So some might be surprised that I am not necessarily averse to something I saw this morning on CNN: The establishment of .xxx domain names for porn sites. A Democratic Congressman or Senator (sorry I am failing on the details -- I cannot find the story anywhere on CNN.com and I write these posts from my office, and so you can imagine why I might be averse to doing a google search involving the words "porn," "website," and "xxx." The University of Texas system is fairly straightforward on these matters. Then again, I suppose writing this means that surfing for such items would qualify as legitimate research . . .) has proposed that all porn sites be required to change from .com or .net to .xxx. Basically, the idea is that this way people, especially children, would be protected from inadvertantly ending up at an x-rated site when they browse the web for something rather more innocuous. The opposition, which I understand but just do not fully buy, argues that in so doing, we would ghettoize porn.
I am neither anti- nor am I pro- porn. I fully believe that adults have a right to do whatever they want behind closed doors as long as it is not illegal, and that such laws should be limited -- if someone is not getting hurt, the law ought to tread lightly if it treads at all. But my free speech near-absolutism comes with a caveat: While the state has little right to restrict speech, that does not mean that free speech does not have consequences. If you use the N-bomb on a college campus, you should not be punished by the university. But I'm going to have no problems if someone kicks the shit out of you, or if you find yourself stigmatized as a racist. If you say something offensive, there is no free speech protection from people being offended, and reacting accordingly. In sum, people have a right to be jerks; society has a right to response to that jerkiness. Free speech does not mean a free ride.
And so back to the porn domain names. I believe adults in their homes have every right to surf the internet for any damned thing they desire, to fulfill whatever sexual fetish they want. But I am not certain when the idea that someone might be embarassed equals as an encroachment on free speech gained traction. Now, if the government were to use this proposed domain names switch as a first step toward prohibiting pornography, I would have a problem with that. But I have no issue with protecting people with no interest of looking at porn, or protecting children from stumbling onto porn sites by providing a separate dominion for porn. As far as I know, prior to the internet, if people wanted access to porn, they had to go out and buy it or order it, and potentially risk embarassment. Tough patooties. Being a grownup, exercising rights, sometimes means one runs the risk of a little bit of blushing.
3 comments:
Incidentally, kicking the s*** out of someone, no matter how crude their speech, just might be a legally unacceptable act (i.e. assault).
This seems like a silly issue. If the legislator's professed concern is really "for the children..." (and when isn't it among these insincere, sanctimonious moralists?) then there could be some kind of registration or electronic key required for such sites that would be recognized by blocking software. This seems to me the most analagous to the kinds of restrictions minors are made to encounter in accessing the brick-and-mortar equivalents of such establishments. Mandating a specific domain-name suffix might come across as the cyberspace equivalent of zoning, but it almost seems like a mandatory advertisement, as if a strip club were forced to raise conspicuous signs with sexual slogans emblazoned across them high above their grounds to be seen for miles. And of course, with this being Ameyreeka, people will apply this to sexual education sites, sexual information sites, pages of the Wikipedia, etc.
Regulation is always a tricky and sloppy bag with unintended consequences and I'm glad that with the internet, people are continuously erring on the side of promulgating the least amount possible. We can always hope that it catalyzes the further emotional growth of this immature society. Live, let live, and don't buy what you don't think your kids can't handle, whether it be a television (with cable service?), a radio before Howard Stern left for satellite (or a satellite radio now for that matter), or a computer with internet access and no blocking software. Or let Jerry Falwell build his own private "clean" ethernet just for everyone else.
MUL --
Of course kicking the shit our of someone might be illegal. That would not in and of itself not make it right. I fully believe in the fighting words doctrine. If a white guy tosses the N-bomb at a black guy, and the black guy pounds him, the law be damned, I am on the black guy's side 100%. Or, to quote Chris Rock, there ain't no one above an ass whoopin'.
I don't disagree with you about "zoning," but I do believe that while xxx sites might seem to be advertising, porn does not exactly need it, and in any case, this might prevent the inadvertant aspect. Sure, protecting thew kids as a politician's goal is always self-important. But let's not confuse that with the fact the we do need to protect our kids.
dcat
Well I'll have to disagree with you on both counts. If you mean words directed at someone in particular, verbal provocation might be mitigating, but I tend to value protecting the rights to one's physical integrity over their right to be free from not feeling put down, or even to be free from verbal provocation.
On the second point I think you misunderstood me. "xxx"-labels would be for the purpose of being conspicuous, which I would take to be analagous to advertising (the label is already used as such). Is it sexual words (or xxx) in the rest of the URL that you think of as unnecessary advertising that would be replaced by an xxx at the end?
Everyone has different ideas of how to raise their kids and what they would feel a need to "protect" them from. I would like to think that I would want to teach my kids to not have an unhealthy or unrealistic attitude or understanding of sexual behavior. Porn may be at least as much a symptom of this disconnect as is puritanism, but it is the prevailing and longstanding puritanism in this country that gave rise to America's unhealthy and unrealistic understanding of sex in the first place. I'd like to think I'd err on the side of them knowing more about sex generally - despite the widespread depictions of all its excesses - than risk a dumbed-down whitewashing on the availability of the topic altogether for fear that they would... well, whatever. I think what parents fear most when it comes to what their children learn about sex is their own embarrassment. I sometimes wonder if the "protection" they invoke doesn't often have something to do with that.
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