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Internet Hunting Banned in California
TheSync writes "California has banned Internet hunting. Emergency regulations will be put in place by the California Fish and Game Commission, and legislation (SB 1028) is in the works. West Virginia is considering legislation against it as well. Hunters consider hunting by robot and mouse click 'a digrace to the sport,' whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine."
It's my God given right as an American to be able to sit at home in my underwear and kill shit.
PETA likes this legislature. They pulled for it. They proclaim victory on their front page.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
I had just wrote up an shell script to do all my hunting for me, and now this!
I highly doubt the submitter's genes would be alive today, if not for the hunting of "innocent" animals, whatever the hell that means.
I agree, this is integral "Your Rights Online." I protest this grave infringement against my inherent right as a human to operate a deadly weapon using some Flash game on my desktop.
What's wrong with One-Click Hunting? Did Amazon patent this or something? I think it's a good idea. Your dinner comes walking by... click, and it's ready for pickup. This is significantly better than having to duck behind some bushes, trying to be all quiet, and then shooting your dinner. What if a fellow hunter is on the other side and you get shot? This way, nobody has to be present when bullets get fired... nobody, that is, except your dinner. :-)
Obviously the problem is the poor critters have no way to fight back - now, if we could electrify a few keyboards ....
dang, I was up to 60
We raise our slide-rules high.
Way to make an unbiased and factual news post, Timothy!
Yeah yeah "but timothy didn't say it thesync did" ever heard of being an editor? Ever heard of a respectable news site?
The funny part is that the first quote *is* a quote (minus the blatant spelling error, of course - congratulations again!) while the second part is complete and total fabrication.
You know what? Stuff like this doesn't help *anyone*. If you need to put words in people's mouths to make your point, your point has failed.
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whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine.
Nice troll. I still continue to be amazed such nonsense makes it into the article summaries. Animals are not "innocent", and in many cases hunting acts as part of the ecosystem, preventing animal overpopulation. It you're going to troll Timothy, try to at least sound intelligent.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Why is a firearm not a disgrace to the sport? Shouldn't one use a spear? And no atlatls either!
Damn those inbred internet hicks... Damn them to hell.
http://www.UnFiction.com http://www.ARGN.com http://www.ImmersionUnlimited.com http://www.Linux-SP.com
Why not tie the system into a selection of security cameras in Florida shopping malls and make it law there that anyone wishing to partake in mass emailing has to wear a bright coloured jacket with a target printed on the back in public - then we could solve two problems in one go!?
Maybe I get your spam, maybe I don't - maybe you die, maybe you don't; it seems like a fair trade-off.
AT&ROFLMAO
Why does there need to be a law for everything? How can the banning of Internet hunting be regulated, anyhow? What is the state going to do; get ISPs to look at the logs of everybody who are signed up at Internet hunting sites? Doesn't California have better and more important things to focus on, such as balancing the budget?
My bow and I would like you to come within 100 yards and say that ;-)
It's about time that they outlawed Deer Hunter. That game ruined my life! Now I'll have time to watch "The Dukes Of Hazard" DVDs.
Yeah, sure it is a sport... Now, being a meat eater, I have no moral objections to hunting... But calling it a sport is silly. You kill an 8 point buck with a bowie knife and nothing else, I will call you a sportsman. You use a high powered rifle or a composite bow? That's hunting... Sport... heh...
Styrofoam IS biodegradable, you're just impatient!
so you're crapping in the bushes and a deer comes along and you shoot it with your high powered rifle, easy right? But on some level you now understand what its like to crap in the bushes like a deer. And for understanding this, the killing process becomes very real.
over the internet it is no longer hunting. Its a video game where things actually die, there is no connect.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
Of course most likely you'd not be really killing real animals, any more than you're talking to an innocent teen when you dial 0900-VIRGIINS. Instead you'd pay your $50 or whatever and the whole shooting would be mocked up, probably from Discovery channel footage. That way a few thousand cyberhunters get to "shoot" the same bambi and nobody really gets hurt except a few credit cards.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I dont see a difference between killing an animal for food or sport, even if the sport is done on the web.
This sounds like passing a law for PR, nothing else. We dont need feel good, nanny laws created. This is law is purely about ones feeling about hunting, nothing more.
People need to stop passing more laws for behavior and freedoms of the people, and deal with voilent crimes, polution or robbery. They need to stay out of peoples lives and hobbies.
If they said "No Church Online" you bet there would be more people talking about this law.
Serriously, do you need to be told what you can watch, what you can eat, who you can marry, whats proper in your own home? Damn if you people dont see this is a fluff law you are a sheep.
Why is
whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine
appended to the end of this story? I really don't have an opinion about hunting, but trolling the front page (to get more ad impressions from comment posters?) isn't cool.
whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine.
yeah! outlaw all hunting, even by other animals. How could anyone or anything ever hunt and kill an innocent dear, or bunny! We should all become communist, vegan, and move into the wilderness.
Why can't we moderate the index page?
I think the orginal poster is talking about tearing the heart from a 9 foot tall bear with your bare hands then holding it over your head on top of a hill shouting in sheer barbaric primal release.
In keeping with my roots, I do a similar thing when I buy a plastic and styrofoam refridgerated package of boneless, skinless chicken breast for $1.99/lb.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
How many of you criticising this legislation are actually hunters? As someone who is both a techie and an avid outdoorsman, I don't see any problem with this legislation. High powered rifles do not ensure a perfect hunt. I personally am against confined game farms where a hunters prey is pretty much domesticated, and I have a problem with doing it over a computer. Hunting can and should still be a challenge. I don't see something like internet hunting promoting, for example, an intimate parent/child bond as there's hours or days spent away from other distractions. I mean, seriously, if you're out hunting, you're off in the woods or the field, and there isn't an instant messenger or e-mail to pop up -- hell, damned cell phones are enough of a problem in the outdoors. It comes down to that Jurrasic Park conundrum: just because you can doesn't mean you should. Hunting over the internet is not a right. I can understand the advantage for disabled individuals, but then again, I hunt with people who are "handicapped" under my state's laws, and you know what -- there are already special accomadations for them, such as allowing the use of ATVs while hunting, or allowing the use of crossbows. And yes, fat, lazy Americans should get up off their asses to actually go hunt, if that's what they want to do. Sorry to say it, but every group of Americans could use some Darwinistic thinning -- if you want to go hunt, you should have to figure out how to use a gun, walk through the wilds, etc. Those who can't figure this out, and, say, accidentally shoot themselves, or die in the wilderness... well, go population control. And, I can see where PETA would call this a triumph on their part. I find it kind of odd to agree with PETA on something, because I'm usually against what they have to say. I mean, think about it this way ... what real arguments can anyone make for allowing this? What convincing situations and reasonings can someone present?
"If God's on our side, he'll stop the next war." -- Bob Dylan
http://www.live-shot.com/ After viewing some of the links from that site I ran outside to make sure that my car was not up on cinder blocks.
In hunting, the challenge is what you make it.
Yes, there are a lot of road hunters and people who just sit by camp and hit things way off in the distance (sniping does require some form of skill though).
But then there are those who like the challenge. Some of my friends hunt with hand-made spears. Some of the crazy ones go out with a pack, and make the spear themselves in the forest, then hunt. I consider them real, true hunters.
I bow hunt elk mainly, and I'd say there's a slightly greater than 50% chance I'll bag one in a season. We go out into true wilderness, walking and do it. I don't shoot unless I'm closer than 30 yards, which is generally pretty hard in the area we hunt. Then I pack it out 10 miles on my own back. My father loses 20 pounds every hunt we go on.
But let's get realistic for a second. Since when was nearly any hunt that man did fair? We're smarter, and we had the mental capabilities to easily slaughter huge numbers of animals for 10,000+ years. Complaining about hunting "no longer" being a challenge is a bit disingenuous. It hasn't been a challenge for thousands of years. We used to light fires to drive animals towards the hunters, or drive whole herds of animals off of cliffs. Baiting and partially domesticating wild animals with offers of food, then slaughtering them. I'd say that things are a lot fairer now than they were thousands of years ago, but not quite as fair as they were maybe 200 years ago. Largely due to it being more of a sport now than sustenance. Back in the day, it didn't matter if you killed a whole herd of 200 animals to get one, because you'd die if you didn't get that one. Today, we just go out and get that one. If we don't, then we hit the supermarket.
The main reason everyone is so upset/scared over internet hunting are the safety concerns.
Not really. The internet hunting takes place on private grounds nowhere near populated areas, so it's safe. The concern is really the morality of it.
Also hunting on foot is a lot more noble and is a tradition that has been carried out for thousands of years.
Indeed.
And I might add this: most countries where hunting has been a tradition for centuries couldn't afford not having hunters. What I mean is, the hunter is part of the ecological balance of whatever area they hunt in. Take them out of the picture, and suddenly certain species of game, previously hunted, see their numbers soar, destabilizing the ecological niches of numerous other species, and introducing diseases and malformations in their numbers, due to overpopulation.
In many countries, hunters regularly conduct what they call "cynegetic management", or "sanitary shootings", which is essentially the removing of weak and diseased surplus animals. Those sanitary kills can also preserve endangered species, by lightening the burden on their food sources and the predatory pressure on them. This game management is healthy for the environment, which is what most green anti-hunting folks fail to understand.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The most "humane" thing to do would be to stop encroaching on their environment and leave them be.
What would be useful here is a new term that would permit the distinction between "hunters" and "dickwads with big guns." Currently we lump the two groups together and heap derision upon both for the sins of the latter (and some don't like the former, either).
... and thought myself lucky to have had an interesting day.
... the hunters, of course. It may be shallow to lump hunters together with dickwads with guns ... but the hunters would not suffer so much abuse if the dickwads with guns went away forever.
In my case, I *have* been deer hunting and goose hunting --- myself armed with a camera, and my companions with guns. I've had a bleeding deer carcase in my lap for 45 miles bouncing along in an open jeep in 25F weather,
I don't think I could pull the trigger, and there is that little issue that I'm a vegetarian. But I don't hate "hunters."
I do, however, hate dickwads with guns. In my day job, I put up scientific apparatus in remote places, and dickwads with guns use my antennas for target practice, chop up my coax, steal the guy lines, and generally remind us that the gene pool has a shallow end.
But if there is one group of people who should *really* loathe dickwads with guns, it is
But on some level you now understand what its like to crap in the bushes like a deer.
Or piss on one.
My dad and I were hunting years back on a tree farm. About 20 minutes before sunrise (can't shoot here till then) he went off to take a leak. A minute later I hear some loud rustling and he yelled astring of curses.
He had walked up to a clump of tall grasses and was relieving himself when a buck jumped up from within the grass, where it was sleeping, and ran off. My dad had pissed on it and woke it up.
He said "imagine being that buck's wife and trying to explain who's scent that is!"
R(k)
I'm sure I'm not the only one asking this question, but what exactly IS internet hunting?
What is this innocent animals statement? Is the writer trying cast aspirations about hunters?
My brother-in-law is hunter in SW Ontario. We all enjoy the spoils of his "sport" Not much of the animal is wasted. Let me tell you, fresh Ontario Bambi steak off the charcoal BBQ is to die for. I have vension steaks and gound/minced vension for chilli in my freezer too, and will be a far healthier for me than N. American beef that has been pumped full of anti-biotics and growth hormone, fed things that aren't part of its normal diet and has more chance of giving me nvCJD than anything from the UK. And yes, I am aware that there is an epidemic in parts of N. America where elk and deer are dying of a disease similar to BSE.
For all those meat eaters out there who make anti-hunting comments: are you prepared to kill you own animals, gut them, and prepare them? Or will only accept it in the sterilised format from the supermarket? Think about it. Some people have good reasons, some are just hypocrits.
Finally, I do realise there is some basis for the author's statement. I do realise that there are "hunters" out there who are just in it for the guns and killing. I don't have much respect for them either. Maybe there is a cultural difference between the US and Canada too (somebody please enlighten me) - muzzle-loading season for deer around here lasts one week, the rest of the time my brother-in-law has to hunt with a bow and arrow (crossbow in recent years actually).
There wouldn't be a problem, except that the predators that would normally keep deer in check are largely absent. No one wants cougars or packs of wolves living near their town. But without these top predators, deer populations have nothing to keep their numbers down -- except hunting.
Therefore, interestingly enough, conservation demands that we hunt more deer.
It's not unlike the paradox of the principal-of-least-harm. In order to minimize the number of animals that die on account of your diet, it's best to eat nothing but large free-range ruminants. A vegetarian diet results in enormous numbers of rodents and insects being killed by threshers and harvesting machinery.
I guess I'm a little off-topic now...
As a sidenote, dickwads with anything are a problem. Is there really any tool you would trust a dickwad with? Guns are just a particularly extreme example.
No doubt from one that has never been hunting and frozen his balls off or gone one-on-one with a wild pig.
Still, I guess there could be some useful things to do with internet hunting. In many places there are various pest species. iHunters could help shoot 'em up and also help pay for pest elimination. For instance, here in New Zealand we have possums introduced from Australia http://www.invasive-animals.org.nz/possum/ I kill about 50 of these a year and still they come... I would not mind a couple of ihunters setting up camp at my place so long as they don't shoot the kids and sheep.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Where do you get your chicken breast for $1.99/lb? It's around $6.50 here. I think I would probably hold it over my head shouting in sheer barbaric primal release too, if I found it for $1.99/lb...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't think this could be funnier if you tried.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Off topic? Sounds right on to me.
I love my sig.
I don't think there needs to be a law for everything, but to me this is a case where hunters are saying that they don't want hunting to become inundated with people who are not hunters.
Hunting isn't just about taking out your high-powered rifle and wasting an animal. You have to be out in the environment. You have to be where the animal is in order to kill it. While the technology for finding and killing animals has become more advanced, there is a connection between the hunter and the prey . I'm not a hunter, but every hunter I've ever talked to takes this seriously.
It seems to me that one of the primary reasons people go out early in the morning and spend long hours in the woods looking for animals to kill, then doing the dirty work of dispatching the animals and hauling their dead bodies is that they want to be closer to the life and death struggle of nature. They want to feel less removed from it, not more removed from it.
In that sense, a ban on Internet hunting is a way of saying that they want to preserve this aspect of hunting, so that it is not overwhelmed by people who have no sense of what hunting is all about, and think of it as merely a video game featuring live animals. While I don't hunt because I don't see the need to kill animals in order to feel closer to nature, or in order to prove my dominance over other creatures, I can understand why hunters would want to keep hunting from becoming an exercise that requires no interaction with the natural world.
As a side note, California does have to focus on balancing the budget, but I hardly think it's a question of balancing the budget or passing a law banning Internet hunting.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Agreed, there was nothing insightful about his comment. There is no "human infestation". Humans in the midwest aren't putting themselves in a position where other humans in the midwest are starving as a result of their overpopulation. In fact, the Midwest is pretty well thriving these days (minus Ohio), and has a much more managable population level than the coasts.
Allow me to go so far as to also say that if they were starving each other out, it still wouldn't be ok to shoot them. :-)
Yes, it would be much better for animals to have their population controlled by Chronic Wasting Disease induced by overpopulation and destruction (by humans) of their habitat, rather than controlling the population through conservation techniques such as licensed and regulated hunting, which not only controls the population but also funds the conservation efforts and studies.
Yes, death by overpopulation, malnourishment, and disease is much better for the "innocent" animals than feeding my family after I spend months developing an effective load to cleanly kill them, years target practicing, and weeks tracking the animals in the outdoors to get the perfect shot.
I don't believe in animals rights, and I know god wanted us to eat them otherwise he wouldn't have made them taste so good. However, people who kill animals for entertainment have mental issues. Any psychologist will tell you that children who kill animals for fun are prime candidates to become serial killers.
If you want to go out in the woods playing super predator, tracking and stalking, have fun. When you catch your prey why not shoot it with a paintball gun and call it a day? I don't get the thrill out of killing animals.
What "critisism of apple"? What are you implying? You're lucky I don't have mod points!!!
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I'm a web developer in Seattle but my family is from the Cascade Mountains just a couple hours northeast of here. When I was young my mom took up hunting as a way to provide food for her family and be able to make ends meet. It's been a tradition in my family for generations so it seemed like a natural solution to high grocery bills.
It provided my single mother and my sister and I with organic, all-natural meat for a year every time she went elk hunting. Though it was part of the experience, she never hunted purely for sport. When we kids graduated and moved out she stopped hunting because she didn't financially have to.
This is a form of hunting that has ancient traditions. It's respectful to the animals because we hunt with gratitude for the well-being of prey and take measures to make sure they are sustained and protected by legislation. When they are threatened, those who depend on them are threatened.
Internet hunting is a sport for those who have made no investment in the animals they hunt. It sickens me that hunters who do it for the rush of the kill would associate themselves with the human tradition of depending on animals for our food. There's nothing in common between the two.
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It's so much more humane to blow the brains out of your food than to ruthlessly rip it out of the ground. Plants have no chance. They have no fight or flight mechanisms.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Ironically, you'd really "know how the meat is produced" if you hunted it yourself...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
For a law against internet hunting? My argument against that is that it is not the job of the government to teach ethics and morality.
If you actually think internet hunting is bad then talk to your friends and neighbors about it. Participate in protest marches. Pass out flyers on the street corner. Even make posts on slashdot if you have to. If you make a convincing enough argument I will agree with you. But please please do not go to the government and use the government for force me to agree with you. That is not what the government is there for.
If anything, I have a lot more respect for someone that hunts his own meat (as long as he/she is a good shot and knows his limitations), than for someone who buys it neatly packaged at a supermarket.
But, people, if you are going to hunt, be responsible and learn to fcking shoot!.
People willing to take a shot at an animal, but not willing to put in the time to be good enough to make a clean kill (or track down a wounded animal whatever it takes) makes me sick.
They're not any better than "internet hunters".
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Thank god I mostly eat meat from the grocery store - there they only kill the guilty animals! "whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine." Oh, and I here they only pluck guilty vegitables as well. Don't want to kill the innocent type.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
You make a very good argument, and I agree with you on most points but, I might disagree on some details.
Although I agree with you on the role of evolution, I disagree with using it as justification. Primitive man also killed his competition for a better chance of propagation. As for our biological requirements, you are completely right.
As for having someone else (butcher) kill an animal vs killing it yourself, I believe that killing the animal yourself is more ethical. Look at how much meat is thrown away in this country. People who kill their own animals tend to have much more respect for the creature and do not waste them. Where I disagree with you is in the making a sport out of killing the creature. I have butcherd a few animals (goats, sheep, and pig) for BBQ's. However, I try to make it quick, simple, and as painless as possible.
Now, I do understand the desire for the sport, hell, we've got millions of years of evolution that make it desireable. There's the inrush of all kinds of hormones and nuerochemicals to make it a desireable activity. But, as a thinking being I find it distasteful to make sport out of killing.
Just my $0.02
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
That was 20 years ago and the deer population still hasn't fully recovered to normal levels, though it's getting there through nice, sustainable, controlled growth, encouraged by more aggressive wildlife management policies (more hunting).
Don't you see some error in your way of thinking? How is KILLING more deer to allow RECOVER the original population? Or you mean the population is STILL TOO HIGH (despite the mass dying because of the harsh winter) and you intend to help recover its original, lower number?
Truth is, the population WOULD have regulated itself. 75% of the population - the weakest would die. Next year the "boom" would be smaller. Then possibly there would be more food over winter, and so, in some time the population would ballance itself, equal number dying over winter as being born as "surplus" over normal population.
But no, hunters couldn't stand seeing so much good meat, so much game going to waste. Feed them now, shot them later, the preferred way. Of course let the weak survive so we could shot the best ones and still have the numbers matching.
The problem with hunters is that they justify their actions by short-term problems ("if we don't kill enough deers, they will destroy trees this winter") while their long-term tactics is directed at maximizing their own interest - first kill off all the predators (remove the competition) then maximize the population, while maximizing hunting - more born, more killed, more meat. The ballance could be kept - some predators, some herbivores and just several shots a year to keep the ballance wherever it gets out of hand. But no, you prefer to turn forests into game factory, where you MUST kill A LOT of wild animals to keep the area from ecological disaster. It's not "population control". It's "meat harvest."
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Biased much? Try thinking from an alternate viewpoint for just a milisecond. It may hurt, but it may be worth it.
Hunting is a NORMAL part of human life. Remember evolution? We're carnivorous Timmy. We have carnivore teeth. Animals are attractive because they are food. Only dumbass urban dwelling, Smartcar driving bunny huggers think deer are cute, mostly because they've never seen deer except in the zoo.
So Timmy, you ignorant city slicker, how cute is it when Bambi and her mummy step out in front of your car at dusk on the highway and freeze in the headlights? You're doing 70 mph in your environmentally friendly Smartcar, and Bambi is coming right in there to share the front seat with your animal loving self plus whoever else is in the car. Wife, kids, girlfriend... Happens every single friggin' day on the highways around New York City. Because why? Because no hunting therefore too many deer, that's why.
Or how cute is it when you see Bambi and her mother and brothers, sisters, cousins, second cousins twice removed and a whole passle of others standing in the middle of a denuded forest where there's nothing green less than seven feet off the ground. The deer are nothing but skin and bone, they have putrescent sores, and they smell like an uncleaned hamster cage. That cute? Happening right now in the Pennsylvania woods around Philly. Because why? No hunting, that's why.
How about Lyme disease? Cute eh? Explosion of deer ticks EVERYWHERE in the Northeast to match the deer explosion, you can't wear shorts in your own backyard. Because why? Because guys like Timmy insist on gassing off about "innocent animals" and smearing the morals of hunters. You can't hunt or even target shoot in the urban Northeast without being a social pariah.
Now think about the legions of Canada Geese on ever goddamn lawn in the USA. And goose poo. And West Nile virus. Be brave Timmy, you can think it. Yes! Congratulations Timmy you have got it in one. No hunters = bad things happen.
Timmy, your religious views are getting people killed in car wrecks, ruining the environment and spreading disease. Actions have consequences, you should maybe think about that a bit.
And yes, web hunting is unsportsmanlike. Get out and look it in the eye when you shoot it. And eat what you shoot.
I agree, this is integral "Your Rights Online." I protest this grave infringement against my inherent right as a human to operate a deadly weapon using some Flash game on my desktop.
How long before a real-life hunter walks into the frame, and some jackass takes a potshot, killing a human being by clicking their mouse? Will it really matter all that much (aside from lawyer wrangling in the court) whether the murderer-by-click is a snot-nosed prepubescent who figured he'd never get caught and it would be "cool to draw real blood," or a self-righteous anti-hunting zealot who thinks offing a hunter would "serve the cause?" Frankly, to the victim and their family, probably not.
I have no problem with hunting for meat. I like meat, and I love venison (though to be fair, I don't much care for hunting. Sweaty, dirty work and not very entertaining for me, but then, I'm not much of an outdoorsman. That, however, is a question of personal taste) and frankly, the better the herds of deer are culled, the better off the entire eco-system is. But allowing anyone with a computer and an internet link to operate a deadly weapon is criminally stupid. Eventually it will be used to kill a real human being, by some amoral fuck (and the Internet is full of those) who thinks, for whatever reason, it would be real cool to click on that link and ice the guy in the orange vest who happened to walk across the video feed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy