New LA Net cafe rules
p2pnet.net News:- Los Angeles is taking a page out of Communist China’s little red book on the Internet.
Claiming “illegal” cyber cafes allow minors to access “unhealthy information and websites,” China is shutting down Net coffee houses that aren’t state approved.
The Ministry of Culture is also installing a special video system in all Net cafes nationwide by the end of 2004. Customers will have to enter name, age and their national citizen identification number before they’re allowed to log on.
“Citing problems with truancy and youth violence, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance restricting the hours during which minors can visit Internet cafes and requiring the shops to install video cameras for security,” says a Reuters story here.
The ordinance targets ‘cyber cafes’ and ‘PC baangs’ that provide five or more computers with Internet access, including those set up specifically for multiplayer PC video games. The cafes would be required to get a police permit to operate.”
“Cybercafes are not inherently bad or troublesome, it’s the attractive nuisance that they provide to children,” Councilman Greig Smith is quoted as saying in a Los Angeles Daily News story here.
“It’s just the nature of the beast that they draw people late at night and provide a place to go that may attract problems.”
July 8th, 2004 at 10:29 pm
Something not mentioned is that public access internet computers are virtually untraceable to the people using them. High-profile crimes via the internet, such as releasing a major virus, making death threats, etc, can (with considerable effort) often be traced to the source even when hiding behind proxies. Tracing it to a public terminal leads to an an effective dead end – something that law enforcement will no doubt try to remedy.
Expect more widespread use of video cameras, and probably soon, having to show an ID to use a public computer.
The local library where I live now requires registration for internet access. Since the “Patriot” Act forces all US libraries to turn over all records of a patron on demand to law enforcement, this would presumably include internet records as well as checked-out books.
July 8th, 2004 at 11:32 pm
Yeh? I’m in Canada and all we have to do in a library is book a time with our name and that is all