James Carroll wrote: > I disagree with both of the above ideas in the most strenuous way possible. > > First, the "get their consent" thing is ridiculous, foolish, and dangerous, > and is a big part of our parenting problems in America today. We don't need > our children's consent to decide what will happen on our computers. We are > the parents, they are the children, and it is about time we as parents get > that fact figured out.
I don't think you understand what I mean by "consent." If you're an adult, then consent probably does mean what you have said it means. For children in the home, for example, consent can merely be, "if you want to use the internet, please know that we your parents love you and check up on you, because there are things that are inappropriate to view and we cannot have that in our home." That's perfectly valid. > Next, on whether filters are better than monitoring. I recommend filtering > too, but filtering doesn't really work, or solve most problems. All they > really do is to help us not to accidentally stumble upon things we don't > want to see. Nor do I believe that monitoring's only use is to "catch" > someone once they have already "fallen off the cliff" as you described it. > Monitoring is by far the most powerful deterrent tool we have, so long as > the monitoring isn't secret (which I don't recommend). They idea is to make > sure they know that "I am watching everything you do on my computer, so > don't even go over by that cliff." They are FAR less likely to do something > wrong if they KNOW that I am watching what they do. I recommend key loggers, > and periodic screen capture monitoring as well as logging all web page > accesses. And I am not the only one that makes that recommendation. It is > rather standard in the literature. While I can't disagree with you entirely, I'll defer to Stuart's comment on this, as I agree with him. And despite with the "literature" says, I know from presentations by the BYU honor code office that how the church deals with and instructs members concerning the dangers of pornography and other inappropriate internet things is changing, and emphasizing more positive things, rather than trying to use the threat of being caught. Browsing inappropriate materials is a symptom of deeper problems that we as parents and leaders need to address. As the Book of Mormon says, preaching the word had a greater affect on the hearts of men than the sword. Not that a web monitor is a sword, though. ;) -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
