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Judge Strikes Down COPA, 1998 Online Porn Law
Begopa sends in word that a federal judge has struck down the Child Online Protection Act. The judge said that parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit others' rights to free speech. This was the case for which the US Department of Justice subpoenaed several search companies for search records; only Google fought the order. The case has already been to the Supreme Court. Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. wrote in his decision: "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."
For once, the mouth on the Censorship icon should have the black strip removed. This law has been the dark specter over every forum I've seen for years, and many non-communication-related services, too.
The question is, is COPA finally dead, for good? No more judgements to be made on the case? Please? The article doesn't specify if it could be appealed again.
I realize they'll just pass another law with similar provisions, but at least this helps set the tone in the courts.
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Its about time that courts are finally seeing that our personal liberties are more important than fascist legislation that only appears to protect us and/or our children. Lets hope more are to follow.
This is a Good Thing®. I'm so tired of hearing about how people aren't being responsible enough, so we need to remove those responsibilities from them. Seems kinda counterintuitive to me.
Community standards are not a good way to police a country that promises liberty and justice for all.
Forget the federal attorneys, he obviously intended to sack all the federal judges and replace them with new ones loyal to the Empire
"It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government's addressing the problem at its source," a government attorney, Peter D. Keisler, argued in a post-trial brief.
Mr. Keisler then pointed at a child in the back of the the court playing a PSP and continued, "I mean, it's not like I have time to watch this brat."
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I for one thank our porn permitting overlord!
The original generic sig.
Man, the moms from Mothers Against Canada are gonna be so mad.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I know Google has been falling out of favour with the /. crowd of late, but I think they really deserve some big kudos on this matter. If they hadn't stood up to the DoJ on this one, no one would have and this law would still be in place.
Way to not be evil!
And just how many families are going to give up that unnecessary second income? *crickets chirping* I thought so.
I've seen a lot of people of both sexes talk the talk, but then not even walk at all when it's time to walk the walk.
Parental responsibility includes a recognition that your needs aren't important compared to your family's. You like your job, but don't need it to support your kids? You have a moral obligation to quit if it is getting in the way at all of being a parent.
But we can't say that today because that's "sexist" and "backward." Funny how well "modernity" seems to be working out for families. Divorce rates through the roof, kids screwed up right and left, but hey, let's ignore all of that and focus on abstract ideas that make us feel good, right?
Finally a Judge who understands the First Amendment. Now if we could just get "Inciting a Riot", and "Disturbing the Peace" laws struck down.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
As I read the article, the following jumped out at me.
"The Web sites that challenged the law said fear of prosecution might lead them to shut down or move their operations offshore, beyond the reach of the U.S. law."
Move their operations offshore?? We see how that worked for the casinos, They will get you when changing plains. :
How about move it offshore, Move out of the country, and NEVER set foot on US soil again! A hard thing to do in these times. Next you know the US will divert plains and instruct them to land on US soil, just to arrest some one.
Oh well, welcome to the Land of the Free and home of the Brave....
Please note that the above statement predates the current laws restricting your freedom of speech, Freedom of the press and freedom to assemble(1). The restrictions on gun ownership(2), The no-knock warrants (4), Holding people with out a trial outside of the country (5,6), Setting bail above the amount a person can make in there lifetime (7), and the loss of amendments 9 and 10 after the civil war. But you are free to excersize you 3rd amendment right! "Amendment #3 No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Oh, and as for the Brave part. You can not be brave and defend your self with deadly force unless you have first tried to run away and hide. If there is no where to run, then you can be brave and defend your self.
I am all for a constitutional Tea party to show that the Americans have not lost the spirit of what was started, Just this time we should sink cigarette trucks! The Tax on them is through the roof! The government makes more from a pack of cigarettes than the cigarette companies do!
Ok, I am going to put away my soap box and get back to work.
That quote about First Amendment rights being "chipped away", is from Reed's opinion in ACLU v. Reno, 31 F. Supp. 2d 473, issued in 1999.
This is not my sandwich.
You didn't say which parent should quit their job and it doesn't matter. If one of the two incomes in a household can support the household, the other one can and probably should quit. It doesn't matter which parent that is.
Though the truth is that almost everything is sexist one way or another. The average person would probably assume that the statement above was referring to the female in the household. The "femenist" would assume the same and get pissed about it because it is sexist. But try being a good father with a good job and trying to get full custody of your kids from a bad mother and see what happens...life is skewed one way or the other.
Back to the decision, I applaud it. I'm tired of parents not taking responsibility for their kids. If they don't want them to see porn on the internet but aren't willing to put forth the effort to filter the content, then they should cut off their kids' access to the net. It really is that simple, no matter what they say.
Well, thank the founding fathers, at any rate. Yes, the world has changed and the powers of the federal government have grown beyond the dreams of Jefferson and Madison and those folk. And Yes, maybe they're a bunch of dead rich white slave-owners. But they weren't nincompoops!
The legal system in this country is pretty messed up, riddled with inefficies and outright injustices. But it still does some things right. =)
He has managed to see the forest to spite all the trees.
My wife and I already plan on her staying at home to raise our kids when they are spawned. For reasons just like this. Parents have a responsibility to be the safeguards of their children. If you aren't up to that responsibility, don't have kids.
Now , if we could just get clones of this judge to march on Washington.. maybe curtail this damned Nanny State we have brewing.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
It's all about "what you've got" in our society. It's been so since the beginning of man. Some would even say it's genetic.
There was a man, a couple of millenia ago, that said something about taking care of one's family being more than "providing" for them. He advocated change to make both governments and parents, even individuals, responsible for their actions. His mentor's book is the number one best seller every month. It's been at the top of the list for so long that people don't even mention it on the list anymore. I think everyone should give it a read once in a while.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
How are you saying yay for google? Are you so short-sighted that you forgot how they're handling their Chinese operations?
For once, we leave raising children to the responsibility of the parents rather than the government. Think the same thing will happen with videogames? Or will we still have those insisting that violent games are to blame for children who commit crimes, not bad parenting?
I disagree with the responses you're getting, MikeRT.
If you can't manage two cars and a big, or even medium sized, house without both parents working, here's a novel idea to help you out:
Sell the house and get a smaller one. Poof! Less debt, and if you managed your equity correctly, you have a major down payment on a smaller house, giving you a substantially lower house payment as opposed to just a lower one.
Then when the kids are old enough for their own jobs (and thus old enough that you have little else that they will learn without experience) you can re-upgrade your house and the homemaker probably won't even need to get a job if the commuter has impressed his/her employer.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Why do you think I explicitly put the qualification, "unnecessary" in there. Please, don't lecture me on this because I can actually appreciate how hard it can be to live on one income because I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the richest and most expensive parts of America. When many Americans in smaller areas were whining about $2 gas, we were contemplating driving down to the small towns to buy our gas there!
What I am talking about are the families that really don't need a second income. There are more of those than you probably realize, and if you cannot afford to live on one income, you might need to move to a new town or city, if for no other reason than it'll increase your own happiness and ability to feel like you can make it.
The problem is that to live on one income, unless the one income is very large, you need to make things like going to Starbucks a once a week luxury, not a daily or several times a day activity. You cannot have a big TV, you cannot have an expensive car; you'll have to go for that Honda Accord instead of the Acura TL or RL or Lexus equivalents. See what I mean?
My fiance and I are following what seems to be more and more the pattern of religious couples we know, which is that she will work hard for 3-5 years when we get married, then have kids. That 3-5 years will give me the chance to build up my career and for us to save some serious money so we have options. I know couples that are living in one bedroom apartments just to save money to compensate for not having a terribly large combined income, but it works for them while they're making their plans on where to move to.
American Parents need to be prosecuted by our laws for the actions of their children. Growing up, I was constantly reminded by my teachers and my parents that if I commit a crime as a minor, my parents could be held equally accountable. Not knowing if that was actually true then, it seems like a pretty good idea to me. Placing the entire responsibility in plain view like this would be a positive post-action to this decision. Sure the liberals will quip "but what if [substitute a situation]", but lets get one thing straight here: You are the conscious of your children until they are 18 years old. Therefore, the ultimate responsibility for protection from all things evil and wrong is the parent. "What if my child is just wild, and just commits a crime to get me in trouble?" Let me say this: If you have a precedence set which shows you have done everything imaginable to prevent that crime from happening, how can you be held accountably negligent? In itself, this wipes out the majority of slacking little fund sucking little freeloading parents in the US that are basically asking Legislators to raise their children- in the schools, in the afterschool programs, and on the weekends. I'm sick of all the oversite. Childporn is wrong, disgusting, and a very real problem. However, the gating point for access to my children is me
Isn't this a concept. That those charged in the protection and upbringing of children should take care of these things, and leave our personal freedoms alone. Who is this judge, and someone give him a promotion and a raise for using common sense and some foresight.
I liked this as well: which they will with age inherit fully
Gives some real insight into the Protect the Children mentality. How about we protect what they will value as adults?
- Kal`Goblez
At the risk of sounding like a newb, can anyone recommend a good content filtering system for a home?
I don't worry about these things normally (because I am unmarried) but my sister and brother (who both have small children) are petrified about letting their child touch a network-enabled computer.
From a standpoint of ease of use and effectiveness, what's good?
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Oh, that's right. I forgot about that part of the First Amendment that says that the protections it guarantees are limited to people above a certain age. Can somebody remind me exactly which age group of people it is to whom the Bill of Rights doesn't apply?
Goodbye mod points, but I feel too strongly about this to keep my trap shut...
No jokes, please
Clap, Clap, Clap. About fscking time a person with influence in lawmaking didn't have his head up his ass clear to the waist. Make parents somewhat accountable and quit shifting the blame around. (Note: I do understand that some kids are just bad, but for the most part that's not the case.)
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
That's one more choice than the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremburg_defense
Bravery != Killing People
Bravery == Saving Lives
Nice sophomoric false dichotomy you've got going on there. Of course you know that, and you're just trolling.
Even so... do you really find it brave to stand there while the thug you're lecturing does something irrational, like not listening to your well considered logic about how his life has gone astray and how much happier he'd be if he didn't actually, just now, rape your wife? Is your wife being brave, or cowardly, if she just lies there and takes it while the police take their 15-20 minutes to respond to your 911 call? Um, that's assuming the thug you're lecturing has allowed you to place such a call, and that you haven't frozen in your tracks trying to decide whether the police you're summoning will be either brave or cowardly if they're forced to use force to deal with someone who is irrational and dangerous. Wouldn't want to call the police if they're just going to show up and, cowards that they are, actually threaten the person raping your wife with harm if he doesn't stop what he's doing. Maybe you can talk your local PD into a brave new policy of only doing Greco-Roman wrestling when confronting murderous people?
Suggesting that it's all just some either-other situation so that you can childishly demonize anyone who would actually defend themselves and their family is pretty embarassing, and suggests that you've not really ever had to face such a situation. Talk to some people who have, and then get back to us.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The US Constitution was written is a different time. Because of this, it isn't quite as infected with the rampant legalism most current US laws are - to be more specific, the need to specify each & every point, down to the letter. It can be fairly safely assumed that anytime "the people" is used in the Consitution, what they actually meant was "full citizens of the United States."
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Nice spin on the "think of the children" angle.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
No couple is forced to work two jobs. If a couple works two jobs, it is more likely that they are living beyond there means. That could be buying expensive crap they don't need to inflate their ego in relation to their peers, or they are in a mountain of debt, most likely related to the results of living beyond their means.
In the US, we have to have everything now, we can not wait for it to go on sale, and we deffiently can't wait to save up money to buy the product. I guess that is why the US has a negative savings rate.
Now I'm not on the Google = Evil train or such, but I don't buy that argument. Ethics should always come above profits, and legality, especially if your a company going under a highfalutin' slogan like "do no evil". The rational of "Well these laws are unjust, but damn they are the law, and boy do we want their money!" is a rather weak ethical justification of contributing to the oppression of a couple billion people.
In fact Google is down right getting rich from said oppression, which is rather mercenary. Of all of Google's recent "not quite not evil" actions, this one still irks me most. Even if there was not implicit approval of China's repressive regime in their actions, I still rather doubt the ethics of ANY American company being involved with China, since they are also implicitly supporting the practices of the Chinese government.
Now this isn't an anti-communism rant either. I really have nothing against communists, I have something against repression, and human rights violations, and those who support them.
It's just another schizophrenic corporate policy. We legally grant them the rights of individuals, but then refuse to give them the responsibilities of individuals. "They're a corporations, their making money, thats okay!" Where we should be wondering why they are profiting against OUR laws (or constitutional rights, as we put it in this case).
BTW, is there a decent alternative to Google yet? I really want to stop using them now, after this rant, completely, since in a light I can be seen as giving tactic approval of their actions.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Your assumption that I have not faced such a situation is interesting. Ever consider that being in such a situation led me to this belief? No, because your pious "defense of my family by taking a life" attitude clouds your judgment. It's one thing to kill a man while he rapes your wife. It is another thing to disable a man as he attempts to rape your wife.
The difference:
You would shoot him in the head if possible.
I would shoot him in the leg or arm or both if possible.
People like you, who hide behind your family because you are too much of a coward to face evil, disgust me.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
dontthinkofthechildren
I bet the people who wrote COPA knew full well it wouldn't pass constitutional muster in a court challenge. This way the legislators get to look like they're "protecting the children", and can blame "activist judges" for the failure of the law to be enforced. Win-win, right?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Just my 2 cents,
Shoot him in the leg/arm == He continues to commit crimes and harm others or he uses his other arm to shoot you in the head!
Shoot him in the Head == No more problem with him.
Shoot enough of them in the head == less violent crime!
All Law abiding citizens armed with guns == Crooks thinking twice before trying something.
All law abiding citizens armed with Fully Automatic Guns == Government thinking twice before trying something.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Your comment is both funny and has a good point. The problem is that there are actually people out there that think that "Kill them all and let God sort 'em out," is an intelligent way of thinking. It's one thing to have the ability to nuke a country out of existence while it is an entirely evil thing to actually nuke a country out of existence.
Let's go back to this hypothetical rape situation and make it more hypothetical. What if, it's not a case of rape and this unfortunate husband has actually found his wife cheating on him. Sucks to be him because he's now getting the chair for a crime of passion when he thought he was "defending his [non-existent] family." The intelligence is astounding. The fact that a person is a coward for not confronting evil does not make the fearful action devoid of consequences.
Sorry, for degenerating so far off topic (though, we are talking about defending one's family from sexual predators). This will be my last comment on the issue unless further repliers ask for such.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
It's not the government's job to educate children, either, is it? Isn't that the parents' job also? And yet, it seems most people entirely support public schools, and in fact, public school curriculum being regulated by the government (e.g., the whole debate regarding evolution/intelligent design being taught in schools). Double standard, perhaps? IS it the government's job to educate but not protect children? What about when children are at school, should they be allowed to access whatever they want there?
Stupid question here, were they not god's commandments, or is this part of the father/son/ghost thing? How did porn affect your life, honestly? Most folks I know that have a porn addiction, either are just using personal sexual gratification as another alternative to get the pleasure center of the brain met, it just happened to be the addiction they found. And in most cases either they would have had a similar problem without easy access to porn or would have found another addiction. The other thing I wonder every time I hear about porn addicts, is it the porn itself or is it seeing something taboo? Many of the people I have talked to that have had porn addictions come from hard lining religious or social backgrounds that very much vilify it, and just like drugs kids get into it as an act of rebellion, and because they do not understand the truth about what they are seeing and experiencing they do not know how to handle or control it. Also with the hard core porn out there, that is not what kids need to be seeing out of the gate. Being able to sit down with a child and talk about the human body and expressions of physical love with images to help explain it can be wonderful for a child to get reality and understand what things mean. I meet so many teens that just don't understand about interpersonal affection and what it can mean. Our society taboos sex and due to sensationalist nature of our media loves to portray it in the most extreme situations and for the most impact. I don't think you need to give your 4 year old a login to some hard-core adult site, but sit down your 8 or 9 year old and give them the basics of sex, and not just the technical "here is what it is and what it is for" but also the beauty and connection of what it can mean. You can get into the 'why do people have fetishes' and 'what is a donkey punch' when the kids are older and ready to handle it. But honestly I have yet to meet someone who was exposed to sex at an early age, in a responsible manner, that did not turn out at least 'normal' [if not really well adjusted] in regards to sex, their sexual identity and security. If we go back to the second commandment, it would be more like not exposing your neighbor (if they did not want to be exposed) to your sexual acts or porn. You stopping viewing porn does not affect your neighbor, also taking your idea further it really means you should stop driving because you could potentially hit and kill someone which is far worse. Also you should never smoke because the second hand smoke can affect the health of those around you, and really you should make sure everything you do is green or at least carbon neutral since environmental impact affects everyone. Serious question on your porn addiction, if you had been shown pictures of naked women when you were starting to get to that age and explained about love and sexual intimacy, would viewing porn later had the same impact on you? Also if you had been in a social environment where you could have discussed it, and talked openly about how you were feeling and that you felt you might have a problem, do you think it would have had less of an impact on your life?
Wow that was fun, it stripped out all of my carriage returns. Teach me to not preview first, here it is again with proper returns:
Stupid question here, were they not god's commandments, or is this part of the father/son/ghost thing?
How did porn affect your life, honestly? Most folks I know that have a porn addiction, either are just using personal sexual gratification as another alternative to get the pleasure center of the brain met, it just happened to be the addiction they found. And in most cases either they would have had a similar problem without easy access to porn or would have found another addiction. The other thing I wonder every time I hear about porn addicts, is it the porn itself or is it seeing something taboo? Many of the people I have talked to that have had porn addictions come from hard lining religious or social backgrounds that very much vilify it, and just like drugs kids get into it as an act of rebellion, and because they do not understand the truth about what they are seeing and experiencing they do not know how to handle or control it.
Also with the hard core porn out there, that is not what kids need to be seeing out of the gate. Being able to sit down with a child and talk about the human body and expressions of physical love with images to help explain it can be wonderful for a child to get reality and understand what things mean. I meet so many teens that just don't understand about interpersonal affection and what it can mean. Our society taboos sex and due to sensationalist nature of our media loves to portray it in the most extreme situations and for the most impact. I don't think you need to give your 4 year old a login to some hard-core adult site, but sit down your 8 or 9 year old and give them the basics of sex, and not just the technical "here is what it is and what it is for" but also the beauty and connection of what it can mean. You can get into the 'why do people have fetishes' and 'what is a donkey punch' when the kids are older and ready to handle it.
Honestly I have yet to meet someone who was exposed to sex at an early age, in a responsible manner, that did not turn out at least 'normal' [if not really well adjusted] in regards to sex, their sexual identity and security. If we go back to the second commandment, it would be more like not exposing your neighbor (if they did not want to be exposed) to your sexual acts or porn. You stopping viewing porn does not affect your neighbor, also taking your idea further it really means you should stop driving because you could potentially hit and kill someone which is far worse. Also you should never smoke because the second hand smoke can affect the health of those around you, and really you should make sure everything you do is green or at least carbon neutral since environmental impact affects everyone.
Serious question on your porn addiction, if you had been shown pictures of naked women when you were starting to get to that age and explained about love and sexual intimacy, would viewing porn later had the same impact on you? Also if you had been in a social environment where you could have discussed it, and talked openly about how you were feeling and that you felt you might have a problem, do you think it would have had less of an impact on your life?
Or maybe he loves his OTHER neighbour(s), who enjoy porn, and don't want to decrease the happiness of 12 to increase the happiness of 1?
God in general has a fairly big emphasis on people's ability and right to choose their own ends. If I'm a <nasty sinner> then <bad stuff> will happen, either in this life or afterlife. But He lets me make that choice.
You would shoot him in the head if possible.
Wow! You sure have an interesting mind-reading capability, there, or think you do. Too bad it's off-line at the moment.
I would shoot him in the leg or arm or both if possible.
Gotcha! That's some awesome shooting skills you have there. So, some large, lumbering, drug-addled, assault-minded guy is crashing through your living room. It's fairly dark. He's swinging a chair at you and perhaps some screaming member of your family. I realize that you're busy trying to explain the error of his ways and everything, as the chair is zooming at your head... or that you're carefully drawing a bead on one of his not-holding-still arms or legs as he's rushing across the room at you... so, my hat's off to you on the once-in-the-leg and once-in-the-arm shots you're going to execute under the circumstances.
Has it ever occurred to you that the primary use of a gun under those circumstances is as a deterrent? I've used one in exactly that way: to stop violence aimed at myself and my wife without firing a shot. Why did it work? Because the person (busy - despite seeing us through a window - trying to bash through our back door with a pipe in the middle of the night, who did in fact turn out to be way messed up on a witch's brew of pcp+meth+etc at the time) saw the gun aimed at his face, and finally stopped what he was doing. Took the police (who were called the moment we heard the noise) over 15 more minutes to arrive. If he had made his way into the house, there is absolutely no way that I could guarantee a leg-hit or an arm-hit, etc. (and I'm an excellent shot), given his flailing about and general crazyness. But some lower-level part of his operating system saw the gun and understood the life-threatening prospects. Did he stop because he was worried about an injury to his legs or arms? No. He processed a risk to his life. That's the very basic stuff that the brain still processes while under that sort of adrenaline rush and other altered brain chemistry. I'm not sure why you think it would have been "braver" to let someone like that finish what he was starting, but to suggest that being unwilling to brandish and, if necessary, use a gun when you have that option, rather than letting harm come to you family, is somehow 'cowardly' is rather mysterious.
You think mentioning 'family' is some easy dodge? All of the same applies when it's only yourself, too. Or your property. Someone willing to hurt you or risk your life has waived their rights to their own safety, period. I could have shot the assaulting clown through my back door, but I chose to give him a second to see if the visual language of the gun would work where the words used had already failed. You would have me, though, wait until he got through the door, and see what damage he could do in the 15 minutes we waited for the police? I think there's a different sort of cowardice involved here: you are afraid to confront the moral issues at stake in taking action because they require you to have a solid sense of self, and to operate without mixed premises. It is indeed a very absolute thing to decide you're willing to use lethal force when you have no other choice. It's intellectually cowardly of you to fall back, then, on the notion that once someone has committed to being willing to do so, that they will do nothing but that. Cowardly because that's a cheap and empty way to try to paint people you don't like as the stereotypes you wish they were (because then it's so easy to hate them and ridicule them). Sorry it's more complicated than that, and that it requires a little moral courage to digest that reality and work it into your cartoonish world view.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This isn't about child porn or murder.
Child porn is completely illegal, because kids under 18 (Varies by state, actually) are legally unable to consent to it.
COPA is about preventing children from SEEING LEGAL porn. Basically, I think COPA requires web sites to make an effort to prevent children from accessing stuff like that... You know, age checks, requiring credit cards to prove age, etc etc. The judge is saying that forcing webmasters to restrict their content like this is a violation of free speech, and that the government has no right to determine when a child is old enough to view adult material. That's the parents' job.
(This is Slashdot, so I'm sure someone will chime in if I have this wrong)
How did that meme go? I am intrigued by this judge's ideas, and would like to subscribe to his newsletter.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
lose != loose
Won't somebody, please, think of the felons ?
While I don't agree with many of the laws that make one a felon, those that are felons for violent crimes and crimes of depravation, I don't care one wit for their rights beyond that of basic, very basic, human rights.
I'm the scary kind of Buddhist. I understand the concept. We do more harm to the person by locking them away. We do harm to many others by releasing him into the population. It is a kindness to stop a person from harming others and himself by sending him to next next incarnation sooner, so that he may start his healing and learning all that much faster.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Stupid question here, were they not god's commandments, or is this part of the father/son/ghost thing?
Christ is God and vice/versa/etc., so, yes.
How did porn affect your life, honestly?
Every girl/woman I looked at became a piece of potential sex. My relationship with my family suffered tremendously in many ways. I passed up many years of healthy family time as well as time with friends on occasion to seek out more porn. We aren't just talking an hour here or there. I had dialup all that time, so porn was pretty much a 4-8 hour kind of thing. The pattern was generally that I could be free from it for 1-2 days before going back for 2-3 days. That was in high school. And note that I was not some bottom-of-the-social-foodchain outcast/loner type. I was high school valedictorian and senior class president (at a public high school mind you).
When I got out of high school I hoped I would grow out of it. I didn't. Going through college was hard because porn took up valuable study time--very stressful knowing you need to be writing that paper but for some reason you can't stop looking for pictures of Russian lesbian nymphos or whatever. After that I met the most amazing woman on earth and had to keep it from her until I knew that I no longer could/should. It hurt her very much and caused all kinds of fears/doubts. Around that time God simply came to me one day and said that He was setting me free and I have been ever since (as for why He didn't do this sooner I have many good guesses, but I don't know for sure). The relationship has healed but there are still fears/doubts that keep popping up. She can't understand it. She feels like there must be something wrong with her, when the problem was with me. But I guess that's not harmful either, eh?
The other thing I wonder every time I hear about porn addicts, is it the porn itself or is it seeing something taboo? Many of the people I have talked to that have had porn addictions come from hard lining religious or social backgrounds that very much vilify it, and just like drugs kids get into it as an act of rebellion, and because they do not understand the truth about what they are seeing and experiencing they do not know how to handle or control it.
My parents weren't the hard-line type of religious folks. They certainly wanted their children to follow Christ but they took a very good approach. They taught us about Him and encouraged us to "believe in Him" when we were young enough to not know what to do. As we got older they would teach us about things and encourage us to do what was right, but they didn't restrict us from everything that might cause trouble. With sex, we talked about it openly and honestly. As I got more into porn it was harder to talk honestly about sex because I didn't want them to know what I struggled with. Deep down I knew they would love me and help me through it, but I found it very embarrassing.
For me it was not rebellion. What little of a rebellious side I had was played out by being a l337 h4x0r wannabe and installing Netbus and BackOrifice on the computers at school. After a lot of self-analysis and such, I think the driving force behind it was something to do with exploration and limitless options. In other words, there's always a girl you haven't seen and its a thrill to find a really hot one.
...if you had been shown pictures of naked women when you were starting to get to that age and explained about love and sexual intimacy, would viewing porn later had the same impact on you? Also if you had been in a social environment where you could have discussed it, and talked openly about how you were feeling and that you felt you might have a problem, do you think it would have had less of an impact on your life?
If I had been shown naked pictures of women I would have pretended that it didn't phase me and then I would have sought them out on my own just as I did. All t
I get pulled over for speeding - 60 in a 55 zone, and pay my fine. Three months later I get pulled over again in the same spot again doing 60. Clearly I haven't been rehabilitated of my wanton need for speed. How do you deal with me?
Cut yer nuts off... then we'll ask you if you still feel like hotrodding through our town's streets.
"Curiouser and curiouser"
You say:
Wow! You sure have an interesting mind-reading capability, there, or think you do. Too bad it's off-line at the moment.
And later you say:
You would have me, though, wait until he got through the door, and see what damage he could do in the 15 minutes we waited for the police?
I understand that you are very emotional. After all I just called into question an ideal that you clearly hold dear. But, "physician, heal thyself."
Also, with your question:
Has it ever occurred to you that the primary use of a gun under those circumstances is as a deterrent?
you are clearly, albeit unsuccessfully, attempting to act like I never said this:
It's one thing to have the ability to nuke a country out of existence while it is an entirely evil thing to actually nuke a country out of existence.
so that you can conveniently ignore my follow up hypothetical to your hypothetical:
Let's go back to this hypothetical rape situation and make it more hypothetical. What if, it's not a case of rape and this unfortunate husband has actually found his wife cheating on him. Sucks to be him because he's now getting the chair for a crime of passion when he thought he was "defending his [non-existent] family." The intelligence is astounding. The fact that a person is a coward for not confronting evil does not make the fearful action devoid of consequences.
But in answer to your question, I didn't say you shouldn't have a gun. I said you shouldn't kill people. Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
The fact that I have morals does not make my views cartoonish. It makes them of moral character.
I think any "reason" to kill is any "easy dodge," as you put it. There are plenty of ways to disable a person without killing him or her. I can understand you not taking the time to learn them if you don't value life. It makes things easier if you can just kill a man and blame him for it. But who pulled the trigger, i.e., who decided that his life is worth less than yours? He didn't. He decided that your life is worth less than his by his actions.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that if I shot you for threatening to scratch my car, walking towards my wife with your hands in your pockets, or tripping on the sidewalk and stepping on my grass, you'd present me with a thumbs up before your body hit the ground. My point here is that you have apparently not heard (or chose to ignore) my mentor's teachings:
"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to treat you."
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
You're going to blame porn for your addiction?
I would suggest you have an addictive personality. I was exposed to porn back in sixth grade. I've certainly managed to do well, by any reasonable standard of accomplishment.
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As such, why shouldn't it be made harder for people to access, such that only those who have significant motivation and means will access it. When I got into it, it was just like it is today: freely available and easy to find. If every porn site required some thing like age-verification or a credit card # to access, it would have been impossible for me to get into in the first place. Thus, addictive personality or not I would not have had this problem. If people were not so selfish, they would agree to these restrictions out of love. Unfortunately people who embrace pornography do not know love because they don't know the One who gives it, making the whole thing a catch-22. I don't expect things to change until this world comes to an end, whenever that is.
It is not a wonder sexual education sites were against this law.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Religion screwed you up. Not porn. Now you're in the depths of a delusion that there is some dude in the sky and he's "helped you" but your "most amazing woman" is beneath his help and doubts you (and is even worried about this nonsense)... you are one messed-up unit, all right, but it sure isn't porn that did it, or is doing it. No wonder you can't reason your way out of a paper bag.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."
As I like to frequently say... The children will be entirely safe once freedom is entirely destroyed.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Also, the whole age verification and CC# thing is stupid, in most of the world there are lots of adults who don't have credit cards, and age verification services would somehow have to verify who you are, thus effectively preventing "normal people" (non-businessmen) from distributing their own porn as they would have to perform some form of verification of the age of the viewer. Maybe we should outlaw talking about religion to children under 18? And have all websites that talk about religion verify the age of those trying to view them. After all, people who embrace religion don't think clearly and are generally brainwashed while they're still kids...
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
First of all, there's nothing to protect them FROM. Sex is not harmful per se.
Second, they shouldn't be "protected" even if there were such a thing - they should be "trained".
Finally, that was never the motivation anyway - that is just a cover for a bunch of religious assholes to impose their "morality" on everyone else and for a bunch of politicians to seize more power of what people can say or do.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yeah! That's such a great idea! Kill two birds with one stone, right? Nobody wants those pesky poor people around anyway. Their ghettos get in the way of my sunset vista. We could take a pointer from fucking China! Regulate births! If you fall below a certain tax bracket and you want a child, well, sorry, you're fucked! Just treat 'em exactly like you would a fucking television!
Nice thinly veiled classist and racist bullshit, dude. Hopefully one day you will end up poor with children to raise, and we can all see how quickly you backpedal.
Here's one last fucking hint, douchebag: It is not a fucking endless summer, by any means, to be a parent with a low income, but you know what? Weirdly enough, some people love their children regardless. The minute you start advocating treating them like material fucking goods, you have shown yourself to be devastatingly ignorant.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
What you're asking for is for someone else to cut you off from your addiction. It's nobody else's responsibility to raise you once you turn 18 but your own. And, prior to that, it's your parents responsibility. If you'd like, you can have your right to be your own legal gaurdian revoked, and have someone else parent you for the rest of your life. That way, you won't have to take responsibility for your own behavior beyond what your legal gaurdian dictates.
When you ask that everybody be given blanket rules, just so that you have those rules, you're imposing your own views upon everyone else. That's antithetical to the principles upon which European culture in North America was founded; People emigrated to North America to escape restrictions and persecutions in place in thier own countries. They still do; I have coworkers whose parents immigrated from Iran and Vietnam. I tutor students who've fled Sudan.
What you're asking for is that everyone become restricted in some manner just so that you don't have to risk taking responsibility for an action you won't prevent yourself from taking.
Try installing filtering software. Or only surfing from public libraries. Or only access the Internet through dial-up. Or through a mobile phone. Join a "pornography addicts anonymous" group. All you've been doing is blaming pornography for miserable portions of your life. Perhaps there are other issues. Maybe you should see an honest-to-God psychologist for a while, one who helps you change yourself, instead of changing others.
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Once heard an interview with a very respected older society woman who had taken on charitable support of released prisoners and who had come to the conclusion that any sentences over five years crossed the boundary where the prisoner lost hope and thus became a greater danger.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Bravery is doing something even though you're afraid to do it.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I don't think money is a big part of this problem. Bigger problems are independence and creative urge. Some people cannot depend on their spouse for the rest of their lives for support. That is a very difficult decision for any independent person. It also requires perfect trust in your partner. The second big problem is that if a person has worked for some time, they miss the interaction with their peers. Living at home and interacting with people around you, that don't have similar interest as you is not that interesting. It makes people bored to death.
The solution really is Telecommuting. That is the only way we will see better child support and lower divorce rates.
Anybody who goes into double income just for the money, is being stupid. Double income does not increase standard of life. It does increase the chance that you will fall out of love, and that there will be a divorce and children will suffer in the. Even when the worst scenario does not happen children still get neglected, which is not good for them.
"Shoot enough of them in the head == less violent crime!"
Do you work for the Bush administration?
Some time take a look at the claim that the murder rate is lower in death penalty states. Did you ever notice that they don't count the executions?
You don't understand him correctly. Or, more likely, you're deliberately misrepresenting his argument. The GP was quite clear that he considered killing an attacker to be a last-resort measure. The fact that he considers it an option at all does not mean he (or anyone else of like mind) is looking for excuses to kill anyone. Nor does it mean that, as you dishonestly implied, that they "don't value life" or have "not taken the time" to learn less-lethal methods of home defense. Those inferences are entirely your own.
On the other hand, an older child who knew what sex was, but wasn't ready to watch would run from the room screaming, "Ewwww! Gross!"
And then you have your teenagers, who you are ok with being exposed to porn, anyway.
If you think about it, kids have been exposed to sex for centuries. Ever watch Little House on the Prairie? I sure as hell did not, but we're talking families with 5+ kids living in a 1 room (not 1 bedroom, 1 room) shack. I'm pretty sure those kids were exposed to mommy and daddy having sex, and they survived.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Don't be so smug.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Just to illustrate how wrong you are, consider this. My wife has to take nasty medication that shows up in breast milk, but it isn't necessary that she get in the meds right away after giving birth, so she'd breastfeed for a while before switching to formula. Do you have any idea how much extra food she would wind up eating in order to make breastmilk? She'd eat way more than me, and she'd be dropping weight like mad! She easily ate more that $3 worth of extra food each day while she was breastfeeding , which is more than the cost of formula.
Yes, you read right. Breastfeeding, at least in my wife's case, is more expensive than formula feeding.Several thousand on a nursery?
- One bucket of paint: $20
- One dresser bought off Craigslist: $75
- One glider: $95 at Baby Depot
- One crib: $250
- Look on your face while I'm laughing in it: priceless.
Thank god you started talking sense at some point. I was getting worried. My tenants have nicer cars and TVs than I do. We don't even have cable.Hey, how come you started talking sense? I would have never responded to you if I knew you had some sense in you. My wife's engagement ring cost less than one day's salary.Very, very true.Ok, I learned my lesson. I won't respond anymore before reading all the way to the bottom. You somehow got to the right conclusion, even if you started off based on incorrect assumptions.
Cheers!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
At least you think you'll wait.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three women who got pregnant while on the pill. I can think of one more who may have, but it's rude to ask (know she had an "oops", but asking about birth control methods is a little personal, eh?).
Good luck!
P.S. No, my wife was not one of them. All of our pregnancies were planned months in advance.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock