the real issue here is responsibility. I believe that my sense of
decency, and how to preserve it within a family which includes three young
daughters, is a personal responsibility. Unlike many parents these days, I
do not wish to pass this duty over to any institution, governmental or, as
in the case of EFF, non-governmental. It's not their job. It is my own,
unless I am too cowardly to assume it.


It's simple and hard. If you don't want your children fixating on filth,
you'll get nowhere turning it into forbidden fruit which you can't, as a
practical matter, truly forbid. Better that you step up to the tough task
of raising them to find it as distasteful as you do yourself.