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German Member of Parliament Joins Pirate Party
Political Observer writes "Jörg Tauss, a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), left the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is part of the coalition government, and announced that he is joining the German Pirate Party (Google translation; original German article). Tauss resigned from the SPD after all but four of the party's members voted for a new censorship law, which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at reducing child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS-based content blocking and is the subject of major criticism from Internet users. In March 2009 Tauss became the subject of investigations by the German police for possession of child pornographic material. He said he had this material only for research as part of his role as a member of parliament. Investigations are still continuing."
Well, although it does seem far fetched it legitimately could be used for research in the fact that he could either use it to convince people that certain parts of the law as unreasonable (such as, this counts as child porn, however as you can plainly see it is not).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The guy might actually be a pedophile, given the frequency of occurrence within the population, it'd be shocking if some members of parliament weren't pedophiles; but his story isn't necessarily as absurd as you claim.
Say, for instance, you want to know how likely it is that somebody just on the internet, or somebody looking for ordinary porn, will be exposed to kiddie porn. Or, you want to know how prevalent kiddie porn actually is. Either question seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder about, if you are a legislator with a kiddie porn related bill presented for your consideration. Attempting to answer either question could easily leave you with some illegal images in your browser cache.
In related news, the RIAA and MPAA released a joint statement calling the Pirate Party "A degenerate den of pedophiles that threaten our children and, indeed, our very society"...
I'd just like to add people are curious, plus if anyone wants to get a taste of what people wish they could do if they could get away with it read some books by nancy friday.
Human beings are animals, and they are curious. Put the two together and it's not surprising.
His membership got accepted by the Pirate Party!
We now have an active Pirate in the parliament.
I wonder how the next Bundestag elections will end. I have the feeling, that this is the start of something big!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
How do you arrive at this conclusion? By there being one guy changing parties?
You're lauding the Germans for their Democracy in response to an article about how most of the government there just voted to put in place internet censorship and a framework for DNS redirection to enforce it?
Sounds like they are experiencing many of the same problems with the principles of Democracy that many other countries are having.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Actually, what he did is known to everyone who bothers to not only read headlines: He did trade some material. He did not pay for anything and wasn't paid. His defence is that as a Member of Parliament, he had get an idea of the extent of the problem and the structures of the scene. It is currently unclear whether that's legal according to German criminal law.
BTW, there's another public figure who is in possession of child pornography and even offensively showed it around: Ursula von der Leyen (dubbed Zensursula), the German Minister of Family Affairs. There was no investigation and no-one doubted that that had been legal.
In short:
If you're part of the Legislative, you're obviously not supposed to posses child porn in order to make an informed decision about laws on child pornography.
If you're part of the Executive, you're obviously entitled to possess child porn in order to show it around to the press to gain support for drafts of such laws.
Claus
By the fact that a party with 7% popular support is getting anywhere close to 7% representation in parliament.
And what is a "child"? Is a 17yro a child? You know, you come to the point where teenagers take pictures and are charged of childporn.
Where is the good old German nudism gone?
Because people have a natural instinct to protect their children, which causes them to be on lookout for potential dangers for them. This, in turn, causes slight anxiety, which is preyed on by the cynical politicians who are drawn to psychological weaknesses like sharks to blood.
It's the same thing as with terrorism: politicians and others who want power strive to fan people's fears into full-blown panic, so they are no longer thinking rationally, and can be manipulated easily. Pedophiles are even better boogeymen than terrorists, because the guy who points out he has better chances of being struck by lightning than dying in a terror attack seems brave while a guy - or better yet, a mother - who points out that her children are more likely to be run over by a car than get molested by a stranger can be branded a bad parent.
Hysteria and lack of rational thinking are considered virtuous when dealing with children, and calm use of reason is seen as callous and irresponsible. The end result is, of course, the same as it's always been: a police state build on the pretext of eradicating witches/jews/communists/terrorists/pedophiles.
Preventing child abuse is not the point of these policies. Enabling censorship and getting votes for it because "it's for the children" is. If anything, increased abuse would be beneficial for the politicians, since it would be something for them to point to and pretend to be fighting against.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Exactly, basically he did a stupid thing which harmed his cause. But still it is no coincidence that Tauss was taken out just before the internet filtering bill passes the parliament. You would usually delay it but child porn is an very emotional and sensitive issue, cmp. Belgium, and they wanted to get rid off Tauss anyway.