Slashdot Mirror
Bill Would Extend Online Obscenity Laws to Blogs, Mailing Lists
Erris writes "Senator John McCain has proposed a bill to extend federal obscenity reporting guidelines to all forms of internet communications. Those who fail to report according to guidelines could face fines of up to $300,000 for unreported posts to a blog or mailing list. The EFF was quick to slam the proposal, saying that this was the very definition of 'slippery slope', and citing the idea of 'personal common carrier'." From the article: "These types of individuals or businesses would be required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service."
Yep, he realized from 2000 that he's gotta move to the right in order to win the nomination. Its sad that more centrist politicians have to move to the left or the right to get the nomination and big money for their respective party's nomination
... the less tolerant people get. The less tolerant people get, the more censorship needs to be applied to protect people from 'inappropriate' material.
Give people their free speech. If you don't like what they say, don't listen, but respect their rights.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Its over here on the other side of the Atlantic. Our politicians get investigated when they take cash to give a shitty honour and go to prison when they take on the media and lose.
Remind me why you chaps had the revolution again? There was something in there about Freedom, but its all been lost in the noise.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
He wants obscenity reported? Please report to him that the following message was posted:
(The easily offended should skip the rest of this post.)
(Last chance to look away...)
Fuck Senator John McCain. Fuck him up the ass hard with a big thick dildo with built-in violet wand until the santorum runs down his legs. Tie him down and fuck him and give him the golden shower he wants and deserves, until he admits his wretchedness, admits what a bootlicker he is, admits that he gets off on being a slave, because he can't handle freedom.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Every time I hear the "uproar" against "obscenity", I hear the sound of silence over the real problems.
- Over 12 million living in poverty
- 40-50 million without health care
- 25% of the worlds prison population
- 46800 car deaths in 2005
- Every 90-second a car is colliding with a train due to lacking regulations if crossing.
- Higher education costs and arm and a leg and your first born.
This country has some serious problems to deal with, but obscenity is not one of them!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Seriously, who would risk running a public forum in the face of fines like that? Even major players like Amazon would most likely be forced to take down public comment sections lest something slip through. Slashdot, Fark, Kos, Pandagon, Redstate, LGF, whatever your online bitching kink is, it's going away.
And suddenly Americans would have to go onto foreign servers just to find a forum to exercise their free speech rights.
See, here's what REALLY pisses me off. McCain isn't stupid. He's many things (repeating many of which, at this point, could possibly get me jailed), but stupid is not one of them. Either he's offering up this bill with no intention of seeing it passed, or he recognizes the death of free speech on the American internet as an acceptible price to pay for his rise to power.
Every time I see a bill like this, I grow a little less convinced that there's any way we'll be able to reclaim our government from these assholes.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Not satisfied with his first assault on our First Amendment rights, he's doing this to undermine the blogosphere. By imposing commercial-style constraints on bloggers, he makes it likely many of them will shut down, reducing the amount of criticism he has to face.
What a scummy little man.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
That depends, are these "rapists" free? If you committed a crime and are released from prison, it's my position that you've paid your debt to society. If you haven't, then shouldn't you still be in prison? If we are pushing this once a criminal always a criminal mantra then why even let convicts out of jail in the first place if we are just gonna let the free world become another prison cell, gradually restricting their access to resources.
Either sentence them for longer, clean up the system, or do something that works. Don't punish them after they've already been punished. It's bad enough that they won't ever be able to vote or get a job better than grocery bagger, you have to start restricting their online rights to save "children" from "potential risks." How about _not_ scaremongering about children and saving our rights instead?
It's a slippery slope, first, restrict rights for convicts. Then, outlaw things to make everyone a potential convict. Bang...restricted rights. With the way people talk about online piracy, it's only a matter of time before that's criminal, and then after that's criminal maybe restricting the rights of those who have been convicted upon release.
I hate to be paranoid, but in Philadelphia they've installed security cameras on the streets. It's not long before you pick your nose and it's on the evening news.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A while back, right here on Slashdot, a porn hosting webmaster posted a relevant comment.
Every now and then, somebody would set up a website on their system and upload kiddy porn.
He tried being a good citizen and reporting it. Several times. The authorities didn't follow up, they simply made angry threats to arrest him.
His company now silently deletes kiddy porn sites.
Playing devil's advocate, though, how is this proposal different from the existing legislation that requires health care providers to report suspected child abuse?
Marriage was around long before any of the major religions of today (Islam, Christianity) and served as a political bond joining property and fortune well before Christ, Mohammed, or Zeus. Religion may want to co-opt marriage (and I can certainly understand why, it's a control mechanism similar to, and related to, sexual control) but history doesn't support the claim that marriage is religious.
As for the government's interest, this is relatively natural: When you join in property, medical and fiscal responsibility, residence, and income, only a perfect government would be able to keep its hot little hands out of the pot. And hoo boy, is our government not perfect!
Religion's no better. As soon as sexuality and joining come into it, next thing you know there is some person trying to tell you exactly how you should be managing your affairs. One wife, not two. Opposite sex partners only. This age disparity, and no more. This color, and not that. This religion, and not another. History supports a much wider set of joinings, and for very good reason -- they're perfectly natural.
So to your idea of religion having all there is to say about marriage, I say, "take off, eh?" Marriage should be what the partners (2...n) say it is, and the rest of us should respect that. It should not be subject to Christian or Muslim or even ancient Greek sensibilities. When people want to join together and seek their fortune and lives together the rest of us have only one job: Get the heck out of the way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think it is very clear what it should mean. A declaration of partnership based upon serious, long term commitment by individuals who are both capable of understanding that precise commitment up front (the classic definition of intelligent, informed consent) and able to represent that fact in a legal and comprehensible manner. Such declaration may be public, or not, and it should -- not does, but should -- carry with it such legal obligations as the participants have agreed upon, and no others. Socially, it's dead obvious: "This is my partner, please treat them as you would me." Simple, easy to deal with, no worries.
When people say "we're married", that's what I think of. As to the specifics, these only matter when legal issues come up; and that is why paperwork stating the terms is such a good idea in today's world. Otherwise, some idiot could tell you you could not have a say in the treatment of the love(s) of your life if they were in the hospital, or that you could not have a say in the schooling of your offspring. Marriage, in the end, is a state that is intended to benefit the individuals involved. Not the rest of us as onlookers. If they wanted our opinion, surely we would have been invited to the ceremony, or made signatory on the paperwork.
Yes, however what you are arguing for here isn't "specific" meaning, it is canned meaning. I would argue that every human partnership involves different stakes, different foundations, different preconceptions, different commitment, and therefore just as when forming a specific type of business, you'll want a specific type of agreement tailored to your union. What those specifics are matter primarily to the members of the union, and are otherwise not much of anyone else's business until such time as a question of parenting or hospital visitation or the like comes up; at that time, you whip out your paperwork, point to the appropriate clause, and you're done.
Communications about what a union means would be vastly enhanced by a thorough hammering out of what one is agreeing to, it seems to me. Opportunities for improvement abound: No wife would find she had unwittingly become a dishwasher or drudge; no husband would find that his wife's last day of interest in sex was the day before they were married; no child would find itself stripped of a parent. Services to assist in hammering out such agreements would become widely available; sounds optimum to me.
Oh, I'm being perfectly honest. And honestly, what you want for anyone's marriage but your own and your offspring's is completely irrelevant to me. What I say is marriage for me, is marriage. Period. You don't have even a fraction of a say. Honestly. :) When it comes to you telling me what marriage is for you, then I'll listen, and I'll respect that, all the more so if you can make it clear. Marriage isn't religious to or for me, because religion doesn't intercept with any part of my life. Consequently, I don't give a flying hoot what any religion has to say about my marriage, or lack thereof, any more than I would if an astrologer tried to tell me I should live in some particular fashion. Superstition isn't a solid enough foundation for any fraction of a relationship I enter into, I can assure you. If it is for you, that's something else entirely, and I encourage you to have it your way. And I promise not to bother you about it; if that's the way you and your partner(s) roll, by all means, have at it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.