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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."
First a black president, and now a pirate party! Amazing!
I agree with the Pirate Party but I'm still holding out for a Ninja party since Ninjas > Pirates.
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."
what? for research? if by research he means being a sadistic pedophile then i can understand that. of course i'm sure he had to force himself to look at these 'researh images' for several hours a day so he can better understand the mind of a pedophile. so if i'm a scientist, and i'm doing pharmaceutical research, can i use that as my excuse for a small mountain of cocaine on my coffee table?
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
If this kind of thing happens more often, the general public might actually get to hear about it.
Whenever I ask them, most of the people I know have heard about the Pirate Bay guys being found guilty and
very little else. Most news stories we get here (in the UK) are very biased whenever these kinds of stories even appear.
ID Cards are barely mentioned, censorship & privacy stories are generally ignored unless its got the usual terrorists/paedophile
angle.
Let me be the first to offer a hearty "Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Seems Europe is starting to get better at that whole "democracy" concept than we are.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -PF
You don't need to DL a bunch of kiddie pr0n to study it nor do you do it without informing any police organisation before doing so, if only to prevent any mistaken ideas, much less prevent duplication of work and chasing down useless paths.
Tauss has very good representation who know how to take advantage of a few laws here in Germany which more or less allow public figures to buy their way out of a courtroom.
Ahhh yes. The Pete Townshend defence.
Aaaarrrrr!
Yeah... I'm thinking that the Pirate Party can do without pedophiles.
Well, I wouldn't say that. Have you ever googled, etc. for child porn just to see how easily you can actually find it in the Internet? I am turned on by older women than I am but I have still done that. It wouldn't even be very far fetched claim to say that you could save some of the stuff as example even if you aren't turned on by it. Unless we know exact details of the material on his computer, how it got there and most importantly, if anyone profited from that and if anyone got hurt... We know nothing.
Besides, I always wonder... Why do people act as if pedophiles were horrible people. It is sexual preference that they might not be able to change themselves. What matters is if they let anyone get hurt because of that. Child molesters should be hunted down, as should people who acquire child porn in a way that it causes more injuries to children (IE: Buys it and people who produce it will gain more motivation to produce more). But people who just download it from peer to peer networks without anyone profitting or getting hurt more because of that download? Hell, it might even prevent some child abusement cases.
And yeah.. If you really think that public figure could tell police "I'll download some child porn but I'll just tell you beforehand" without massive scandals...
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.
These are the worst news regarding any piracy party i've ever heard.
A politician who is charged with possesion of child pornography gets outraged with a law trying to combat child pornography, and then goes on to join a party trying to fight against these censorship laws on completely different grounds.
From this day on, the german Piracy Party will be regarded as a Pervert Party.
It's not like the Pirate Party is the only german party that is against these laws. In fact, only the 2 largest parties voted for it.
I would assume he hopes to get rid of these new laws and that he would stand better chances at it by joining a larger party.
So why would he join exactly the Pirate Party?
Maybe the cops just called him and told him that they did not only find CP on his computer but also an illegally downloaded Britney Spears album!
In European Union the pirate party joins the parliament
Child molesters should be hunted down, as should people who acquire child porn in a way that it causes more injuries to children (IE: Buys it and people who produce it will gain more motivation to produce more). But people who just download it from peer to peer networks without anyone profitting or getting hurt more because of that download? Hell, it might even prevent some child abusement cases.
Exactly! If you believe RIAA's theory, then by downloading CP for free you are discouraging the production of CP!
Think of the number of children that can be saved if everyone spreads CP everywhere so no one will pay for it! Wouldn't that cause billions of damages to CP producers? To save children from abuse, the law should mandate the spread of CP instead of making it illegal!
By making CP illegal and thus creating a monopoly for illegal CP producers, the law could be hurting more children than it presumably saves.
This new Pirate MP is something else again. This guy is like the cheating husband caught in bed with another woman by his wife who then tells her solemnly: "Honey who you are gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?" Unless he is the most uniquely moral and upstanding politician in the history of politics (possible but unlikely) his Blagovitch-style explanation is an act performed in order to make his party switch seem like an act of principle rather than what it really is: making a virtue of a necessity. Bottom Line: This guy just wants to stay out of jail and keep his seat.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
you can. No, Juggernaut either FrreBSD because you join today!
the grammar nazi party
we're all doomed to a life of assumed inferiority because we don't apply strunk and white's element of style to throw away comments on a backwater chat forum
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pirate party members of parliament have a distinct advantage of a plethora of rich, undefended parliamentary seats to board, plunder, and retain for the cause.
I expect to see them take 5 seats a day in the EU and german parliament at this point, or they'll be keelhauled by the party captain.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Germans are pretty conservative and mainstream and I don't see something called a "pirate party" succeeding.
Germany has a liberal party (FDP) that stands for smaller government and more personal freedoms; they also opposed this law. And they have mainstream appeal. It would seem to me that they would be a better choice to join than the "pirate party".
In Germany is filed 50/50 with first pass the post and proportional representation. So we have the best of both. And if he has a direct seat that it stays which him even when he changes party.
Using bold because the new slashdot script is completely retarded and won't interpret line breaks or p-tags normally!
You need to see child porn because you need to know what the war against child porn is about. The official line is that this war is a just war against the violent rape of children. The images are said to be primarily (a) violent, and/or (b) involving tiny children and babies. A question anyone concerned with the ever increasing power of supposedly democratic states over the Internet and all communications is what these images actually depict. If they indeed depict primarily tiny children being violently raped, then this war against child pornography is in line with its own rhetoric. If the images are not violent, and do not depict primarily toddlers and babies, then the rhetoric is out of line. A cursory investigation into these images may suggest the rhetoric is well out of line, that our current conceptions of child sexuality, and pedophile sexual behavior, is inadequate, ideological, and dangerous. Unfortunately, the adequate investigation of such materials is not something most citizens dare to do, and for good reason. The simple viewing of these materials is a crime many declare is "worse than murder" -a declaration made in absence of evidence, of course.
Debbie Nathan made a good case for viewing child pornography in a series of articles that trashed Kurt Eichenwald after his New York Times articles on Justin Berry, an apparently willing teenaged cam-whore. Her basic argument is that without an ability to independently assess the contents of child pornography, journalists (and any researcher whatever) cannot make judgements independent of police institutions. In effect, research becomes an arm of policing, rather than informing policing, or going beyond policing. And so shoddy research that reinforces the status quo interpretation of child pornography attains the status of legitimacy, is well funded, and makes careers. Detailed, thoughtful research into the matter is impossible, reviled, rejected. The dangerous game of child pornography investigation was underlined by the exchanges by Nathan and Eichenwald. When Nation accused Eichenwald of *illegally* looking at child pornography. Eichenwald brought out the NYTimes lawyer-dogs to threaten Nathan's article off (cowardly) Salon.com, arguing that by law Eichenwald was able to view 3 images of child pornography legally, as long as he reported this to the police afterwards. This, of course, was nonsense as far as the articles were concerned, because Eichenwald, by his own admissions in the peices, looked at far more than 3 images. But being in the back pocket of the U.S. Dept. of Justice meant Eichenwald, unlike other investigators, was beyond the law. But in the end Eichenwald self-destructed. Nathan continued to pursue the case, and uncovered private messages that made Eichenwald appear to be sexually interested in Justin Berry, and a rapacious consumer of his hardcore images. Instead of cracking the case, Eichenwald was trying to escape the consequences of his actions by appearing as a child advocate, saving children from child pornographers. His career was left in shambles.
THESE ARE THE DANGERS OF RESEARCH INTO CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.
If this is the case, if a man who had all the protections of the police, practical immunity from prosecution due to his participation in "nabbing the bad guys," why would anyone think the research into child pornography was (a) comprehensive, (b) adequate, (c) independent of law enforcement, (d) independent of a stifling, choking status quo? If the pro-police contingent of child porno researchers can get burned to death, what about people who question?
It is a well trod line that one of the significant shifts that mark our emergence into modernism is an ability, a desire, and a need to question authority, to see for ourselves. This is what is called enlightenment. It is not my argument that child pornography IS enlightenmen
Ach Quatsch. He is not going to run for office in the elections in September. And being a Pirate MP does not keep you out if jail either.
It says in the summary, "The law, which aims at reducing child pornography..."
I do wish people would stop and think before they start typing. In fact, the proponents of the law claim that it is aimed at reducing child pornography. Subtle difference.
No, according to the RIAA if you download CP you're stealing it from the people who are trying to sell it, so the poor child pornographers have to engage in a criminal job like grocery clerk instead of benefitting society with their products.
Okay, i'm a mod on a forum, some pedos pops along, spams loads of images.
Now... i HAVE to view those images in order to know that they are CP so i can delete them.
BUT WAIT, i am now a pedo, according to several laws in several countries.
NO, FUCK THAT!
Possession laws in the digital age are fucking retarded in every sense of the word.
These things need to be changed, they simply will not do.
The act of viewing an image, which will get cached, has probably lead to thousands of innocent people being ruined by these terrible laws.
And you can bet your ass that people have done this on purpose to get their enemies caught and ruin their life.
Four members of the coalition opposed the law, i.e. SPD (Tauss's former party) had three people vote against it, CDU (the ones who pushed this ...thing... through parliament) had one person vote against it (because his daughter, a journalist, probably convinced him).
i can not help to notice that this MPs "troubles" with the executive will/could provide the rainbow press with another much valued connection piratespedophiles...
However, there are peculiar aspects to this case which demonstrate why contrary to what one might perceive at first glance, this stance is imperative and not political suicide on the Pirates' part:
With the Slashdot-appointed stand-in Horseman of the Infocalypse as the scapegoat of the year, incessant witch hunt reasoning ("hairesis maxima est opera maleficarum non credere") has been used along with insidious rhetoric to try and silence as alleged child molesters anyone questioning the official claims that "for the children" (Godwin's Law leaves it to you to look up which infamous politician coined this "incontestable" strategy!), a technically content-agnostic censorship infrastructure (central DNS black-list, i.e. easily circumvented by any but the most stupid perverts, but a supreme target for anyone trying to shut down the nation) had to be instituted to block "countless massive commercial" child-porn resources purportedly openly available on the Web, as well as against anyone demanding that such servers (illegal in probably every civilized nation on earth) be shut down (and their operators and suppliers brought to justice) rather than hidden from the public's view.
Fed up with misleading information from police authorities and a number of astroturfing organizations closely related to the politicians who stood to benefit from an adoption of presumably unconstitutional censorship, the defector and new-found Pirate, who had been fighting online smut for years and was one of only a few tech-savvy MPs, apparently (and possibly in an overzealous way) tried to prove his opponents wrong by demonstrating that the porn-trading scene had long moved elsewhere.
The surprise was not that he could be found in possession of some material that may have become illegal (under laws he himself had helped adopt) - when his parliamentary immunity was lifted, reportedly by a committee controlled by lawmakers with close ties to his opponents. Rather, the startling fact is how the news media had been called in to the immediate search and seizure operations, as if to make sure he would be thrown to the wolves of a lynch mob of public opinion, in utter disrespect for the presumption of innocence, so as to "finish him" in the voters' eyes no matter what the outcome of a fair trial (yet to be held) might be.
It would be a sad state of affairs if Western democracies that consider themselves the "beacons of liberty" had to re-learn the Rule of Law from a Pirate Party.
But even if we assumed for a moment that both this politician and the Swedish pirate captains were guilty as hell, this scenario in which their purported "crimes" are used to foster ulterior motives and measures would give a principled Pirate Party true to the defense of civil liberties every reason to stand up for the accused unless convicted by final verdict in a court of law, as in the words of Henry Louis Mencken:
A parent who says that their kid is more likely to be assaulted by a member of the family is incriminating themselves.
And a guy without children is automatically a threat to children.
Yay, more peados for Slashdot to hold up and defend as good guys. Tear down those Gary Glitter posters, creeps !!
This, however, seems to have been the sad reality in nearly every assembly - where even the second meaning of the term escapes the increasingly less represantative "representatives" who have long seen the Internet as something that gets sent by some strange set of highways or tubes, and placed on their desks printed out by their assistants.
;-)
Conveniently, the lobbyist of Evil Corp., their main campaign donor, brings ready-made drafts with all their favorite catchwords each time he invites them to five-star dinners , so they can leave those technicalities to the experts and fully focus on truly bringing the nation forward.
I've translated a German transcript of his speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DHPatch.jpg
The "gut feeling" and "knee-jerk reaction" of most people will be "How could they possibly listen to this guy (in spite of guilt by mere accusation of a crime of witchcraft in the lynch court of public opinion)?"
However, at a closer look one has to realize the Pirates did the right thing by resisting to chime in to a chant of "burn! burn! burn!": http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1276159&cid=28409757
How would you feel about being photographed nude, or during a sex act and then seeing your pictures distributed worldwide?
Childrens in CP pictures are people too, not objects. They might have a say about distributing all of this.
Does anyone know an actual http website with childporn that hasnt been immediately reported. I mean there is this code of honour amongst the worst criminals in the world we call copyright infringers. I still don't understand. Do they want to block porn websites that depict 40 year old women with pigtails and cheerleader outfits because they are supposed to be teens ? I thought these ppl had a liking for words, being the politicians they are maybe they should start learning porn-jargon? There are no open http childporn sites, these filthbags are too smart most of the time and its a VERY restricted community (if that's even a good word for filth like that). It's as smart as Sarkozys Hadopi was. Ppl who are too old to understand what the internet means and are scared because their children don't read dusty books anymore? What's the difference between a book and a webpage ? A book is outdated by the time it hits the shelves, because it's information is not dynamic. A webpage might have gotten new information since maybe a second after you started reading it. A book can be read by one person at one time, if he or she happens to be in the library at the time it was there. A webpage is available everywhere from anywhere for as many people as the webserver can serve. And there's this thing called mirrors. Yes, i can see why this would scare control freaks, i really do. So someone, please explain your grandpa Sarkozy and grandma Merkel (they must have children right, given the fact they are obviously seriously conservative) that this new internet-thing is not necessarily a bad thing full of lolitaporn that pops up with every click of your mouse
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
we can find almost anything erotic, including things far stranger than prepubescent sex.
One of my gripes with child pornography laws is that regarding child porn, "child" isn't defined as a prepubescent person but a person of age less than 18.
When I was 15, I wanted to have sex with 15 year old girls. I think (almost?) all guys share this experience, and everybody sees this as acceptable---except maybe her parents ;-)
Now that I'm 25, I think of 15 year old girls as a bit on the young side. From what I'm told, it's also illegal for me to have sex with them. I also know that society would raise an eyebrow at it.
But, and this is the fun part: I think society would raise an eyebrow at it not because the young girls aren't sexually mature but because of the large age difference. That is, people would raise their eyebrows at it for the same reason they'd raise their eyebrow at a 38yo guy having sex with a 21yo girl. And that is not illegal.
Other gripes: it's illegal not because it's about non-consenting children but because it's about children. And politicians ban cartoon drawings of it. And politicians ban videos of 18yo girls that look 15. I've yet to see a story about them banning such things because they have empirical evidence that they cause more harm than good. Who knows, maybe masturbating at anime child porn would keep a pedophile a pedophile instead of turning him into a child molester.
Wouldn't that cause billions of damages to CP producers?
That would take the distribution of 25000 images (at $80,000 apiece). (let billions = 2*10^9 in ...)
My guess is that there are many more images than that illegally downloaded every year. Let's pat ourselves on the back for the damage we're doing to those nasty people!
i'm glad single issue parties never get much ground in the US. i get that you care a great deal about this one thing, but you should be a lobbyist trying to influence parties that already have power. Let's say your single issue guy gets into Congress, what about all the other issues? What is his stance on abortion, the environment, military spending, education and so on? If his stance on those issues match major party A more than major party B, he should join party A.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
That has to be one of the more ridiculous things I've ever read. Even though by any objective measure, we allow people more liberty than any other country on the planet, because our standards are higher that somehow makes us worse than totalitarian regimes? You want us to lower our standards in our Constitution, as if that will get the politicians to stop violating it?
As the father of daughters, and the grandfather of granddaughters, I find child porn laws worse than the problem they purport to solve. But your country has those Orwellian (if not Kafkaesque) "Human Rights Commissions" that muzzle speech.
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