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>Tonight I received a piece of email in which the writer invited me to >"suck" his (?) " ----." I could see from the address that it had been >emailed from within Netscape. When I plugged the URL into my browser, up >came the home page for an elementary school. This reminds me of some stuff I saw on the Net and wrote an article for _Minnesota Media_ (just got a copy of it today in the mail). Here's that article on Net censorship: (BTW...I am censoring this article with XXX's because the quoted passages are quite blue... the original article in the magazine was printed uncensored). Should We Censor the Internet? By Russell Smith Special Contributor Here's a posting from LM_Net back in July of 1994: To: Multiple recipients of list LM_NET <LM_NET@suvm.acs.syr.EDU> In-Reply-To: note of 07/23/94 02:15 who really gives a diddly squat about this cropola. there is much more in this world that is both relevant and important, don`t you think? come on, get off the `chine and go boink your significant other, whether dog, man, beast, or woman. as the sun rises, and the buzz off the 2 bottles of warm red wine and a couple of cases of cerveza start to dissipate, I may have to think about such tedious topics as destructional design and other myths. `Til Mary Carpenter= Chapenter cums to get me, I'll misbehave. Get a life!!!! Jesus H. F___in' Christ!!!!!! And here's this intellectual gem from list ALLMUSIC in December 1994 : >>>want rude? WHY DON'T YOU JUST EAT SXXX AND DIE? (Now, THAT was rude!) ;-} >i think that what you were too weak to say was "you can shove your two >cents up your fXXXXXX aXX," >but when men support what women say just because >they've been on this dXXX list forever...that's also something i can't >tolerate. fXXX you. >but...now i am. i am rude. sXXX my dXXX if you condone lorena bobbit's actions... >and luckily, these two cents fit quite well up my aXX--i just tried it. Sounds like you enjoyed it, too! Try sucking your *own* dXXX while you're experimenting with yourself, 'cause no-one here will, I guaran-gXXXXXX-tee it!" Now the preceding passages were posted on unmoderated educational lists. Unmoderated means anyone can post if they subscribe to the list and the message will not be screened by a human before it goes on public display. So my question is do we really want ten-year-old student Internauts viewing text like these examples? I say no and until someone convinces me that such language is appropriate for young minds I will continue to oppose full access to the Internet for children. There are other concerns besides just x-rated adult text on the Internet. Graphical images of sexually-explicit materials are accessible on the Internet for downloading and the ability to download such images is only limited by the computer skills of the users, not their age. Thus, a ten-year-old with sufficient computer savvy can quite easily download x-rated pictures and print them out for distribution. Now if the student has his or her own Internet account that they can use at home then the potential for seeking out sexual materials is heightened. Who will know if little Johnny is downloading nude pictures in his room instead of writing a penpal in Australia? Nobody will until Johnny brags to his friends or prints out pictures for distribution. Of course there are worse dangers than just downloading sexually-explicit materials. Youngsters can be contacted on the Net by sexual deviates who assume many guises. The deviates may pretend to be students themselves and carry on e-mail correspondence with real youngsters. It may sound weird or far-fetched, but serial killers either exist or will arise on the Net and some kids will be enticed to their deaths. Sound scary? You bet it is and that is why federal, state, and local police are beginning to spend more manpower monitoring the Internet. The rise in live chat sessions on commercial services has exacerbated the growth of online sexual deviates. The anonymous nature of the services (no identifying e-mail addresses) has led to more experimentation by deviates and youngsters alike. To the kids online chat sessions can be like the old game of playing on the telephone, but without any social scoldings. To the deviates the chat sessions represent an ideal environment to play out sexual fantasies or in the worst scenario, solicit victims. So if there are indeed problems with implementing student Internet accounts then what kind of actions should schools and parents undertake to lessen the dangers? Here's a five-point plan: 1. The AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) should be carefully explained to students and parents. Follow-up training should be administered on a regular basis; 2. Very young students should be directly supervised by parents and teachers during Internet sessions: 3. Older students (secondary) should not have school accounts to use unsupervised at home; 4. Adult content newsgroups or discussion groups should be removed from the providers lineup of easily viewable groups (menu picks); 5. Anonymous Chat areas on the Internet should be offlimits for student accounts. Now you might notice that the main focus for my suggestions is on school censorship because in most instances youngsters will have access to the Internet in an educational venue. But parents who share Internet accounts with their children or purchase accounts for them would be foolish indeed to turn their younger children totally free on the Net. Parents should devise their own censorship scheme based on the social and intellectual maturity of their children, but to assume that youngsters (even highly-intelligent ones) will always choose the right path is a big mistake. Kids are by nature very curious about the unknown and the Internet is full of unknown riches as well as dangers. To assume that children are miniature adults is a fallacy and can lead to disaster. In summation, the question of censoring Internet student access should not be so much a question of should we, but how much? To fail in assuring our children's safety on the greatest communications invention in the history of the world would be a grave disservice and one we can at least try to prevent. Russell Smith rssmith@tenet.edu Educational Technology Consultant Fax 915-675-8659 Region 14 Education Service Center Abilene, Texas Ph. 915-675-8647