COPA Worse Than Censorware?

Slime-dogg writes: "Looks like the feds are trying to pass a law to ban posting of erotica on-line." The law, COPA, isn't really news. What's news is that the ACLU is arguing that censorware is "less restrictive" than simply criminalizing sexual content. Essentially they are telling the court, "You should not allow COPA because, instead of banning sex, the government could install censorware and that would be better." Legal arguments by definition must be practical, so I see where the ACLU is coming from, but many will interpret this as green-lighting government-mandated censorware.

Comments

Children's rights

[rodgerd]

I certainly find it troubling that free speech advocates are basically flagging any notion of childrens' rights in the censorship debate. It becomes even more bizaare when one considers that the ACLU are willing to defend the notion that neo-Nazis have the right to free speech, on the grounds that failing to defend the most repugnant members of the community will lead to a loss of freedom for all, but are happy to allow US 17 year olds to be treated as their parents' chattel in the matter of their freedoms.

Hands up anyone who, as a teenager, wanted to look at stuff, or read things, or held opinions their parents didn't like? Hands up who's enthused about the notion you shouldn't have been treated as anything other than an extension of your parents?

The funny thing is, of course, that the US, like most Western nations, does have a firm notion that children have rights that over-ride their parents'. A parent can't molest or beat their children, because children have a right to a physically safe environment. They can't pull their kids out of school at 11 to work in a factory and boost the family income, because kids have a right to a decent education (or, failing that, whatever they get at the local school).

But the ACLU is happy to allow parents to exercise total control over a 17 year old's browsing habits, even though it may not be best for the long term development of the seventeen year old.

Re:Children's rights

[rodgerd]

However, this isnt about rights.

That's certainly what framers of the arguments in favour of providing minors with no rights would have one believe. I beg to differ. Moreover, having already acknowledged that Yes, children have rights as persons. it seems a little disingenious to then claim This is about what is or is not in the best interest of the child. and imply that a minor's ability to exercise his or her rights do not enter into the picture. In what way is it advantageous to deny said minot the ability to exercise rights? What about the learning experiances associated with said rights? Are some minors to wait until adulthood to learn basic life-lessons? In what way is this utile?

You go on to say:

Rights are based upon the assumption that the given person has the capacity for rational independent thought and the ability to take responsibility for their actions [...] ...the event which marks the State's recognition of an individual's capacity to take responsibility for himself is the 18th birthday.

In short, a long-winded exposition of the notion that the excercise of rights is tied to the notion of moral agency and the assertion that the recognition of moral agency is tied to the 18th birthday (except for liquor).

The tying of moral agency to rights is a fairly standard argument, and one I find little or no fault with. Your argument that follows on, however, is fundamentally flawed because it is based on the premise - which you yourself acknowldge is false - that moral agency is some sort of binary switch the state and society recognise as being activated at age 18. While it is the case that one enters one's majority at 18 in most Western nations, most Western nations also recognise elements of moral agency, with the implicit rights thereof, well before 18. Most nations will allow a minor to face trial by their early teens, which clearly undermines your assertion that ...the given child does not have the capacity to make those choices itself. since the customs and legal systems of most Western nations consider a child perfectly capable of making decisions about at least issues of the most serious sort. Otherwise, a 14 year old could not be tried for murder.

A cursory glance at the ages at which various rights accrue reinforce this impression; at 16, for example, any New Zealand minor, most UK minors, and many European and US minors have the right to make judgements relating to sexual activity - judgements which will be upheld as valid by the legal system. Having sex with a 15 year old in New Zealand can land you in jail if a parent objects, but having sex with a 16 year old will only land you in jail if they objected.

In short: our legal and social norms recognise that children have varying degrees of moral agency and, implicitly, rights as they work through their teenage years, yet the ACLU are prepared to ditch those rights for the expediency of their adult constituency. Bad form.

There is a very large body of work on paternalism and related issues in philosophy. A library is nearby, no doubt. Check it out.

I suppose I should be grateful you managed to restrain yourself to only one snide comment in your post. Perhaps you should spend less time directing other to libraries, and more time in them, preferably boning up on rhetoric, logic, and moral philosophy.

Re:Children's rights

[Kintanon]

responsibility for himself is the 18th (or 21st, depending on what we're talking about ahem BEER) birthday.



Let me see here... I'm qualified to do all of the following:
1. Pilot a 1 ton vehicle at speeds exceeding 55 mph.
2. Elect the governing officials of our nation.
3. Go to war and wield a fully automatic m-16.

I am not qualified to do the following:
1. Purchase Alcohol.
2. Enter certain establishments where alcohol is sold. (specifically a bunch of clubs in New Orleans and other places, strip joints mostly)

Does anyone else see something wrong with this list? I wouldn't buy beer even if I could, because I don't drink. But it's the principle of the thing.

Kintanon

Re:Children's rights

[delong]

Yes, children have rights as persons. However, this isnt about rights. This is about what is or is not in the best interest of the child. This is about paternalism.

Rights are based upon the assumption that the given person has the capacity for rational independent thought and the ability to take responsibility for their actions. As minors (biologically speaking) are neither intellectually or emotionally developed enough to either make rational, independent decisions or take responsibility for their actions (having little concept of consequences), parents have a strong obligation, codified in law, to decide what is in the best interest of the child based upon what that child would decide if it was capable of making a rational decision. In this case, the event which marks the State's recognition of an individual's capacity to take responsibility for himself is the 18th (or 21st, depending on what we're talking about ahem BEER) birthday.

So yes, children have rights, but parents (and for some reason the State thinks its in this category as well) have duties to decide the application of said rights because the given child does not have the capacity to make those choices itself. Now it is arguable whether a 17 year old is capable of making responsible, rational decisions. But under law, and under Dad's roof no doubt (hehe), that decision is moot because the law says that they can not. Not for another year at least.

There is a very large body of work on paternalism and related issues in philosophy. A library is nearby, no doubt. Check it out.

The problem with ages

[rodgerd]

Also, what's so magical about these ages?

The problem with ages is that they're often poor measures of maturity; you're quite right. I can think of 25 year olds that aren't maure enough to conduct their sexual affairs and probably won't be when they're 45. And I'm sure there are 14 year olds who are. Problem is that maturity tests present some problems on a couple of levels:

They're cumbersome: sure, it would be nice if the age at which individuals can do stuff was tuned to the age they can handle it at, but the infrastructure required to asses this would be huge; consider the system required for drivers licenses. Age based rights are practical, even if they're often crummy in some ways, and, at some point, convenience needs to be a consideration in governance.

They can retard growth: One of the classic answers to the problems associated with young people screwing up at various things (sex, driving, drinking) is often to raise the age at which they're allowed to start trying them - for example, since 18-25 year old males are usually (in .nz, anyway) the worst idiots behind the wheel of a car, restrict them from getting a driver's license until they are 25, instead of leting them start at 16. What this fails to take into consideration is that part of the reason people make poor decisions when they first have access to a thing is that many, heck, most people need to get burned once or twice before they learn the lessons needed to behave sensibly. So a test of one's ability to handle a particular set of rights may permanently disenfranchise people who just need to make a couple of low-grade screwups before they start getting it right - but without those screwups, will never be able to get it right.

Re:What the Hell?

[Elvii]

Gotta agree with this one, seeing as this doesn't really try to address the problem. People will always be able to post/view/etc "objectionable" material, whetever you happen to define as objectionable. So government/people keeps doing band-aid fixes, trying to do via law what *should* be controlled via basic (imho, anyway) values that should be instilled at childhood. Never gonna work. Not gonna go off on a religious/family values soapbox, but without going too far off topic, this kinda thing isn't gonna work. Erotica isn't dirty, it's just percived that way due to how western civilization has shaped us. (Those in US, anyway) It's up to personal values and freedom to decide how to view, or not to view, anything in a given medium, and things like this only hinder those freedoms, imho, without *really* solving the problems.

End of rant, hope some cohrent message can be made out of all this. :)

bash: ispell: command not found

Re:How is this true?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Porn is perfectly healthy. Erotica, as the "upmarket" version of "porn" certainly falls into the realm of protected speech. But, let us contemplate the problem of banning "porn." If one bans pornography, one removes from the public sphere a great deal of information dealing with human sexuality. Some of would be classic erotica (e.g. The secret logs of Mistress Janeway, or Dirty Pictures (with annoying popups), but some of might well be pages relating to Sexual Health, or Gnostic scripture, or a work of Impressionism. Would a site dedicated to Hot Grits and Natalie Portman be thus banned from the net? The CDA was bad law. Requiring filters is bad law. Allowing filter companies to silence their critics with lawsuits and/or filter abuse is also bad law.

In ten or twenty years, I may use a filtering program for the sake of efficiency. But I would want to know exactly what kinds of decisions went it to building that filter....

You say porn, I say potatos

[Nathaniel]

I have a moral objection to all discussion of potatos. I find the mention of them to be a vile, currupting influence on society, and I believe that discussion of potatos is particularly bad for today's youth.

I have kids, and the problem has become alarmingly worse in the past year or two.

I propose that your solution is a good one, but that we also apply it to partition the Internet in a way which provides me and my family with a more clearly deliniated space in which potatos not discussed, and in which we can be sure that potatos and images of potatos are never available to my children.

I believe a subtle form of censorship is the answer here, but in a different form from either of the solutions being debated here: there needs to be a very good, reliable way to partition the "spudzy side of town" from the rest of the net. Ideally, this would be driven by force of law and would include both IP address as well as namespace partitioning (a .spud top-level?), so that both routing and DNS could be used to prevent exposure of children to these sites. (I and many others firmly believe that exposing children to potatos, even accidentally, is a particularly egregious form of child abuse.)

Seriously, we all know the problem is getting out of hand. If we don't clean up our own Internet, someone else will do it for us.

Bottom line: Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor inconvenience of a few sleazy spudpushers? </Advocate>

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

[deltab]

Not just "most Western nations" - in fact 191 countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The only countries that have not are Somalia (not having a government that can do it) and... the United States. Hmm.

Death penalty

[Nicolas MONNET]

And the reason, of course is ... that the US insist on being allowed to legally slaughter minors (electrocution qualifies as slaughter to me). Or at least minors when the crime was commited.

Re:They will never stop teen porn

[Nicolas MONNET]

Hmmm ... kiddie porn is not about some 15 yo being photographed by her boyfriend. Look, what's the problem if her b/f takes pictures of her? Ok, people might see it, she might be ashamed, ridiculed at worse, and that's it. That's not a crime. What people are talking about here is 10yo or something being raped in front of a camera; quite a different matter. The problem is not so much that there be pictures of the act or not, but instead that the existence of customers for that kind of stuff might encourage the production of it. Quite a different issue.

Re:What the Hell?

[fishbowl]

The issue cleared itself up presently

Was the responsible party called before a
tribunal and allowed to go through the motions
of explaining himself before his execution?

Or was he allowed to live, to darken your
door another day?

Childhood Innocence?

[Outland Traveller]

I'm not sure if I agree with your statement:

"One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children. Innocence is and must be part of that."

I think the role of parents is to prepare their children to succeed against the hard realities of adult life, so that they may hopefully realize their dreams and potential.

"Play" and imagination are preparation. Innocence may have a certain romantic or whimsical allure (as in, "Innocence is Bliss") but I don't think it is truly desirable.

As a parent, your instinct is to "protect" your children, but you also have to understand that the best way to protect them is to gradually teach them to face harder and harder decisions on their own.

One of the tough situations that one must face as an adult, just as difficult as avoiding drugs or unplanned pregnancy, is to realize the value of the first amendment in the face of adversity, and resist the urge to permanently mutilate it for some short term warm fuzzies.

-Outland Traveller

Re:Childhood Innocence?

[dublin]

This is inexplicably quite a controversial topic, simply because so many people unaccountably appear to believe that shielding children from evil influences is wrong.

Yes, the scary word evil was intended here - unfortunately, one of the first realities we must face if we are to "succeed against the hard realities of adult life" is to recognize that both evil and forces of evil do indeed exist in our world.

Failure to shield young children from these influences will make it impossible for them to ever actually become adults capable of resisting evil influences. My approach is controversial in today's world, but quite practical, and proven by a successful track record hundreds of years of years long. Is yours? (A bit of careful non-present-biased reading will convince you that all the hard questions were answered quite some time ago. there truly is nothing new under the sun from the human anture point of view. Every method you can think of to raise a child has been tried before, and nearly all of them have proven they do not work. Do the research!)

Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.

Re:Just get rid of the popup windows on exit.

[Greg W.]

Hell, those damned pop-up windows on exit from the sites are far more annoying than the content!

Turn off Javascript! Especially if you're using Netscape 4.x and have cookies enabled -- there are known security exploits.

Re:its odd timing for something like this

[Bryan Andersen]

Yeah, I know I'm paranoid,

No you're not being paranoid, it's being very realistic. It's protecting the rights of the few from the tyrany of the masses, and that is one of the major things the framers of the constitution wanted to do. Remember this nation (United States of America) was formed by people who were oppressed in other nations. Think very carefully about supporting anything limiting a person's rights. It may be your rights that are limited by the next bill.

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[Kaa]

...both IP address as well as namespace partitioning (a .porn top-level?), so that both routing and DNS could be used to prevent exposure of children to these sites. (I and many others firmly believe that exposing children to porn, even accidentally, is a particularly egregious form of child abuse.

I see. So just because you have hangups about nude human bodies, we should partition the Internet?

Bottom line: Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor inconvenience of a few sleazy pornographers?

Well, I am certainly not willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor incovenience of a few mealy-mouthed moralists who believe that viewing naked bodies or even (heaven forbid) pictures of actual sex will irretrievably damn the poor innocents to eternal damnation.

I am strongly opposed to Internet partitioning (as in, .xxx TLD is perfectly fine, routing-level access restriction are not fine at all) just some people find some material objectionable.

Not to mention that this is a very, very slippery slope.

Kaa

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[Plasmic]

Bottom line: Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor inconvenience of a few sleazy pornographers?

Well, I don't know. Is that a loaded question? I wonder..

Did it ever occur to you that we wouldn't be forced to make such ignorant choices (internet or porn: one or the other, but not both) if it weren't for stupid people like you?

It isn't flamebait, it's the truth.

Re:You're all off on a wild ass tangent...

[Rupert]

Not if you reduce the number of 'P's by one...

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[dublin]

We're just going to differ on the relative merits of the ACLU. I didn't say that I never agreed with them, though, just that the occasions were infrequent. Unfortunately, even when they're right, it's usually for the wrong reasons.

I agree active 'man in the loop" censorship solutions are preferable, but they are by and large impractical and needless to say, labor intensive.

Home censorware solutions are not significantly different from those of libraries. And you can bet I'd be one of the ones making life hell for the school board if any teacher took such an overtly hostile act as assigning the history of gay "rights". Personally, I wnat these sites blocked far more than the skin sites, as they are far more offensive.

Finally, I'd be careful about advertising quotes from a man (Bertrand Russell) who admitted on several occasions that the *only real* reason he opposed Christianity was so he could indulge his own sexual appetites as he saw fit. His moral deficit is most obvious in the brutal rape of the young daughter of a man whose home he was staying in - hardly a role model in anyone's book. Not to mention his arguments don't even hold up to significant scrutiny...

Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[dublin]

No, my point of view is not stupid at all (in fact I can show it's far more internally and externally logically consistent than yours), but it does come from a different worldview, which you are appparently unwilling to acknowledge.

And, actually that (Internet or porn) is exactly the choice facing anyone with children today.

One thing that seems to be lost in all the discussion of how we must let kids visually learn all the latest perversions is that exposing children to sex at an early age has the very real effect of robbing them of their childhood and their innocence. If you're an adult and you have no more willpower than to fall prey to Internet porn, that's one thing, but exposing children to sex is nothing less than child abuse.

One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children. Innocence is and must be part of that. Sadly, innocence is becoming quite difficult for parents to ensure even if they take quite an active and steadfast role in shielding their children. That's why I believe the present system has failed and structural reforms may be the best remaining option. (Note that I'm well familiar with geek culture and values re: freedom, and have been working to build the Internet longer than some /. posters have been alive, but I am no longer proud of what the Internet has become.)

Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[dublin]

Actually, they couldn't be more wrong (but then the ACLU is seldom right...)

There is a real problem with unwanted "in your face" porn - just mistype a URL, or get on the spammers' mailing lists, and you know what I mean.

I have kids, and the problem has become alarmingly worse in the past year or two.

I believe a subtle form of censorship is the answer here, but in a different form from either of the solutions being debated here: there needs to be a very good, reliable way to partition the "sleazy side of town" from the rest of the net. Ideally, this would be driven by force of law and would include both IP address as well as namespace partitioning (a .porn top-level?), so that both routing and DNS could be used to prevent exposure of children to these sites. (I and many others firmly believe that exposing children to porn, even accidentally, is a particularly egregious form of child abuse.)

Seriously, we all know the problem is getting out of hand. If we don't clean up our own Internet, someone else will do it for us.

Bottom line: Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor inconvenience of a few sleazy pornographers?

Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.

Re:More screwed up stuff

[Hard_Code]

Somebody moderate the parent of this up, so people can see the type of idiots we have out there. I can't bring myself to waste my time responding to this crud.

"I wish this forum were less bigoted and I could post this with my real name. Too bad, really..."

Well, I /specifically/ post controversial, flamage, or even stupid posts under my real account just to stand up to criticism. If I have something to say I'm not going to sulk and mumble in the shadows. You could find out if your ideas hold water if you actually expose them to scrutiny. Otherwise you just look like another ignorant AC troll.

More screwed up stuff

[Hard_Code]

I just watched In&Out last night. It's a movie where Keven Kline (great actor, IMO, love his movies), plays an English teacher who has been accused of being (GASP!) gay. Of course you can imagine what follows in the little town he lives in...rumors, weird looks, etc. It results in his being fired from his school position ostensibly "because the community feels that the influence is not right" whatever that means. The gist was that if they had a gay teacher that it would "rub off" on the kids. Gayness of course being evil they would never want this to happen, so logically had to fire him. No wonder so many people grow up with wierd perceptions of homosexuals...all exposure to them is limited and warped. I wonder how children who actually ARE or will be gay can ever grow up right when everybody around them is taking all role models away and telling them it is BAD. Anyway, the last scene in the movie, the graduation, results in one student standing up and saying "Well, /I'm/ gay, it must have really rubbed off!" (to everyone's shock). Then another student stands up and proclaims they're also gay. Then another and another. Then parents stand up and say they're gay too. All the firemen stand up and say they're gay. Until the whole room is standing and saying they're gay.

Anyway, I'm also reminded of the Ebert & the movies show I watched this weekend, about a movie called "Pups" in which a young kid, 13 or so, gets a gun, and holds up the school, and later a bank. Ebert mentions that nobody knows about this movie because it had a very limited release because it was supposedly controversial. He says, and I agree, that it is amazing that a show about kids and guns cannot be allowed to be seen by kids, but any action flic in which people blast each other to pieces gets a wide distribution.

No wonder kids are so screwed up.

So, hey, let's hide "sex" from them and pretend it doesn't exist. That way when they discover it they'll be MUCH better prepared, right? gag

Re:How YOU can help.

[Weezul]

GNUwatch is a bad idea for many reasons. You are correct that an open source version of a traditional censorware product would not work, i.e. people like to program, but no one wants to enter the URLs of porn sites all day. It might be possible to invent an AI porn monitor service which detected probable porn, refered the page to a center where a human verifies the content is pornography (quickly/under 5 seconds), and can discuss the page with the person who requested it, but such a system would be a bad idea for many other reasons.

I would go so far as to say we do not want a good porn detection system at all. Actaully, we should try to patent up the good ideas about using AI for detecting porn to prevent the censorware people from using these ideas.

It's worth pointing out that Libraries have a good porn filter.. put the computer out where everyone can see what your browsing.. and ask people to leave when they bring up porn.

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[Weezul]

they couldn't be more wrong (but then the ACLU is seldom right...)

I suppose they were wong to sue the government into letting U.S. troops take the bible with them to the Gulf War? I suppose they were wong to defent the rights of christians who feal that it's a sin to have their picture on their driverse licence? I hate it when some ignorant moron who knows nothing about the history of the ACLU spouts off about "the horrible thinks those liberals are doing."

Now there is a really good solution to pornography on the internet, but it is not a one size fits all solution. Specifically, libraries and homes need diffrent types of censorship which I will try to esxplain.

Libraries need a least restrictive blocking solution. Specifically, they need to move the computers out into the open where anyone can see when someone is looking at pornography. There are various technological versions of this idea (where the jpgs from the netscape caches are flashed on some screen behind the circulation desk). This solution would be thousands of times more effective then any current censorware or legislation at preventing kids from incountering pornography inside the library.

Actually, this solution would prevent the "my kid walked into the library, closed the netscape window, and their was porn on the desktop" since it can detect porn independent of URL. No censorware or legislation can claim this.

Unfortunatly, parents do not have this wonderful solution available to them, since their children's home internet usage is unsupervised. Traditional censorware is the only solution to the home problem, but parents and unfairly blocked sites should have a recourse when sites are unfairly blocked. Censorware will only become a viable solution for families when parents can sue the censorware companies for inconvienencing their childs research into a school project on the history of gay right in America. This will forcet he censorware companies to be honest about what they block and what they do not, i.e. some parents would want the gay rights sites to be blocked, some would not.

Finally, porn spam is a totally seperate issue. I agree that we need good anti-spam laws. I would even agree that porn spam should be treaded more seriously then non-porn spam, but the law shouyld be essentially the same thing.

Re:It's not just the porn

[quonsar]

But now large media giants such as BBC, CNN and others that people implicitly trust (it is "official" information, after all...) are beginning to hint that the net is an incredibly dangerous place and should be handled with tougher legislation than normal media, the future does not look good. With backing from media and hyped up public it will be easy for politicians to start drafting draconian legistlation to combat the "evils of net" even on multinational/continental scale.

From thier perspective, the net IS an incredibly dangerous medium. The problem with the net is that the target audience can talk back! This will never do! Why, what if every Tom, Dick, and Harry were allowed to run a TV station? You'd have anarchy! Anyone could broadcast anything! Even such pernicious things as questioning the veracity of "news" reports, or revealing the lies of our client advertisers! There MUST be government control, either control of access (unless the "free market" handles this on its own by forcing everyone to buy access from a few large providers) or control of content, so that the target audience of the internet cannot marginalize "official" content with thier own.

The internet is under attack, the point is to limit your access or control your output, and the worst is yet to come.

======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16

Sounds like home

[kNIGits]

Greets all

If either of these options come to pass, the US might begin to know how we feel down here in Australia, where internet censorship laws have been in place for a while now.

kNIGits
_______________________________________

Is that an African or European swallow?
_______________________________________

Re:No "Green Lighting"

[Duxup]

I would agree.
I think the ACLU is stating the obvious, and NOT supporting one or the other. Like me saying "I'd rather be shot in the head rather than suffocated?" Just because I said I'd rather be shot in the head, doesn't mean it wouldn't try to prevent both. I think what they're saying is being taken out of context, possibly for dramatic effect.

time will tell

[anonymous cowerd]

> "Gayness" IS WRONG, and I can say that I know
> no gay people who are truly happy people.

I can believe that there you aren't lying, troll, as I don't suppose you know any gay people at all.

Anyway, look around, not everyone shares your prejudice. Plato, for example, says you are wrong. What is truth? Who knows which of you is right?

Let time sort it out. Provided that the human race has not wiped itself out of existence by then, a century from now, thoughtful, educated people will still be reading Plato. Will anybody alive then know or care about your opinions? Even now, I don't.

Sincerely WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Re:They will never stop teen porn

[anonymous cowerd]

> What people are talking about here is 10yo or
> something being raped in front of a camera;
> quite a different matter.

Sorry, but you're wrong. You're just plain wrong. And the reason you've made the mistake you did is because you are French.

As a Frenchman, you can not grasp the idea that a simple, chaste photo of a nude or semi-nude seventeen-year-old woman could possibly be thought of as an instance of child pornography, nor that any sane government would ever consider imprisoning the possesor of such as photograph as a worse criminal than a violent, sadistic rapist.

Well, do yourself a big favor and stay out the the U.S.A., this sex-sick madhouse. In the U.S.A. any photograph of a seventeen-year-old woman with her breasts visible may be legally held to be not merely pornographic but an instance of child pornography.

You might imagine, as a Frenchman, that if that photograph had been taken by a world-renowned art photographer the law enforcement agencies might be willing to grant an exemption. But that's your sane French logic talking; in the U.S.A. the exemption works entirely in the other direction. Today U.S. citizens spend more on porno than on all other movies and theatre performances put together. But who did the the law come after? Did they try to shut down any of the thousands of vendors of pure obscenity without any redeeming artistic value at all? No, they tried to prosecute bookstores for selling the works of the internationally acclaimed art photographers David Hamilton and Jock Sturges.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

This is going way too far

[Lonesmurf]

I don't get it.

That is the topic of discussion here. If I want to d/l porn from the internet (something that has been going on longer than most of the participants in this board have been alive..) it is my RIGHT to do so.

I don't care if some idiot parents in Bumblefuck Missouri decided that the Children are harmed when they see naked people (oh, god forbid, those naked natives in the rain forests must be so traumatized) but when it becomes far reaching legislation that will affect me and eventually affect my children too, I say that this idiocy has gone too fuching far.

Any censorship that you force upon me and my family is easily ten times worse than any porn that we watch in the privacy of our own homes.

Rami James
Pixel Pusher
--

Re:free speech

[mcrandello]

What really gets me is the fact that they're essentially using the same arguments that we (the /. readers) have been echoing in the posts about the censorware against us (as the opening paragraph of the second article states)...

The Justice Department's reasoning is simple: If products like Cyberpatrol and Surfwatch are so badly flawed that they don't block what they should, then the judge in the case should uphold a federal law making it a crime to post erotica online instead.

Now the ACLU is in a position where they actually have to *defend* one of the industries (see the mattel articles in YRO) that they have very recently been trying to defend the people of this nation against[censorware]. What I don't get is why it either has to be censorware or censorship? IMO neither is acceptable under the first ammendment to the constitution.

What is happening isn't the stifling of childrens voices, BTW. This has absolutely nothing to do with children, regardless of what the acronym in the bill stands for. This is about someone getting mailed a naughty pic, or catching their husband with his browser history all full of porno links, and wanting to lash out at someone. Maybe some people *do* actually care about their children, but they're being drawn into this by the arguments of the above. If children are being drawn into porno sites, finding some reward there and then returning then their parents aren't paying enough attention to them. Enough said.

I don' know of any good solutions, other than strongly advocating that parents actually *be* parents, and not think for a second that if we as a nation pass *any* law it will make their kids more safe. It will only lead them into more danger as we sit back and let the Internet be their trusted babysitter (remember there are a lot of places totally unaffected by this law). Anyone from Adbusters want to take this up?

as usual I may be full of <censored>, feel free and point that out to me :)

Re:Our view on sex is warped

[omnifrog]

So does that mean that a stripper in Alabama can't look at pictures of herself naked?

I have a simpler solution for you

[guran]

Dont let your kids access the internet at all.

The net is a medium where *anyone* can express their opinion and write/display whatever they want. That means *someone* will put something there that someone else (you) won't like.

If you have a problem with an unmoderated medium, stick to "safe" pages.

If your kids are not mature enough for such an environment, keep them out.

And if I was in the board of a school with guts enough to teach about controversial issues, I couldn't care less about those who think "ignotant is better"

Re:Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[guran]

One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children.

Agreed
Another one of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is to let them grow up.
"Innocent" is just another word for unexperienced, or if you prefer, naive. A prefered quality in a child, but a major handicap as a grown up.

What makes you think that the "innocent" child would be the least interested in porn? The sight of a naked body would have no sexual effect on me as a child. In my "innocence" I had not yet "leared" that I should feel anything special about naked women. If your kid thinks porn is interesting, I'd say it's either because you act like its something "special" or because he/she is no longer that "innocent" child, in which case you should explain *why* porn is wrong rather than making it even more interesting.

Ban Porn Sites!

[Cheshire Cat]

Actually, what the goverment should ban are those porn sites where when you close one window, three more pop up. When you try to close one of those, another one pops up in its place. Its like some wierd, online version of the Whack-a-Mole game. I would strongly vote for any Congressman who would burn the heads of these Hydra-like sites.

Re:Our view on sex is warped

[kwsNI]

Only a few states actually make the legal age 21 for purchasing it. I believe there are four of them, and one is Alabama

Unless it's your sister/cousin. ;)

Actually, I knew that. Read my original post again. I put in there the disclaimer: "Do (some) Americans have their priorities straight or what? " I was talking more about what ages people feel are appropriate as opposed to what is law (since that changes state to state?).

kwsNI

What's obscene?

[www.sorehands.com]

It goes back to what's obscene? I don't know, but I'll know it when I see it..

Remember the multiple uproars about NEA using government money for some objectionable art. There were discussions as to what was art and the old question of "what is art?".

free speech

[rifter]

What annoys me about this ruling is the reiteration of the de facto standard such that minors do not posess constitutional rights. In this case the judge says that when the children grow up they will get free speech. What I dont understand is when it was in our history we decided that children are neither born nor naturalized until they are "of age..."

Re:free speech

[ronfar]

Now the ACLU is in a position where they actually have to *defend* one of the industries (see the mattel articles in YRO) that they have very recently been trying to defend the people of this nation against[censorware]. What I don't get is why it either has to be censorware or censorship? IMO neither is acceptable under the first ammendment to the constitution.

Perhaps you are not aware of recent changes to the First Amendment enacted by the Supreme Court, see this article for details:

Second, five justices also agreed that a form of expression -- in this case, totally nude dancing -- may be banned outright because of the "secondary effects" it has in promoting crimes such as alcohol abuse and domestic violence in the surrounding neighborhood. Souter, however, asserted that government must offer some evidence that these secondary effects will flow from the expression and that its statute will alleviate them.--quote from "Kandyland decision a new First Amendment landmark," by Tony Mauro on Freedom Forum

Missing from the above quote is the fact that David Souter was the only one of the justices who believed that you should have to prove "secondary effects." Of the remaining justices:

1.Scalia and Thomas: Basically said that the government can ban whatever you want if it is supporting "public morals."

2.O'Connor, Rehnquist, Kennedy, and Breyer: Basically said that as long as the government asserts negative secondary effects as an excuse, they can ban whatever they want.

3. Stevens and Ginsburg: Dissented, pointing out that this was basically the end of the First Amendment as we know it in the United States of America.

Essentially, the "secondary effects doctrine" of the Supreme Court currently is, "if someone thinks it might cause a crime, it can be banned for that secondary effect." Currently, the First Amendment has about as much teeth in it as the Second Amendment, years of packing the Supreme Court with far right conservatives has had it's desired effect, which was always to reduce the effectiveness of Constitutional arguments. (Conservatives have been upset by "activist courts" which basically used the Constitution to enact legislation, such as bussing and Roe v. Wade. So the goal of conservatives and the "strict constructionist" philosophy was to weaken the Supreme Court and give power back to the Congress.) If the CDA were proposed today, it might not just pass, it would probably also pass Constitutional muster with the current court.

I suspect that this is why the ACLU is trying to argue that "well, we have filters so we don't need to enact bans" because under the new Constitution, just the fact of the First Amendment no longer protects you from being censored. It's a brave new world.

I hope people will consider this in the next election.

Re:How is this true?

[spectral]

How about we stop being puritans and don't ban/censor anything? Has it ever been proven that seeing a female nipple (I can't say breast because you can go anywhere and see those, but the nipple has to be covered up, like it's evil or something) or other sexual act has emotionally scarred children for life?

Where do babies come out of? What do they suck on for the first little bit of their life? after that, why does it become illegal? The government/society needs to stop trying to get other people to control their children the way they want. If I ever decide to have a child, I'm going to want to be able to decide myself what little johnny or sally can and can not see. Hiding something only causes people to grow obsessed about seeing it, or to become deviant about it.. think of all the perverts/rapists/etc.. I don't know of any conclusive data, but one would think that in less restrictive places there'd be fewer of these, since people wouldn't have such repressed sexuality in their early years.

Privatized censorship an insidious evil

[rodgerd]

One of the problems I have with the ACLU's tactics in fighting censorship bills is the de facto legitimisation they are handing to the notion of privatized censorship.

Why? Well, privatized censorship is usually worse, not better, than government censorship in countries which are fundamentally free. Don't believe me? Go have look at the industry-backed censorship of the comics industy from the late 50's through to the early 80', which went way beond anything that could ever have been imposed by a government authority the industry had decided to self censor in an effort to avoid government regulation, and in the process bowdlerised the medium to a far greater extent than the government ever would have.

Similarly, the system of movie censorship in the United States strikes me as just plain insane, and I live in a country with government censorship. Yet movies are passed far more liberally here, and material which either never makes it to US cinemas, or only shows in 50, is accepted in New Zealand because the government-legislated censorship is concerned with the extreme cases of what society considers dangerous (positive depictions of rape, sex with children, etc), rather than what a bunch of industry-appointed individuals consider might cause more controversy than is good (ie might not increase ticket sales).

The ACLU is IMO playing a dangerous games, whose outcome could have a perverse effect in terms of chilling speech more, not less.

Re:How YOU can help.

[unitron]

The only way for censorware to work perfectly is for humans to view all the sites on the 'Net and decide which age groups should be allowed to see what. No machine, no algorithm, no program, can unerringly make up the lists of sites to block.

Therefore, for GNUwatch to work, the open source/free software (you know who I mean) community will have to volunteer their services to sort through all the possibly objectionble sites, all the rich panoply of porn out there. Perhaps some sort of distributed effort, a SEXI@home, so to speak, could be implemented. Fellow Slashdotters, it will be your solemn civic duty to wade through Terabytes of firm, perky breasts, pert buttocks, and throbbing steamy lust. Are you "up" to the challenge?

This is good for me!

[FigWig]

I've got to show this article to my girlfriend! Then I can tell her that my massive, 3GB porn collection is nothing but a form of protest. Yeah, that's the ticket...

Chill homie.

[mindstrm]

Think, for a minute.
If you took the main, introductory page of most porn sites, or even the stupid pop-up banners, printed it as a poster, and put it up in your store windowd on Main St. USA, you would most likely be charged and found guilty of some obscenity laws. You are making this material visible to minors. On the other hand, if the posters are up inside your store that does not allow minors inside, you are perfectly safe.

Why should the Internet be any different? Remember, nobody is saying you can't put porn on the internet, just that you have to take steps to not display it to those who are minors.

Personally, I think people are too offended by porn, and as long as poeple are offended, other people will be fascinated.

Parental responcibility

[jburroug]

Under U.S. case law, courts will usually nix a law on free speech grounds if there are other "less restrictive" alternatives to accomplish the government's goal. For the ACLU, the existence of filtering software -- even with its faults -- is a way to convince judges that there are options other than COPA. In such a case, "government must make use of less drastic means if it would regulate at all," writes constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe in American Constitutional Law. Am I the only one who thinks that the least restrictive actions in the case simply be for parents to decide what is and what isn't harmful to their children and keep them clear of it? Or better yet maybe concerned parents could actually teach their children good judgement and then trust them to do the right things? Are parents in this country so goddamn lazy and ignorant that they no longer want to actually bother with being parents to their children? How on earth do the supporters of these insane laws expect today's children to be respconible, thoughtful adults at some point if they are never trusted to learn about life while they are young? Do congressmen and "concerned" parents really think that when a person turns 18 they magically develope the ability to cope with pictures of naked people (and vote, and fight wars), something they couldn't handle 24 hours earlier, and at 19 are suddenly able to make an informe decision about the long term dangers of tobacco, something they couldn't do while fighting wars and picking our nations leaders (oh yea and legally looking at naked people) oh and to end this series, at 21 suddenly develope a tolerence to alchohol and suddenly know their limits? *sigh* When will people learn that in order for childern to know how to act as adults when the become adults, you have to teach them what it means to be an adult? Dammit.

Sorry for the rant but this kind of "for the good of the childern" crap really gets under my skin.

What the Hell?

[zpengo]

Some points to consider:

1. It's not the government's business what Joe Schmoe is looking at when his wife's not home.
2. ...unless it's kiddie porn or some such, in which case neither banning erotica nor promoting censorware is going to accomplish much, because
3. it's impossible to ban erotica, and
4. censorware is not difficult to bypass.
5. (Unless you're an innocent, non-sexual-content website, in which case you will almost certainly be blocked -- It's happened to me more than once).
6. Instead of making new laws, people just need to go out and enforce the ones that already exist. Find illegal porn producers and bust them...hard. Make an example. Put the fear of God into whoever was considering rounding up some teenage girls and getting out the old Polaroid camera.
7. Putting their heads on spikes throughout city streets might be a good start. *grin*

   *gets down off his soapbox*

Re:What the Hell?

[|deity|]

3. it's impossible to ban erotica.

Very true but the government *can* make it illegal, at least for US citizens, to provide erotic content without some form of age verification.

I seem to remember that the porn industry is almost the only industry making money online. This law would just make them move to a server that's in a country with less restrictive laws. The internet no longer belongs to the US. When are law makers going to realize that they can't legislate the world or morality.

The government invented fud only when they do it it's called propaganda and they could teach Bill Gates a thing or two. They want people to focus on the very small group of individuals that are into child pornography. Then they want the american people to make the mental connection that all porn on the internet is child pornography. Don't get me wrong I'm not a big fan of the porn industry or their very creative java script programmers. I want porn protected because if they can outlaw it they can outlaw others forms of expression on the internet.

Parents need to take charge of what their children are doing. It's not the governments right or responciblity, in most cases, to raise children. A parent should know if their child is hanging around with gang members. A parent should see the signs of drug use. A parent should know what their child is doing on the computer. Would anyone give a 12 year old a new car and say have fun? Would anyone let a child go somewhere in a bad neighborhood without at least teaching them how to survive? No, and the internet can be much more dangerous then a new car or a bad neighborhood. If a person is unfit to be a parent the children should be raised by a fit foster parent or the state.

Many of us grew up dialing in to bbs's and doing other less legal things on the computer as we were growing up. Our parents were clueless. Now most of us are old enough to have children. We know the dangers we know what can happen if children are left unsupervised it's our responcibility to educate our children and the people in our family with children who don't know what it's like to grow up in a digital world.

Enough of being serious here's my top ten list of things more dangerous then leaving a child alone with a computer and an internet connection.

10. Giving the child a chemistry set and instructions on how to make TNT.

9. Tying the child to the top of the car so that the child can get more fresh air.

8. A hammer and a china set. (need I say more?)

7. Teaching the child how to fly the families crop duster.

6. Leaving the child alone with Al Gore.

5. Leaving the child alone with Bill Clinton.

4. Letting the child go to a public school.

3. Giving the child both a knife and the movie scream for the childs birthday.

2. Allowing the child to train the pet Siberian Huskie.(I don't think that's spelled right.)

1. Giving the child a loaded handgun.

Disclaimer.
(Don't get me wrong I believe that everyone should have the right to own firearms. But, children should never have access to a gun and any household with a gun should train children from an early age about gun safety.)

Re:What the Hell?

[1337d00d]

5. (Unless you're an innocent, non-sexual-content website, in which case you will almost certainly be blocked -- It's happened to me more than once).

Yeah. This can be very painful. Example: The network tech had just installed some censorware to keep us 'task-oriented'. Now, we were moving between servers, so our email accounts were all down. To hold us over until the new server arrived, we got Geocities mail accounts. These were fine, except that the censorware blocked out Geocities as a 'massive porn trade center'. (This was because geocities hosts some less than appropriate websites) Quite conveniantly, the network tech was flooded with messages (he had personal email at another ISP) telling him that everybody in the office, at various times, had been visiting a massive porn trading center. Now, since the software failed to tell him exactly what 'porn trading center' we were visiting, he just compiled the reports into a binder and gave them to the CEO. The only thing that saved us was that the CEO himself had tried to get to his mail account, and was not appreciative of the report that he had visited the trading center. The issue cleared itself up presently, but we've never used censorware since. (But the network tech does check out the weblogs occassionally. That's probably the best way.)

It's not just the porn

[Kryptonomic]

What worries me the most is the tendency of mainstream media to go along with the idea that the net is the next dangerous place to a war zone and must somehow be censored or controlled. And I am not talking just about the US mainstream media (to which the idea of net censorship would seem to be more than welcome for some reason). The BBC World, for instance, has been running recently a special report on hate sites in the net and tone of the report was that of "the end justifies the means" pro-censorship. Needless to say that I vehemently disagree with the message these hate sites carry, but to my mind it is a lesser evil to tolerate them than to start the vicious cycle of censorship which would eventually bites us back and wouldn't stop their moronic dribble being spread anyway.

Has the traditional media become so accustomed to freedom of the press that they don't realize that should global net censorship become reality their freedom would be on the line as well. Or is it so that the traditional media sees the net as competition and consequently tries to counter it this way?

This reminds me of a special net report in a local paper. The article was highly critical of the net (full of porn, bomb making instructions, etc.) but what the reporter found most threatening was the absence of any authority who would decide what information is "official" and what is not. He felt that people might become confused by false information in the net and some sort of global control mechanism should be built in to guarantee the accuracy of information on line. In essence, he was asking for censorship.

In spite of this being said in a small, local paper, insignificant to the global nature of the subject, it sent shivers down my spine even then. But now large media giants such as BBC, CNN and others that people implicitly trust (it is "official" information, after all...) are beginning to hint that the net is an incredibly dangerous place and should be handled with tougher legislation than normal media, the future does not look good. With backing from media and hyped up public it will be easy for politicians to start drafting draconian legistlation to combat the "evils of net" even on multinational/continental scale.

How is this true?

[Yu Suzuki]

I'm no expert in the field, but wouldn't it make more sense to simply ban erotica (read: porn) online? As numerous studies have proven, mandating censorware has the potential to block out a lot of material that isn't erotica (read: porn). However, banning erotica (read: porn) would simply nip the erotica (read: porn) problem in the bud and leave other sites to carry on their business without being falsely accused --all the erotica (read: porn) sites have closed down, so nobody would accuse any of the sites of trafficking in erotica (read: porn).

I know it seems weird to supporting government-mandated censorship of erotica (read: porn), but, as so many things in life, it's a trade-off. On one hand, we could give up our rights to free erotica (read: porn) to the relatively trustworthy government (the government may not always be doing the right thing, but at least they're not out to make a profit). On the other hand, we could keep our erotica (read: porn), but only that which is approved by our corporate masters over at Hasbro. Government censorship of erotica (read: porn) or corporate censorship of everything? The choice seems clear to me.

Yu Suzuki

They said what?

[Duxup]

I'm reading the comments on the article above where I see the following line:

"Essentially they are telling the court "you should not allow COPA because, instead of banning sex, the government could install censorware and that would be better.""

I read the article and I see where the article notes that the ACLU seems to support parents installing such software. That I understand. However, I do not see where the ACLU has suggested the government too install such software, just suggesting that they seem to support parents doing so. That's a big jump assuming that because the ACLU SEEMS to support individuals installing software to filter something from their children that they also support the government doing so based on the fact that fact and that they note that censorware is "a less restrictive alternative."

Just because the ACLU doesn't seem to have a problem with me sending my kids (actually I don't have kids, but if I did) to bed without ice cream. Does not mean that they would support the government mandating that everyone has been a "bad boy/girl" and somehow restrict everyone's ice cream intake, just because the ACLU feels that it is less restrictive than making ice cream illegal in general. I don't think they would support either myself (and thank goodness!)

I wonder if anyone else sees it that way or if I've maybe misread this?

This is how the law works

[alexhmit01]

Explicitly protected rights in the Constitution are granted the strictest protection. For the state to curb them, they must demonstrate:

1) A compelling state interest
2) The law is the least restrictive approach

The state can show that preventing minors from accessing porn is in the state's interest. This is TRUE, if for no other reason than certain parents, fearing their children's exposure to pornography, will prevent their children from accessing new technology. This will prevent those children from having the same opportunities as others.

Regardless of whether you think that exposure to porn is detrimental, it is believed that it is, and there are genuine harms from not having a solution.

However, site owners have a Constitutional right to this protected speach. Adults have the legal right to access this speach. However, the state has the right to try to protect children from this speach.

The ACLU's argument is that there is a less restrictive means, censorware. Requiring adults to register to receive persecuted speach would be horrific. This is speach that many Americans want to silence, therefore, requiring adults to admit to partaking would be effective censorship. As a method for protecting children, this is NOT the least restrictive means, as the censoring products can accomplish the goals without restricting the rights of others.

Now, the censorware has problems. In general, these problems are not the availability of porn, but rather the other stuff blocked. As a result, children behind this wall are having their rights to access protected speach violated. Therefore, the state cannot impose it on something like a library.

Clearly these views ARE consistent. Filtering software CAN be used by parents to protect children, so a restrictive law is not needed. Mandatory filtering prevents minors from accessing protected speech, so are also bad.

Alex

What is wrong?The ACLU is saying that it's A-Okay.

[ratsdliw]

The ACLU is saying that it's impossible to filter the internet but they agrue it's better to filter it than ban offensive content completly.

They want to refine the wording of COPA as not to make it overly broad. The main complaint is what kind of nudity is "harmful to minors". Where does one draw the line?

COPA defines material that is "harmful to minors" as:

[a]ny communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene or that -- (A) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest; (B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manor patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and (C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

As you can see this gives the government sweeping power in what they can ban. I think it's insane when our government tell us what "lacks serious literary" value, etc etc.
You can get the whole motion here.

Why the ACLU is doing the right thing here

[IO ERROR]

Under U.S. case law, courts will usually nix a law on free speech grounds if there are other "less restrictive" alternatives to accomplish the government's goal. For the ACLU, the existence of filtering software -- even with its faults -- is a way to convince judges that there are options other than COPA.

In such a case, "government must make use of less drastic means if it would regulate at all," writes constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe in American Constitutional Law.

That a "less restrictive means" exists is sufficient for the Supreme Court to kill a law on free speech grounds. The government doesn't have to use it. And the Supreme Court can't mandate such a use anyway.

What this means is that, finally, censorware is going to do some good by getting this law killed.

Government-mandated use of censorware will get killed on other grounds in completely separate cases.
---

Our view on sex is warped

[rodgerd]

For some reason (I blame the Puritans 8) the English speaking West has an utterly warped view of sex, and on keeping children away from sex (where "children" seems to include, eg, 21 year olds if you're the US vice-president's wife).

This leads to insane anomalies, such as a 16 year old being able to view graphic depictions of violence being perpetrated for yucks, while people having sex in even the most conservative context (loving relationship), never mind fun, is walled away behind felony statutes. Heck, in many parts of the English-speaking world, people can legally have sex before they can view it. Which is nuts.

Meanwhile, other parts of the world worry more about, eg, the productizing of childhood (eg, Sweden's restrictions on advertising to children), or promoting the notion that violence is a good and fun way to solve problems (Germany's restrictions on pro-violence games). You'll forgive me if I think those countries have their heads screwed on right - I'd rather 14 year olds get the message that sex is natural and enjoyable (in the right circumstances) than thinking that beating people up is neat.