Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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...
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
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.
Sorry for the rant but this kind of "for the good of the childern" crap really gets under my skin.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
*gets down off his soapbox*
Got Rhinos?
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.
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.
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
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
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?
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
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:
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.
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.
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
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.
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.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)