By Jeff Schult
11/23/98
Internet Entertainment Group and Dr. Laura
My reaction to Internet Entertainment Group suing all the other porn site over the spread (oops, sorry) of the Dr. Laura pinup pictures? Get a life, IEG. Dr. Laura’s butt belongs to the world.
I have to confess, I REAAAAALLLLLLLY have this urge to call up Dr. L on the air and say, "Hi, I’m my kids’ dad, and I have this problem … I love my kids’ mom a lot, but she can be a real b*tch, always telling everyone what to do, always being right, always having the last word. Now I find out that she had this secret, tawdry life as a floozy before she met me, and that an old boyfriend of hers sold nude pictures of her that are going all over the Internet … What should I do?"
CDA II injunction
A federal judge this week granted an injunction against the government and Janet Reno can’t go out and enforce the Child Online Protection Act, which is probably a relief to her as well. The 1st Amendment is safe for another ten days.
If by any chance you’re reading this and thinking, "but we must protect our children from filth and pornography," you don’t get it, either. It comes down to this: The Internet is about Free Speech. It is the Town Square, the largest public gathering place in the world. Child pornography, "obscenity," fraud, theft, threatening, etc. is already illegal on the Internet. We’ve been over all this. If you don’t think free speech is important, you should try to get the 1st Amendment rescinded, as opposed to supporting anticonstitutional legislation. Get a filtering program if you want (they suck, though.) Spend some time with your kid talking about this stuff.
The Internet is NOT a babysitter. If you already use your television as one, you’re a bad person, anyway.
All this still amazes me, how badly government does not get it. Thank god the courts do. How long are we going to accept a congress that deliberately passes unconstitutional bills?
Sun wins over Java
I’m a little surprised – a judge ruled that Microsoft has to live up to its contracts and cannot steal stuff from other companies. I had thought there was ample precedent that Bill & Co. could do whatever they want.
In any case, MS will never accept the Sun Microsystems standard. They’ll do as little as they have to in order to comply. It’s really up to the developer community – will we do things the MS way anyway?
Between the Justice Department lawsuit, the Sun case and now AOL Borging Netscape, this is shaping up as a bad Christmas in Redmond.
Magaziner to ICANN – Open Up
The new Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers needed a little prodding on transparency, and they got it from Ira Magaziner. It’s not going to kill ICANN to have to hold votes in public and be a little clearer on what constituencies it plans to be answerable to. For more on ICANN, here are my notes (and photos) from its first public meeting held earlier this month in Cambridge, Mass.
EFF Web Site Down, Then Up
It amazed me that the Electronic Frontier Foundation could vanish from cyberspace overnight without a trace, but that’s what happened two weeks ago – they had computer problems and *poof.* Gone.
They’re back up now – their antiquated equipment just gave out under the load of two million hits a month. Maybe it’s donation time – I wonder if they have a hardware fund?
Jeff Schult and Nicole Chardenet can be reached at jeffbot at this domain.