Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how Stuff Works, and today I have
Speaker 1: sitting next to me Jonathan Strickland, one of our writers.
Speaker 1: I suppose I should remove the tape. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: was gonna make a great owl sound, but I don't
Speaker 1: even actually have tape. Those That was radio magic or
Speaker 1: podcast magic if you want podcast magic. Well, the reason
Speaker 1: Jonathan sounded muffled up front was because we were talking
Speaker 1: today about parental controls. Yes, although I'm not his parents. No, No,
Speaker 1: let's clear that up right away. No, he is not
Speaker 1: my long last father. My father is is is neither
Speaker 1: long nor lost. He doesn't have to wear a big
Speaker 1: black suit with a mask over his head and wields
Speaker 1: a lightsaber not often, Okay, alright, So anyway, parental controls
Speaker 1: are a subject of much debate simply because you know,
Speaker 1: let's get down in the nitty gradie. It's a form
Speaker 1: of censorship um about which many people, including Jonathan uh
Speaker 1: and I'm probably not gonna sound like, you know, an
Speaker 1: anti censorship person. But I also have two young daughters,
Speaker 1: one of which is uh too young to do any
Speaker 1: more than drool on the keyboard. But you know, recently
Speaker 1: I have a kindergartener who's very computer savvy, and uh
Speaker 1: started thinking about that the other day. Looked at the
Speaker 1: mac os and there's a parental control suite built into
Speaker 1: the operating system. Yes, just like there is for a
Speaker 1: for Microsoft Vista, and uh, these are these are really
Speaker 1: simple uh solutions. You know. It says turn off the
Speaker 1: computer at a certain time on school nights, or only
Speaker 1: allow them to use the computer for and then you
Speaker 1: get it to set half an hour, whole hour, three hours,
Speaker 1: and you get to pick So those kinds of things
Speaker 1: really okay, not censorship, but you do have some control
Speaker 1: over how much time your your child spends using the computer. Um,
Speaker 1: and they're built right into the operating systems, which you know,
Speaker 1: seem pretty cool. Now. They also go farther. You can
Speaker 1: allow them to block uh dirty words in the nictionary
Speaker 1: websites that might be offensive. Of course you're relying on
Speaker 1: somebody else to set those sites up, you know, and say, well, um,
Speaker 1: go ahead, and subscribe to these conventions, so you're sort
Speaker 1: of trusting somebody else to block your your websites for you.
Speaker 1: But um, you know that that's essentially how it works.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, you know, I would like to
Speaker 1: limit my my kids time on the computer, so I
Speaker 1: set up a basic set of parental controls. UM. So
Speaker 1: I'm so far pretty happy with it. Cool cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: back when, uh, back when I was a kid, UM,
Speaker 1: I was fortunate to be part of a LUs hold
Speaker 1: that had computers pretty early on. So I mean even
Speaker 1: when I was I guess about maybe twelve or thirteen,
Speaker 1: we had a computer. This is kind of dating myself
Speaker 1: a little bit, um, but we had, uh, the first
Speaker 1: real computer computer that we had. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: count the Texas instruments and please don't send me mad
Speaker 1: email about that, but it was the Apple to E,
Speaker 1: the Apple to me, and and we had an Apple
Speaker 1: to E. We had several games on it, um, which
Speaker 1: ostensibly were for me, but it was not unusual to
Speaker 1: find that my father playing playing games and beating my
Speaker 1: high scores. Um. But the the real reason we got
Speaker 1: it was because my my father writes novels. So um,
Speaker 1: our parental control system was dad coming into the office
Speaker 1: and kicking me off the computer so that he could
Speaker 1: write the next chapter of his book, which was you
Speaker 1: know necessary because in order to supplement his income and
Speaker 1: pay for my education and everything along those lines and
Speaker 1: those of my sister, you know, he kind of had to.
Speaker 1: So that was the old style of rental control where
Speaker 1: it was very much hands on. But yeah, today, when
Speaker 1: you've got kids who have their own computers now or
Speaker 1: their own phone lines, I mean you've got a lot
Speaker 1: more technology available, and some of it geared specifically towards children. Um,
Speaker 1: you really have to take these other things into consideration.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, we can only afford one
Speaker 1: machine for the entire house now. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: prices have dropped so much that it's not a luxury
Speaker 1: item anymore. Um, not for a lot of families anyways.
Speaker 1: For some families, yes it still is. But for many families,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not unusual to find three or four
Speaker 1: computers in the household. So in that case, you can't
Speaker 1: really just you know what, pop your head in every
Speaker 1: five minutes and make sure that your kids not jumping
Speaker 1: back online to to check out the internet. It's it's
Speaker 1: not really practical. So and I can I can begrudgingly
Speaker 1: agree that these are unnecessary. Uh has died to use
Speaker 1: the word eve, But they are necessary um in many cases.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, well see they they actually hurt me a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did.
Speaker 1: Of course, parental controls don't go only, they don't stop
Speaker 1: at the edge of your computer screen. There are also other,
Speaker 1: many other screens that you'll find parental controls on, like
Speaker 1: your TV, the beachip which is built in actually to
Speaker 1: the TV itself, which is supposed to UM allow the
Speaker 1: rating system to sort of help you control what can
Speaker 1: and can't be seen. Um. But you know, you'll also
Speaker 1: find it on a lot of set top boxes, like
Speaker 1: a cable or satellite subscriber. You'll um in many cases
Speaker 1: find that there's some way to knock out certain channels. Uh. Personally,
Speaker 1: I like doing that with the shopping channels. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I put a little password in there because I, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to watch them. Um. Well, and
Speaker 1: and really technology has become so pervasive that it's it's
Speaker 1: that's pretty much why you need these things. So kind
Speaker 1: of let's let's go back to the computer one for
Speaker 1: a bit, because I did write an article that that
Speaker 1: that dovetail tails into this conversation. UM. It's not directly relevant,
Speaker 1: but UM tangentially, I suppose, which was about Internet censorship
Speaker 1: and UM. One of the big problems are that that
Speaker 1: advocacy groups have, with privacy advocacy groups and and and
Speaker 1: UM and free speech advocacy groups have with these kind
Speaker 1: of UH solutions is that they're not the most elegant
Speaker 1: or accurate UM ways to prevent people from seeing certain sites.
Speaker 1: A lot of them depend on UM blacklists. So in
Speaker 1: that case, like Chris was saying earlier, you're depending on
Speaker 1: someone else saying this site is inappropriate for people to
Speaker 1: look at at work or for children to have access
Speaker 1: to UM. And so that's just a list of websites
Speaker 1: that that someone else somewhere has determined are not appropriate
Speaker 1: for you or your your kids to look at. But
Speaker 1: in other cases they use keyword blocking, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a search engine. You know. Search engines will
Speaker 1: often UH scour a website and and categorize it by
Speaker 1: the keywords that are on there. So when you do
Speaker 1: a search for that keyword term, that's how they pop
Speaker 1: up well, the same sort of thing for these parental controls.
Speaker 1: They search for a database of keywords, and if those
Speaker 1: keywords show up or phrases in some cases UM, that
Speaker 1: site will automatically get blocked by the software. And the
Speaker 1: problem is that it doesn't always block the appropriate site.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it blocks stuff that really you should have access to. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a I have friends who work at the
Speaker 1: Center for Disease Control and some of them work in
Speaker 1: uh in realms which require them to do research on
Speaker 1: things like sexually transmitted diseases. But with certain software blocking
Speaker 1: applications on their are website blocking applications, they can't go
Speaker 1: to the sites they need to go to to do
Speaker 1: research because they these keywords are popping up and that
Speaker 1: the information is being blocked. So there are times where
Speaker 1: this can really prevent you from from even doing your
Speaker 1: job right. So that's kind of uh that's that's why
Speaker 1: I look at this is sort of a downside in
Speaker 1: many ways. Now, when you're talking about kids, it's a
Speaker 1: different it's a different matter altogether. But the problem is
Speaker 1: that these these parental controls aren't being applied just by
Speaker 1: parents too kids. They're being applied by by companies to
Speaker 1: employees or in some cases by governments to citizens. True enough,
Speaker 1: there are instances even of I s p s Internet
Speaker 1: service providers who are filtering content that comes into UH
Speaker 1: into homes based on their content for you know, actually
Speaker 1: have heard of politic coal content being censored. UM. And
Speaker 1: we're just talking about in the United States. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are other places like China who are famous where
Speaker 1: you know, they're famous for blocking large, large volumes of
Speaker 1: content on the Internet, and Cuba, which has its own
Speaker 1: intranet which acts like an Internet but is really all
Speaker 1: self contained. It doesn't really access anything to the outside,
Speaker 1: so it really insulates the citizens. That's true. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things to UH that people try to use
Speaker 1: it for uh. You know, applications such as libraries, public
Speaker 1: libraries where um you know, in this case, you wanted
Speaker 1: to shut down at a certain point to uh to
Speaker 1: log off all the computers in the library. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a big debate in many library
Speaker 1: circles UM over whether or not it is a good
Speaker 1: idea or a bad idea to UH to allow censorship.
Speaker 1: Of course, you don't want uh. Your child is working
Speaker 1: on a term paper, UM for a class, you don't
Speaker 1: want somebody surfing the internet for for porn right next
Speaker 1: to them. But at the same time, you know, is
Speaker 1: it right? You know, one of the central tenants to
Speaker 1: UH to the American Library Association's uh you know code
Speaker 1: is that you're supposed to open these channels and and
Speaker 1: fight censorship and all fronts. I know this because I'm
Speaker 1: pursuing my degree in library and information sciences. So this
Speaker 1: is a topic We've talked about a lot lately, but um,
Speaker 1: it is. It is one of those things where they
Speaker 1: you know, there are people fighting on both sides of it.
Speaker 1: They see a reason for it. But you know, for
Speaker 1: as far as the kids are concerned, but as far
Speaker 1: as adults are concerned, do you apply the same rules
Speaker 1: and in what way? Right? It's difficult? Yeah? Yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you put a do you have a separate section in
Speaker 1: the library? I mean, and if actually does that, does
Speaker 1: that is that inappropriate in the way because it casts
Speaker 1: a certain light on the people who go in there.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the most popular ways of
Speaker 1: handling it is to notify the library customer that they
Speaker 1: are being they are not using a filtered internet connection,
Speaker 1: and to offer an unfiltered internet connection to that person,
Speaker 1: you know, as an alternative, it's like, well, here it is.
Speaker 1: You know. Of course they also risk losing federal funding
Speaker 1: for these projects because that's part of the legislation. And
Speaker 1: and this is you know, it's just gonna get more complicated.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna get uh easy. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna there there's no easy answers to this, and it's
Speaker 1: not gonna you know, there's no solutions gonna pop up
Speaker 1: in the next thirty seconds or something. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: hearing the latest news I've heard about. This is for
Speaker 1: airlines that are considering, you know that they're starting to
Speaker 1: use um, I'm starting to WiFi enable right in flight
Speaker 1: Internet that have WiFi enabled uh um in flight services,
Speaker 1: so you pay to have access to the internet and
Speaker 1: you can surf the web on your laptop in flight
Speaker 1: for a fee. UM. And there are people they're both customers.
Speaker 1: There are airline personnel like like flight attendants and even
Speaker 1: pilots who are all concerned about whether or not they
Speaker 1: should put in filters to block people from surfing for
Speaker 1: porn on an airplane flight. Right, And I mean that
Speaker 1: that's definitely one of those situations where you're you're thinking, really,
Speaker 1: why would you want to You're sitting next to perfect strangers.
Speaker 1: And I've heard arguments about this. I've heard arguments that say, well,
Speaker 1: why would you look on someone else's screen? Well, it's
Speaker 1: in your field of vision. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but my my vision does extend
Speaker 1: beyond directly straight in front of me, and the way
Speaker 1: the way you're sitting in an airplane. Let mean, if
Speaker 1: you're in coach, I mean you know, you're your elbows
Speaker 1: are and sticking in the ribs of the person next
Speaker 1: to you. There's not a whole lot of space there. Well,
Speaker 1: if you think about it. The one of the biggest
Speaker 1: arguments that I've heard for people who do not want
Speaker 1: airlines to allow cell phone use is they don't want
Speaker 1: to hear everybody else talking. No, I don't having their
Speaker 1: personal phone conversations. Well, why would you want to? You know,
Speaker 1: I'll give that some credit. You know, you're a captive
Speaker 1: audience for your four hour flight. You have to sit
Speaker 1: next to this person in very close proximity. If you
Speaker 1: don't want to flight, you can't switch seats or anything like. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't really want to watch somebody sir,
Speaker 1: for porn, you know, sitting right next to them and
Speaker 1: coach and I want to but no, particularly not when
Speaker 1: you're a captive audience strapped into a seat at thirty
Speaker 1: thou feet that that definitely does not have appeal to me.
Speaker 1: And I've heard suggestions, perhaps tongue in cheek for solutions
Speaker 1: like having the curtained off area in the back of
Speaker 1: the plane so you can just have the porn section.
Speaker 1: And just do we really need to turn airplanes into
Speaker 1: that kind of environment. I mean, we used to have
Speaker 1: the smoking sections, which, depending on your point of view,
Speaker 1: we're bad enough. From my own point of view, definitely
Speaker 1: bad enough, so I'm glad those are gone. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just such a kin of worms um and and
Speaker 1: even though I am vehemently anti censorship, I guess it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's okay as long as
Speaker 1: it doesn't impact me, because I can I can definitely
Speaker 1: say that if I were sitting next to someone and
Speaker 1: they were looking at inappropriate material, however you may define that,
Speaker 1: it would definitely make me uncomfortable. And I mean it
Speaker 1: just seems wildly inappropriate. You you you would hope people
Speaker 1: would use their individual judgment and come to the conclusion of, hey,
Speaker 1: this is something I should only look at in the
Speaker 1: privacy of my own home, bathroom, closet, whatever, um, and
Speaker 1: not on a seven thirty seven going on a transatlantic flight.
Speaker 1: You know. But you can't necessarily trust that people will
Speaker 1: do that. So that's where the kind of worms comes in.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: do eventually with my kids. Um. You know, they're, at
Speaker 1: least as far as I can tell, um, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty smart kids, and they're gonna have to you know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be able to get around a lot of
Speaker 1: the paroun controls I could set up for them. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll find some way to do it, because you know
Speaker 1: that's the kids are smart and uh you know, and
Speaker 1: they soak up information so quickly, see as fast as
Speaker 1: we come put up barriers that are gonna know ways
Speaker 1: around them. It's kind of it's it's both admirable and scary.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. And you know, I think I think
Speaker 1: you're right. I think what it comes down to is
Speaker 1: educating people and saying, look, you know this isn't appropriate
Speaker 1: at this time. You don't want to do this in
Speaker 1: front of all these people. You don't want to expose
Speaker 1: people to things that you wouldn't want to be exposed to,
Speaker 1: and here's why. And you have to uh to get
Speaker 1: in there and explain what it is, what's going on,
Speaker 1: and say, you know, you're gonna have to use your judgment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're getting back to the old parental control. Exactly interesting, right,
Speaker 1: You can't just solely depend upon technology. Although technology can
Speaker 1: certainly help you out, you can't. You can't depend on
Speaker 1: that as the the cure all solution. Um. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you've got to hope that we don't have too many
Speaker 1: Andy Kaufman's out there, because those are the exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of people who would want to push your buttons
Speaker 1: and do what you're not supposed to do in public
Speaker 1: just to see how people react. And there's always going
Speaker 1: to be those people, but hopefully they'll be in the minority. Well.
Speaker 1: I guess that about wraps up this discussion. If you
Speaker 1: want to learn more, you can read all about internet
Speaker 1: censorship on how stuff Works dot Com right now, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again soon for more on this
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