Censor, as used on the web.


I'll begin by pointing out that the phrases government censorship and governmental censorship can be found via Web search. If only governments can censor, then these phrases would be redundant, wouldn't they? Actually, they are examples of retronyms, phrases that come into being when a word acquires a new meaning and a qualifier is needed to distinguish between the old and the new. The Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing defines a retronym as...
A term invented to distinguish a subclass of things from new members of the superclass, where the distinction was previously not necessary, since the old subclass had been all there was of the superclass.
A classic example is the manual transmission. In the early days of automobiles, all transmissions were manual. A transmission was a transmission; nobody ever said manual transmission. Then automatics came along, and eventually, in the USA, became the default for cars and light trucks. Now if you want manual, you must say so!

In a similar fashion, the phrase parental censorship is found to be quite common on the Web. If only governments can censor, then what is parental censorship?

Here are a few illustrative links...

Preliminary Response to the DEET paper "Development of a Business Plan for Education Network Australia"
For the purpose of discussion, Hedland College...

"If a parent decides that a child should have access from home to material that a school prohibits, that is the parent's decision. The educational system has no part in that parent's decision. It is entirely analogous to the parental censorship of TV and written material within the home."
Little Agreement on Plan for Rating TV Programs (New York Times, 26 February 1996)...
"To that end, advocates of ratings codes try to call them 'labels' and useful supplementary information for parents, rather than crude blocking devices leading to parental censorship."
The Age (Melbourne) - Education...
"And is it the parent's fault, in failing to provide censorship, or the media's, when children watch television, video or films that could lead them to anti-social behavior?"

"Parental censorship is a difficult area."

"Such censorship by parents or by adults in general has problems..."

TrueBlue PC DVD - Specification
Television and Popular Culture
HONR 3800 3 credit hours, Professor Meg Moritz...
"This includes an examination of the complex interplay among writers, producers, program executives, network censors, advertisers and advocacy groups."

[Ah, another! Network Censors!]

"In past projects, for example, students have investigated gender differences among college students in the use of the remote control; the use of television by the elderly; and parental censorship in the program viewing of second graders..."

Primary Network...
"In addition to InTOUCH TV Koplar Interactive Systems International provides advanced television services such as program and commercial verification, interactive television and telephony, and ratings lock-out/parental censorship by encoding current broadcast, cable and satellite television signals with digital information."
Harold L. HEARN, Plaintiff, v. P. J. MORRIS and Donald Butterfield, Defendants.
No. Civ. S-79-304 RAR. United States District Court, E. D. California. Nov. 20, 1981...
"Given the foregoing principles, the question becomes one of the extent to which prison officials may restrict inmate correspondence with minors to facilitate parental censorship of that correspondence."

[And that's from almost two decades ago, pre-Web!]

Gov't censorship of internet, e-mail should be unacceptable
Western Herald Online Edition, 13 January 1997...
"This would force the dirty work of censorship on U.S. online service providers."

"There are several internet services that provide parental censorship. Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol are two of the most popular."

Harbrace: English: Holt Handbook, 5e: Student
"Your claim or thesis might be as follows: To restrict children's access to Internet pornography, parents can actively censor the type of information their children can access on the Internet by engaging in and supervising their children's use of the Internet or by purchasing and using available software that blocks out particular Internet content. Following some background on the problem of the availability of Internet pornography to children, this claim clearly indicates that two methods of parental censorship will be discussed, what these two methods are, and in what order these methods will be discussed."

DVD Filter Gives Parents Final Cut...

"Beyond the moral issues of parental censorship, artists were concerned about losing creative control over their work if a company mapped their work without permission."

From Thinking Straight: Reading, Writing, and Grammar, chapter 17 of The Well-Trained Mind: A Parents' Guide to Classical Education by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer...

"We're strong believers in parental censorship."

From Violence In Programming: Is It Protected Speech? by Craig R. Smith, Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University, Long Beach...

[the terms governmental censorship and parental censorship are used in this document]

SurfControl Company Story...

[the term governmental censorship is used in this document]

PICS, Censorship, and Intellectual Freedom FAQ...

"People also employ different definitions of censorship. The most expansive definition is, any action by one person that makes otherwise available information unavailable to another person. Under this expansive definition, even a parent setting filtering rules for a child would count as censorship. PICS documents have adopted the more restrictive definition of censorship as actions that limit what an individual can distribute, and use the term 'access controls' for restrictions on what individuals can receive. But the distinction blurs if a central authority restricts access for a set of people."

[And that's from the people who invented PICS! Remember PICS? I think that Mensa should accept their definition as being rather authoritative, don't you?]

9 Decembro 2000 modifita, de Ailanto verkita.