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Senate Bill Would Make Clandestine Video Taping Illegal
happyclam writes "CNN says that Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is announcing a new combination bill that would do two things: (a) outlaw filming someone via hidden camera without their permission except in public places, and (b) provide for an adult-only domain such as .prn where all non-child-safe sites (pr0n, hate speech, etc.) would be relegated--the sites would have to give up their .com/.org/.net domains they own today. The first part makes sense, but the second clearly treads on free speech to some extent and will have a hard time going through, I imagine." I wonder if having an actor at the press conference is a new requirement for a bill to be introduced in congress.
other countries? Could still end up with exotic asian scat porn on .com or .org domains. The internet is not .USA.
.prn so sex.com becomes sex.com.prn would help. But still, this would be messy.
Perhaps automatically offerening free transfer
That means I can't set up video tape surveillence inside my house?
So now my house has less privledge than a public place.
I guess its not my "castle" anymore. Its just a nuisance to this numbskull.
So once all the porn and everything else that isn't wanted is relegated to the .prn domain, what then? Conveniently, DNS serves begin losing their registrations? And who decides what goes into the .prn category? Definitely a free speech issue..... and I won't even start on the video issue......
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
This reminds me of the recent story of libraries filtering adult content (or not, as the case may be). How does one really determine if something belongs as a .prn versus a .org?
.prn automagically? What if I run a site on breast cancer? Am I automatically .org?
If I show pictures of breasts, am I
I think that is a bad tld. .adult would be better. This isnt DOS. If a good way to categorize this comes about, I'm for it. The problem is, even victoria's secret magazine is porn to a 14 year old boy from suburbia. But about videotaping... I should be allowed to tape my babysitter in my own house.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Free speech does not give you the right to trick someone or mis-represent yourself..
.prn part... but we need to Expand it.. FORCE businesses into .biz and .com schools into .edu and only groups and orginazations get .org while internet services providers are forced with .net
.com because it is a BUSINESS.
Granted hoteensluts.com is obvious whitehouse.com IS NOT and is there to only decieve and misrepresent in-order to trick people into their site.
I agree with the
Yes... slashdot will have to become a
it's about damn time someone suggested forcing TLD's to be used correctly.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What about video taping babysitters to make sure they don't molest your children? Making it illegal for someone to video tape you in YOUR house who is NOT the owner, ok. Saying the owner can't do what he wants in his own house? I don't think so.
The second to the last paragraph of the article states that the law applies to recordings made for lewd and lascivious purposes. I think that secretly videotaping babysitters for the purpose of monitoring their performance doesn't fall into that category.
An exclusion for public places would seem to permit workplace monitoring.
A long long time ago, in a internet far away..
TLD's were originally MEANT to separate entities on the internet. Then along came the big bad internic who decided what a great idea it would be to WHORE out TLD's to anyone willing to pay the price. Remember when.
.org was for non-profit
.com was for companies
.edu was for schools
.net was for network providers
It's not a free speech issue as much as it's a zoning issue. I don't mean DNS zones, i'm referring to the type of zoning cities do that dictate what kind of businesses go where. You have your industrial zones, your retail zones, your suburban zones, and yes, there are even zones for strip clubs. This kind of zoning doesn't infringe on anyone's right.
One more thing, the Internet is like our public roads, their use is a privilege, not a right. Anyone that abuses that right get's reported to their upstream provider and they disappear off the net faster than you can say "goatse.cx" I'm all for regulating these sites because Iâ(TM)m sick and tired of being tricked into a ZILLION popup ads from these fruity porn sites. Their methods have become more sinister over the years and they need to be put in check. Just because I accidentally or purposefully click a link, it's not a license to take over my computer with popup after popup.
Does this new bill mean (if it were in the US) it would have to be xenu.prn?
As the Usenet thread points out, does this mean the Democratic Underground would have to move to democraticunderground.prn?
What's ICANN got to say about all this, since (I thought) they turned down .sex, .xxx, and .porn?
(Nevermind, scratch that last part.. I couldn't care less about what ICANN has to say about this.)
This seems to me to be one-upping the legislation that tries to redefine SMTP . Yikes.
Hmmm, I thought it was too, at least as far as bathrooms are concerned. There was a special on 60 minutes or something, about upskirting. Some woman was talking about how some guy behind her was filming up her skirt with a camera, and how she called the authorities. Of course it it legal to do that in a public place, as long as he wasn't moving her clothing aside or anything. Just because the visible angle is straight up, doesn't make it suddenly illegal. But that's beside the point. What they didn't seem to address is the practice of filming people in public restrooms, that would seem to me to be on another level. Yes it is a public place, but ostensibly a place provided for privacy in public. I'd be pretty shocked to hear that it's legal to video someone, without sound or no in a public restroom, dressing room ect. As far as taping an interview goes, I can't see how that's a problem though.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
It depends on the state. Here's a summary of voyeurism laws by state, as well as federal laws.
How do you define porn? In the UK, there are national newspapers with topless women on page 3. This isn't considered porn in the UK, no-one would play any attention to a 15 year old buying 'The Sun'. I suspect that in the US, it not be the same.
She was there because she played someone named Susan Wilson referenced in the article in a TV-lifetime movie about this ladies problems with video voyeurism.... most likely the reason they had her there instead is because the real Susan Wilson is probably not as good looking... and they are using Angie Harmon's good looks to assist in swaying the emotions of people into accepting this bill further. If they were to have had some ugly lady bitching about being watched on camera - it would not carry as much weight as if some hottie was doing the bitching. This just goes to show, that even still, politics is acting for ugly people - its the same BS emotional manipulation as the hollywood crap. Just makes me sick.
An open letter to those under-regarded /. members: /. user foolishly clicks on a "funny" link. They're not really sure about goatse.cx, but you can be damn sure they won't click on goatse.prn. No more lulling n00bs into having a pleasant shock. I can say it in no stronger terms than this: If this law passes, /. trolls will lose a great deal of their "classic" material. You need to fight for rights!
This is a time of great chaos. But there is a threat even greater than terrorism and the CPDPTPDTA (sp). Yes, and that is goatse.prn
What about "goatse.prn"?
Well, think about the effectiveness as a new
Send a letter to your congresspeople and senators asking to vote against this bill! Remember, "People come for the goatse.cx, not the goatse.prn!"
For your convenience (probably to busy hitting "refresh", looking for first post, huh?), here is a sample letter.
Dear congressperson,
I am a pathetic loser who appreciates diluting valuable content with disgusting images. This gives me pleasure, and by passing this bill, you will be hurting my very livelihood. So when the time comes for you to vote, remeber:
Think of the trolls, not the children.
Thanks for your valuable time.
(a) outlaw filming someone via hidden camera without their permission except in public places, ... The first part makes sense
This is handled at State level just fine already. Even the congresscritter mentioned on the radio that something like 40+ States do not have the law she proposed.
Said another way, something less than 10 States find a need for a law like this, they were perfectly capable of passing these laws without any help from the busybody DC crowd. For example, in TN I can record (audio, video, both) any conversation that I am party to and do not have to inform the other parties, i.e., one party concent. In Maryland, all parties to the conversation need to be informed (unless there is a warrant) that a conversation is being recorded. This proposal is just a federal extension of the same theme.
Apparently, in some States, one person can legally train a camera through the open window of another person's home. In others you can not. Sounds fair enough to me. I close the shades when I do not want others to see what is in my apartment and do not need a law to alleviate me of my responsibility.
If someone enters my place and plants a camera, I believe that every State has a dozen or so laws that the perpetrator can be charged with (breaking and entry, illegal entry, etc), that is if the cops bother to stop writing speeding tickets long enough to catch the criminal. Don't forget all of the civil charges.
Now, since States can and do pass laws like this one, what "makes sense" about the feds passing it for the whole country?
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Why don't they just legislate .kids or .notpron, and simply permit no conent unsuitable for children on sites with that domain. Then, if one were to want to ensure that kids don't see anything unsuitable ban them from going to all other domains. Corporations catering to kids and the vulnerable would most certainly jump on board (as they do not have to rid themselves of their old domains) and I am sure google.kids would be easy to get online. Enforcement is dead easy. Why do the guys coming up with this stuff think in such convoluted ways?
What we need to do is pass a law that permits only one law to be introduced per bill. What the heck does an adults-only domain have to do with videotaping others without their consent? (Besides the obvious, of course.) Might as well add on a tax increase while we're at it.
From the District Court CDA decision
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
They'll get my .net when they pry it from my cold, dead DNS record.
.com, and a .org. Once I get an .edu, a .gov and a .mil,
C-X C-S
I also have a
I'll have collected the whole set!
Then they will all combine to form Voltron, and I'll rule the world!!
It will basicly make any adult discussions (and i mean adult not in the pronographic sence but in the mature sence) equivalent to porn.
Something similar already happened with the movie industry in the US. The rating for 18+ (i forget it) is considered pronography so nobody is willing to make movies that will get rated that way even if they are serious movies. If some one does make a movie that is rated adult it will be treated as porn and not shown in most theatres even if it is not porn but a serious adult movie.
Thus the US in the embarrassing position where most if its movies, and thus a big part of its culture is made for adolescents.
Protecting children is fine, but it is really sad if the whole cultural discource is reduced to adolescent level in order to protect children. Then it is the adults that suffer - they do not have a chance to grow up mentally and spiritually.
If you think that an adult can lead a full life while only participating in culture that is suitable for children conside that even the bible is not really suitable for children.
And if you think that this law will prevent a child that really wants porn, you are mistaken, there is always a way to go around circumvension measures - all you need is a friend on the outside that can access the adult site and send it to you encrypted, so no one sees what it is.
Slashdot is a good example. It started off as a hobby and .org was probably a fine choice of TLD. There were no ads. At some point ads came along, probably just because the bandwidth costs were getting out of hand. Then they got bought out by a company. Most recently they started selling subscriptions.
.org for a .com? When money changed hands? When they became part of a corporation? When they started selling a service to individuals rather than eyeballs to advertisers?
So under your system when would they forced to give up the
Ooh, sorry, someone else already owns slashdot.com, a company which sells razors to sadist cartoonists, guess Taco & Co. can kiss their branding goodbye. Oh well, if people are really interested in them, they can find them through Google.
Ways around that are to petition your HOA for a rule change, or move somewhere else. I may be reading too much in your comment but you seem to be willing to have your HOA curtail what you can do on your own property, but not the federal gov't.
The flip side of your argument is that someone who films house guests using the shower could say "I was only trying to protect my property from criminals."
Here is a rant from a woman who stayed at a friends house, and later found that he was secretly videotaping all his female guests.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
This is just another example of poorly thought out bill with a barrel of pork tacked on for good measure. At points it's too narrow to actually suceed in what it attempts, and at others it's too ambiguous or far reaching.
.prn part is a piggyback bill. It's clearly tacked on to this because the videotape business is (on the surface) quite sensible. In principle, I don't have a problem with having a separate TLD for adult sites (it's far from censorship, and having TLDs mean something in general is a Good Thing), but it has all kinds of problems with praticality. For example, who determines if a site is pornography/hate speech? Lots of "ratings" systems have been tried and are not sucessful, why would TLDs be different? Why .prn? Hate sites are not pornography. Why not .adult? They also don't seem to recognize that the Internet is international. What good does it do to apply this to US sites when sites in the rest of the world can do whatever they want? That doesn't protect anyone. It's clear that noone who had input on the bill had any real technical knowledge of how the Internet works.
In principle, both ideas have merit. It is already illegal to secretly record audio without a warrant (i.e. bugging or wiretapping). It makes sense for the same rules that apply to audio apply to images and video as well. But, in this bill, it is only illegal if it is for a "lewd or lascivious purpose." What about videotapes that violate your privacy in non-lewd ways? Shouldn't those be illegal too? And it doesn't apply in public places! What about public restrooms? What about "upskirts"? Those are two things they specifically want to stop, and it's not clear at all if those are covered.
Fortunately, this law would not prevent, for example, taping of your babysitter to be sure s/he's not beating your kids (it's not a lewd purpose).
The
This is clearly NOT a privacy bill at all, but simply a porn/speech regulation bill. OK ideas drafted into lousy legislation.
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
You can bet that a blanket ban on covert filming is going to be actually aimed at threatening the reporters and activists who use hidden cameras to expose the lies and hidden secrets of abusive and corrupt organizations. Remember, these sort of abusive and corrupt organizations will agressively use any sort of official secrecy to keep information from the public. (Remember how Tobacco companies even managed to use Attorney-Client privelege to hide scientific research? Or how the chemical industry has tried to use "national security" concerns to remove public records of toxic sites?)
The "public space" exemption is too narrow as a lot of the current space used generally by the public is actually held in private hands. Furthermore, the public has a right to know a lot about what happens in supposedly "private" places that actually produce products for public consumption.
We should not be naive here. Angie Harmon and concern about voyeurism is not what laws like this are really about. If we want to ban just voyeuristic films of private citizens in various states of undress, then a law should be written that narrowly targets that.
no more "hidden camera investigations" by legitimate journalists.
no "nanny cam" to catch the nanny abusing your child or stealing your stuff.
the only people allowed to use hidden cameras will be law enforcement/entrapment agencies.
who decides what is adult? (not her I hope).
the democratic party should be ashamed to have a legislator who would sponsor this kind of crap in their ranks.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
it is a situation where a child is the voyeur?
~.Evanrude
I would rather it was
It would behove the legitmat Adult film industry to push for there own domain as well. It makes them look good, it does not prevent people over 18 from viewing them, it gives parents an easier way to prevent there under age child from seeing something there parents don't want them to.
To put an adulkt mgazine behind the counter, but still let people know where they are, doesn't impact free speech. The publishers to publish and there readers can still buy there mag.
For propriety sake, I would also like to say that I like adult sexual entertainment, Believe it should be allowed. It has problems, but so does the non-sex entertainment industry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
However, who is going to determine whose hate speech will be required to use the ".prn" domain? Hate is not absolute, it is very subjective to the observer and comes and goes with societal fashion. Personally, I think "Hate Speech" deserves the most protection possible and should not be regulated by Government. Its every American's right not to like people for irrational reasons and be able to shout it at the top of their lungs. I like it when I hear hate speech because it makes it easier to determine the folks I want to avoid.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
When the Communications Decency Act of 1996 was struck down, Justice O'Connor wrote a concurrance that suggested that if the law had been approached as a zoning ordinance, it could have been written to pass muster. In writing the opinion, she relied, in part, on a 1996 article by Larry Lessig.
The idea of using a PRN domain was probably motivated by that concurrance. Whether it would survive Supreme Court review is another matter. Justice O'Connor was only joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist.
Wait...this is good! No longer would we have to put up with X10 ads telling us to video tape the girl next door!
--
J Boylan
Kent Brockman: With our utter annihilation imminent, our federal government has snapped into action. We go live now via satellite to the floor of the United States congress.
Speaker: Then it is unanimous, we are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield in the great state of --
Congressman: Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: $30 million of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.
Speaker: All in favor of the amended Springfield-slash-pervert bill? [everyone boos]
Speaker: Bill defeated. [bangs gavel]
Kent: I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.
In Louisiana tresspassing is not illegal?
The house was being rented. The owner was the videotaping sleezebag.
This is an important law to pass, but it's one that should be passed by the states. The federal government has very little authority to govern what I do in my own house.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I'm looking forward to the future of cheap, tiny and pervasive video recording devices. This bill is raising "privacy" expectations where there are none. It's already illegal to publish someone's image without their consent. Making it illegal to create such images in your own home is the thin wedge of outlawing such devices in public places, except for "official" or "impartial" and "privacy protecting" government devices. Fight this now.
Get it straight people, if you don't want to be embarrased of your behavior DONT DO EMBARASSING THINGS! People have memories, video devices are simply memory enhancers. Right now, I can tell anyone I want about the expressions you make on your face and other sensations no video device will ever capture. Telling others makes me a cad, remembering might make me happy, forgetting is impossible.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.