Balanced Copyright Reform

Here's a copy of an e-mail message I sent to my MP on the subject:

Hello Mr. Poilievre,

It's come to my attention that draft legislation concerning "copyright reform" could be drafted in coming weeks and months (building on Bill C-60). I suspect you've already received a form letter or two on the subject of "digital rights management" or DRM, so rather than add to that pile, I thought I'd quickly relate a personal experience on the subject, to give you some perspective.

My wife recently bought a number of CDs for a road trip. She'd had her iPod digital music player for a while, but this was to be the first time we took it as our sole source of music for any length of time. With the FM transmitter she'd bought for it, we would be able to play it through the car stereo, the portable stereo of anyone we visited along the way, etc.

However, she quickly became frustrated with the Nickelback CD she bought. She couldn't import it into iTunes (iPod management software), or even play it on her computer. The digital rights management software on the CD prevented it.

It's that DRM software prevents this and other legal uses of the merchandise we purchase that makes it such an important issue. (The fact that it can also open our computers to breaches of privacy and security is a separate, but equally important, issue: Sony-BMG's DRM software is a chilling example of this.)

While the Canadian Coalition for Digital Fair Access has some good information on this issue (as does the more recent Online Rights Canada), it's the "Consumer Technology Bill of Rights" put together by DigitalConsumer.org in the U.S. that succinctly captures what I would like to see in any DRM-related legislation.

I'll just quote the point that's relevant to my story:

2. Users have the right to "space-shift" content that they have legally acquired. This gives you the right to use your content in different places (as long as each use is personal and non-commercial).

(http://www.digitalconsumer.org/bill.html for the complete list.)

Thank you for your time, Mr. Poilievre.

Cheers,

John Jarvis

The politics of confrontation

A friend sent me an article on the Auditor General's gun registry report that was leaked. The tone of these opposition quotes sent me off on a tirade:

It's troublesome given that ethics, accountability, transparency, turning government around, cleaning government up are supposed to be one of the top priorities of the new government, said New Democrat David Christopherson.

And if they had any role whatsoever in leaking this then they're... betraying their pact with the Canadian people.

A Liberal press release offered more of the same:

This unprecedented affront to the office of the Auditor General, Sheila Frasier, makes a mockery of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise to operate with a higher ethical standard, said Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

I think the Liberals (and their NDP terrier) are completely undermining the "new party" spin they've been cultivating around their leadership race with this whining and nitpicking - the "Look, they're worse than us!" tripe - that was the previous minority government's daily bread. Nothing has changed: the Liberals have no vision for the country, and no one to truly lead the way once they beg, borrow or steal one.

It hurts me to say that, by the way, because listening to Ignatieff speak around the time of his announcing his run for the party leadership sparked a hope in me that we might get past the bickering for a time; but it means nothing if he still has these petty vermin below him.

If they'd waited 'til the report came out and acknowledged the mistakes it will certainly include - I've read about the software development debacle, so I know I'm not reaching here - I can honestly say that it would've significantly reinforced that hope I mentioned: simply because it would've been so radically different from anything this squabbling mass of glad-hands has done in years.

The cost of these distractions is concisely stated in the following quote I read a few months back:

Institutional rivalry, lack of foreign policy consensus, and increased media coverage combine to create a foreign policy making environment that accentuates the normal advantage held by immediate policy questions and current intelligence over long-range issues. It also favours the politics of confrontation and competition over that of problem solving.

-- Glenn Hastedt, Public Intelligence: Leaks as Policy Instruments - The Case of the Iraq War, Intelligence and National Security, Volume 20, Issue 3, September 2005.

The Prime Ministers: Louis St. Laurent

My correspondence on the CPAC series continues:

Hmmm... This is a strange series. I didn't like this episode either. He was voted our greatest post-war Prime Minister, yet they spent little time explaining why he'd get the vote of so many historians. What truly positive material we did see came from his own family (relevant, but not very surprising, one would think).

This emphasis on the 'Uncle Louis' facade, and, later, his, and his cabinet's, air of entitlement - which seemed to be much worse than the situations that fall under that category today - were not flattering. And whatever the true proportion of these episodes during his entire leadership, by paying lip service to his great achievements and lack of involvement in the PR machine, the producers are passing judgment on the man.

And this isn't the first example of that. I just found this one to be particularly heavy handed. Man, and I thought CPAC was a more balanced alternative to the CBC; guess no one can resist the opportunity to spin.

Later correspondence focused on Byfield's negativity:

Well, he's a journalist, and I have to say, I valued his perspective on St. Laurent more than, say, on Laurier, because Byfield was there covering the '57 election, for example. The fact that he relates how all the old-timers in his profession were unhappy with the government at that time, for example, is fine with me. I want to know. But it's the producer's job to balance that with St. Laurent's earlier success, and give Byfield a chance to reflect on that, if possible (don't know if he was even working then).

And CPAC's spin:

Well, I for one would seize any media source that showed the sort of balance I'm talkin' about; and I wouldn't let 'em go. :-) I know there are other people who feel that way too. There is such a thing as scoopin' and spinnin' yourself to death, I think. You're certainly sentencing your credibility to death, let's say.

La Convivencia

I just finished watching the BBC documentary An Islamic History of Europe. Its stirring depiction of la Convivencia, with Muslims and Christians sharing the best of their cultures in Spain, while hotly contested, got me thinking about these first decades of the 21st century: it may be naïve, but I feel that Canada is well placed to revive this idea of coexistence.

The Prime Ministers: William Lyon Mackenzie King

My correspondence on the CPAC series continues:

Well, in my opinion, the blame for [the seemingly harsh comments of Jack Granatstein and Ted Byfield] falls on the editors of this series; I was actually going to use the adjective 'stupid' in that sentence (take your pick of places; more than one's appropriate), but thought better of it. They are focusing on inconsequential crap, and, given that, I think both Granatstein and Byfield did a good job of relating what we - unfortunately - know about King's private life, in all its strange detail, but without dwelling on it, and then getting on to the "and so what?" of it all. Who cares? Byfield ends a segment with I think his decisions ultimately were always pragmatic. He did his job, in other words.

I [also feel it wasn't write to publish King's diary, instead of burying it with him, as was his wish]. Did his family make that decision? Did they come to regret it, I wonder? People are entitled to their private thoughts; and they're entitled to put them down for later review. You can't keep a life of thoughts in your head, and being able to read them would probably help one sort through a lot of problems. That aside, whatever his reasons for writing, the public doesn't have the right to read it, just because he wrote it.

The Prime Ministers: Wilfrid Laurier: Addendum

In the light of all this nonsense about Harper's waistline - no, I won't even hyperlink to it and give any 'news' site the satisfaction of traffic - I thought this later point in the correspondence was also germane:

... and Chretien made a point of saying the press didn't question [Laurier]. I thought that was fantastic! Imagine knowing no more about your prime minister's private life than, say, your doctor's.

It does not matter, people.

The job they're doing, that's what it's all about.

The Prime Ministers: Wilfrid Laurier

This is the first of a few posts on correspondence I've had re CPAC's The Prime Ministers television series:

When a Quebec supporter complained few immigrants were francophone, Laurier said, We trust in the long run they will come out right true Canadians.

I love this line. That was the highlight of the show, so I thought I'd lead with it. I'll be pullin' that one out in a future conversation with Dad, you can be sure, that, and the “tough” people that made Western Canada under him. (Canadians are English and French... Pffft!) ;-)

I was struck by how strongly people need heroes. The man described for most of the thirty minutes was well beyond his considerable 6' frame. Chretien said he was an institution in his family, and clearly he isn't alone. (I found him very convincing in that moment, by the way; very sincere. I didn't think much of his comments overall, but when he spoke about francophones talking their place after Laurier, I felt the importance of it.)

But clearly he was human. I mean, however reverently it was read, Laurier's thoughts on politics were clearly that the end - his “certain object” - justifies the means, which “could not be approved of”. I don't agree, but acknowledge that I prefer to think in the ideal, and have long since ruled out a career in politics as a result. :-)

Finally, all the comments on Laurier's appearance went over the top, eventually; somewhere around the comment that he probably spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. I certainly wouldn't want to be remembered that way.

Knee-jerk Trade-offs

Speakers more profound than I - including Adam Shostack and Bruce Schneier - have weighed in on the Western approach to terrorism countermeasures, a recent example of which is the searching of bags and packages carried by people entering New York City subway stations.

Countermeasures like this spring up far too quickly. They must be subjected to a more critical process, so, as one of the New Yorkers commented, the terrorists don't simply hit us where we're weak (e.g., shopping malls... before the decade's out, I'd bet). Otherwise, how are we to know whether the trade-offs we've accepted are good ones?

Information and Human Nature

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, created a ripple when he questioned Google's dream of taking over the universe by gathering all the information in the world and creating the electronic equivalent of, in their own modest words, the mind of God. (Search on Google and God's Mind if you don't want to register with the Los Angeles Times.) However, I think Google, Gorman and his detractors are all missing an important point, and it centres around human nature.

While Gorman makes some good points in Google and God's Mind, his notion that only certain books need to be digitized - "massive databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility" - is really splitting hairs; how they're used afterward is more important, as he implies in his second piece, Revenge of the Blog People: I do not believe [Google Print] will give us anything that comes anywhere near access to the world's knowledge.

It's how the information is used afterward, how knowledge is accumulated, that's really important. I'll use another quote from Google and God's Mind to illustrate my point:

The nub of the matter lies in the distinction between information (data, facts, images, quotes and brief texts that can be used out of context) and recorded knowledge (the cumulative exposition found in scholarly and literary texts and in popular nonfiction). When it comes to information, a snippet from Page 142 might be useful. When it comes to recorded knowledge, a snippet from Page 142 must be understood in the light of pages 1 through 141 or the text was not worth writing and publishing in the first place.

Gorman says must be understood, but really it's up to the reader; if they want to draw their own conclusions from a paragraph on Page 142, that's their prerogative, and this is where my point about human nature comes in.

Morgan Jones talks about convergent and divergent thinking in The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving, and how humans are convergent thinkers at heart. That is, in our reading and research, we are inherently trying to tie it all up and converge on a solution or opinion, if you will; that's the way our brain works. Now, going back to Gorman's example, what the Google Print project will facilitate is the converging of an opinion based on Page 142 of that particular book, and maybe a few pages from some other books, with the reader never having read pages 1 through 141, or the preceding pages of the other books.

But that's like saying guns kill people, John. Yes, you're absolutely right, and I'm not knocking the Google Print project. I say that Google, Gorman and others are missing the responsiblity that these sorts of initiatives place on our education system. As people read fewer books cover to cover, teaching people how to think critically and research becomes all the more important. Given our convergent natures, I can see a time when kids rate their research on the number of sound bites they've skimmed (and, no doubt, how quickly they've done it as well). Educating them on proper research techniques means that they'll be able to make the best use of the most powerful tools as they're developed (like Google Print).

Invisible Darkness turns Deadly

O.K., so the title is misleading: Deadly (2005), the film about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka’s psychological dance with death and depravity isn't based on the Stephen Williams' book Invisible Darkness; in fact, despite buying the rights to the book in 1994, Director Peter Simpson abandoned the project in the face of public outcry, especially from St. Catherines.

According to the Toronto Star, Deadly "was written through court transcripts and other evidence in the public domain... [and writer Manette Rosen's interviews] with police involved in the [Bernardo and Homolka] case at headquarters, as well as a crown attorney..."

I recently received a copy of the 2001 petition to stop Simpson's Bernardo film. (Whether it had anything to do with Simpson dropping the movie, I don't know.) Of the 70 or so names attached, over half were from St. Catherines, and all but a few were Ontarians. One signatory - at least I assume they signed it... as much as you can sign an electronic document without using a digital signature - included the comment:

Some things are just too important NOT to pass on - I hope you agree.

Of course I agree that some things are important enough to speak out about - some things are important enough to fight for, in my opinion - but I don't agree that the making of this movie qualifies.

Why? Because the story is out of my hands; it's out of everyone's hands. It happened, at least two books tell the story, and people will continue to talk about it, despite the heroic efforts - in scale only; the deliberate destruction of records is despicable and barbaric! - of Danson to wipe what really happened from the face of the earth: again, from The Star:

[Tim] Danson [lawyer for the families of victims Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy] even won an order to have the Ontario attorney-general's office burn the Bernardo-Homolka videos, as well as autopsy photos and other evidence, in a precedent-setting move.

Burn, no less! The bile rises in my throat just thinking about it. Fahrenheit 451 made real! Whatever his motives, that was just wrong! And that gets back to the petition: I'm sure all those people from St. Catherines hoped they were helping the families of Bernardo and Homolka's victims in some small way by signing that petition - heck, maybe some of them even know one of the families - but you know what? It doesn't matter. Period.

The only thing that matters is how those families live each day: if they look to the world to forget what happened to their daughters, sisters, etc. - even for some period of time, because how long is enough? Who can say? - they will continue to be disappointed and hurt; and, no less importantly, they'll be killing those women again, and all they did with their lives. If, however, they look within themselves and to each other for support, nothing, not books, movies, not even tourists (think Jack the Ripper and you know they'll come), will be able to steal more moments of their lives.

Time does not heal all wounds.

"Diamond" "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, R.I.P.

I just saw a story on CTV Newsnet about a shooting in Ohio, pantera.com confirms it: Dimebag Darrell, of Pantera fame, is dead. I'm shocked.

5 Minutes Alone was an anthem for me in university, and Cowboys From Hell? No one was playin' that stuff then. Whatever the animosity among the band members in recent years, no one can take away the butt that Pantera kicked in the 90's.

R.I.P., Dimebag.

On challenging U.S. copyright law...

LISNews.com is reporting that, unfortunately, Kahle v. Ashcroft has gone the way of Eldred v. Ashcroft.

The Stanford Center for Internet and Society has a great summary of how the two cases differ:

In [Kahle v. Ashcroft], two archives [the Internet Archive and the Prelinger Archive] ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally - the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) - are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an effectively perpetual term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution's Limited Times and Promote...Progress Clauses.

Isn’t [Kahle v. Ashcroft] just Eldred v. Ashcroft all over again?

No... Eldred v. Ashcroft involved a challenge to the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which extended the term of both existing and future copyrights by 20 years. In 2003, the Supreme Court rejected these challenges. Eldred focused narrowly on the constitutionality of the CTEA’s extension of the term of subsisting copyrights; the Court held that these extensions did not violate the First Amendment or the Progress Clause.

Kernighan, debugging and assurance

I read a great Kernighan quote at Marquee de Sells today. For those who aren't familiar with Kernighan, he helped design the awk programming language and coauthored the first book on the C programming language.

I was struck by the security implications of programmers writing computer programs that they aren't smart enough to debug. The analysis and testing that makes up a security evaluation is comparable to debugging, and yet many of the evaluators I've worked with are not as smart as many of the programmers I know. My experience with evaluator qualifications states that a college or university degree in engineering or computer science, plus a few years apprenticing, is sufficient for evaluating source code. Is this realistic?

Thinking about debugging and security brought me to the concept of a reference monitor: a reference monitor enforces the authorized access relationships (i.e., the policy) between the subjects and the objects of a system.[1]

One implementation of the reference monitor concept was called a reference validation mechanism. Early examples of reference validation mechanisms were called security kernels, or that combination of hardware, firmware and software which implements the reference monitor concept.[2] Three design requirements of these reference validation mechanisms (and security kernels) were: 1) It must be tamper proof, 2) it must always be invoked, and 3) it must be small enough to analyze and test with complete assurance.[3]

It would seem to me that Kernighan's point speaks to a caveat on the third requirement: it must be small and simple enough to analyze and test with complete assurance.

Footnotes

1. Anderson, J. P., Computer Security Technology Planning Study, ESD-TR-73-51, vol. I, ESD/AFSC, Hanscom AFB, Bedford, Mass., October 1972 (NTIS AD-758 206).

2. Computer Security Technology Planning Study.

3. U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, December 1985.

Security Certification for PIN Entry Devices

Having been inconvenienced by card skimming, I found this Register article on Visa's PIN entry device certification program very interesting.

My complaint to Toyota, Part 3

So, having given up on Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. (that's the American affiliate, I gather), I turned to Toyota Canada, Inc., even though no vehicle purchase was involved:

Hi,

I'm trying to submit a complaint to Toyota Worldwide [the parent company, also referred to as Toyota Motor Corporation later on --John], but there doesn't seem to be any means of doing this through the toyota.co.jp Web site.

I filed it with toyota.com and got the following response:

Response (Michael) 08/04/2004 07:59 AM
Thank you for contacting Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

We apologize, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. only handles inquiries for vehicles sold in the United States and manufactured to U.S. specifications. Please contact Toyota Canada, Inc. for further assistance with your inquiry.

--

My original complaint [posted earlier --John] follows. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Toyota Canada, Inc. quickly responded:

Dear Mr. Jarvis,

Thank you for your recent correspondence.

We have noted your comments regarding the advertisement and have forwarded them to the appropriate departments within Toyota Canada Inc. for information purposes.

Thank you again for taking the time to write and for providing us with your feedback.

Sincerely,

Christine James
Toyota Canada Inc.

This left me puzzled... especially the information purposes part:

Thanks for the quick response, Christine. I am a little puzzled, however. First, I'd asked two questions at the end of my comments, so they weren't simply intended to inform. Second, am I to understand that Toyota Canada, Inc. was responsible for the production of the advertisement in question? I'd assumed it was produced by Toyota Motor Corporation for an international audience (dubbed in various languages, as appropriate). [I've since realized that the commercial is silent, greatly simplifying this job. --John]

If this is indeed the case, I would appreciate your help in forwarding my comments to Toyota Motor Corporation.

Cheers,

John

Their response was priceless:

Thank you for your recent correspondence.

We have noted your further comments. As well, we would like to take this opportunity to explain that Toyota Canada Inc. and Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. (TMS) are separate business entities, as such, we suggest contacting TMS's Customer Relations directly for comment at the following:

TMS
Customer Relations
19001 South Western Ave
Torrance CA USA
90509-2991
Phone: (800) 331-4331
Fax: (310) 618-7814

We would also like to mention that TMS can be contacted through their website - www.toyota.com - select 'Contact Us' at the bottom of the main page, next select the 'FAQ page' link. You may have to create an account with TMS.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,

James Mcwade
Toyota Canada Inc.

That's right, folks: that smacking sound is me being batted back and forth between the American and Canadian arms of Toyota. :-) There's more to come, though; I'm not giving up yet.

My complaint to Toyota, Part 2

Well, Toyota responded this morning:

Response (Michael) 08/04/2004 07:59 AM

Thank you for contacting Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

We apologize, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. only handles inquiries for vehicles sold in the United States and manufactured to U.S. specifications. Please contact Toyota Canada, Inc. for further assistance with your inquiry.

Toyota Canada, Inc.
1 Toyota Place
Scarborough, ON
Canada M1H 1H9
888-869-6828

If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact us.

Toyota Customer Experience

An invitation to complete a customer survey followed this message. I responded to the questions about their Web site and customer service as follows:

I don't feel it's proper to expect people to create an account before they can submit questions or comments to your company. Someone (or some group) should be monitoring a feedback@toyota.com address. I felt my comments were important enough to warrant registering with your Web site; I doubt many others would bother.

As for the response I received, I was simply sluffed off to the Toyota Canada based on my location; it's obvious that the person didn't even read my complaint, since it had nothing to do with a vehicle I'd purchased (their excuse for the rebound). If anything, my complaint should've been forwarded on (by them, not me) to the appropriate department of Toyota Worldwide.

Up next: Part 3: Toyota Canada, Inc.

My complaint to Toyota

I saw your "splitting" Matrix ad (the one where the cars part and merge like drops of water) in the movie theatre again tonight, and, since it still offended me, I decided to write.

Specifically, I complaining about the way it opens, with the Matrix driving straight at the meridian before the tunnel. First of all, the fact that it's the first image that we're presented with tends to drill it into our minds for the length of the ad (and beyond), but, even worse in my mind, is it's being completely unnecessary; there are many other ways to introduce this idea of splitting that aren't nearly so evocative.

Just on the off chance that you have no idea what that image of driving into a meridian evokes, it is almost the exact image that was presented to the world following the death of Princess Diana in the summer of 1997. I asked two other people - keep in my mind that it's only my second time seeing the ad - about the first thought that entered their heads after seeing the image, and they both responded with Diana's death. I'm confident that more asking would elicit similar responses.

Normally, I'm all for freedom of expression in art - it's what kept me from writing this complaint after my first viewing - however, I really feel that this ad constitutes a gratuitous use of that particular image, both in its placement (i.e., at the beginning of the ad) and its relevance (i.e., it's really not referenced again; cars split and merge without any catalyst, if you will, throughout the rest of the ad).

Now, I'm not suggesting that you pull the ad - again, I'm a firm believer in letting others decide for themselves what they deem to be offensive - but I am interested in knowing whether you were aware of the striking similarities between your footage of the tunnel meridian and the shots of the wreckage where Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed died, and if so, why you decided to include them.

Thanks,

John Jarvis

On protection from unreasonable searches and racial profiling...

My buddy's thoughts on Phillip Henry Mann's acquittal got me started... :-)

First, I don't agree that the story begs the question: should a criminal have a reasonable expectation of privacy? If the police have reasonable grounds for suspecting that someone's a criminal, then they can take that person downtown for questioning. So, yes, if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting someone's trafficking drugs, by all means, stop the guy and bring him downtown for questioning. The key point in this story is that after the initial pat down and questioning (which I completely agree with; I don't want to see a cop wounded or killed by some scared kid any more than the next guy), they got the guy to empty his pockets because they were curious about the soft object they'd felt (as I read it). If they were surprised by what it was (i.e., they didn't suspect they'd find it when they approached the individual), and they'd convinced themselves that they weren't in any danger prior to asking to see the contents of the pocket, then there's no reasonable grounds for the search.

See, as with any aspect of the law, you've gotta go out to the boundary cases... Those improbable, and often really scary, situations. In this case, yeah, you know, I'm not saying it'd be the end of democracy as we know it if this guy lost his weed, paid a fine, etc. But what about the 911: The Road to Tyranny footage of the woman being pulled over and eventually charged with obstruction of justice? For those who haven't seen that excellent documentary, think of ticket quotas or cop surliness taken to an unreasonable extreme. Legislation is our only protection against these, thankfully rare, sorts of abuse.

Now, on racial profiling, I'll just tackle a few of its many facets. First and foremost, one should always be mindful of the biases and mind-sets of the people involved; the concept of racial profiling should never be separated from the people involved in the real-world situation, because their biases will have a huge impact on how the concept is applied. For example, if it's obviously a crutch propping up sloppy work, then we, as a society, have a problem.

But, for the sake of argument, let's say that, from a counterterrorism standpoint, some degree of racial profiling makes sense strategically (as in your example of al-Qaida). That is, it makes sense to look for people of a specific ethnicity in the search for the rest of that particular terrorist group. Now, how that appropriateness is applied tactically, in certain American and Canadian cities, for example, is another kettle of fish entirely. We must compare them very carefully (as I mentioned), keeping in mind the freedoms that we enjoy and the concept of being innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

It's scary stuff, man. If you're on the right side of the law today, then, yeah, sure, pull over, let them search your car, your home, your pockets; you've got nothin' to hide. But, s**t, look out if you happen to be on the wrong side of things tomorrow.

On wanting to believe versus believing...

I was doing my part to make Slashdot a better place, metamoderating away, when I came to a comment on Pascal's Wager: an argument for believing in God, basically. Well, in reading the context of the comment, I came to a reply by Dunbar the Inept that echoed my thoughts on belief.

My religious experiences didn't touch on this wager, or any other argument for believing or not. It's as if it was assumed that I believed because I was in Sunday school, because I was confirmed (O.K., maybe there was an argument for the assumption in that case) and because I read some of the Bible, when, in fact, I was conflicted.

And these experiences aren't limited to my United Church of Christ days: as I briefly discussed last month, I quickly became discouraged as I read the Qur'an, with its strong language against anyone who doesn't hold belief in their heart. What's amusing is that, were I able to flick belief on like a switch, I would be insane (as Dunbar pointed out).

On kids and the Web...

HaloScan's basic account restricts comments on the owner's site to 1000 characters. Who knew I'd have so much to say on this post by Deirdre?

Brian captured my thoughts on the first point; security through obscurity shouldn't be your only line of defense.

On the second point, I'll bite. From the MacCentral article on the ruling:

If the law hadn't been challenged, a workable solution would now be in place... Parents wouldn't be afraid to leave their kids alone in the room with the computer on.

I disagree. If I were a parent - and I'm not, so, yes, take that into account - I wouldn't be relying on legislation or technology to assuage my fears about what's going on behind closed doors.

Depending on the age and maturity of the child, I would rely on either supervised Web time only, or my child's judgment and our open relationship. Gone are the days of unsupervised research with the children's encyclopedia or Britannica. If my kid needed to do research on tadpoles, filtering software (even the ICRA functionality in Internet Explorer seems to work well, although it requires some work on the Web site author's part) plus my supervision would be the only way to go. As they got older, some unsupervised time could be introduced... It comes down to being my responsibility.

Having the government determine what the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find obscene scares me, to be honest. We're talking about getting rid of the artistic merit defense up here in Canada too, and I just keep thinking that, yes, it sounds reasonable in many, even most, scenarios that proponents bring up. But what about the cases at the extremes of the spectrum? What about the filmmaker who shies away from the story that needs to be told for fear of going to jail?

Tread lightly, people. We have to live with these decisions.