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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."
I agree with the Pirate Party but I'm still holding out for a Ninja party since Ninjas > Pirates.
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.
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.
You've never downloaded 'questionable' material just to see what was the problem with it? BDSM, bukkake, bestiality, snuff films, coprophagia and yes, even child porn have passed through my hard-drives, even though I find all of them disgusting.
I'd post anonymously but frankly, I don't give a fsck, it's been years since I've had any of that stuff and if some cop decided to tap my internet connection they'd only see download of various patches and traffic from the odd online game. Perhaps he's lying, perhaps he's not, but his statement doesn't sound too far-fetched so I'm willing to give him the benefit of doubt.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Yes, how absurd. Obviously if he looked at these images he is a sadistic pedophile and was about to attack children any second. He also apparently texted the word "geil" so we know exactly what he was thinking.
Of course law enforcement can look at these images for several hours a day and no one is harmed, and we also know they never have any improper thoughts while doing so.
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.
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...
Quite frankly, unless he's actually paying for it, or otherwise actually contributing to child abuse, I really don't care. Simple possession, if not a completely victimless crime, is certainly very close to being one.
The whole thing is a joke. It was his job to handle child pornography cases. He left, because he was disgusted with the way it is handled now.
And another group of politicians made his special rights vanish in the blink of an eye, so that he could not react, and they had a window for suing him. It was all staged.
Interestingly, that very group is known from the "Sachsen-Affäre". A large-scale scandal, where it is proven that they took private advantages, bribes (while in office), did illegal spying, human trafficking, child prostitution and drug dealing. And guess what happened to them. Exactly. Nothing.
So the wolf is the shepherd here, and I guess you can pretty much bet, that the point of this law (at least partially) is to protect them.
UPDATE: Good news: The Pirate Party accepted his membership. So now we have a Pirate in parliament!. Yay!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
Whatever his reasons, I'm not sure that it helps to have somebody being investigated for such material as a supporter of change. If he gets convicted then it becomes a case of "see, only pedophiles and perverts would oppose this law!"
Not to mention the fact that it's nearly impossible to browse certain high-visibility sites (4chan) without some dumb-witted idiot posting a 8 year old child getting molested.
Agreed. But that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this principle. The much larger issue is that thoughts and looks are being treated as criminal acts, when in fact, then can be the exact opposite, or anything on a spectrum in-between. Treating actions as a crime is one thing, but treating looking at something as a crime is entirely different. And yes, I'll post anonymously, because even otherwise rational people can be completely psychotic about the whole kiddie porn issue. If I was more of a conspiracy theorist I'd even say it's as if the powers that be have encouraged people to hate the idea beyond all rationality, so they have some way to distract people from other issues, like their own ACTS of corruption.
Yeah, I accidentally stumbled upon the R@yG0ld keyword on WinMX many years ago. I found what I thought was a completely legal set of images(if she was under 18, I definitely couldn't tell) so I selected *everything* the user had. Within a few minutes I realized that the keyword didn't mean "barely 18" and damn near vomited when I saw the first image that was clearly not legal; didn't take long for me to wipe it all since I had no way(or determination) to sift through all of them to determine if any of them might be legal. Now I hear that's all that's left on the WinMX network.
Though what's worse is the naming convention on Usenet where the uploaders think it'll be chic of them to name a pic of an obviously legal girl "15 yrs old.jpg" cause I also used to batch download images from there and about shit myself when I saw filenames like that. Now, I just stick to the obviously legal sites AND if they show a "cougar" then I'm usually sure I'm quite safe..heh
Pedophiles are people too!
</most controversial comment of the day>
This signature serves no purpose other than to help you see which posts were made by me.
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?
What it means is, if cocaine is "bad" but the law outlaws all white powders, then yes having a non-cocaine white powder which is illegal as it violates the cocaine law, would be perfectly fine. (Yes, for you too!)
Throwing everyone in jail who has white powder, under cocaine laws, is BAD (and exactly what happens)
Using the USA as an example, as I don't know the legal age over there, here it is 18 years old. Adjust the numbers accordingly for your country...
If I have pictures of a 17 year 11 month 28 day old girl, and/or next to it a 23 year old girl who looks 17, both of which are illegal under the law and will get me sent to prison as a child porn distributer, that should be fine. (Just like in your example)
I'm not saying anything about what he does or does not have. I don't know. I wasn't there.
But when the government claims he had child porn, I have proof that in 99.(high number) percent of the time it is NOT child porn and just a smear campaign, I will firmly side with the idea that "The government just told a horrible life ruining lie" instead of think they have anything to do with child porn. I have decades and tens of thousands of court cases to back up my default assumption, out of 4-5 that turned out to be real child porn possessors of prepubescent children.
(This also might be a USA thing too) Just as when a police officer claims they tasered that 7 year old boy because it was their "last option", i instantly do not believe them. Under such rare cases would that be the case, that I now dismiss all of them as bullshit, even on that one in a hundred years time it WAS the last option.
Here, tasering for no cause happens so many times a day, that there is no possible way for a sane rational human being to believe it.
As much as I hate people that abuse children, at that ratio, everyone ever arrested for it needs released.
That will not do, as real pedophiles need to be in jail. Thus, to keep tens of thousands of innocent people out of jail, AND to keep real pedophiles in jail, the only solution is to fix the broken laws. THAT is what needs done.
The odds are in favor of this man doing nothing wrong, and the government using their ole staple lie to ruin the life of someone they don't like. The odds they actually managed to catch a real pedophile are too low.
Unlike you, I will wait for proof to be found.
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!
Right. I don't look at the stuff either, but most people assume that people who do view it are ruthless predators - who are one step away from snatching a kid from the park - without taking into account that it's possible that some people child porn imagining themselves to be the kid and not the adult.
MILF and schoolteacher fantasies anyone? Schoolgirl fantasies? Maybe schoolgirl costumes should be banned because every guy who buys one for his wife or halloween date is a sadistic pedophile.
While we're at it, let's assume that every chick who wears a schoolgirl outfit, or every horny boy who imagines banging his hawt teacher are not indulging fantasies known to be normal since antiquity. Let's assume that they are disturbed and confused and should seek counseling along with heavy doses of behavior modification and the stigma associated with victimhood! [/sarcasm]
As an aside, I find it disturbing that many folks are afraid to post the words "child pornography" on slashdot without obfuscating it to CP or ch*ld pr0n even while anonymous.
Why don't you have a seat over here and tell me what you are doing with 9 year-old ballerinas in your thumbnail cache?
Quite frankly, unless he's actually paying for it, or otherwise actually contributing to child abuse, I really don't care. Simple possession, if not a completely victimless crime, is certainly very close to being one.
Also, what exactly does "child pornography" mean? Does a 17 year old girl qualify? How about a 14 year old boy? I wish I made porn when I was 14...
In European Union the pirate party joins the parliament
I was just gonna look. I didn't really intend to do anything. I thought they were 14...
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."
In Australia it means 20 year old cartoon characters... link
There is a very simple test: has he categorised it into different folders?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
In Germany 14-17 year olds count as "youth" rather than "children", under current law, so I suppose the accusation is that this legislator possesses illegal images of people under the age of 14. Otherwise he would actually be facing charges of "youth porn".
Germany made erotically posed nudes of children illegal again in November 2008, so in fact not all of that material depicts molestation. Those images were fully legal in Germany in 2006-2008 because of a high court case that said they were not sexual abuse so they could not be considered illegal under the former law. I didn't hear about a spike in the number of German child molestations during that time, did you? So it means suggestive images do not necessarily cause molestations, as some people claim.
People need to be able to independently research claims that there's a "billion dollar" industry that creates these images, and that it's all really as abusive as they claim. These claims were used to make the laws harsher. If you can't verify the claims, what you get is one-sided propaganda. I agree with the suggestion that it should remain illegal to buy the images but legal to view them.
it'd be shocking if some members of parliament weren't pedophiles
Banned in the US. And you wonder why these guy scream child pron so often.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=359924937663867563
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
It is not the piracy party for heavens sake... It is the "Pirate party" and one of their various objectives happens to be the protection of the civil liberties. I don't think at all that a guy that fights against the implementation of state censorship of the internet with the intention to stop what's basically a thoughtcrimes all under the anthem of 'saving the children', even though all the money, resources and freedom spent on battling child porn is not justified when you find out that actual child prostitution is a much , much worse problem that for some reason gets almost no attention or resources, perhaps because battling it would actually mean messing with mafias and organized crime without giving the governments a chance to remove internet censorship...
Though to be fair, perhaps states just want to avoid to get themselves into situations like Iran's government's in which forbidding internation coverage does not help you in your efforts to prevent the world from knowing what's going on all thanks to that evil, open, decentralized beast the internet is.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
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!!
Mere possession is a problem in that it propagates the victimization whether or not money changes hands. A childhood friend of mine who was as much my sibling as my own flesh and blood (and a very early Slashdot member) was recently convicted of trafficking in child pornography. He was somewhat peripheral in terms of content but was actively contributory in establishing the distribution.
This rocked me to my core.
There is no case of possession of child pornography that does not merit thorough investigation and very few that do not merit prosecution.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I wish I had mod points for you Chris Hansen...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I don't find BDSM, bukkake, bestiality, snuff films and coprophagia questionable when done by consenting adults. I admit that bestiality, snuff and coprophagia are not my thing, but that's only my opinion and that doesn't make them questionable.
Bestiality is a gray area, we know the human adult is consenting but what about it's animal partner?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Not to mention the fact that it's nearly impossible to browse certain high-visibility sites (4chan) without some dumb-witted idiot posting a 8 year old child getting molested.
As a prestigious member of 4chan [seriously if you go check the site out, you'll see I have the vast majority of posts there] I'd like to point out how wrong you are. 4chan only occasionally gets child porn posted on any of its boards, perhaps only as often as a few times a month on /b/. Usually it's gone within minutes as the mods and janitors are quick to delete it.
/b/ you'll probably never see anything worse than shitting dick-nipples.
Honestly if you just stay away from
Bullshit.
Bust the sick fuck who made the content and bust the next layer of people who paid for or profited from the content.
After that, we hit the slippery-slope type arguments like "people who experiment with marijuana will go on to use cocaine" or "people who download child porn for free via p2p will go on to be molesters".
If they pay for the shit? Okay, fair game, but you forget that the vast majority of molestations are committed by family members and other trusted associates and not creepy guys in trenchcoats sitting on the park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent (with apologies to Jethro Tull).
You are experiencing an emotional knee-jerk reaction. Respectfully, please quit watching Chris Hansen and other manufactured mass media, read a few psych books and come back after you comprehend the post you responded to.
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".
So you are making the Hans Reiser mistake all over again, are you? How could you, and your upmodders, after all that has happened. If you talk the talk, murder and child porn are easily brushed aside, it seems. I think this is disturbing. It is the opposite force of a lynch party where someone is declared guilty without trial. You don't know this guy, you know nothing about this case, yet you are saying he is innocent. Would you felt the same if he was a preacher or swimming teacher?
(Note: for some reason, Slashdot doesn't seem to want to include line breaks in this post)
Agreed. As a thing-I-can't-think-of-a-name-for, I find it impossible to oppose victimless crimes, such as downloading or viewing child porn. (At least if we agree that it truly is victimless, but I can imagine claims that it isn't, that aren't outside the realm of reason and dispassion. Feel free to ask me, if you care to know.)
As a psychology student, I find there to be nothing unhealthy, even by official standards (DSM-IV), with curiosity with child porn, any more than with rape fantasies. Humans are so goddamn sexual, we can find almost anything erotic, including things far stranger than prepubescent sex. In my personal opinion, there's nothing wrong with exploring those things. To reiterate, immorality can only be a result of actual harm caused.
As someone else alluded to, it's probably at least as likely that a person's fantasy is to be the child, rather than the adult. I found a downright brilliant piece of erotica smut that's a fine example of this. I e-mailed the author and he wrote back, but I think I embarrassed him when he realized I wasn't especially interested in his fantasy personally, or in playing it out with him online. Anyway, here it is:
http://www.asstr.org/files/Collections/pza/www/stories/Cyberboy/Made_Myself_Into_a_BoySlave.html
Property is theft.
Actually part of his contribution involved his own family members. This experience totally reshaped my view about those involved in kiddie porn so fuck you and your ignorant generalizations and FUCK YOU to your claim of bullshit.
Neither me nor my family was directly involved but this was such a close friend we might as well have been.
Learn something about the subject before you respond in your kneejerk quasi-libertarian fashion. This is real life with real consequences, not philosophical masturbation.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
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
In other words his involvement was, from what I gather, potentially: possession, distribution, production, and from the sound of it trading this produced content with others.
Can you honestly not tell why someone might refer to downloading child pornography from where ever, as a completely one sided exchange, as in no way furthering the victimization of youth, given that the images already exist and no incentive is being provided for the production of more? In contrast I think it's very easy to say exactly where the victimization in your example is, and the fact that he would (my gathering) be involved in bartering of the fruits of the victimization rather than straight purchasing is irrelevant to the argument and provides a very clear incentive for continued violence.
In other words, your friend doesn't fit the definition. Leave him out of it.
I'm sorry your party lost a seat in the parliament, but could you try to spread a little less bullshit around, and stick to the facts?
And if he has a direct seat that it stays which him even when he changes party.
He doesn't have a direct seat, but it still stays with him. His old party will demand that he should return it like they always do when someone changes party, but as usual he will keep it.
..but what about it's animal partner?
It depends on if the animal is dressed really slutty or not.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If faced with the choice between being a police state proponent or a pervert proponent, I stick with pervert. I'm a statistician, and the amount of people harmed that way is smaller.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some countries even see drawn pictures as child pornography, if they feature graphics that someone could interpret as maybe being children.
As Germany does ...
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.
Does it? Or is it like the UK, where drawn pornography involving child characters is classed as obscenity, even when a similar drawing featuring adult characters wouldn't be?
Making, distributing or possessing real child pornography isn't classed as obscenity, it's classed as sexual abuse. The only difference between making, distributing and possessing is one of degree, not substance. Abusing a child is one part of the crime, taking photos is another, distributing them is another, possessing them is another. Anyone who does any of these things, including possessing photos, is a party to the act.
With drawn pictures, there is no act of sexual abuse; it's merely an obscenity offence.
You know, the minister who's pushing the internet censorship law showed child pornography as "accommodation" before a debate. She got a lot of complaints for that but they didn't go anywhere.
Here's a comment from Tauss about the ongoing investigation (8 Pages, German): http://daten.tauss.de/StellungnahmeTauss110309.pdf
Quite... I still remember a few teachers and friend's mothers who could have molested me all day and the only side effect would have been my perma-grin.
Though, to be fair, I assume that the "mature woman, pubescent boy" kind of child porn is not significant in proportion to the rest.
I don't find BDSM, bukkake, bestiality, snuff films and coprophagia questionable when done by consenting adults.
You do know what snuff films are, right?
The biggest problem with witch hunts for child pornographers is that it's not the cold eyed brutal child rapists who tend to get caught up and prosecuted as child pornographers, it's teachers investigating student misconduct, 13 year olds and high school students.
That the alleged pornagraphy was produced by its subject, was voluntarily distributed to the "child pornographer" or that tarring the accused with the term "child pornographer" is ludicrous seems to be no barrier to prosecution and sometimes conviction.
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...
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?
Not in the EU and the UK. This is the main problem, that we talk about different things.
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:
JÃrg Tauss was a specialist in his party, the SPD for internet. He is from the left wing, former trade union secretary, was mostly isolated in his party and had to play according to the rules.
Just before a bill is passed in the German Parliament about child porn and content fuiltering on the internet the most vocal person in the relevant committee, JÃrg Tauss an MP is searched in his Berlin office. Even the press communicates about the search before the police does. He is taken before the committee meeting which dealt with - oh surprise - child porn. They find a package with child porn images on CD. Surprise, surprise.
I personally don't care if Tauss viewed child porn images, whatever "child porn" means. What I care about is that it is very fishy when the specialist of the party is taken out. MPs should be sacrosanct from prosecution, in particular when it overlaps with a political agenda.
How can you professionally deal with say "nazi hate literature" when you don't have tried yourself to get access to it or are in possession of the works, so you know what you are talking about. What Tauss did was a bit stupid. That is all.
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.
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.
this post has forced me to add a sig. if you think its trollish of me to have a strong reaction to something i (and most other people on the planet) find highly morally objectionable, think again. there is _NO_ need in IMO to have anything labeled as 'child porn' in your possession at any time regardless of who you are, thats why its illegal. if he was trying to change the law, there are plenty of ways to hash out the law besides showing pictures to people. and curiosity, _really_ we're gonna try to use THAT as an excuse? i've honestly been curious to know what its like to take another persons life, but you can sure as hell bet i wont be doing it to find out. as mentioned below, some people are deeply personally affected by this stuff. think about how sensitive people were in the US after 9/11 and multiply that by 10 on an individual level and you start to understand _why_ its illegal in almost every place on earth. and btw, if you havent been a direct victim of 9/11 or child pornography, dont even begin to share your worthless opinion on my analogy.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
It's impossible not to visit 4chan?
Btw, no surprise that this article has seen hundreds of child-porn apologists crawl out of the woodwork. Well done Slashdot, you've really excelled yourself again.
In Germany, child pornography is defined as pornographic material with children of up to 14 years having or witnessing sex. This applies to real and realistic descriptions in any form, including textual descriptions and drawings. Material concerning teenagers less than 18 years old is called youth pornography.
http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/184b.html
I've translated a German transcript of his speech.
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
Given that sort of statement, it'd be interesting to know what IS the frequency of occurrence within the population? And where do you source such a figure? The mass-media would have us believe that paedos are lurking behind every bush, just waiting for an opportunity to snatch some young innocent. TV shows create artificial supply of fake willing and encouraging children, then declare capturing a predator as proof that it's all around us. Yet we have no real solid information on how often children are abused by Internet predators. The social paedophobia could be complete unjustified. Don't know. So please, follow up your intimation of knowing what ratio of the populace are paedos with a citation.
"Oh no... he found the
The South African law is even more bizarre: there it's purely proportional, but there are "transfer windows" where MPs can move across the aisle carrying their seats with them.
Though over there, it's benefited the ruling party more often than note.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
As has been pointed out by others, he did have child porn. It was his job to do so as he was involved in child porn investigations. Then he resigned because he disagreed with how it was handled and the people responsible immediately revoked his rights and then dragged him to court before he could get rid of the stuff.
Essentially it's like a policeman resigning and then immediately getting arrested because he's a non-law officer running around in a police station with a loaded gun (inside the chief's office, no less!).
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
In his investigation he tried to show that child porn is frequently distributed by mail order, telephone hotlines, and mobile phones again. However dealers of child porn usually require potential customers to break the law by providing illegal material themselves before trusting them.
In his hearing he admitted mistakes and he assured his innocence. He said that he had acted in the belief that he was permitted to perform such investigations as the responsible political authority.
By your stupid logic, me posting a picture of a naked child on Slashdot would make you a "child porn apologist" because you mistakenly clicked the link.
The difference here is that 4chan uses a technology called "Thumbnails". I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it, but they're typically loaded by your browser whether you like it or not, regardless of whether you click the bigger image or not.
But then again, I'm replying to a stupid troll, so I doubt my logic applies here.
Right, but it only takes one image to land you in jail because the jury is probably stupid when it comes down to IT, and doesn't understand how image caching works.
Yeah - they really shouldn't let him join the party. It will undermine everything they're trying to do.
It was pointed out up thread that he quit some anti-pedophile working group with the parliament because that working group was run by politicians engaged in human trafficking and child prostitution, see the Sachsen-AffÃre. It sounds like he is a whistle blower being punished. So he moved to a party for young people who read the news. I don't think the Pirate Party would have accepted his membership if they didn't believe his story.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DHPatch.jpg
The very act of downloading implies interest and creates a "market" irrespective of presence or type of remuneration. This drives the creation of even more; either by continued victimization or the generation of new ones.
Fetish play by consenting adults is one thing. Victimization of children is something entirely different, no matter the form or revenue.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Let's get real about something: possession can be involuntary, for a number of reasons (You may not know it was child porn until after you see it for example, after all much mainstream porn advertises the teenage status of the models), and even *if* in a given case it were possible to prove 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that a person had knowingly and deliberately obtained child porn, it is then necessary to distinguish in some way between people who look at child porn in order to identify and prosecute child-porn possession cases, (into which group every pedophile with half a brain will attempt to insert themselves, for obvious reasons) and the actual criminals. (You could not make the distinction, in which case every prosecuting cop, attorney, truck driver, etc. who was in the chain of custody of the evidence would need to be charged as well).
And as for bitching about libertarian bullshit, well, anyone who can get child porn onto your property and call the police about it can end your life, because your name will be in the papers as a child-rapist long before it ever comes out at your trial that the images in question were buried under your back porch, and there's no evidence that you knew about them at all.
Read more carefully. I said all instances of possession need to be investigated and that very few do not warrant prosecution. there are some instances of innocent possession by non-law enforcement, but that's a vanishingly small percentage. The process of investigation weeds out the innocent, and in fact the act of investigation is how the majority of people are caught.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
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
Really? Tell that to the kid who was abused, photgraphed and knows ten thousand people are using their picture for tissue paper.
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.
If people regularly posted pictures of naked children on Slashdot, I wouldn't visit it. Simple, no?
I disagree that it creates a market. If there is nothing given in return what motivation is provided for the production of new content? Do you believe is some sort of altruistic child pornography patron who funds these things for the good of the community as a whole when he sees the demand?
The people that produce and profit from, or fund the creation of, would do so regardless of whether an ecosystem of unrelated interested parties who provide them absolutely nothing, and in fact that they are more than likely completely unaware of.
When I download a song from a random person on a filesharing network, does that increase demand for the artist to produce more music? No, because he doesn't know, he doesn't profit, and unless I tell other people he'll never know the difference.
I'm not the person who replied to you about the comparison of that to any other fantasies, but in reply, actually the form does matter. There's been quite a debate over whether victimization of fiction children constitutes a crime. It seems as though you'd agree that it does because it creates a culture of acceptance towards the victimization of children. I would argue that it's not because the only victim is your sense of good taste.
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.
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On Slashdot, yes, but it's a lot more moderated than 4chan is. They're two different websites, and 4chan sees a lot more content and probably traffic than Slashdot does, so the level of bullshit is higher.
Just because you're not able to deal with the BS doesn't make everyone else a pedophile. That's a dumb way to see it.
Filesharing music is an open system while child pornography distribution is very closed. Analogies between the two are weak at best. And don't put words in my mouth, especially ones born of slippery-slope logic.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
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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