OLPC Brings Porn To The Third World

OLPC - One Lapdance Per Child

Depressing, for all the effort that’s been put into this project. I guess you can’t think of everything.

Correct me if I am wrong, but surely that is exactly the point of the Internet?

It’s no wonder )) The`re kids, what did the OLPC organizators expect? ))
Teenagers and sex always go together )).
I would suggest, not to block the porn at all, but instead to develop a web program, site or soc. network for those kids, which will improve their sexual educatin, give them infos about venereal deseases and how to secure themselfs from those, etc. Mostly if one considers the rate of AIDS carriers in those countries. In this Case, porn sites can be used as educational materials ))

Sorry, Borsi, OLPC is run by Americans, and the official position of the US Federal Govt on teen-age sex is to a) tell teen agers to abstain, and b) to attempt to incarcerate them as sex offenders if they do not. This policy extends to controlling the AID epidemic, as well. Dubya and his fundie cronies prefer to instruct AID-ridden Africa on abstinence rather than consider ways to provide life-saving pharmaceutical help. It’s the same mentality that shipped Bibles and hymnals to the homeless victims of Hurricane Katrina, it’s the same mentality that housed survivors in “RVs” laden with toxic gases. OLPC will have to turn down any funding originating within the US to get around putting these “porn filters” on the machines they’re distributing. The human realities of sex, children, and porn will not be allowed to set in for the US within the forseeable future - certainly not within the lifespan of the current religious right-wing power base. AIDS? That will take care of itself if the children just abstain from sex until after marriage, right? Sure it will - just ask any American protestant…

I wonder if they will start sending e-mail and phishing scams with their laptops.

More Nigerian scams are on the rise, next news headlines. This time it’s 12 year old kids doing it.

Just kidding.

Porn filters are a must in this situation. Given the diverse social and religious perspectives of the communities this initiative will reach, easy porn access could lead to serious trouble on the ground for these operations.

I know you guys are just having fun but it’s important to realize that, as screwy as the States are about this stuff, they’re trying to get these computers into settings that are often much more conservative than anything you’d find in the U.S., partly because librarianship here emphasizes anticensorship stands.

“I wonder if they will start sending e-mail and phishing scams with their laptops.”

Why would you expect otherwise? That happens everywhere.

The photo of that beautiful kid so happy with his laptop is priceless!

Seeing that innocent joy makes all this effort worthwhile.

From the Bureau of Unintended Serendipitous Consequences:

Nigerian children learn advanced computer skills as they hack Net Nanny

Clyde: I think you might over estimate US libralism and the conservatism of other nations. In my experience travveling around the world, America is actually one of the most conservaitve nations on earth. The vast majority of adult content is originated from a very small handful of opportunistic film makers in the SanFernando Valley and hardly representative of US libralism. Any move to filter the Internet rings of 21st century Chinese communism. These kids should be free to navigate the Internet without restriction but should be tought the vitues of global capitalism and even use adult content as an example. More impotantly I agree with ‘Ali’ here. These kids will still be poor in five years time. They’ll leave school and need money. If we’re not careful these kids will use these computers criminally. So my first concern would be to focus on online ethic and the virtues of legally earning money onine vs a new generation of idiots clogging up ecommerce sites even further.

It is just sad to see this noble effort misused.

Alex

1) the kids (or atleast the sharp ones among them) would find a way to break any filters - it’s part of the growth process

2) almost all kids learn about sex this way these days - was part of our growth process too..

As Search*engines said - seeing that innocent joy should be worth it.

And the more relevant argument should be - how to educate and warn the children against the evil that roam the net - child abuse sites, poachers that try to snare children at online forums (eg. one ex-US house representative) etc…

Duncan - congrats! This is the first interesting post that you have made in months…

Computers sent to foreign lands must be seen as ambassadors of sorts–with even more potential power than the human variety.

Programmed discretion might be in order. Otherwise, these gifts offered by OLPC run the risk of being perceived as trojan horses for porn.

@ Wicked Keemo - “OLPC - One Lapdance Per Child” = HILARIOUS

I wish I could say I am surprised by this, but I’m not. I wonder what kind of filter they will build in that is going to stop innovative curious teens from figuring out a way around it.

They can also get a head start on learning all the basics of 419 scams.

Nigerians are hopeless and beyond redemption.

It was inevitable that they would use them for porn and games. They really should have used the money spent on these computers to improve their country infrastructure, perhaps children’s health. $100 computers sounds real cheap to us but when 70% of the population lives on less than a $1 a day it seems pretty irrational and exuberant.

Adam -

Ever heard of a saying that goes something like this. Give the man food and he can eat for a day…. teach the man to hunt and he can eat for a lifetime.

$100 means you can give the kid 100 meals…. and what about after that…. these people need to slowly move out of their environments … as the actual ecological nature of where they are can not support human life. Unless that structure is created… or piped in… a la Las Vegas…. then these people will continue to starve… and live in poverty.

Maybe they should just set the servers up to utilize OpenDNS with porn filtering enabled.

You mean how our government subsidizes our farmers so they can produce crops in abundance that we just can’t use and they cant sell. So in order to maintain the price of these crops the government in the name of “charity” buys them and dumps the surplus crops in Africa making it economically impossible for farmers in those countries to make a living. Making it always necessary to supply food because the farmers can never make any money to improve their crops? Creating a vicious cycle of dependence.

Sometimes you need the basics like clean water, electricity, jobs, food on the table, and a roof over that table. That is why there are so many illegal immigrants in the United States, because those basic needs are in short supply from their country. You don’t need a computer to get yourself out of poverty.

There is *no way in hell* that this issue could’ve been overlooked during development of the OLPC. My guess is that the folks in charge, w/enought to worry about, chose to dismiss the issue as an impediment to moving forward.

The sad thing about this whole initiative is the narrow-minded goal of improving 3rd world conditions w/1st world technology w/out understanding the cultural implications of such ‘open access’ to information.

As for laptops at schools in the US, are there even any studies that have shown measurable improvement to student performance? My guess is that it is more of a distraction in the classroom than anything else.

Think about how all the children, parents, teachers and fine folks involved in the OLPC project feel when reading this stupid headline:

“OLPC Brings Porn To The Third World”

Reminds me that every idiot can kill a fly, but not all the scientists of our world united can bring it back to life.

Well like they say, when you live on the cutting edge, once in a while, you will ……get cut!

Every innovation will have its downside. We just have to figure out a way around it - in this case, filters etc. The work is still monumental and deserves recognition.

I really don’t think it’s the organization’s fault - what about the school’s responsibilty? That’s like saying Dell is going to be responsible for porn downloaded at Curtis School here in L.A. Why would it be Dell’s responsibility to prevent schools from allowing kids to download porn? Should then all computer manufacturers put porn filters on computers in case parents aren’t policing it with their kids?

This article is nonsensical.

Patricia - they are responsible because they are a not for profit group trying to spread laptops for the aid of education. If porn is the major use for these laptops it becomes an embarrassment to there cause.

“filters” will not work, they will get around them; it is just software

Ok, so what? In my opinion the real question is what else are they using the computers for? Hopefully they are also using them to develop better thinking skills that will enable them to live more fulfilled lives.

Nice gotcha piece of journalism. I assume the same Internet-connected PCs are also bringing access to newspapers, mapping programs, Wikipedia, political blogs, online schooling, social networking, VOIP… and all the other advantages of being connected that can be found out there.

I’m sure that the kids do more than just look at porn. No matter the nationality, a boy is still a boy and he’s going to look.

OLPC forgot an important thing. How can you give laptops to children without porn filters? On the other side, I think that there should be more sites of sexual education because teenagers are discovering their sexuality and they need information.

porn is a universal language - it’s a biological need/sex

lol - when you mean child, do you mean teen boys surfing for porn…or kids in general, including that little innocent-looking little girl?

AHHH HAHAHAHA this is just so funny!

It’s amazing what these kids are using this technology for.

And I agree with Paul - boys are boys and if you give them access to computer without porn filters, they will look at porn. Hooray!

Keep up the awesome stories.

Having deployed and managed many tech centers in under served communities I can vouch for the fact that there is no silver bullet to prevent porn access to those who have Internet access. It’s just not possible. Regardless of what they do OLPC will be delivering porn access. Eh…so what? The good with the bad, right?

From my personal experience I can tell you first hand that nothing beats having twenty+ of your tech center coordinators using curriculum with a link to http://www.whitehouse.com instead of http://www.whitehouse.gov. The former at the time was a goatse-esque porn site.

Let there be porn for everyone! How long did you really think it was going to take and do you thing the filters they put in place will block anything but legit sites?

Thanks TechCrunch

http://www.askTheAdmin.com

Glad to see our hard earned tax dollars are being so well spent. Free porn for everyone!!!

I bet the porn industry is having a riot on this one! Now they can have nigerian snuff hintai films to add to the porn soup of the world

@ Adam, I thought the laptops were given to the schools, which in that case I stand by what I think on it.

I can’t imagine they’d give them directly to the kids. I would think there’d be a risk that people would sell them off instead of using them.

After porn, Islamist extremist and Ben Laden followers will take over the net to brainwash these teens. Wake up naive westerners. You are paving the way for all kind of extremists to play the white angels … Look what the westerners are doing to our children….

Let them have their fun!

@ijustgotblogged, your tax dollars didn’t pay for the OLPC laptop.

Boys will be boys..

@1, super witty

I agree with several here, they should have had the filters. Big oversight. I also agree with some that they’ll look to go around the filters. That’s great, that will be part of their learning process, hacking stuff.

Let them have their fun! Boys will always be boys..

It’s a shame. When the OLPC project was first announced in 2005, some of us saw this coming, and there’s no excuse for OLPC not having proper filters, anti-spyware, anti-virus Pre-intalled. Dummies!

http://www.digitaltechnews.com.....op_co.html

lucky they don’t have webcams!

Back in 1995, in my first year of university, the internet was given to us - and I almost failed my first year cuz of porn - it’s what happens to boys, it’s just the way it is.

Unbelievable how they forgot about the pr0n filters. How is it possible?

they did want to expose them to the real world right… the real world dont need no sticking filters! http://www.askTheAdmin.Com

Hey — there’s porn on the web? What a news! … But apparently well-hearted people overlook that some people simply don’t share their opinion or morals.

So, what’s the lesson learned by the OLPC? Great tool to bring censorship to the world.

With the hormonal changes inevitable in puberty, there’s no doubt that young straight men will develop urgent curiosity about the opposite gender, the most graphic information of which comes in the form of porn. Like a person said before this post, there’s no way to completely block them from every profane or explicit website on the net. But internet filters are a definite must, which the OLPC people apparently “forgot” to put in? (Perhaps that’d be an extra few bucks in the $100 unit price) It will probably prevent many to most of the children from discovering porn at an early age, and for those who get past the filters - well, the silver lining in that cloud is that the process of getting past the filters is a little discovery, perhaps educational, on its own. I can’t believe with all the programs packaged into each laptop, there wasn’t a filter, then again, it’s probably the funding. Maybe Google should contribute more, take a few millions away from its $4.6 bil venture to create open wireless internet- then again, I wouldn’t really want the redirection of resources to Africa when we could utilize it more (Instead of providing all the kids in 3rd world nations with laptops, why not put the funds in educating the wilder areas in the US, since we ARE among least literate or rather the most-people-failing-school countries?)

I refuse to believe that the children will be looking at mature content 24/7! Porn aside, they MUST be having other uses for the technology, assuming that the schools with the free laptops have trained teachers who know how to use the programs themselves… What about the girls? With the more gentle traits inherent in their sex, they would probably receive a greater benefit from the technology. Of course, that is assuming they won’t be interested in the slim models, fashion, cosmetics, or any other stereotypical female-related thing — of course, I realize I’m becoming more chauvinistic, so I will desist typing since I realize this comment is 3x longer than the article.

At the very least, better porn sites than sites on terrorism and extremism.

When I traveled to India last year many kids were ALREADY watching porn on their cellphones. Nothing has changed. Schools will soon enough buy software that filters porn sites anyways so who really cares?

Furthermore in some 3rd world countries porn is illegal or internet connections don’t go above 2kbps (slower than a modem). So downloading porn isn’t very realistic.

None of this diminishes the efforts of OLPC

Porn filters. Well, that’s a winner for you. The problem with news is that we never hear the good stuff — just the negative stuff. I would like to hear more about what positive impact the OLPC is having on the children and how it will transform the ecomonic landscape for these impoverished people. Setting up porn filters is a waste of time and resources, especially when (a) kids will find ways around them, and (b) porn filters kill legitimate content as well.

Also, something silly USians never seem to learn is that if you prohibit something, it popularizes it even more, drawing even more attention to it. This is especially true of teens and kids in general. I would say just ignore the porn issue and focus on teaching these kids how to find the content and leverage the information on the Internet to actually better their lives in the long run. The porn will attend to itself, and can’t really be stopped, anyway. Pandora’s box is open, folks. There is no going back.

Also, it would be instructive to see what true “benefits” to the US Educational system has been seen with the introduction of computers in all the schools. My guess is that it has not mattered one iota — dropouts rates still remain unbelievably high, and US schools still rank 20th or so in the world. The US seems gun-ho on introducing some new thing, trick, technology into its schools without even a though of how the new thing will have a real benefit or go the way of film scripts. I also find it amusing that most teachers in the US are shown up by the very kids they are supposed to be using these computers with — the kids typically are way ahead of the teachers in the use of the computers.

The US — a nation with lots of potential, but also a nation ruled by lots of floundering idiots. If you could just kill the idiot factor in the United States, that country may actually mount to something in the world! Fat chance of that, though.

@Flajann, I have to admit I agree with your post. Our media loves breeding idiots because it has the false idea that its content needs to be sensational. Most of our society aren’t idiots - it’s just that the idiots are the ones who never shut up.

I agree that filters are a bad idea because of their restriction of good sites, and restrictive nature. That said, I also agree that proper education on the subject is a good option in helping with this issue.

I can’t believe you used the term “third world”, it’s tantamount to a racial slur. It’s a hateful and archaic term that was used to signify that the Western world (which was considered the first world) was superior and more advanced then the other non-Anglo countries - specifically Asia and Africa. The more politically correct term is “developing country (compared to ‘developed’).

The usage of the term “3rd world” gives off a sense of unprofessionalism, and it would be like using the words “retarded” or “gay” to dethrone or devalue something. I’m not sure whether you’ll read this but it is most definitely a disgusting term that is very commonly used without any forethought.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) needs to implement OBSPT (One Big Stick Per Teacher)

Simple, cheap, effective, legal in Africa — enough said.

But in some countries, aren’t images that we consider “normal” considered porn or forbidden?

@TechCrunch Racism, I disagree. “Third World” has nothing to do with race in most people’s minds in our country. I think of unpaved streets, lack of running water and underdeveloped resources when I hear that term.

Just sayin’.

Teach them to hack Net Nanny = Spamming americans soon with new hacks to steal our identities.

teach the kids about STDs, they seem interested enough and have all the materials

I want to live in a world where teenage boys surf porn as well.

I wonder whether Reuters could have also measured the productive time these kids spent on their laptops. Reuters probably guessed that part of the story would not be as interesting to the readership. Would Techcrunch carry the story in that scenario? I wonder.

Unfortunately it’s easier to measure the negatives than it is to assess the positives associated with access to the internet.

Hardware Spyware. Best way to spy on that little country.

Don’t filter the laptops. It’s up to the countries that get these machines to decide what (if any) block they need to put in place for their students. In order for democracy to stand a chance at real growth, no barriers to information can exist, of any kind. Porn might be the dark side of unfettered access to information, but then again, traffic accidents are the dark side of being able to drive. With great freedom comes great responsibilty. These countries need freedom, not dogma.

Well, the MIT eggheads wanted to provide these kids an educational opportunity. And sure enough, that’s educational…

This makes me want to invest even more in OLPC.

OLPC is still great - …

And what about the extreme violence you may find on internet ?

Well, that’s PORN. :-O
I repeat, PORN !

The only thing I hope it will not bring to third world is this stupid american conservatism where any kind of content is tolerated but porn……. It seems so absurd to others….

COMPUTERS IS RACIST ANYWAY. THEY MAKE THEM TOO HARD AND THEY SHOULD BE EAZY LIKE TV AND THATS IS WHY THEY AINT NO GOOD JOBS IN THE COMMUNITY.

Fact: Porn decreases sex drive. Look at Germany, Japan, S. Korea where they are struggling with low birthrates. Introduction of ‘virtualized sex’ to a society affects casual sex… this is exactly what certain low-income societies need so we all are not victims of idiocracy in 50-60 years.

Bottom Line: Filters are a necessity because without the filters the laptops will be stolen by adults.

Dogtown, that’s one of the more stupid things anyone has said in this comment thread…

The reason why these countries have low birth rates sure as hell isn’t porn, it’s high education and the willingness to have a career. Neither of which is a bad thing.

Getting a billion kids has always been a way for poor and uneducated people to ensure that some of their children will survive to adulthood and help feeding the family. With higher wealth, that need decreases since childbirth lowers and the ability of a single person to sustain a whole family increases.

@Scott:
Do you really think that porn filters will prevent theft? That’s absurd. Adult theft of laptops has nothing to do with the ability to view porn. It’s about the value of the machine on the black market.

If the Chinese government can’t succesfully filter out anti-government or pro-democracy websites, what hope does anyone have with trying to filter porn on these laptops? Even the best filtering programs don’t block all porn.