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Username: kschneyer
Date/Time: Sun, November 12, 2000 at 8:28 PM GMT
Browser: Netscape Communicator V4.04 using Windows 95
Score: 5
Subject: .kids, cultural relativism & priorities

Message:
 

 
   The potential of a .kids or similar tld is too important to be jettisoned for the reasons that have been articulated.
   Although it may be true that the existing applicants have failed to state a sufficiently precise set of criteria for approving .kids sites, this does should not cause rejection of the proposal.  The public policy issue in creating the .kids tld is vital, involving one of the most widely-discussed and troublesome aspects of the increasing availability of the Internet.  Assuming arguendo that the stated criteria are too vague, the applicants should (all) be invited to make them more precise and resubmit.
   ICANN's comment concering the differing cultural definitions of what is appropriate for children (and that it is unclear who would decide such things) is, at best, a non sequitur.  One can invoke cultural relativism as a way of rejecting nearly any ethical or policy-based filtering mechanism.  There is, nontheless, broad consensus in many countries as to the sorts of content to which children should not be exposed.  A set of criteria matching this consensus is easily possible; although it would not satisfy everyone (what ever does?) it would certainly provide a useful response to the increasingly hysterical calls for the legislative strangulation of the Net.

  --Kenneth L. Schneyer
  --Professor of Legal Studies
  --Johnson & Wales University
     

 


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