Youth, Pornography, and the Internet (2002) / Chapter Skim
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8. Approaches to Protection from Inappropriate Material
8. Approaches to Protection from Inappropriate Material
Pages 181-200
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From page 182... ...
A third dimension of "protect" might refer to measures taken to ensure that the child suffers no ill effects from being exposed to inappropriate material. This approach recognizes that absolute protection from inappropriate material is impossible to achieve (except at the cost of total disconnection)
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From page 183... ...
, it is likely that any group of judges will agree on some material as "appropriate" and some as "inappropriate," and that there will be some material about which the judges will disagree. Of course, depending on the particular judges involved, the term "inappropriate" could include a very large variety of material, including some or all sexually explicit material, bomb-making recipes, extremist material, birth control information, hate sites, and the platforms of particular political or social groups.
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From page 184... ...
The proxy's judgments must then be evaluated against the standard of the responsible adult who would otherwise make such decisions for the child. The proxy may be another adult such as a teacher acting in loco parentis, the board of a public library system, another trusted adult, an Internet service provider, a developer of filtering software,1 a local jury deciding an obscenity case, the U.S.
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From page 185... ...
. Given a need for proxies, how does a proxy make reasonable judgments about what sexually explicit material may be inappropriate for viewing by children at any age?
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From page 186... ...
than human assessment given the strictly algorithmic process, the reliability of machine assessment is 100 percent.3 The reliability of human assessment is likely to be considerably lower, even when the same rules of classification apply to all assessments, simply because people interpret the same rules differently. Validity is a more problematic concept because there is no universally accepted standard (no "gold standard")
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From page 187... ...
Moreover, the content of some existing Web pages changes very rapidly, and new Web pages appear at a very rapid rate.5 This fact leads to one of two approaches. One is based on an automated, machine-executable process for identifying inappropriate content 4sources of adult-oriented, sexually explicit material are generally consistent in their offerings such content is available on their Web sites today, and will be available tomorrow tif they are still in businessy.
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From page 188... ...
, the volume of material that is subject to actual human judgment is increased in which case the issues regarding human review discussed in the previous paragraph obtain. 8.2 DIMENSIONS OF "PROTECTION" In the context of "protecting youth from inappropriate material or experiences," the term "protect" has a number of plausible definitions.
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From page 189... ...
The primary difficulty of protecting children and youth against deliberate exposure is the fact that many adolescents, especially boys, are highly motivated to seek out sexually explicit materials, including material that is ostensibly limited to adults. Absent a significant change in their desire for such materials, their motivation often enables them to overcome many obstacles in their path, whatever the nature of those obstacles.
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From page 190... ...
This approach recognizes that absolute protection from inappropriate material is impossible to achieve (except at the cost of total disconnection) and that nurturing a child who is able to place inappropriate material into context, to evaluate and make good judgments about it, and to deal with it appropriately is an important element of the overall goal of keeping children from harm.
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From page 191... ...
This community includes children, but also includes adults, and the information needs of the community taken as a whole are generally much more diverse than those of children and youth in school.6 Thus, given these differing purposes, it is not at all unexpected that school and libraries have different needs and might take different approaches in seeking 6For example, the position of the American Library Association is that "librarians believe in supporting a wide variety of information needs," and emphasis should be placed "on the patron's right to choose," an emphasis that is "consistent with [the library] profession's commitment to intellectual freedom." Further, "libraries rarely limit what can be read in a library.
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From page 192... ...
Examples to support this point of view tend to be drawn from the more extreme sexually explicit material found on the Internet and not coincidentally material that tends to arouse revulsion in a large segment of the population. Thus, "protection" of children must be as airtight as possible, and false positives that improperly classify appropriate material as inappropriate are preferable to false negatives that improperly classify inappropriate material as appropriate.7 Note also that if one believes that even one exposure of a child to such material is likely to have long-lasting and profoundly negative effects on his or her development, then nothing less than perfection suffices.
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From page 193... ...
That is, they might well say that some types of material should indeed be universally prohibited, regardless of community standards (e.g., child pornography) , but conclude that for other types of sexually explicit material, communities should be free to decide for themselves.
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From page 194... ...
Warning protects against inadvertent exposure to inappropriate material, but not against deliberate exposure. As with blocking, all material that is not explicitly identified as inappropriate is treated as appropriate.
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From page 195... ...
Whereas deterrence depends on the possibility of detection and punishment, education is an integral part of helping a child choose to refrain from accessing inappropriate material by inculcating an internal sense of personal responsibility. The second component is education about the Internet and the development of critical thinking that can help the child to conduct searches that are less likely to turn up inappropriate material and to recognize inappropriate material more effectively.
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From page 196... ...
and do not 9For example, Section 51550 of the California Education Code states, No governing board of a public elementary or secondary school may require pupils to attend any class in which human reproductive organs and their functions and processes are described, illustrated or discussed, whether such class be part of a course designated "sex education" or "family life education" or by some similar term, or part of any other course which pupils are required to attend.... Opportunity shall be provided to each parent or guardian to request in writing that his child not attend the class, [and]
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From page 198... ...
Further, the protection that it does provide is adequate for publishers and vendors of adult magazines to be able to plausibly assert that they are taking reasonable steps to keep such material out of the hands of children. Hyphen given a choice, only ~ to 5 percent of parents remove their children from comprehensive sexual education classes.
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From page 199... ...
The possibility of such synergistic effects should not be taken to mean that one particular combination of protective elements is right in all cases. Furthermore, no combination of protective elements will be free of tradeoffs, both within the space of protecting children and youth from inappropriate sexually explicit material on the Internet and with respect to how this space interacts with other societal issues.
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From page 200... ...
200 YOUTH, PORNOGRAPHY, AND THE INTERNET and communities retain the ability and authority to determine what is best for their children and how to make those trade-offs in accordance with their own values. Chapters 9 through 13 address a variety of options for public policies, strategies, and tools, and some of the benefits of coordinating their use.
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