> If you think that the arguments made in that booklet make sense to you than that explains the rest of what you said.
Um, I said “I or you may not agree with all it actually says, but please don’t distort the argument.” We’re all on a non-essential web site right now, so no one here will be able to defend all its arguments – that would be hypocritical.
> Again the asifa booklet is exhibit A.
Again, I said: “No-one’s talking about the asifa booklet here”. It was you that claimed that the asifa booklet blamed the ‘net on OTD rates, and I merely challenged that and provided you a method of obtaining it, so you could read it and see that you were wrong and see the OTD debate is a strawman.
> You are making a lot of assumptions about my business and my views on the subject which are not true. In my mind its not a one size fits all solution – to me kids, teens, adults at home and adults at work all need different levels of filtration (or in the case of kids no internet at all).
That’s what I was hoping you meant, especially the “adults at work” bit – but you certainly didn’t say it initially. You were originally claiming that businesses simply couldn’t operate properly if they had filtered internet. That is nonsense. Filters work for just about everyone – it’s just a matter of getting good advice and setting the right level – and the level is typically far higher than most people believe possible.
> Also various families will have different needs – ie. someone in medical school (or in college in general) will have a very difficult time with a filter.
Not the medical student argument again! Please! Every time there’s a filter discussion someone mentions the poor medical students.
They are one of a very small minority who would have to have a very permissive filter, or one that’s easy to override, or a monitoring system instead.
By the way, on monitoring systems – it doesn’t (and usually shouldn’t) be a spouse that monitors. But if the concept shocks you because of the lack of trust that’s implied, then you won’t like learning hilchos yichud. (It is true that monitoring systems are far more difficult to use effectively than filters.)
Frankly, people in medicine spend their careers seeing stuff that for a normal yid would be totally ossur but their jobs saves lines and halachah permits this. It’s irrelevant to the discussion unless you like arguing in extremes (rosh yeshiva vs women’s doctor).
> Anyone who runs a business which is involved in developing/testing software will tell you that filters will not work for them for obvious reasons and it has nothing to do with viewing inappropriate sites.
I work in developing software and that’s not true.
I can view more sites in a day than many people see in a year.
My business relies on accessing countless websites and our internet traffic passing through multiple proxies, redirects, DNS systems and heterogeneous networks in one piece so I know about all the ways that filters can affect software businesses but it’s untrue that “filters will not work for them”.
There are filters (e.g. DNS-based) that will work even in the most extreme example, and sometimes multi-tier solutions are necessary. The state-of-the-art is improving every day and having a legitimate sites blocked is increasingly rare. Like email spam fighting, it will soon be a largely solved problem.
Rarely, a business may have to change some software if it absolutely conflicts with every filter that’s currently out there, but even in this <u>extreme</u> case I ask you the same answered question as above: “if your business relies on viewing grossly unsuitable material, do you think there is a Rov in the world who would agree you should operate that business? If not, then is just a question of how big the risk it, and your awareness of that risk.”.
Lawyers would recommend a filter too in a business environment because it protects from a particular class of legal problems that employees with internet access can cause.
If it’s important enough, we would save no expense to get the right advice & filter.
Some people baulk at spending the price of a esrog on a filter that will work with their business because it’s not free, so they leave it unfiltered because the free one makes the ‘net unusable. It’s simply because they don’t appreciate the problem – because they haven’t seen first hand the mess the ‘net can create – yet!
It’s fair enough to criticise “hyperbole”, but the flip side is that many people are naive to the multifaceted dangers of unadulterated internet access (often because they haven’t yet been affected), and believe “self-control” is a reasonable alternative. If they knew what rabbonim and the pros know, it wouldn’t be a debate.
In fact, even the secular world are waking up the problems that a generation of exposure to the unfiltered internet will cause. In the UK they are starting to mandate that every internet connection be provided with a filtering option. And that’s from the government of a bastion of the liberal free-speech western world! Yes, they mean kids, but us adult Jews should not want possible access to inappropriate material either.