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Supreme Court To Review Child Online Protection Act
Samer writes: "Reuters is reporting that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by the DoJ on the Child Online Protection Act of 1998. The story quotes the acting Solicitor General as saying that adult verification services, which cost the user money, represent an acceptable "price to pay for protecting children from the harmful effects of graphic pornographic images"."
Why do we try to "protect" children from viewing something that in only a few years they will all be doing anyway?
Why is viewing porn harmful? I can see keeping kids away from smoking and guns and violence...but keeping them away from seeing images of people having sex?!?! I don't get it!
How is this harmful to a child? I remember seeing my brother's Playboy's when I was a kid of like 8 or 9....I didn't die or explode or go blind or anything.
This is free speech also. HOW DARE someone else tell me what I can and cannot look at!
Exactly how much better off would the nation be if all that money was instead contributed toward, say, dealing with however many unsolved rapes there are each year in New York alone?
What about adults chatting with what they believe to be other adults online, who merely "role play" being underaged kids, not knowing the other person is an FBI agent? The classic role-playing john-hooker pickup comes to mind. Who are you to say what two adults can't do in private for fun?
When no children are involved, who are anti-virtual-fantasy child porn laws claiming to protect? Who is the victim? Is there one? Is the victim the 1st amendment?
Is "The Blue Lagoon" or "American Pie" illegal because it depicts "what appears to be children engaged in sexual activity"
This issue is not so cut and dry as some would like us to believe.
> I do think that people who are into porn are
> more likely to, say, cheat on their wife
While you did state that is what you think, and not as though it was some indisputable fact, I happen to feel that its a pretty unfounded thing to think.
As was stated by another poster, the pornography may very well be a symptom of an already failing relationship and not the cause. If you are unhappy with your sex life, you are more likely to obsess about what you aren't getting to satisfy you. It can be only confounded when you and your partner have differing needs as far as exploring their sexuality.
I was exposed to porn when I was 11. I still watch it. The only really bad thing that I can see about that habit is that its just that, a habit, and can be a real waste of time sometimes. However, that exposure started me down a road to discovering what I expected from a sexual relationship, and now that I am with the woman I want to marry, I can feel confident about that relationship from a sexual standpoint, and I am satisfied in the sense that we share a common need to explore and gradually expand the horizon of our sexual existence. What I'm getting at is that taken the way I took it, porn was actually a good thing, as it made me aware of a world of sexuality that I might otherwise have been faced with learning about and desiring intensely *after* I became locked in a monogamus relationship... and therein causing friction.
The price is acceptable until the adult verification services realize this is going to be a law mandated thing. Then they will crank their verification fees.
Draw the line inside the person's head who you want to control/influence/love. You will never be able to completely filter what information he gets exposed to, so indoctrinate/teach him to react to it in the best way. Make kid be able to survive any inputs (even bad ones) with integrity intact. "Never trust the client," they say.
The same routines that protect from "evils of porn" will also work against advertising, religeon, propaganda, etc.
Oh yes.. Wonderful cause and effect rational.
I've also heard that 100% of all serial killers breath.
99.96% drink water.
97.56% eat bread.
So lets just assume anyone who breaths, drinks water and eats bread is a serial kiler.
Now if you can do a study that shows ALL boys exposed to a playboy at age 9 go on to become serial killers then I'm all for it.
However I think you'd find that it would drop to a level that no statistician would say there was ANY cause and effect.
Look at genetics, mental health histories, family violence, school violence and I'll bet you could come up with some real cause and effect statistics.
-AC
Given the Court's recent track record, I wouldn't be placing any serious wagers on the outcome of a DMCA test. While freedom of speech issues have typically been their most reliable hot button, they've upheld some pretty rotten laws in the past.
That said, if it's gonna happen it had better come up soon. Dubya is likely to appoint the most rabid conservatives he can find, and you can bet they'll be more interested in finding holes in Roe vs. Wade than defending in the Constitution.
That is an education issue. If people would be more open about sex, rather than being embarassed about it, children would know and understand about these things. Of course, people's embarassment stems from their parents own mishandling of the whole sex things. Do bear in mind that for a long time in the west and still in most of the world, children would share a room with their parents and babies were still being born. Were our ancestors all "screwed up" by this constant intrusion of sex into their lives?
In addition, it's often felt that pornography portrays an unhealthy sexual relationship, and should not be shown to people too young to understand the fantasy element of it.
How do you define an "unhealthy sexual relationship"? In many cases, people will invoke religious principles to define it. Well, not everyone shares those morals. Many people will grow up and spend a period of their life having meaningless sexual relationships. And there's nothing wrong with that (though it's not a lifestyle I subscribe to myself). And then, many "Christian" families are having "unhealthy sexual relationships", staying together "for the children" in the face of no love, spousal abuse, extra-marital affairs. What's going to affect a child more, 30 minutes of video or 18 years of constant exposure to the interaction of their mother and father (or surrogates)
Children shouldn't be allowed to see porn, just as children should not be allowed to see violence. Most can't deal with it
What's to "deal with"? So there's a man and a woman having sex on the TV screen? Big deal. If you have passed puberty, it'll get you horny. So what? Whaen you're going through puberty, drying paint will get you horny.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be showing porn to my daughter after dinner. And I will probably do my best to avoid her being exposed to the stuff (including controlling her internet access until she's old enough). But if she happens to come across some while browsing around, I will sit her down and explain it to her, not have some screaming fit about it.
And yes, I am posting anonymously, not because I am ashamed of what I have to say, but I am concerned about the way some people may respond to this posting. If you have something to say, you can say it on Slashdot.
R
Actually, I thought I did both. :)
Nope, and you dodged again by telling him that "studies along similar lines exist" even though he said he'd never heard of one. I haven't either, despite many many stories such as this one on Slashdot. If valid studies along those lines existed, why haven't people who think as you do trotted them out in your responses to these stories?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Damn near every industry plays on ignorance and naivete. Capitalism is based on greed. They're out to get the best deal for themselves. If you can get your workers to do more for less, you do it. If you can convince people that working for you is a good opportunity, you do it. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. It's only an opinion anyway. Many people don't understand that.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No, it is based on the control of the means of production. Cavemen probably acted greedily, but you would never accuse on of being a Rockefeller.
Corporations constantly look for ways to maximize profits. Often at the expense of their employees, consumers, the environment, etc. Why? To make higher profits! Greed! Exactly what I said. If you think otherwise, you'd better offer up a better explanation than that. Greed isn't exclusive to capitalism (hence your caveman reference makes no sense), but it's certainly an integral part. "Self-interest" is another good term for it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You are practicing equivocation which is illogical.
I don't believe I am. There is no such thing as "big enough" when it comes to corporations. As long as they can find a way to maintain their profits, they will continue to grow. We have seen corporations go to great lengths to generate more profit. As I said before, it's often at the expense of their workers, consumers and the environment. It's not that they just want to turn a profit. It's the fact that they often use reprehensible methods to gain those profits. I think that pretty well fits the definition of greed.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
One thing that really annoys me is that from the title of the law, you really have no idea what the law is about. Go ahead, ask anyone what "Children's online protection act" means. Likely as not, they'll think that it has something to do with:
Note that none of these have anything to do with preventing children from seeing/accessing pornography.
Now, I realize that there is almost no way to restrict what cutesy title a lawmaker will place on his own bill; any scheme I can think of has great peripheral damage almost instantly. However, it may be that with a good enough name the media can be convinced to call this law by a different name.
Obviously, flame names like "Unconstitutional act number 23 of 1998" aren't going to work. So we need something "Online Age verification act of 1998", or "Children's Internet Access Restriction Act". We need a name that makes it obvious to parents that with this law in place the government decides what is appropriate for children to view, and that the law is about restricting access by children to certain sets of images or text.
So in the interest of coming up with a catchy yet accurate name, what are the aspects of this law besides penalizing people who put up porn (as defined by some prosecutor seeking re-election) and don't cover it with a veneer of age verification? Does the law allow parents to override this consideration? (That is, could I allow my child to see certain sites, or would any provider with such a allow-parental-override system also face prosecution?) Does this law have other effects that aren't at issue with this constitutional challenge?
The case involved a woman who was pulled over for seatbelt violations-- something that normally carries a 50 dollar fine. The police officer arrested her for various actions which the woman may or may not have done.
An arrest involves searches, loss of personal dignity, deprivation of freedom, and a notation on a criminal record. Seatbelt violations generally do not involve such deprivations. The woman was put in jail at the discretion of the arresting police officer. She did not enjoy due process.
If cops have the ability to act as judge, jury and executioner, and can escape proper judicial review of their actions, we are doomed as a society.
How trustworthy are these electronic age verification services? I have a feeling that the attourney general's office will be none too swift in prosecuting the fraudulent ones.
Besides, when I search for porn, I want to be as anonymous as possible. Verified Age means verified identity-- and verified identity is more harmeful to privacy than even the most insidious doubleclick cookie.
"But right now, I wouldn't even be able to let him go to the library alone because there are no controls installed there."
It's called "letting go". It's called "trust". If you teach your kids right from wrong, spend time with them, and show them how to do things the right way, there's a good chance they'll pick up on it.
But kids will be kids. They will get in trouble. They will do things they're not supposed to do. It's their way of exploring their environment and their society.
I remember when I was in middle school, we had an overnight party - there were maybe 8 of us there, all good, decent, upstanding kids. One of my friends "smuggled" one of his dad's pr0n videotapes out of the house, and we watched it. It was one of those "No! Turn it down! Joe's parents might hear us!" things. We knew it was "morally objectionable" to society, but we didn't know *why*, as society deigned to "protect" us from it. We watched it anyway. And you know what? Other than the shock factor, we weren't impressed. It didn't scar us for life, make us drop out of school, or turn us violent. It didn't turn us into womanizers or leches.
But these are the things that kids do. If something is "forbidden", or if they're "protected" from it, it just makes them more curious, if only to know *why* they're being protected from it. They'll find out about it eventually, whether it be from you as their parent, from their peers, or on their own.
Kids are also a lot smarter than we give them credit for. If they're determined enough (and kids can be VERY single-minded) they *will* find a way around any barriers thrown in their way.
The bottom line is that no matter how much you want to protect and shield them from everything "bad" in the world, you have to let kids be kids, and learn how to deal with these types of things on their own. Guidance is OK, but in some cases, the kid is going to go contrary to what *you* would want them to do. It's natural and perfectly normal. It's how they learn to deal with their world.
As long as you have taught them right from wrong, you've done your job. Now you have to trust them enough to let them go.
The UK's New Scientist had an article about this a long time ago ( Flesh and blood , free registration required). It referred to a number of studies that have found negative effects of at least some kinds of pornography.
Do read the original article for the full story.
What the supreme court upheld was the cop's right to arrest anyone who has broken a law. In basis this is a good thing - the state has the right to enforce the laws with arrest.
The problem is the woman gets arrested and taken to jail on a charge for which the MAXIMUM penalty is a $50 fine. So effectively the punishment was more than the maximum of the crime she was charged with. And this is all she was ever charged with - not resisting arrest or assulting a police officier or anything - just the seatbelt violation.
What also caused problems for people was the fact that she wasn't allowed to make sure someone she knew came for her two kids in the car even though she was just a few miles from her home and neighbors.
In theory cops have an impossible job and are stuck between the proverbial rock and and hard place and they have my sympathy - it's a job I wouldn't do. In reality most of them I've met are guys who like to have authority over people and need the gun to keep them warm at night and act like dicks.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
>Isn't it amazing that the generation that
>campaigned for youth rights in the 60's when
>THEY were teenagers are now voting republican
It sounds like you think the whole generation consisted of hippies.
It isn't so. They were in the minority then, just like the geeks are in the minority against
things like the MPAA and RIAA control.
In 20 years, the next generation will be blaming
YOU for turning around and voting for Disney.
Geeks are so vocal about reform that the record could make it look like this generation was aligned. But the truth is, most people are NOT EVEN AWARE OF THE PROBLEMS.
In the 60's the hippies were definitely in the minority, and any viewpoint not in line with the government or with popular opinion was forcibly rejected.
And you're blaming these people for the laws being passed today? Quit looking for someone to blame for your problems and start writing letters and campaigning.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old's right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well- functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble."
American Amusement Machine Assoc. v. Kendrick No. 00-3643 (7th Cir., March 23, 2001). http://laws.findlaw.com/7th/003643.html
You still have to register for the draft at 18, though. (Although they're afraid of you might have a gun they didn't give you. After columbine and such they have metal detectors in school because they EXPECT kids to be violent psychopaths, complete with McCarthy style witch-hunts against nonconformist. Fun.)
Isn't it amazing that the generation that campaigned for youth rights in the 60's when THEY were teenagers are now voting republican, trying to censor the internet (the "free love" communes), strip-mining the environment (flower power), fighting a war on drugs (they're upset they didn't use the next generation's supply back in the 60's?) and generally being the same hypcritical pricks their parents were? (No real suprise here, although finding them retroactively defending nixon is kind of amusing.)
When did the phrase conservative replace the phrase "old fogey"?
Oh well, another 20 years and they'll start to die off en masse. (And they expect US to fund social security for them, after they looted the thing to fund Reganomics when they all became yuppies back in the 80's. Right.)
Rob
The solution is not to bury their heads in ths sand (it gets up their noses anyway,) but equip them to deal with it. And ourselves too.
If you sound like a homicidal maniac when you're having sex, maybe you're not doing it right.
Sex should be something to laugh with, not at. It should be a pleasure and pleasant to see and do.
If you like to occasionally sound like crazed buffaloes, go to a motel and wreck their sheets in private.
Otherwise what's the big secret? Mummy and daddy love each other. Deal with it. (That will usually get rolling eyeballs and sickers which don't sound like trauma to me.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It harmful if they're coerced into participating against their will (or before some arbitrary age limit,) but I can't buy the argument just just surfing for free drivel and eye-candy is harmful.
Either the kid is too young and their eyes will glaze over at the boring crap (face it, if you're not interested, its boring crap,) or they'll get pissed off at this getting in the way of their pokemon web site.
If they're old enough to say "Hey dude, lets do some serious damage to my ol' man's MasterCard..." they're old enough to watch two people having sex. Its better than having them learn about where to buy guns.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The normal method of deterring unlawful conduct is to punish the person engaging in it. It would be remarkable to hold that speech by a law-abiding possessor of information can be suppressed in order to deter conduct by a non-law-abiding third party.
Now if that can't be used to defend 2600 against the MPAA, I don't know what can. Of course, I'm sure the court will change it's mind when it comes to copyright issues....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-1408.ZS .html is the reference. Turns out that the law is written specifically to allow arrest, but not require it. Further, it's worth noting that there is no mention of the woman "mouthing off" or otherwise resisting the arrest. Therefore the Supreme Court ruling was appropriate that the officer was within the law and that the law doesn't violate the 4th amendment (because the 4th amendment doesn't explicitly define warrantless arrests as "unreasonable search and seizure".
On the other hand, it does seem to be pretty obvious that if statues are written so that it is up to the officer to decide in such cases whether an arrest is warranted or not, it leaves lots of opportunity for abuse of the law to harass citizens. But since that wasn't the question the Supremes are supposed to be addressing, it didn't get addressed.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
You say "we weren't meant to breed until we were 18 then humans wouldn't sexually mature till then. " Well, maybe that's because our culture is pushing for a more developed sexuality earlier.
I think his point was, NORMAL humans mature sexually around age 12-15. So why do Americans insist on protecting people from sexuality before they turn 18?
I can't go beat up someone who's been pushing this junk on my kids but I could call me DAs office and let them handle it.
HAHAHAH I've never heard of someone PUSHING porn on someone else--you don't have to. Porn sells itself. If a kid has a copy of Playboy it's because they were curious enough to go out and get ahold of it.
To me, unhealthy sexuality means STD's. I'm not familiar with that particular flavor of porn. Sure we should protect anyone (including ourselves) from unhealthy sexuality. I certainly don't want herpes!
To address the second point, as much as no one likes spam, spammers are hardly PUSHING porn on people. Spammers OFFER porn. Chris Rock did a similar gig about drug dealers. No one pushes drugs. They offer them. And if your kid is curious about porn they'll seek it out.
Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned if a child is old enough to ask about something, he or she is old enough to get a straight answer.
Besides hasnt someone cracked adult check already??
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
After years of wondering, I finally have to ask: do you ridiculopathy folks ever try to make a connection between the text of a link, and the stories that are actually on RP at the time? Most of the time there seems to be no connection, just some random words at the end of a post made into a link.
It's almost as annoying as all the monospaced people. :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
*grin* touché!
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
See subject.
Lets see, if you're under 18 you face curfews (both late at night AND during the day when you "should be in school" even if you're home schooled). The drinking age has been raised to 21 almost everywhere, and the driving age and voting age aren't too far off. And of course you need to be "protected" from all sorts of things "for your own good".
On the flipside if you commit a crime in many of those same places you can be tried as an adult as young as 14. Something is fucked up when you can be tried as an adult for first degree murder when you aren't old enough to drive, let alone vote.
How many kids have accidently killed themselves while looking at their dad's porno collection?
How many gas stations or banks have been held up with an issue of Hustler?
The right to keep and bear arms is not absolute, anymore than the right of free speech is absolute. You can own guns, but that right is restricted because a great many people are seriously wounded or killed by guns every year. Nobody has ever been killed by a porno mag or movie, and porn has never been proven to have a detrimental effect on people's health.
That is why those examples are relevant and why you should take your gun nut paranoia to some other discussion.
There's no JavaScript on Slash, except for maybe the ad banner. I use iCab with images and JS off, and I can log into and view Slash just fine.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
> and ruled that cops can take you to jail when
> they pull you over for any reason they feel
> like
No, get it straight. What they did was uphold the police action of taking a particular woman into custody, and threw her suit out. You have no idea what the woman did; she may have been mouthing off to the police officer, or resisting in other ways. Sure, the INITIAL incident was not having a seat belt fastenend, but that's not what eventually caused her to be taken to jail.
The supreme court does not legislate, so it's not like they just invented a law that says police can take you into custody for anything. All the supreme court does is uphold or strike down the enforcement of laws.
-Mike
--- witty signature
"protending to be protecting our kids from what our puritanical roots identify as *sin*"
What do you mean? Are you saying that we aren't doing a good job protecting our kids because they can get porn from any other source then within our own homes? Or are you saying that it is wrong to have 'puritanical roots' that identify porn as sin?
I agree with you that the parents cannot be watching what their kids are doing 100% of the time. Unfortunetly, in our culture sexual promiscuity is no longer feared and even rewarded. You can't get away from it even if you wanted to. So yes you are right that there are an unlimited number of ways to get porn that parents cannot do anything about. But that still doesn't make it right. So we have to teach our kids what the difference between right and wrong so that when one of their friends says "hey, let's go look at this nudie mag I just got" they know enought to say "no thanks!" But we must also give those kids that don't have parents who love them as much a fighting chance to have a 'normal' life. Even if the parents don't care, somebody, even if it is the government, has to tell these kids that even if your parents are messed up doens't mean you have to be.
But I belive your question was on sexuality, not legality. Yes, sexualtiy is a normal part of human behavior. That is, within the paramaters of a normal relationship. You say "we weren't meant to breed until we were 18 then humans wouldn't sexually mature till then. " Well, maybe that's because our culture is pushing for a more developed sexuality earlier. Just like in advertisement that when you tell people that a certain behavior is what they need over and over again, evetually some people are going to believe it. Allowing free access to porn will do just that. Our country is built on the foundation of a stable society. Societies are built from stable families. Stable families develop from a healthy relationship between a man and a woman. If you begin to unravel that relationship, eventually society and then our country will have serious problems. Any way you look at it, objectively that is, porn tears at that relationship. This is why we at least have to try at keeping our kids from it as long as we can.
In my opinion the government laws on this sort of thing is there to prosecute and punish those people who want to try to sell, or give, my kids porn. I can't go beat up someone who's been pushing this junk on my kids but I could call me DAs office and let them handle it.
The final argument is that even if you don't buy the moral or leagal arguments, you at least have to let someone bring up their kids the way that they want to. We have to offer parents the freedom to do that, and the only way to have freedom is through the enforcement of laws that protect those freedoms.
--Jim
"So why do Americans insist on protecting people from sexuality before they turn 18"
You cannot protect someone from sexuality. That is, the biological process called puberty. But what we can protect our kids from is unhealthy sexuality.
"I've never heard of someone PUSHING porn on someone else"
Do you know how many unsoliceted porn spams I get a day?!? That is what I meant. That has nothing to do with how a kid got a Playboy. The whole point of the online protection is that it is so much easier to target kids (pedophiles) or allow kids to see things that normally would require id to buy in most states (Playboy Mag).
That is the whole point of the thing! Not that we should do away with porn, but just saying that people must make an effort to protect kids, who don't necessarily know better, from seeing things that they are not mature enough to understand.
I think this is a blatant attempt to get the social restrictions on one area to apply to other areas. More simply, the "godless" regions of the U.S. (usually referred to as "California") would be forced to be as conservative and religious as, say, Knoxville, Tennessee (which tried to convict the cast and crew of the XXX movie "Deep Throat" on the assumption that the film was onboard a plane as it flew over Knoxville, thus violating local community standards. If you don't beleive me, search the web.).
Because there is such a strong, frequent mention of "local community standards" and of "States' Rights", I find that this law is flawed. Both LCS and SR have been used in the past to justify slavery, segregation, polygamy, gambling, prohibition, and to try to thwart such things as womens' suffrage. In the recent past it has been used to defend the removal of Darwin from the Kansas classroom, to keep flying the confederate flag over southern states, and to make a national election completely vulnerable to the whims and the manipulations of local political hacks (both Illinois and Florida). Still think local community standards and State's Rights is a good thing?
One of the founding principles of America is Self-Interest, "Rightly Understood." Each person has rights, but those rights end where another individual's rights begin. Local communities have the right to be as wild or as conservative as they wish, but they have no right to enforce their standards upon individuals who are not a part of that community.
One group enforcing their will upon another is exactly why most people fled to America.
And note that I've managed to completely ignore whether this involves pornography, murder, election laws, speed limits, or anything else. If you remove one part of the principle, you make it easier to remove the entire principle.
Does anybody know where we draw the line? We don't want to censor in public libraries, yet we don't have any way of allowing the pr0n industry to self-regulate. Is there no happy medium somewhere? Something that gives parents a little help without getting others upset over first amendment rights?
Unfortunately, the price of freedom of press, speech, etc. is the risk of being offended. Did you know that some libraries carry Playboy and don't restrict access based on age? There are a great many bookstores that will sell to the underage as well. So this is not a new problem. The new twist is that it's even easier to access.
Like or not, many kids will start to look at porn as they get older. Personal experience is that this starts around the age of puberty. Often, kids who are not yet into puberty that are around those who just hit it may get involved just out of curiousity. This is natural and I think our society tends to overreact a bit. What will happen if a child views porn? Most prepubescent children I know of don't want even sit near the opposite sex, much less see them naked. If you're worried that your children are going to pick up misinformation or have unhealthy attitudes about sex, talk to them before they get there. You don't need to get into great details and incorporate your beliefs about sex. Try to keep it positive and try not to look uncomfortable about it. If you are uncomfortable about it, you might want to have a trusted family member do this.
-Jennifer
The general thought in the past, and still held by many mental health professionals,
is that the viewing of sexually explicit material before the child is ready can lead to various mental and sexual problems.
This is borne out by several case studies of young children who are scarred by
viewing their parents having sex. Said children do not
yet have the mental capacity to deal with this, and often think of
the act itself as a violent assault. In addition, it's often
felt that pornography portrays an unhealthy sexual relationship,
and should not be shown to people too young to understand the
fantasy element of it.
I do agree with this ideal. Children shouldn't be allowed to see porn, just as
children should not be allowed to see violence. Most can't deal with it -
they don't have the knowledge or experience to deal with it
as it actually is.
Having said that, the responsibility is on the parents to ensure
that their children are not viewing this stuff. Don't make it
harder for adults to get to it - educate parents on the problems
involved. Make them responsible, not everyone else.
As a 17 year-old who received a license about 8 months ago, before the new law went into effect, I cannot even begin to relay how utterly ridiculous this is. Since I have a car, I have to drive around friends and classmates all the time; this would not be possible with the new rules. And as a straight-A student, first in my class, I'm gravely insulted by the thought that I would not possess the same rights just because of my age, when (I don't want to be conceited, but this is necessary...) I'm a much safer driver and intellectually superior to a many, many people who I also see on the road. There are many people who probably can't handle a license, but discriminating by age is downright wrong.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
It's a bad law, giving officers that much discretion. However, the Supremes really weren't considering that aspect of it, as you note. One cogent objection I've heard is that the punishment of arrest may be harsher than the punishment for committing the crime. That makes sense as a general rule, but the Court didn't wish to impose it as a rule on all the states.
but the Commerce Clause has not been applied that strictly since before FDR. Heck, they have a hard enough time getting justices to vote against laws that justify themselves with the Commerce Clause but don't even involve buying or selling. (Like "no gun at school" laws that claim that school violence may eventually affect learning and thus commerce, and thus the federal government can intervene with anything they want on school violence. Striking that rationale down was a 5-4 decision.) Narrowing the Commerce Clause to only commerce that actually travels between state lines would be a great victory, but is far more radically states' rights and limited government than anything the Court has come close to, even in its recent movements.
The Supreme Court also did not overturn the states' medical marijuana initiatives. They just said that, even in the lack of state law, the federal law still applies because it does not make an exception for medicinal uses. Now, I disagree with what happened, but it's difficult to see what else they could have ruled, given federal law. Yes, they could have thrown out the law, but, well, as a precedent that would have meant throwing out a lot of other laws. (Like, for example, a bunch of laws regulating business dealings and medicine sales.)
The federal law has to be changed or repealed.
This is a common fallacy (mostly among liberals, but not exclusively).
Y'know, this term has been thrown around so much in recent years that it has lost all substantive meaning. Instead of throwing labels around how about if you address the isssue, instead? Sorry if this sounds like a personal attack, because it isn't. Just a suggestion.
I oppose any and all censorship of the Internet, but I am very sympathetic to those who wish to prevent their children from viewing pornography and/or violence.
Violence I can understand. I have seen the studies showing a positive correlation between viewing violence and behaving violently. This is understandable. But let's return to the original question: namely, what adverse affects does viewing "Girls Gone Wild" have on a 9 year old? Any? You made the (valid) claim that the brain undergoes radical changes from birth to adulthood, but this says nothing about the harm of viewing porn.
- Rev.Please bear with me, and I assure you I am not trying to troll.
I understand that our society has deemed it inappropriate for "children" under the age of 18 to view sexually explicit materials. But would someone please explain to me why? Apart from taboos handed down from previous generations, has their been any solid evidence that viewing porn is bad for anyone, even those under 18? Or 12, for that matter? What exactly is expected to happen if some 9 year old comes across "Girls Gone Wild"?
There seems to be so much hyperbole on this issue that no one asks the obvious question here. Namely: What are we protecting children from, and why? I can't help but wonder if the net is going to cause us to rethink our social mores (again), this time in regards to kiddies looking at porn.
- Rev.--
--
One side is that all the content on the net should be censored so nothing is available that your 5 year old shouldn't see.
It's time we defined the other side. Let's define the other side as no one under 18 allowed on the internet, period. Unlike the content restrictions, this one is constitutional.
Then we can agree on a happy medium right in the middle: Adults do what they want, children are allowed on the net, content screening is the responsibility of the parent.
This is a good compromise. Plus, no one has to do anything new except the bad parents that are letting the internet raise their kids. Hooray!
Agreed 100% with everything except the free speech issue. Scalia has surprised me repeatedly with a fairly hard-line pro-speech view despite his anal-retentive conservatism. Indeed, the free speech cases seem to account for a substantial portion of the times he voted opposite Thomas and Rhenquist. Romer, of course, isn't a first amendment case. Further, his extracurricular writings show a strongly solicitous view of freedom of speech. (Of course, sometimes these views seemed cynically designed to support other policy issues, such as his dissent in the abortion clinic protest cases and in the hate speech cases).
In Reno, Scalia went with the majority (surprisingly, as did Thomas, BTW).
I wouldn't count Scalia out from the side of the first amendment, however, I believe that the Thomas/Rhenquist/O'Connor/Kennedy were the foursome voting to take up the case. For this reason, I believe that Scalia may well swing this opinion.
but its not their way. I cannot imagine that any firm supporter of the Third Circuit result would vote to grant Certiorari (particularly Ginsburg and Breyer), for there is always the risk of a 5-4 change of course on this panel. Even if the moderates would support affirming on this case, the particular set of moderates would be anal-retentive about not taking up a case for the purpose of repeating what they had already said.
On the other hand, nobody could make a decent living predicting the whys and wherefores of the Court. At the end of the day, you might be right after all. Regrettably, I tend to doubt it. I anticipate it to be a close 5-4 opinion, with fairly moderate language being a necessary precondition to keep the coalition together.
Since Reno was as stinging and wide-open an opinion as it gets, I can't see this result yielding any good.
The best we can hope for is for the Court after briefing to dismiss the case for certirorari improvidently granted.
A few years back, the Supreme Court wrote the opinion in ACLU v. Reno, slam dunking CDA, with wonderful broad-sweeping language regarding freedom of speech and the Internet. Now, in part, based upon this language, the Third Circuit has enjoined enforcement of "Son-of-CDA" as an obvious impingement upon freedom of expression.
Unfortunately, at least four Justices (necessary to hear the case) do not think that the Son-of-CDA case is just Reno redux, but raises new significant issues worthy of review by the court. This could not mean that they simply want to say First-Amendment-uber-alles again -- these justices want to pull back. How far they want to pull back remains to be seen, and whether they can get the key fifth vote from Scalia (a surprise in First Amendment cases to date) is yet another thing.
But Scalia has "evolved" since Reno, and not in a good way. His jurisprudence has become far more political, far more results-driven and far less principled in these past years. He may be willing to change his stripes on points of principle in order to achieve a "politically correct" pro-censorship result.
Grump.
Like I said, the news is not great. The best we can hope for is a 5-4 decision to affirm, simply restating the law we already have at hand. What is worse, our pro-first-amendment allies must once again split on the virtues of private censorship as an alternative to government regulation, bringing up some old uglies once again.
Tinker v. Des Moines? Hello? Children *do* have constitutional rights. As a lawyer, you should know this, and it's *shocking* that you don't.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
The Washington Post which has the story, with a quick review of the laws and issues, here.
Best Slashdot Co
The venerable Ms. Underwood is apparently a jackass. Here I will review (some of) her perpetrated idiocies. All italics denote quotation from the article.
She said the appeals court has perhaps fatally restricted the power of Congress to address ``that serious problem'' and called the ruling ``dramatic and extraordinary in its scope.''
Who says it's serious? It only affects people with children, and of those people, only those who have irresponsible children, and of those, only those who haven't properly undertaken their responsibilities with their children -- by talking to them.
Adult verification services that cost $16.95 a year represent an acceptable ``price to pay for protecting children from the harmful effects of graphic pornographic images,'' she said.
GAHHHHHHHH! You IDIOT. So... stupid... must... restrain... fist... of... death....
It may well be worth YOUR $16.95 to you. It sure as hell ain't to me. And what about those people who DON'T have kids? They'd have to use an AVS too, thereby paying for something they don't need but would nevertheless be required to purchase.
And all to block out something which you claim is "harmful." Show me some proof of harm or shut your hole.
That's not even getting into the problems with AVSs. First off, would YOU trust YOUR credit card number to one? Second, minors can get credit cards too. They generally have to be tied to a parental account, but they're still credit cards, and they're in the minor's name.
So Ms. Underwood recommends the following: a government-mandated, but corporate-run age verification system which is unreliable and, in fact, nonfunctional, in order to solve a nonexistent problem.
My $16.95 is worth enough to me that I don't want the government forcing me to give it to a worthless pile of steaming feces (in the form of an AVS). I'm sorry, Ms. Underwood, but you don't have the right to tell me that protecting someone else's kids -- I'll actually talk responsibly with mine, thanks -- is worth giving you $16.95 a head.
inigima
When you become a parent everyone becomes your personal slave, ultimately responsible for everything your brat kids see and hear.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There wouldn't be jury in a case where an operator of a web site like this was taken to court (by whom I do not know). So the law will never be tested by the public. It will just be blindly enforced by the guy in the robe.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Indeed. That's why there's supposed to be a supreme court that is concerned with protecting freedom of speech.
How we know is more important than what we know.
again, assumably you're in the minority, and minorities get wiped out whenever possible.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I tend to agree, but when people are trying to pass laws against what you enjoy doing it is not wise to expose your identity to them. Stand up and be counted, but only if you're not likely to be shot down.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Personally, I'm all about keeping porn legal because it's just about the only thing keeping Exodus, Digex and the like in business.
Porn = profitable web hosting.
As Douglas Adams (may he rest in peace) once noticed, all media pretty much started with porn and kinda progressed from there.
Paradox !-)
The spirit of the law is good. But, you lose anonymity in the process. It should be the parents' job to monitor and teach the children, not the government.
> Now if we could just get past the general subjugation of women thing....
I dunno about the subjugation thing - a gender-based 500% pay differential doesn't sound like subjugation to me.
Which reminds me, when I was in college, the feminist contingent was always ranting about how "women only make 67% of what men make".
Of course, when you normalized out age and education levels, it was more like 95%, but the truth never got in the way of a good headline-grabbing statistic.
But I'd say that with a 500% pay advantage over males, the obvious solution to the "gender gap" is to have bigger domestic pr0n industry!
And while I'm just whorin' for (+1, Funny) points with that thought, it reminds me that with the amount of bandwidth required for streaming video - in all seriousness, I'm in favor of the widespread adoption of streaming pr0n. The more there is, the cheaper bandwidth costs will be for everyone.
Pr0n. It does a network good.
I'd rather have my child viewing a video of a tired and overworked "actress" frantically rubbing her clit so that she can time her orgasm with the faceless male behind her than the dreadful alternative -- mass media.
Oh no! She might begin to form her own opinions -- and they just might be different from what the United $tate$ wants.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Meads Samoa book has been seriously questioned lately. Others have looked into her claims, and it seems she was more projecting her own wishes than actually investigating the society. Others claim otherwise, so I don't think it can be seen as an established fraud, just seriously questioned.
l
Here is a link http://hasmoneaus.jour.sc.edu/papers/2000mead.htm
You can find many more by searching for "mead samoa freeman" at your nearest Google.
Sorry folks, I had the wrong Margaret:
Margaret Mead wrote "Coming of Age in Samoa". This book caused a MAJOR uproar when it was published because of its dealing with the effects of early sexualization in Samoans
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
Does Murray's book suggest any of this in a definitive way?
/ coa.html
Its Margaret Mead (sorry about that). Quite the opposite, Mead's research showed that early sexualization among Samoans was beneficial, in particular, Samoans did not have the adolescent difficulties that Western Europeans/Americans have. While her book covers many aspects of Samoan society, she points to early sexualization as a contributing factor to Samoans' psychological well being.
A good review of it is here http://instruction.ferris.edu/taylorj/papers/mead
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
... to this issue. The biggest problem is that EVERYONE has different standards for what is appropriate or not appropriate for their children. I have 5 (!) children myself and I am quite concerned about what they might encounter on the net. After all, there are almost as many religious sites as pr0n sites, and I haven't found a filter that will block access to any of the plethora of bizarre religious right sites that I REALLY don't want my children exposed to. I understand that we live (here in the US) in a society that accepts every religious freak as equal; I just want them to learn about these things from ME, not from some online preacher. Other parents have concerns about other things, perhaps even then children going to MY web site. That's for them to be concerned about, not me. My point is, that what is acceptable or not is HIGHLY individual, there is no legal or technological solution to it. So do what I do, supervise your children's online time; it's a great way to spend some quality time with your children, as well as protecting them from what YOU don't want them to see. Nobody else can, and nobody else will.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
Is their a body of work supporting the statement that graphic pornography is "harmful" to children
This all depends on your definition of "harmful". If the definition of harmful means "violating your religious beliefs", then definitely, for some religions yes, it is implied by the statement itself. Viewing pornography can definitely entail psychological changes, as can early sexualization in other ways. Read Margaret Murray's "Coming of Age in Samoa" for an anthropological treatment of this whole subject.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
Unfortunately, the system is heavily stacked against third-party candidacy, as recent Presidental elections have shown. The modern President is powerful enough that you can't be a real party without fielding a reasonably popular Presidential candidate every election for a number of elections in a row. The unit rule prevents real third-party Presidential candidacies, and thus third-parties tend to be single issue (e.g., Green), or attract members that detract from its seriousness (e.g., the current Reform and Libertarian parties).
The unit rule is governed by the state legislatures, and cannot be reasonably abolished in one state if the others do not follow suit. (Washington put one Ford vote for Reagan in 1976, West Virginia put one Dukakis vote for Bensten in 1988, but these were within the same party. The last time an elector bolted parties was 1972, and the last good third-party showing was in 1968.) Getting the states to abolish the unit rule would require either a constitutional amendment or a control of most state legislatures: both are major undertakings. Both would require the support of at least one major party, and so would require working within the system until at least that time.
Sen. McCain gets more done in Washington, DC, because he is a Republican rather than an Independent/Reform/etc.
~~~~~~
under-paid karma whore
"price to pay for protecting children from the harmful effects of graphic pornographic images"
As opposed to those non-graphic images - they're fine.
Heh. That's just ASKING for mean-spirited jokes about protecting kids from heavily armed soldiers breaking into kids' homes and forcing them out of the country...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
the point of the post above (that you are responding to) was that the kids have to be not shielded from everything but explained everything.
in other words, it's not about whether one is able to restrict the kid or know exactly what kid is viewing at "Johnny's". It's about what the kid is tought - you know, the right from wrong, the left from right etc... that's what matters. naked butts etc. are fairly irrelevant.
quote:
"I can spend time with my child at home, making sure they use the internet safely."
make sure they LEARN, that they find interesting stuff etc... that way restricting them becomes non-issue.
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
Yeah, you always know you can get reliable and fair Supreme Court rulings when your golf buddy (Breyer) is on it.
There is this huge point about the size of _Alaska_ that you all are apparently missing. The Supreme Court isn't trying to legislate from the bench and make pornography illegal or make judgements on its moral character, but rather to give local governments the power to enforce their own enacted decency laws! They aren't trying to push their own agenda, they are trying to make the enforcement of laws (which YOU have put in place) possible. Plain and simple.
It's Orwellian! It's fascist! They are trying to brainwash us with their Puritan values!
Gimme a break.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Besides, when I search for porn, I want to be as anonymous as possible.
Privacy issues aside, we should all be proud of what we do, porn included. Looking at porn isn't illegal, and if you're looking at it, you (probably) don't have a moral problem with it.
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
I tend to agree, but when people are trying to pass laws against what you enjoy doing it is not wise to expose your identity to them. Stand up and be counted, but only if you're not likely to be shot down.
That's why it's all the more important to stand up for it. When you have the chance to get shot down, it's important that everyone stand, so it's harder to hit any one individual.
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
The best thing the 18-22 demographic can do if they really care about their rights is get out there and vote. And ideally band together to keep each other informed, vote on the same topics and recruit other voting age people in that demographic to register. If you can swing a punch consisting of 150,000 young votes, I guarantee you you'll have your congressman's attention. You could certainly have affected the outcome of the last presidential election.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hey, I'll agree with most of your points, but the series of Robocop feature films is fine cinema.
Actually, I'd say the solution (and not only to this, but to most things in gov't I disagree with) is to vote 3rd party, and educate others why this is a good idea, too. Think "outside the box" to use a tired cliche. Trying to "reform" an existing political party will do you about as much good as spitting into the wind.
I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Constitutionally Correct
I think you are referring to the USA, rather than 'the world'?
In Europe the media tolerates nudity and a level of sexual display to a far greater degree in the media than in the USA. Sure, there's a lot of violence as well but expression of sexuality in terrestrial tv is considered a lot more acceptable, and I think expressions of violence are more tightly controlled. In the UK things have progressively more relaxed, as long as it is after the '9 o'clock watershed' there's a fair degree of freedom. And our neighbours in the Netherlands, France etc also seem to have a liberal attitude towards sex in the media.
But then I guess we tend to be a bit more uptight about guns and the suchlike, and their portrayal. IMHO the majority of people here consider guns to be A Bad Thing rather than a god-given as well as constitutional right to possess. (Not a flame, just an observation of very different cultural attitudes). Remember when we had somebody go into a school in Scotland (Dunblane) and shoot children the (overwhelmingly popular) decision taken was to ban all handguns of the type used, including withdrawing the UK from handgun disciplines in the Olympic Games. A very different culture from the USA.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
Maybe it's just me being paranoid, but I get nervous any time a government tries to regulate anything about the internet. It always reminds me of a comment Heinlein made concerning censorship: It starts small, to protect you from something harmful, but the end result is tyranny.
Kez
True... very good point there. The last thing I would want is for the DMCA to be brought in front of a Supreme Court that would have judges appointed by a big-industry conservative like Dubya.
MPAA: Sir, we really want to get this DMCA upheld and enforced to the letter. Can you do whatever it takes?
W: Hmmm... Perhaps if the media were to portray me as a really great, smart guy right before re-election... or if SNL and Jay Leno would lay off a bit... perhaps I can work something out with our friend the Atty. General...
MPAA: Good then. I thought we could see eye-to-eye.
W: Heh. Eye-To-Eye [chuckle], kinda like a couple of potatos. Or was it potatoes... Darn that Quayle! I could never get that straight!
saying that adult verification services, which cost the user money, represent an acceptable "price to pay for protecting children from the harmful effects of graphic pornographic images".
From what I gather, current AVSs just require that you have a credit card and are stupid enough to use it on shady sites. Some do not actually charge the card, they just validate that it is real and infer that if you have a valid CC then you are old enough to see pr0n.
IMHO, AVS doesn't really work anyway. If pr0n exists and horny pimple-faced 15yr olds exist, then it will be accessed by minors, period.
I am just waiting for the Supreme Court to do real work, like taking a look at the DMCA one of these days...
Alternatively the pr0nographers could simply point their domain names at servers outside the US - will they still be answerable to US law if they're effectively in a different country?
As much as I'm loathe to say it, filter software seems like a better solution.
People who are cheating on their wife probably do not have the time to watch pornography.
Conversely, people who view pornography may be too busy to cheat on their wife.
Rich
Umm.. when did this happen? I got my license late last year, and none of the above was required.
Now if they could finally get a tiny bit of self-discretion when it comes to unsolited porno emails, we might finally have a good system. Billy had better not post with his real address to Usenet or a high-volume mailing list, or else he'll start getting "XXX sluts want to get you off!!" mails pretty quickly. There's no call for that.
As for the voting age bit, well, sure, it got lowered to 18 when the boomers were young, and I haven't heard of any big push to change it, so we're probably safe. But, who cares what the voting age is when 80% of the population is over 50 anyway? (Yes, I'm exaggerating slightly)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I think it only applies to those under 18, but it took effect maybe 3 years ago. My g/f just got her license 7 months ago, and it definately applied. Maybe it was highway driving rather than night driving you had to do several hours of, but I'm pretty damn sure it's law. I just barely scraped by, getting my license a month or two before it took effect.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I might be a liberal, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid.
<bart
I think that a better way to filter porn is to require or suggest porn pages to have meta tags in them like meta contents = porn
The Internet Content Rating Association has this form (requires frames and ECMAScript) that you can fill out to create a "PICS-Label" meta tag that you can stuff in your HTML header to mark your content as "family friendly" or "adult-oriented" or anything in between.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I wonder how they intend to make ex-US porn sites comply with an adult verification scheme?
They can't. But, at least right now, they really don't have to, because the overwhelming vast majority of porn is hosted on servers inside the US. I know dozens of foreign adult webmasters, and all of them use US hosting companies.
This silly law wouldn't do anything at all except kill the US online porn industry.
Wrong. It would, in all likelihood, reverse the last year's downward profitability trend overnight. The people who are already paying for porn will continue to pay for porn. The people who used to get it off of free sites hosted on fast servers inside the US, will probably grudgingly pay for porn if the alternative is trying to get free porn off some server on another continent.
It's not so much that a server on another continent would have to be slow, but it would be much more expensive. Quality, reliable hosting is extremely cheap inside the US. Free sites use a lot of bandwidth. I can run my tame free sites off my US servers because I only pay $2.50 per gigabyte of transfer. If I had to pay 5 or 10 times that for a server in a foreign country, the site wouldn't be profitable. And - merely moving to offshore hosting doesn't provide any protection to a webmaster in the US. So a huge number of free sites would close down if COPA was enforced.
Oh, there is one thing it would do - make someone rich, probably whoever runs the verification service.
The AVS and paysite owners will certainly profit. So will the individuals who own small sites protected by an AVS.
Who loses? Free site owners, thumbnail gallery posts (TGPs), and linklists that cater to people looking for freebies (Greenguy's Link-O-Rama, Richard's Realm, Tommy's Bookmarks, Persian Kitty).
Gee, I wonder if they're part of the lobby?
The owner of Adult Check did, in fact, testify before Congress during the CDA hearings, and he wasn't there to help the ACLU.
How come our wonderful US legislators still don't understand that the Internet is a worldwide network they can't control?
They can control enough of it, at present.
I keep wondering when people are going to understand that the US legislators really do have power, and their ignorance and incompetence really is dangerous.
I'd bet money that every single solitary site that I have visited in the last week, probably the last month, was hosted on a server inside the US. And that covers a wide variety of news, sports, entertainment, medical research, games, and even pornography.
Gratuitous karma whoring, but funny as hell all the same! :-) Top marks!
Grab.
Sending a kid off to the public library, watching porn is the least worrying thing. Somewhere further up the list are: gangs; drive-by shootings; ppl who have easy access to _legal_ firearms, never mind _illegal_ ones; SUVs with bull-bars; drunk drivers; ppl with mental health problems who aren't getting help to sort themselves out; and easy access to quick-dependency drugs like crack. The phrase "don't sweat the small stuff" springs inevitably to mind...
;-) or would you rather they were actually out having unprotected sex? It's a bad age to be at. Teenage boys are just going through puberty, they haven't got a clue what the f*ck's going on, half the time they're scared of girls and the other half they want something they don't understand. Meantime, teenage girls have mostly got puberty under control (having started the hormonal changes on average 4 years earlier) and are starting to actively look for sex. Porn gives teenage boys a safe way to explore their sexuality without risking anything.
Not to mention sex itself. Would you rather your kid saw porn to learn how it went (think of it as "practical anatomy"
Someone else pointed out the best solution - put the public terminals foursquare in the middle of the library, so everyone can see what you're doing. There aren't any privacy issues with a library terminal, any more than there are with seeing what books the person ahead of you in the library queue is borrowing, and having to surf for porn in public is going to put off damn near every teenage kid.
Grab.
Irony is wasted in this place.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
The Constitution doesn't apply to laws that are for protecting the children. And nowadays, all laws are for protecting the children.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
, or unfairly regulating it,
I consider it interesting that the Porno industry has been one of the few industries that seem to be pretty good at Self-Regulation. Most sites already require some sort of age verification and you almost never see a porno site advertised on sites targeted at teenagers. Too bad other industries aren't as good at it, like both the Tobacco and Alcohol. Both had to be forced into not targeting teenagers with thier products. Had the government not stepped in our children would still be subjected to beer and ciggarette commercials during saturday morning cartoons.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
That is, get hold of the police chief and ask what plans he has for re-educating or firing those fools working for him, and if you aren't satisfied there, work on getting a new police chief.
Or, even better, get a hold of the Govenor, and ask what is going to be done to repeal the hundreds or thousands of laws that should have never been passed in the first place.
Here's a clue, people -- if we make not wearing a seatbelt a crime, then not wearing a seatbelt is a crime. Creating hundreds of asinine laws, and then asking police officers to "use more discretion" in the laws they choose to enforce, is asking for a world of pain and hurt.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
So, in you opinion, it's ok to throw someone in jail for talking back, is that correct. Which fascist country do you live in? If you live in this police state wanna be please tell me you are not studying law. I hate have to go into a voting booth in 15 years and find your name on a ballot.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
I'm more worried about the porn distributors finding out who I am then the government and psycho organizations. I mean, do you really want that industry, who is responsible for a huge percentage of net spam, to have access to your meatspace identity? From your name could come your mailing address and your phone number.
I know the article was sparse on details, but does the Supreme Court and Congress understand they are passing laws and legislation against an entity that is worldwide and not restricted to US borders? Congress sees passing legislation against pornography is great at the polls and election time. But what will happen to those same politicians when little Johnny and Janey are viewing porn from offshore sites? I guess manifest destiny will see a come back. Ahem. Right.
But now, the cry is to "protect the children" whenever something that even remotely related to kids comes up. Why the hell should anyone rely on the government to protect their children?
In a way, I really can't blame parents for trying to dish off the responsibility of raising their children to the government... They pay so much in taxes that there is little left for them to spend on raising a healthy family.
BUT, pushing the responsibility to the gov't is still a bad move... You can't legislate against stupidity - someone is always going to do something stupid - THEN they should have to pay the consequences - which may be just dealing with the result of whatever stupid act they committed...
Parents should be taking responsibility for raising their children - Find out what your kids are watching - find out what they're reading - parent in a way that inspires your child to trust you enough to want to confide in you... Punishing your children (the same way that the gov't punishes it's subjects) isn't going to teach them to be better people - Teach them to use their own minds and to make their own decisions.
A group of strict rules made up arbitrarily aren't going to help things. That's exactly what the gov't is attempting to do with their "protect the children" legislation...
Just vote Libertarian and end the madness...
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
For 70+ years you damn gun-banners have been sitting back while the federal and state governments have been passing all kinds of restrictions on the 2nd Amendment. "I don't own a gun, so I don't care" you fools said. And the NRA warned you: when the 2nd Amendment goes, the rest won't be far behind. What did we get for our trouble? We get called "Right-wing Extremists," "Alarmists," and "paranoid gun nuts." Well guess what? We were right. They're here for the First Amendment.
You slappy bastards might not own guns, but you sure like your free porn, dontcha? Damn right you do.....I'll give you lefties this: you got nerve. It takes a lot of sand to use the old "...it's for the children..." saw to try to take my guns, but then whine when the same excuse is used to ban your porn. Hell with you; I'm not lifting a finger to help. After all, I don't sit around jerking off to nudie pics.
"I ain't 'nobody,' dork....right?"
I'm guessing you can't log in to slashdot as your school's proxy blocks all JavaScript. Try surfing to www.safeweb.com and then surf to slashdot.org from there. If the proxy at your school allows SSL-connections (which it probably does), then you should be able to view whatever site you want (without even the content being logged at the proxy).
Good luck
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
"price to pay for protecting children from the harmful effects of graphic pornographic images"
Yeah riiiiiiiigh. Did you ever try to search for "sex" in a search engine or something similar without a filtering program, not to mention every promotional page/preview/whatever before you get to the AVS. And better still, american laws are but a local ordinance, so it doesn't help anyway if they go to a foreign site.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
(I'm not responding to you, personally, bauaba... I have no idea what your views are... just the thread in general.)
Here in Minnesota, the seat belt law allows for an additional fine on a moving violation, but does not allow officers to pull you over for it. Some people have been pushing for more seat-belt enforcement, but minority advocates rightly point out that such a law could lead to a lot more pull-overs for DWB ("driving while black"), and so it hopefully will not go anywhere.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The foregoing suffices to establish what the Court's failure to cite any case remotely in point would lead one to suspect: No principle set forth in the Constitution, nor even any imagined by this Court in the past 200 years, prohibits what Colorado has done here.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction because the law violated free-speech rights, saying site operators had no effective way of screening out minors and ruling that the law probably was fatally flawed.
The appeals court upheld the injunction. It specifically objected to the law's reliance on ``contemporary community standards'' and said Web site operators would be unable to determine the geographic location of site visitors using a worldwide computer network.
To comply with the law, operators would have to severely censor their Web sites or would have to adopt age or credit card verification systems to shield minors from material deemed harmful ``by the most puritan of communities in any state,'' the appeals court said.
So there is a reasonable that that the decision could go the way many here would support.
It's time to spin the big lottery wheel of justice. Where is it going to land this time?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Or perhaps they could pay some attention to their children, and spend some time with them? If parents want to use the internet as a baby-sitter, they can expect all the problems they get.
Although all of my adult websites use Adult Verification Services I don't think that the COPA is fair and it should in no way be enforced.
The fact that this law will also cover web-based chat rooms and discussions groups makes it ridiculous.
I don't think that they're doing this to protect children, they're most probably doing it based on their own believes that every sexual act should be censored.
In the same light, how do you distinguish actual violence from cartoon violence? We gave up on that one years ago and now look at the extent to which violence runs rampant in the media. Do we want the same thing in the porn industry? I doubt it.
It's not the children who need protection, it's the parents. They want to be protected from questions like, "Why are they doing that?" and "Doesn't that hurt?" and "I thought you said people who did that were supposed to be in love and married, but there are three people in this picture, what gives?"
As a parent, I think these rules are ridiculous. No, I don't give my kid smut. Nor do I take the kid to scary movies or rated R dramas. The kid is still a kid, and is going to be disproportionately scared by scary movies and won't follow most of the drama in an adult drama. I learned my lesson with the movie "The Man Who Knew Too Little" (with Bill Murray). The kid didn't get any of the jokes and grew so bored with the film that we had to leave in the middle of the movie.
So age-appropriate is a concern, but mostly because the child should have an interest or an educational need and shouldn't be left completely bewildered or confused.
I do not have a signature
Given that the implication is that we are born with the right to free speech, and that the Constitution simply makes it clear that the federal government cannot abridge that right, please explain what major oversight the ACLU is committing. The ACLU is constantly attempting to prevent government at all levels from overstepping its bounds. The link is great, but on the surface appears to provide no predictions for the future at all. Which base exactly were you worried we would get too far off from?
I do not have a signature
So let's see, your theory is that girls would never fuck for a ham sandwich. Who's subjugating who's sexuality, here?
Go Kathryn Thurber!
I'm not sure if you were trying to be sarcastic or not, but I was just trying to point out the de-sexualization of female behavioral motivations in North American society.
(I wish I could be more precise with my terminology, but I'm not a sociology major. So sorry.)
Go Kathryn Thurber!
It is definitely natural and perfectly normal that kids will go against what they are told but we are talking about PORNOGRAPHY. If we, as a society, truly want parents to raise their children, we have to give them as much help as possible. Kids cannot successfully raise themselves on the whole. That (single parents, absent fathers, uncaring parents) is the biggest problem our society faces.
Well, I believe that in this day and age, more cool stuff means more work for Mom and/or Dad. If they want to have a computer in the house, they're going to need to filter what their kids see. It's not the government's job, nor should it be. No self-respecting parent should let someone else tell their kid what should or should not be viewed.
Now I'm trolling in two stories at once.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I can't wait to vote for whoever she is running against....
In Sunny Florida
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
if i remember correctly he won't be running again....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
easy...he won't...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
which of the various age verification services should I use? (Or perhaps, how many?) Okay, the first one is $16.95 / year. But then I need to subscribe to this other one for $19.95 / year. But that still doesn't get me everything. I need to subscribe to this other one for $14.95 / year. etc., etc.
There are other things besides pornography which are inappropriate for children. So do we really turn the Internet into a children's reading room? At what point is this a reasonable price to pay to reduce the entire Internet into a children's reading room?
--
"Linux is a cancer" -- Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
called Visabuxx. If the card number doesn't somehow disclose that the holder is underage, then AVS can't operate by credit cards. On the other hand, if the card does reveal the holder's age, that's a bad privacy violation and exposes the teenager to all kinds of unwanted attention. The mailing lists of teens who use those cards would become a hot commodity for pedophiles as well as more traditional greedy merchants.
I agree for the most part with your comment, but Scalia has never been the swing vote in cases like this. Look at nearly any decision in the last 10 years, and you will find Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas voting as a block against free speech, against separation of church and state, against equal protection, etc. (In the last case, check out Scalia's dissent in Romer v. Evans -- it's pretty sickening) . I'm pretty sure Scalia has already decided to vote for Son-of-CDA, in the interest of protecting "public morality" or some such tripe. The real swing votes here will be Kennedy or O'Connor, as always.
Unpopular former Attorney General Jenet Reno is talking about Running for Florida Governor soley on the platform of "protecting children." When asked questions about actual governance, each answer includes the phrase "protecting children."
How long before your site gets blanked by manditory censorware?
$800 a day? So what, the fact of the matter is you get to say "Ok, I'll do the ass ream scene" but you don't get to choose who with. Someoneelse does. If you say "No, not with him" then you are out the door, cuz there are plenty more waiting in the wings. Survival in the porn industry may require that you do things that are dangerous and unjust against your particular will. That is subjugation...
Don't bother with the "What about the guys?" line. Plenty of dudes would do that work for a ham sandwich.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I think what you are talking about here is called trafficking in humans, which, correct me if I am wrong, is by its very nature, immoral. A lot of those actresses see the porn industry as a misguided "break" into Hollywood. It is nothing of the sort. There is no accounting for naivete and outright stupidity.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
You've committed a bit of an error here. One doesn't choose to be stupid (ignorant, yes) nor does one choose to be naive. In the first case, it is deteriministic; in the second, it is causal. You can choose to stop being ignorant but if you don't have the tools to change then... One does not choose to stop being naive. In the case of the porn industry, these people (men and women) prey on naivete. "I'll make you a star" is what is called "undue influence." You stop being naive by learning a lesson. Realizing you are only a star in the eyes of people who like porn is quite different from realizing that you just won the Oscar. Realizing that you are getting cornholed by Herschel Savage is quite different from a love scene with Brad Pitt. That my friend is a lesson.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
No, it is based on the control of the means of production. Cavemen probably acted greedily, but you would never accuse on of being a Rockefeller.
If you can get your workers to do more for less, you do it
Then you are oppressing them by not paying them for the value of their labor.
It's only an opinion anyway. Many people don't understand that.
If you make an assertion as a matter of fact, then it is an argument subject to scrutiny and further inquisition. Any first-year philosophy student can tell you that.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
profit Pronunciation: 'prä-f&t Function: noun Usage: often attributive Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin profectus advance, profit, from proficere Date: 14th century 1 : a valuable return : GAIN 2 : the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series of transactions; especially : the excess of the selling price of goods over their cost 3 : net income usually for a given period of time 4 : the ratio of profit for a given year to the amount of capital invested or to the value of sales 5 : the compensation accruing to entrepreneurs for the assumption of risk in business enterprise as distinguished from wages or rent
You are practicing equivocation which is illogical.
Greed isn't exclusive to capitalism (hence your caveman reference makes no sense), but it's certainly an integral part. You are making my point; see above.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Some figures:
Now if we could just get past the general subjugation of women thing....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
If ONLY we were forced to pay AdultCheck before we could see goatse.cx.
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--hongpong.com
Just what we need, the federal government viewing pr0n sites all day. At least this would give them an excuse.
A clever sig would prove nothing.
Nevertheless, I will respond to your extremely poor analogy:
By taking drugs, a man harms himself. No-one is harmed in the production of drugs. An addict may commit crimes to pay his way, and dealers may fight amongst themselves, but those are not direct results of the use of drugs and must be treated separately.
By buying child porn, a pervert is creating a demand, which will be met by a supply, which will cause a child to be harmed. Therefore the pervert should be held criminally responsible, even if he has not actually taken a photograph himself.
To comply with the law, operators would have to severely censor their Web sites or would have to adopt age or credit card verification systems to shield minors from material deemed harmful...
I think my CC numbers would be safer in a usenet posting then with a age verification system.
BOSTON SUCKS!
What scare me most about the arrest ruling is that many states have legalized inventory searches of you car when it is impounded, which is what they do when they arrest you... get it? If a cop can arrest you for damn near any traffic violation, they're gonna tow and search your car. So it gives a cop total discretion to search your car without a warrant...
Porn, by virtue of demand alone, will always be available. The conservative powers at the top of the gov't may want to shut it down, but it'll never happen. There's so much money and so much demand for porn, that people will find a way to buy and sell it. Heck, look at the marijuana laws in the US. They're not stopping anybody. It's the right of the people to ignore bad laws.
That's funny. Religion sent me spiraling into a sea of anger, hatred, depression. Can we ban religion, too, while we're at it?
Actually, evidence has been shown exactly to the contrary. I remember reading about a statistical study (lots of good thinks there too, I think) that studied thousands of cultures around the world, and it found a direct connection between the suppression of sexuality (I think in adults, and in children) and increased violence. Yes, unsurprisingly, in cultures that are repressed sexually, violence is more common. This doesn't bloody suprise me, how about you?
cheers, joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Want a good look at how the court will rule? Follow this link: U.S. Constitution: First Amendment annotated.
The ACLU and the NRA and most of the "political leaders" we suffer today do not view the U.S. Constitution as a definition and limitation on federal powers. They promote it instead as the SOURCE of the people's priveleges and immunities, as well as the champion of their government-granted "freedoms". The special interest groups rally around this concept very profitably, and use it to "democratically" enforce their ideas of how things "should" be on the rest of society.
The feds have no authority to regulate on this subject, and we should loudly tell them so.
Score:0 Let's bury this one.
I agree with you as far as the "subjects" of the signatories are concerned. This also leaves a humongus area for us to potentially disagree.
"It was amazing," Mr. Smith stated, "I could actually sit down with my son and daughter and surf the web TOGETHER. I mean, who would of thought of that!"
Yeah, who would of thunk it! By the time a child is in high school, filtering software is useless, they already know about pr0n and when they are younger, parents can exert more control over what they view on the Internet. This is just another example of the government trying to be a parent because a small minority of parents can't do it themselves and their children end up in the park with a dirty ole man. I know I'll never forgive my parents for that one! :P
=-=-=-=-=
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Who naturally feels the need or desire to kill other humans? Serial killers, I guess. But I don't think I'd go as far as to call murder "natural."
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I am harmed when I read about people who go to jail for no good reason. I know how you feel - seriously. I read an article about a teen that was jailed for "raping" his girlfriend (who was 15). He "raped" her because she's not allowed to consent to the activity, but they still wanted to have sex. She committed suicide after he was sentenced.
That sorta shit sends me spiraling into a sea of anger, hatred, and depression.
I dunno. I guess we can all get fucked up by different sorts of passive things. But to mask them instead of confronting them is a recipe for longterm disaster, IMHO.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Let me get this straight. Driving to work in your SUV is natural. War is natural. McDonalds is natural.
News @ 11 is natural (as is the TV on which you watch it). Hockey, pro wrestling, robocop, and schools are natural.
But nudity, and the human mating process, is harmful.
Remarkable.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Porn is unethical because it violates the Categorical Imperative. That is, the principle of action for porn can not be wished as a universal law.
The principle of porn is not "the naked human form" or "the human mating process" as some posts claim. To claim so is to be willfully naive. The principle of porn is exploitation, and this is why it can not be wished as a universal law. To state it another way, porn does not treat people as ends in themselves but rather as means, to be exploited.
The vast majority of porn is not artful but degrading. It portrays a degraded view of human intimacy. Relationships as portrayed in porn are "push button" events between one dimensional persons, which I don't believe is an accurate portrayal of humanity or anything worth while about our relating.
According to US Census, over 60% of 16 year olds are sexually active. We have sex education classes for 4th graders which explain all the details. Why do we insist on this ironic misnomer of trying to 'protect' our children?
Obviously, a 4 year old isn't smart enough to search for porn. When a kid becomes smart enough to handle adult concepts, shouldn't he be allowed to handle them? Why are we afarid to accept the transition between child and adult?
Additionally, by banning and filtering access in so many ways we make the inappropriatness, which is a part of human life, forbidden fruit, that more lucrative toward kids.
Kids who are raised in open environments where they are exposed to good, bad, etc. grow up to be mentally sound and productive citizens, because they learn that the world isn't what's shown on PBS and there are decisions which must be made, and they learn the right way to make them by their parents, by exposure and experience.
By contrast, parents who isolate their children and encapsulate them in bubbles often have troubled kids. Many don't know how to handle adult situations when they suddenly become an adult after being a child all their life. Kids need exposure to learn the difference between right and wrong and to establish valid ranges of what's right and wrong, and then extend this to develop their own insight. Unfortunatly, many parents are ashamed of themselves, people in general, and the world we live in. This is caused from a variety of sources, sometimes generational and other times it's the function of a religion or other ideal which insists on incorporating shame in everyday life.
If children live with shame, they're not going to do whats right because they want to, they're going to do it because they are afarid of being condemed and isolated. This just doesn't work.
Today, as much as we like to think, we still have quite classical ideas. Many parents still beat their children. Others mentally abuse them and shame them. Some isolate them and make them into unprepared adults. This is changing, and people are realizing that children shouldn't be delt with as children, but as what they are -- people. Kids are smart and shouldn't be sheltered from something because they won't understand it. Why not try to talk with them instead of putting a filtering program on your computer, assuming these are 'adult' concepts? Having an open relationship with a child is much better than having one of authrotiy, and your child (trust me) will respect you much more in the long run. That's parenting.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Yes, I did mean beat. Most parents today do in fact give repeated 'spanking sessions' which can be translated to beatings.
All physical punishment is in some way fundamentally wrong. For the minority (e.g. you) it occasioanlly works. But for many, 'spankings', which often later translate to 'beatings' when parents go too far, don't work. Children live what they learn, and children who are hit for doing something wrong learn violence is acceptable and often go on to apply it when they think someone else is wrong. This sets the stage professionals the world over know as social violence.
You may think it worked for you, but I would rather think you were lucky. You're right, the inverse is also just as wrong, children need to have some kind of constructive punishment. Either extremes are very dangerous.
It's just that many people don't understand why we punish children and what we really want. In most cases, it's to teach children right and wrong. We don't have to hit them to inflict fear of doing it again (and thus no concept of right and wrong) to do this. You can just as easily explain to a child why something is wrong and why it is right, and why you should want to do the wrong thing. You should make it clear that while there are two courses of action, you can choose whichever you want, but will that action make you a good person?
Children want to be good people. They will want to do what pleases you because this is a standard human concept. Everyone in my family have been raised with these concepts, and none have ever been in any trouble and have basically been all constructive, productive adults. Furthermore, we all have good relationships with each other which aren't bound by fear.
So I forward to you that you rexamine your last statement and consider if you really think any type of violence translates into maturity. It's not the quantity, its the principle. I hope you don't hit your children, and take the route less followed: right and wrong, not fear.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Wait a minute! I thought we were talking about prOn? Since when did the protection of minors from materials like prOn get into the conversation about that "mouthing off case" that everyone is upset about? Just because some cop had a bad day, we are dealing with this? Please stick to the subject, and I understand about the other case, really. You forget one little fact about prOn on the net... that now you don't go searching for pron, THE PRoN FINDS YOU! Trip up once, click on a link that is misleading, and all of the sudden it opens up a thousand screens, Hooooooray! MY KIDS NEED TO SEE THIS! YES, You're right. You're all right. This is certainly a first amedment issue when these bastards decide to trick my five year old into thinking all women are sluts for a buck, and yes, even better, hijacking my computer to do it. This is not the test model for freedoms. The fact that they intrude on our freedom of information with trickery does not qualify them as protected citizens. Please find some better people to hold up a First Amendment Case. At least Larry Flint didn't try to advertise so much, he just sold. Its fine to sell, (heck this is America, pull off some stunts too!) it is another thing entirely to try to trick someone into seeing what they might not want to choose to talk to their five year old about... JUUUUST YET. "DADDY... what's a c*** hungry super d*** munching b****? Its right here under Pikachu. Is she really 12 years old?" I reserve the right to have my talks with children not interrupted by hidden nasty banner ads. Sorry about the rant.
Give this man a cookie.
I don't think anyone actually wakes up in the morning and sets out to chip away at their own rights and freedoms. Ignorance is the worst form of evil.
The Constitution would seem not to permit this justification (especially in a first-amendment case), as Congress can't pass laws concerning religion. Presumably the Supreme Court can't accept such an argument, either.
What I was looking for was some more traditional evidence showing objective harm (psychological difficulties, increased likelihood of violence, etc.) when children are exposed to pornography. Does Murray's book suggest any of this in a definitive way?
Is their a body of work supporting the statement that graphic pornography is "harmful" to children, or is this just fact simply accepted by America's judicial system? Not that I can see Antonin Scalia questioning the assumption very thoroughly.
The arrest for seat-belts was a reasonable application of the Constitutional limits on federal power -- this incident should have been handled on the local level. That is, get hold of the police chief and ask what plans he has for re-educating or firing those fools working for him, and if you aren't satisfied there, work on getting a new police chief. For the Supreme Court to try to set rules on when a state or local ordinance violation requires an arrest vs a summons would be a ridiculous case of micro-management and keep them working overtime for the next 50 years, so they are lucky the Constitution does not give them the power except where illegal discrimination is clearly involved.
What does bother me is the erratic course these alleged "states rights" (in)justices are following -- it's also quite clear that under the Constitution, marijuana is not a federal matter until it crosses state lines, and how Florida counts the votes is for Florida to decide... From here, it looks like the limitations of federal powers is something they only think about when it's expedient.
I think you will also find that the hippies who stuck to their ideals, and let their children choose what they considered 'right' also have the most unruly 'grown up' children now, and wished they had done it differently. A world without rules, is a world of chaos. Chaos does not produce love, peace, and harmony.
To the people above who question what harm seeing pornography does to minors, just ask me. When I was eleven I was flipping through the channels and came across a scrambled station. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I was intrigued by the strange noises emitting from the actors and actresses. In all the jumble of images on-screen, I made out what appeared to be a woman. A naked woman.
I was shocked, for that brief period- it lasted no longer than a second, my life turned upside down. My strict parents had never let me view any material like that- I've learned since then for good reason. I came upon this accidental viewing at 4:30PM. By 8:30 I was at the convenience store down the street stealing Hustler and Torso magazines. By 9:30, I was getting into rumbles with street toughs.
As the years went on, my eyesight decreased from watching hours of this scrambled pornography, and my tastes in magazines became even more hardcore- I spent my entire European high school trip in pornographic shops looking for the all-anal-revues and animal activities that I so desperately sought. I'm now in jail (they give us 15 minutes every week to use the Internet, but have installed NetNanny to keep things kosher) because I was caught stealing live-action Japanese tentacle pr0n from a local Tower Records.
My life wouldn't have taken this horrible path if I had not stumbled across that oh-so-brief glimpse of a scrambled, discolored, naked woman. I would be singing the glories of God in my local church with my father and mother- not rotting in a jail cell with Bubba and Tito. Hopefully the Supreme Court can rescue children before they turn into people like me.
iluvpr0n.
The only crime the woman, Gail Atwater, was charged with was the seatbelt violation.
Check out this MSNBC thingy for more information, if you so desire.
I'm glad to see my rights eroded.. makes me feel all warm inside.
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
I wonder how they intend to make ex-US porn sites comply with an adult verification scheme? This silly law wouldn't do anything at all except kill the US online porn industry. Oh, there is one thing it would do - make someone rich, probably whoever runs the verification service. Gee, I wonder if they're part of the lobby?
How come our wonderful US legislators still don't understand that the Internet is a worldwide network they can't control?
There is this thing called "shame" and "common sense". All the libraries I've been to have the computers with internet access in pretty open places, and people walk around there. I highly doubt your kid is going to open up web-pr0n sites while other people buzz around him/her. What's the big deal with it anyhow?? Why is it SO incredibly terrible about them seeing these things?? The only thing that makes it bad is if they are not taught self-control and the difference between truth and fiction. All you can do is teach them right and trust them to follow that, because you will not be there forever to hold their hand. They WILL do wrong (being a semi-rebellious youth in my time), its the degree of it and the ability to stop and rejoin all the other bricks in the wall that matter in this society. Of course, that's another discussion...
I've overclocked my brain!!!
Who was the idiot that modded this down to -1??? I love the comment about unnatural things. That's pretty right-on with the uptight crowd.
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fifth sigma, inc.
And what exactly would the Federal Government do about overseas pr0n servers??? Go shut them down?? Yeah, I can really see that happening. Not that they wouldn't try, but for every one site that complies, fifty won't.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I was first exposed to the sight of a naked woman when I was 12 years old (though the use of a computer no less! a low-res, 16 color bitmap. heheh). Today, I do not condone pornography, and otherwise, I am 99.9% (+/- .1%) sure that it did not have any harmful effects on me. I remember the experience. Checking my pulse, I would have found it hightened. I was a little excited. The effect triggered more of a desire to be educated than anything else. What our law makers wouldn't believe is... I didn't go rampaging through my highschool with a machine gun. I am not a drug abuser. I am nothing else that society should deam highly unacceptable (aside from being a computer wiz). The only thing it did to me was cause a little spark that made me think that girls weren't so "ewwh, gross" afterall. Since today I am not a viewer of pornography (aside from catching a flick and bearing witness to some actress' silicone sacks), and my life isn't in shambles (it's going quite nicely if you ask me :)... why should it be much different for the rest of the population? Why sink so much money into more useless crap that doesn't really protect anyone especially when it's the parent's responsibility to care for their children. *sigh*
Why bother.
Age verification over the internet doesn't work. A kid too stupid to not think of writing down Dad's CC number isn't smart enough enough to start up a web browser. Filtering doesn't work either. Porn still slips through,and all kinds of legit educational material (any site that offends the sensabilities of the filter's creator) are blocked.
I don't want the government protecting my children. When the government protects them it just means training the kids to be good little conformists and consumers. I'll protect my own kids, thank you very much.
Worried that little johnny will view porn at the library? Well, then you've blown it as a parent. Most kids too young to be viewing porn will just think its 'wierd' and move on. Kids old enough to be interested, likely aren't going to be harmed. If they see something really disgusting (and it is out there), I hope my children will ask me (or another trusted adult) about it.
Anarchists never rule
If you have children, BE WITH THEM.
Easy enough to say, but when you can't even send your child to the PUBLIC LIBRARY alone, you've got a real problem.
I can spend time with my child at home, making sure they use the internet safely. I can even install censorship software at my disgression if need be. If my child goes to see his friend "Johnny" and I find out that they are viewing inappropriate material, I have a chat with my child, and restrict him from visiting "Johnny." But right now, I wouldn't even be able to let him go to the library alone because there are no controls installed there.
Does anybody know where we draw the line? We don't want to censor in public libraries, yet we don't have any way of allowing the pr0n industry to self-regulate. Is there no happy medium somewhere? Something that gives parents a little help without getting others upset over first amendment rights?
Of course, all of this is probably pointless because we all know that Usenet has far more explicit stuff than any web site....
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The above text is quoted directly from the safeweb site. The bolding was added by me.... Although, I'm sure people are ignoring this.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
This came up when we were reviewing that case in my constitutional law class. (Oddly enough, we were in the middle of a bunch of search-and-seizure cases when it happened.) Remember, this decision was 5-4 and a surprise at that, without any sort of "illegal search" problem thrown in.
So posit a case with that as a complicating factor. Somebody gets pulled over on a traffic stop, cop writes the ticket, asks to search the vehicle, person answers "no", cop arrests person and searches the vehicle anyway, finds pot, case goes to trial. How does it turn out? Well, the court has ruled fairly consistently that refusal to consent to a search is not probable cause to effect a search, and you could REALLY easily argue that this is, in effect, what just happened.
Would it turn out that way? Who knows? The SC is disturbingly fickle lately. However, you can bet that some police organizations have already thought of this possibility, and (not wanting to see their discretionary arrest power revoked over something like this) I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were counseling officers to scrupulously avoid asking about searches in any case that looks like it might end up in an arrest...
I feel this will not be a ruling that the average Slashdot reader will be happy or comfortable with.
Sometimes I'm amused, sometimes amazed that we can continue to let ourselves live in a world where the average man considers the image of a naked blade less disturbing than the image of a naked breast.
Murder, death, violence. Portray these and you may rise to be a "news source" for the world. Love, kindness, and attraction. Portray these and you may live... if you run quickly.
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
I agree that parents should be with their children; but when my child is old enough to be interested in pornography, I'm not going to go with her to her friend's house just to watch over her shoulder and make sure she doesn't get into any of that "bad stuff."
Most of them are sheer and utter bullshit moneymaking bait-and-switch ventures. Who do you think puts up most of the small pr0n sites and their advertising? Yeah, there are a lot of big, "legitimate" (now there's a convoluted use of the word) adult sites that have original content and turn a profit. But all of them charge a membership fee directly, not using any sort of age verification service because when they charge your credit card *that* is their verification that you are at least 18.
The "age verification services," however, set up tons of tiny little pr0n sites, most of which steal content from the "legitimate" sites or just get filled with magazine scans or content dredged from USENET binaries groups. Then they proceed to SPAM everywhere about "hot horny naked passed-out cheerleader coed highschool sluts FREE WITH AN ***AGE PASS GOLD*** MEMBERSHIP!!!!!!!!!" Of course, by free with membership, they mean invented to get you to join in the first place, for a significant monthly recurring fee. Which is of course the opposite of free, since you pay to access, though in theory you're paying a third party who in practice is the same party or a related venture sharing the profits.
For the government to *require* an adult to pay money to a shady, spamming POS con outfit to view what it defines--and too broadly--as "adult material" is not only a violation of the first amandment, but of more basic human dignity.
Not to mention the fact that the law would be misapplied to cover noncommecial web sites put up by private individuals. You just *know* the government would be falling all over itself to show that such websites are commercial anyway, if they dare have banners or links or any sources of revenue to defray hosting costs, or worse yet are hosted on a free server that places banners or ads.
It would effectively kill the ability of American to communicate as adults using the Internet.
This is why I hate my country. Each and every day I wake up and see worse abuses of baic freedoms, and feel more and more deeply that Jefferson was right when he wrote that each generation should have a revolution against the last. You see, what's really hurting us is that the older generation, who'd be thankfully dead and unable to push their values on us, now has modern medicine to keep them alive long enough to hinder progress and social change--so that they try legislation like this to curb the "degenrated" mores of a younger generation who no longer see sex as something secretive and to be kept to oneself. Just imagine--it's only going to get worse, people, looking at the population statistics which show a population getting progtressively older in ever increasing numbers. Social progress and liberated values are no longer going to be an option in this country.
But I digress... Go to USENET for your porn needs anyway...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Frankly, for the longest time during the 80's when all we had were poor 8-bit graphics, punks where busy shooting up herion and spray painting subway cars all over Manhattan.
Thanks to online porn, today's little hoodlums are safe at home and away from the theatre so I can finally go out and enjoy a good time. We need to put together more "enterprise zones" to gets the hood rats to stay at home and order their porn and crack from Amazon.
Who doesn't want safe streets?
When are we going to stop trying to "protect" our children from all the "bad things" out there? If you have children, BE WITH THEM. Help them learn what is right and wrong...don't let the media and a group of people that have no idea what it's like to be a young person in todays world try to tell you what you can and can't do for your children. IMO, this will not stop your average kid from getting to porn sites if they want to. (Remember, kids are smarter than you ;-O)
When will parents understand that you get what you give, especially in respect to your children?
Damn, this pisses me off.....
Sent from your iPad.