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Meta Tags Abuse Illegal  (View post)

Ryan [PersonRank 0]

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
17 years ago4,872 views

this law scares me man...

what's harmful? a site saying there's no santa when viewed by an 8 year old? A site talking about evolution to somebody from kansas? An abortion site to a christian? The skeptics annotated bible having bible in it's meta tags?

I can see the intent here is to shield children from porn sites that put "britney spears" in the meta tags... but like typical govt this is just flawed. That stuff is about 5 years too old. It doesn't work. This is not an area the Govt needs to get involved in. If you don't want your kids to see something harmful online, that's your job as a parent; not uncle sam's.

This law will serve no purpose other than an excuse to shut down more porn sites, and a pathetic attempt to appear to be protecting the children this ballot season.

The only real internet law we need will ban the internet from any children under 16 without parent supervision, and ban making laws about the internet from any politicians over 40.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

This is ridiculous!

On a related note, back in 2001(ish) the company I work for were told to remove their competitor's product names from the META keywords by the competitor's legal team as we were supposedly "stealing traffic" from them. They were happy when we removed them but ignored the fact that our actual web page content contained their product names (which was legitimate use because one of our product's features was that it was compatible with theirs)...

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Al Gore for president!

Splasho [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

"The only real internet law we need will ban the internet from any children under 16 without parent supervision"

I really hope you're joking

Rishabh [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I really hope so too. That cannot be fair in the first amendment of the United States Constitution. I don't like the idea of such harsh punishment over META tags.

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

"Al Gore for president!"

Yeah, 'cause I'm sure him and his wife never "think of the children" when passing legislation.

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Yes they do, but at least they can spell the word internet.

Ryan [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Splasho, it was a joke... and since you removed the 2nd part of it... (aka the punchline), it doesn't make any sense quoted out of context like that.

the "real law" that we do need is one that states you (or yoru parents if you're under 18) are responsible for what happens online.

If you willingly go meet a predator from myspace, and you get raped... your fault.

if you deposit money into an online c a s i n o site and lose... your fault

if you let your child have your credit card... you either a.) eat the charges for being an irresponsible parent or b.) if you don't want to pay, report it stolen and have your child arrested.

we can't legislate personal responsibility.... but we are doing a good job of legislating it away.

Ryan [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Phillip.. why can't I say poker on your blog?

NateDawg [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

[put at-character here]ryan, "why can't I say &#112" – I believe it was for spammer abuse of non-ascii values

to be honest, I'm kinda torn on this issue (probably because I have a three year old boy). Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty conserative (I live in a state who's motto is "Live Free or Die"), so I'm all about personal responsibility. On the flip side though, if some preditor is trying to lure my children to their web site (I really don't care to what extent), that makes me really mad. I do agree that this law has serious potential for abuse (santa to an eight year old) and that there are probably better uses of people's time. Take what I've said here with a grain of salt, because as much as I try, I really have a hard time removing the personal connection and thinking about it strictly logically.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Ryan, your entity series translates to "p o k e r" which is a keyword heavily abused by spammers...

SCJM [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<a h ref="http:// goatse.cx">Free Sesame Street Ring-tones </a>

[Unlinked URL ;-) – Tony]

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