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Three ISPs Agree To Block Child Porn
Goobergunch and other readers sent in word that Sprint, Time Warner, and Verizon have agreed to block websites and newsgroups containing child pornography. The deal, brokered by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, occurred after Cuomo's office threatened the ISPs with fraud charges. It's of some concern that the blacklist of sites and newsgroups is to be maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an NGO with no legal requirement for transparency. Here are two further cautions, the first from Lauren Weinstein: "Of broader interest perhaps is how much time will pass before 'other entities' demand that ISPs (attempt to) block access to other materials that one group or another feels subscribers should not be permitted to see or hear." And from Techdirt: "[T]he state of Pennsylvania tried to do pretty much the same thing, back in 2002, but focused on actually passing a law ... And, of course, a federal court tossed out the law as unconstitutional. The goal is certainly noble. Getting rid of child porn would be great — but having ISPs block access to an assigned list isn't going to do a damn thing towards that goal."
There is such a list in Sweden, and some of the big ISPs use it. There was quite an uproar when someone tried to put The Pirate Bay on it, claiming they had torrents of child porn, and it never got on the list. Almost everyone agrees that the list is useless, but it's still there. :-/
So it's not a question of whether or not someone will try to use such a list for their own goals, but how soon that will happen.
Yea, that would be great and all, but Chris Hansen is doing it to make money. That seems a bit sick too.
Seriously, what happens if a group of people (generally young men found living electronically on one of those lovely chan boards) decide to stage a cp raid? Is the attacked site blocked forever or only as long as the cp stays on the servers? Who decides if it is intentional or accidental? Who even gets to decide what constitutes cp? Is there a job where someone has to sort through all the porn on the internet to see what is legal? Are they accepting resumes? Not that I'm applying.
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of my brain.
Besides, my point kinda was that the laws ARE messed up to begin with. For thousands of generations marrying off daughters under age 15 was the norm--did the men wait until their new brides were 18 to have sex? Hardly.
So basically men HAVE the urge to look at child pornography. All men must--it's hardwired in to find a 16 year old nubile girl attractive. Are all you guys crying "Child porn is so awful!" really saying that if a hot young, busty and curvaceous 15 year old was standing naked in front of you, you wouldn't be aroused? So what makes it awful is searching for it on the internet? Or are we just talking about prepubescent child pornography? No body seems to want to make this clear, which bolsters my argument that all this is just another witch hunt used to control the masses.
Careful What You Wish For....
Rethink the "that isn't themselves" part of that.
There was a case (in Florida, I think? Heard about it second hand) where a 15 yo girl takes an indecent photo of herself and sends it to her boyfriend. Numb-nuts shows it off to his friends, and the next result is that he gets busted for possessing the image, she gets busted for both possessing it and for production.
Let's also consider that in some areas, any unclothed photo of a child is automatically child pornography, including the sort that many normal parents might have of their children and never consider them in that fashion (kids in bath, that kind of thing).
Actually, according to his bio, Marilyn Manson tried to use such a photo from his parents photo album in the liner notes for his first album, and the label refused because they might get into legal troubles over the possibility of child pornography (which was precisely his point -- this was a fairly common, normal sort of photo with no pornographic intent, so what does it say about a VIEWER who declres it to be CP?)