The other night, I was listening to some Intelligence for Life on the radio. They were talking about how we have to be extra conscious about the photos that we post on the internet. This may seem like a no-brainer, but the example they gave made me recalibrate my thinking.
The radio program gave the example of a doting parent wanting to share pictures of their baby with their friends. If they were to post a cute picture of their baby splashing in the tub on a site such as Picasa, they might find themselves faced with charges for distribution of child pornography. Obviously, the doting parent had no intention of committing such a heinous act, but in this world of digital document distribution, we must rethink the way that others interpret our actions.
When we hear stories of teachers being charged for any sort of wrong action or behavior I wonder whether they were aware of the legal issues behind their choice. Given, some of the messes that these teachers find themselves tangled in are probably regretted, blatant errors in judgment. However, there must be many situations that do not present themselves as obvious, wrong choices...like sharing your cute baby pictures with friends on the internet!
Great blog, very apropos with a current issue being faced by Amazon.com this week ; a self publishing book was posted with questionable material and definitely poor taste , which was alleged to present images that could be categorized as child pornography. The process of self publishing allows anyone to publish an electronic text which does not undergo any kind of peer review or publishing review conducted by Amazon (no human other than the author needs to have access to the text before making it public, pretty much like a blog). This particular publication, which was taken off of the website ASAP, was apparently still within the confines of legality, if not within good taste.
ReplyDeleteThe real dilemma in my personal opinion lies in who has the right to censor information and under what circumstances it is acceptable to do so. I happen to agree with the action taken by Amazon of taking the particular publication off the website so that it is no longer accessible. On the other hand, I think of this type of censorship and it scares me a little. What would be censored if we were talking about the 30’s? Would publications with Gay themes be censored then? What about abortion? Should censorship be conducted by whoever has the power to do so when they are representing the majority, the accepted societal norms of the time?