 Nude & Natural Magazine Naturism is the Way. |
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Nude & Natural Magazine Naturism is the Way. |
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| [ Editor’s note: - This is the last installation of NIFOC for the time being. After several years as a successful feature in the Naturist Society's Nude & Natural magazine, TNS is planning some content changes which does not include NIFOC. It has been a wonderful run and we were happy to reach out to so many naturists on the topic of the internet and how it has made an impression on the clothing-optional lifestyle. We have not made any plans as yet to continue NIFOC independently but are entertaining that as a possibility for future consideration. In the meantime we welcome your comments and questions on our musings as archived herein. - DMK - nifoc@sunclad.com ] |
Try, try, again…
Court Rejects Naturist-Unfriendly COPA
ONCE AGAIN, THE U.S. Supreme Court has wisely chosen to block the government’s efforts at activating the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The law, signed by President Clinton in 1998, authorizes fines of up to $50,000 and imprisonment of up to six months for Web site operators who place pornographic material that is “harmful to minors” within easy reach.
Voting 5-4, the court referred the matter to a lower court to determine whether technological solutions such as software filters offer a better alternative to COPA’s content-based restrictions.
The question, which has not been answered and which remains a key point in the argument, is what is “harmful,” and who should be the judge of that? Some may see all nudity as “harmful”; and others might say that a broad range of topics should be withheld not only from from minors, but from everyone. Regional politics bears this out.
Conservative groups such as the Family Research Council support COPA, claiming it is a much-needed law because porn pop-up ads and e-mails are rampant. However, the high court has ruled on more than one occasion that COPA and laws like it are not the answer to that problem.
The American Civil Liberties Union has argued this and similar cases over the past few years on behalf of online content providers, claiming laws like COPA infringe on free speech, and that content providers could face fines and jail time for presenting otherwise legal material.
In a press release, ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson said, “Today’s ruling from the Court demonstrates that there are many less restrictive ways to protect children without sacrificing communication intended for adults.”
“We urge (Attorney General) John Ashcroft to stop wasting taxpayer dollars in defending this unconstitutional law,” Beeson said. “If he insists on going back to trial, we are confident that the lower court will again find that the law went too far.”
As a result of the ruling, the government could return to the lower court for a full trial, drop the matter, or try another approach.
The COPA cases also raise the question of just how effective such laws might be. The “Can-Spam Act of 2003,” which went into effect earlier this year, requires that unsolicited e-mail be appropriately labeled as spam and specifically so if the content might be deemed sexually explicit. Nevertheless, I continue to get a ridiculous amount of these types of e-mails daily with no such warnings attached.
The COPA cases are pertinent to naturists because our presence on the Internet is directly affected, especially naturist Web sites with nude content. The courts have required that the government define what exactly it means for harmful material to be within easy access of minors. Maxim, a newsstand magazine with provocatively featured celebrities, has no nudity (but darn close at times). It also isn’t exactly “PG” rated by some standards. Is maxim.com harmful to minors and within easy access? Are sex-ed articles harmful? Are pro-life Web sites showing dead fetuses harmful? What is the measuring stick?
The question is also raised in states where legislation against material harmful to minors is being considered or has already passed. What does that mean, and who decides? The bottom line is where does responsibility lie for monitoring minors who use the Internet: with the government or the family?
What we need is personal responsibility in regulating our children’s Internet habits—no doubt a big challenge in today’s busy world.
On search topics: ‘nude’ or ‘nudity’
For some time I have been monitoring news clipping sites on the topic of nudity. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t turn up a dozen or more pages of news items. In a random Google search I performed using its news clipping section, searching for only the words “nude” and “nudity,” the system returned no less than 20 pages of headlines—close to 1,000 recent news articles. It seems that nudity is quite relevant to daily life.
Now I grant that sometimes you may turn up an article on “nude” as a fashion color, or part of a write-up on a violent crime, as in “the body was nude”—but many more articles address nudity in the context of being unclad for one reason or another.
Narrowing my search to just “nude beach,” the results were three pages of headlines, or about 150 possible topics. You can spend a lot of time reading about nude beaches on the ‘Net, or so it seems. Searching private Web sites would be a whole other topic, of course.
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism
Hey, someone got it right! While perusing the Internet on naturist matters I came up with Wikipedia. According to its Web site, Wikipedia is “a free content encyclopedia being written collaboratively by contributors from around the world. The site is a ‘wiki,’ which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link that appears at the top of each page.”
Whoever has been contributing to the site has uploaded quite a bit of information that is very current, including links to The Naturist Society, NAC, and others. Readers may want to try this site with search topics such as “nudism,” “nude” and others to see what comes up. Maybe there’s a page that you can help to edit as well.
Knowledge.com
www.knowledge.com/Top/Recreation/Nudism/
In keeping with the open source idea, I also located Knowledge.com. While this site is rather incomplete, it does offer a way for users to add material or become a topic editor. Numerous nude beaches are listed and a handful of nudist resorts. There is much room for expansion and elaboration on the naturist topic within this general knowledge Web site.
Dennis Kirkpatrick welcomes your comments on NIFOC at nifoc@sunclad.
com. Back editions of NIFOC can also be found at www.sunclad.com/nifoc.
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