Slashdot Mirror
Iceland Considers Internet Porn Ban
Onymous Hero writes "With the printing and distribution of pornography already banned in Iceland, further measures to stop internet porn are being considered by Iceland's Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson. From the article: "Iceland is taking a very progressive approach that no other democratic country has tried," said Professor Gail Dines, an expert on pornography and speaker at a recent conference at Reykjavik University. "It is looking a pornography from a new position — from the perspective of the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights.""
This is dumb, as a woman who's various parts are all over the internet I think this is bullshit.
That won't work. Still, just for the record: fuck censorship.
This is like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean and trying to declare water illegal.
...to the internet proxy industry :-)
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
When you live in a culture with a deficit in sexual morality... who needs porn?
"It is looking a pornography from a new position..."
Meh. I've seen all the positions (and done most of them).
Months after this measure goes into effect, sex crimes will skyrocket. What other idiocy does iceland have?
The women who work in porn are there of the own free will and many of them make a decent living from it. Same with strippers. The only victims in a strip club are the guys blowing their paychecks to see a naked woman.
Dilbert is coding protection software to keep minors from viewing porn.
Dogbert: So, you're pitting your intellect against the collective sex drives of every teenager on the planet?
Dilbert: Yes.
Dogbert: Did you know that if you put a little hat on it a snowball can last a long time in hell?
Just another idiotic moral panic. Where's the actual evidence of harm to either porn consumers or producers?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Seems idiotic to protect a woman's civil rights by deciding what she can and can't do with her own body and time.
Foisting your old-world belief systems onto the Internet is neither Progressive nor innovative.
Done correctly, sex doesn't hurt anyone. It's a simple biological process that does not itself degrade or injure. A few minutes of having a dense set of nerve endings correctly modulated to produce an instictively programmed pleasure response is simply not a problem for humans.
It's people like you Mr. Jonasson that make it a problem, people who look at women as degraded if they have sex in front of cameras, you are the problem. Your judgement, sexual frustration and jealousy of those who have the sex you deny your self is all the darkness that is brought to the table.
I'm glad everyone in my life has enough fun sex that we don't have to be up tight about this old-world garbage. I treat pornstars and nuns no better or worse than I would treat the Queen of England.
So if the women are being harmed and their civil rights are being violated for voluntarily participating in porn, where's the outrage over the harm done to the men in the same videos performing the same acts? Just curious.
Leave gay porn legalized!
Performing in porn is free expression, and banning that expression is an infringement on the civil rights of the participants. The only "harm" resulting from porn is not from the porn itself, but from a society that is reactionary and overly judgmental. This is total bullshit to call this "progressive".
Iceland is taking a very progressive approach that no other democratic country has tried. It is looking a pornography from a new position
You mean now you're "looking at it" with your left hand?
In the name of health and safety, children, civil rights and stuff.
Not 'christians', fundies, conservatives or anyone else you've been trained to hate.
The ruling class deciding how you'll live with no help from the church at all.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
This is progressive like Catholicism. "Won't somebody think of the women?" They're not children and there is no coercion (if they are or there is, that's a real crime). The real story here is Iceland thinks women are not equal to men, and may not have equal power of choice.
Professor Gail Dines, an expert on pornography and speaker at a recent conference at Reykjavik University.
How exactly did this gentleman become an expert on pornography?
It is looking a pornography from a new position â" from the perspective of the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights."
What if they unconsciously want to appear in it? Isn't democracy the right to choose your destiny, good or bad?
Freedom collides with democracy again. "Progressive" democracy that can conjur reasons to remove freedom to the applause of people.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Never mind the fact that at least some of the participants of either sex many not be being exploited any more than the would if flipping burgers for minimum wage while their PhD is being reviewed.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
except for the ones involving more than one person.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
A place that has a Phallic museum should not be trying harder than Al-Quida to ban naked women.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So Professor Gail Dines is an "expert on pornography?"
I'm sure there are quite a few other "experts" out there who will take a counter position. Or two.
Iceland - vigilant defender of antisexualism.
All I can say is, enjoy your increased rape rates.
Censorship is progressive now, huh?
It's 2013 people.
"Progressive" now means that we'll tell you how to think and what to think.
It's great, I mean - look at all the burden that's taken off the individual!
(On a serious note relevant to the OP: (http://newsroom.unl.edu/blog/?p=1202) "The research, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, found in a series of experiments that participants processed images of men and women in very different ways. When presented with images of men, perceivers tended to rely more on "global" cognitive processing, the mental method in which a person is perceived as a whole. Meanwhile, images of women were more often the subject of "local" cognitive processing, or the objectifying perception of something as an assemblage of its various parts." This was happening with both male and female survey subjects.
-Styopa
So gay porn is ok? Is lesbian too? "By women for women" etc.
Only thing degrading are the pitiful politicians that come up with these suggestions. Stop making the human race look bad!
I'm sure that many readers here can associate, but I still find it impressive that a person can be considered by a community as being "an expert on pornography"
Art and freedom of expression are at risk here. This law is no different than the Taliban imposing extreme sharia law on their hapless victims, it is one small group determining everyone else's choices.
I mean, what else is there to do in Iceland other than watch porn? Poor, poor bastards...
Paternalistic, sexist bullshit. I don't see them whining about the civil rights of men in porn. No, it's only women who need protection.
Only a complete fool would buy this as anything other than a bald faced lie.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
They need the money right. Make porn companies pay for access to Iceland.
"Iceland is taking a very progressive approach...
When People talk progress remember remember the earth is round.
What do you lose if porn is banned? You lose PORN. Something that - when performed willingly, which is almost all of the time - doesn't harm anybody, but instead offers many people a good time. In other words, something that improves society. There's also the whole thing about how availability of porn is negatively correlated to occurrence of rape. I'm sure you can agree that rape is bad for society.
What do we lose, if porn is banned?
The freedom to choose.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Who the fuck are you to decide what improved or degrades society, and even if you're right, it's peoples rights to be degraded or harmed or view that content if they want. The state is not infallible and neither is the majority.
I think the question should not be what do we have to lose. But whether there is any gain legislating on that.
Why not banning lolcats? lolcats do not (typically) have polical speech or social commentary, so let's just ban it. For sure we are not losing anything of much value. But why do that? People like lolcats.
If you were making anonymous polls to keep either lolcats or porn, I think cats would go out.
The article says this is a "very progressive approach".........which means it can only be for your own good.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Wow are you ever ignorant.
What do we have to lose? The protection and liberty of women who want to make their own choices about what they do. Once something addictive and pervasive like porn is banned, it doesn't stop. It doesn't even become reduced.
What does happen? It moves to the underground.
What are the implications of this?
Women who want to make porn become criminals, and have no way to protect themselves from exploitation.
People who want to view porn become criminals, and aren't exactly doing anything that is harmful at large, which is bullshit.
Want a massive increase of very nasty porn without any health regulations and protection for the actors? Ban porn. Want to keep people and society at large as safe and healthy as they can be? Keep it legal and keep it acceptable. There is no other logical alternative. Ideologies do not work in the fact of facts.
Live with it and get over your righteous delusional thinking.
Pornography is mostly produced by willing people in the US/EU. But icelandic politic rather than admit they have a big dildo stuck in the ass and are conservative wanting to censure why they don't like, rename the issue as "progressive" and paint women doing porn as poor poor fragile forced doll unable to decide for themselves and which have to be protected against themselves and ban porn. In other word people stuck in the middle age thinking women are unable to decide for themselves, or horror , wanting to work in porn. *shrug* if the icelandic people keep electing conservatist, their problem, it is a democratic society, but calling the decision "progressive" irks me.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Porn is illegal in the UK, the ban works very well, downloading film and music without payment or at least the right holders agreement is also illegal and is the reason why HMV goes from strength to strength, every second shop in the UK is an HMV, Virgin Megastores being the other shop.
Again, I will defy popular opinion and make my idiotic point
Fixed that for you.
Speech is political or social commentary, which is what actually needs to be protected. If porn gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society.
And once again:
Porn is social commentary, and no amount of fanciful wishing on your part will change that fact.
I think "free speech" as we want to practice is now is an illusion.
Sadly, I need to agree here - since we're restricted to 'free speech zones', the First is an illusion.
It has a very bad consequence, which is that the signal-to-noise ratio becomes almost all noise.
Utter nonsense. The fact that you can't filter is your own personal problem. The fact that content - in all its levels of quality - is produced at such massive outputs is a good thing.
Even more, it prevents us from having a community with standards.
Does it? That's funny, because I've yet to see lesbian bondage orgies strolling down the street. Oh, right - because standards have nothing to do with quantity of speech.
When porn is common, everyone gets desensitized to porn and lets it shape their worldview.
Better get to banning movies, video games, and network security tools. Can't have people being desensitized.to violence, corruption, and hacking.
In the name of freedom of speech, expression, etc. we have permitted ourselves to become crass and to support outright destructive ideas,
Ah - there it is: You don't like something, so everyone who does is supporting the destruction of civilization.
Porn is almost as bad for the mind as fluoridation. Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I — I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.
There is a valid argument for banning paid pornography because of the difficulty in ensuring that performers are not coerced into the profession. Not all are coerced, but some may well be. Human rights are always exist in balance with each other, and protecting people from coercion should definitely figure in that balance.
Truly amateur porn with no financial gain for the participants is different. But again, only so long as you can prove that there is no financial gain.
Just leave the gay porn. It's not as if any males were ever exploited to make porn. No. t the frail, fragile little women-folk who need to be protected from their own decision making capability.
what about all the harm that it does to the poor defenseless men
Speech is political or social commentary, which is what actually needs to be protected. If porn gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society.
Says you. You realize that all the arguments in your post apply just as well to Xbox, IM, dancing, music and Slashdot itself, right? It's like you're from the Taliban or something.
Also, not all porn is photographic. There's a huge art industry in porn that stands to be affected by any attempt to ban it. Is a free society really going to tell artists what they can and cannot draw?
For over 115 years.
If porn gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society.
You lose the resources that have been allocated to the effort that could have been used to stop murderers or feed children. You lose the freedom to not have to verify the gazillion bytes of data on your person as "porn free".
You lose the right to define "porn" as you see fit and will be under some arbitary definition of a magistrate or whateverthefuckitistheyuseoverthere.
Speech is political or social commentary, which is what actually needs to be protected.
Speech is much more than that, but even if it isn't, you won't be allowed to speak certain combinations of "1"s and "0"s.
Last time I heard, Iceland was the new haven for free speech online. What happened?
...the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights.
This is not progressive at all. What it really is, to be blunt, is incredibly sexist. Professor Dines clearly views these women as too stupid and ignorant to make such decisions on their own, or even know that their civil rights are being violated. If that is not sexist, I don't know what is.
Just a quick FYI, people:
This ban is aimed at violent porn, not porn (as in naked people having sex). So, just to be clear, images depicting naked people having sex will be a-ok, whereas images depicting, say, women being raped or abused would not. It's the consenting adults principle, if you will.
How do I know this? Well, first of all, it's in the article: " "We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime," he said. " The "he" here is Ögmundur Jónasson, the Interior Minister. Also, he's discussed this on his homepage (which is in Icelandic, but here's the link: http://www.ogmundur.is/fra-lesendum/nr/6571/) where he specified that his concern is violent porn, NOT porn itself.
That said, I'm pretty skeptical about this being possible in practice, but I'd love to hear Slashdot's opinion about if people here think it is.
I am not a vegetarian werewolf.
Wait, what? I'm an expert in pornography. Been researching it since 1995
Sure we do -- we lose the right to do things without someone else deciding that it's morally wrong and forcing us not to do it.
Ah, but whose standards? Are you suggesting your standards are so awesome the rest of us should be legally required to adhere to them? Because anybody who suggests something is half way to becoming the problem as they'll want to make it illegal to do anything they disagree with.
Humans have been crass and supportive of outright destructive ideas for millenia. And humans are a diverse group who believe all sorts of stupid shit, believing otherwise is stupid.
And people tend to define "outright destructive ideas" as anything they don't agree with.
The best you can do in society is to try to balance the needs and wants of everybody -- not take one group and make what they think is Divine Immutable Truth and make everybody else follow it.
Who do we pick? The loudest? The most numerous? The ones who have always been in power? The first born male child?
Little old ladies who think a skirt should never be above the knee, people who believe a woman's face should be covered, or that dancing is the work of the devil -- those people are all entitled to their beliefs, but that doesn't confer any obligation on me to adhere to their beliefs. No more than anything that I choose to do that they disagree with confers any obligation on them.
The only obligation here is to shut the fuck up and mind your own business. Freedom of speech says "you can disagree, but you can't stop it" -- and quite frankly, it's a far better situation than a bunch of fanatics trying to make it law that the rest of us live up to what they believe.
I'm not going to adhere to your beliefs just because you want to, and I'm not going to listen to anything you say that says "god told me we can't do this" ... and at that point, you hold your tongue, and I'll hold mine. But if you think your beliefs gives you the right to tell me what I can and can't do -- then your beliefs are shit.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What exactly make one an "expert in pornography" ?
when you make whoopee with a corpse does that involve more than one person or not ?
inquriing minds want to know !
If porn gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society.
We lose the porn. I like porn, and losing porn would make this society worse for me. Just because *you* don't value porn doesn't make it worthless. This is why we have freedom, because people have different values.
In the name of freedom of speech, expression, etc. we have permitted ourselves to become crass and to support outright destructive ideas, and in fact force them on others
Yes, destructive ideas like censorship are being force on Icelanders. This is a serious problem. Far more serious than porn.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Don't share your vital fluids and don't drink the water... (Dr. Strangelove)
Zing!
You'll see more rape. More porn -> less rape.
Where's the actual evidence of harm to either porn consumers or producers?
Careful there, all it takes is one porn producer or consumer to sincerely say "looking at or being involved in producing porn hurt me" and your argument collapses.
It's far better for everyone to admit that IN SOME CASES porn involving only consenting adults and viewed only by consenting adults is harmful and IN SOME CASES it is not.
Absent scientific studies, we are free to argue about who is harmed and how much harm is done. Within reason, we are even free to argue the definition of harm.
In a democratic society whose constitution or basic law doesn't address the issue of porn or freedom of speech/publication/art, it's the job of the lawmakers to listen to the people, examine the facts, and pass laws or decline to pass laws accordingly.
Assuming and anti-internet-porn law would be legal and in practical terms enforceable, it's the government's job to weigh the harm being done by the status quo against the harm done by increased regulations, and to take into account the will of the people in the process. Not an easy job.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
This isn't "progressive". Coercive authority is the oldest, rustiest, dullest tool in the toolbox of government. Coercive authority has been the "solution" for thousands of years. Calling this "progressive" is nothing but a canned advertisement straight out of the propaganda textbook.
You know what would be truly progressive? Individual freedom. Natural human rights -- namely the right to be free from this kind of coercive authority. The problem with individual rights is that there's nothing in it for government.
Secondly, labeling this a victory for "civil rights" is equally deceitful. The behaviors they want to control are occurring 100% voluntarily betwee consenting adults. There cannot be any violation of "civil rights" here, because logically, every violation of civil rights requires the exact opposite of voluntary association: coercion.
In summary, there is nothing new under the sun of coercive authority, even after thousands and thousands of years.
We lose the freedom to choose to jerk off to pornography. Which is pretty damned precious: had I not got a healthy right hand, I'd've spent my youth chasing after terrible, terrible women, and perhaps stupidly becoming manipulated into an equally terrible marriage and family. All that to jerk off inside a vagina rather than with my right hand and some pr0ns; I've seen it happen.
Your so-called "community standards" are defined by international law to be subordinate to fundamental rights, such as the freedom of speech, both in its "speak" and "receive" sides. Secondarily, porn is not forced upon anyone. Thirdly, desensitization to pornography is a myth perpetuated by protestant and feminist anti-pornography groups, and has no basis in controlled studies.
I'd much rather hear the feminist viewpoint explicitly. What is the supposed "damage to women"? Why is it a "violation of women's rights", in general, rather than a violation of specific rights of specific women? Why is it not an equal violation of men's rights, or are there some rights that women have but men do not?
You still have the freedom to choose. It just requires relocation, much as if you want to view child porn today, you have to go outside the first world.
If your porn is that important to you, it's a small sacrifice.
What the hell do Icelanders masturbate to?
Seriously, masturbation is happening in Iceland godamnit, and I want to know what's going on in their heads? Family? Friends? Co-workers.... weird. Maybe Vanna White still has appeal to the Icelanders. Godamn Icelanders, I feel soooo sorry for you. I feel like I should post some ascii porn.
Even among feminists, there's significant disagreement about whether porn is inherently exploitative of women, or whether it's fine if all the performers have consented to participate (if they haven't then it's sexual assault at least). And this debate has been going on for several decades at least, with some (e.g. Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem) taking the anti-porn side, while others (e.g. Ellen Willis and Susie Bright) taking the view that women should be able to express their sexuality on film if they want. The key problem: There's no scientific data to support any position on the subject, so it's come down to gut feelings with various rationalizations on both sides.
My own take: I'm not going to support passing laws to deal with purely theoretical problems. If the anti-porn side can demonstrate some actual documented harm, then I'll change my mind.
I am officially gone from
Have you seen the women in Iceland? #!$( gorgeous. I'm shocked that anyone would want to look at porn in Iceland.
Do they have civil right?
both of them.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
I see a possible future where the entirety of Iceland's international internet traffic is easily handled by a single 56kbps dialup modem.
Ban porn. LOL. Try banning the air that you breath. You cannot legislate a person's morals no matter how much you wish to. At best, these efforts will slightly inconvenience people who want porn. Have they not heard of SSH tunneling?
The most gainful activity that a government official can engage in is composting another government official.
It's her!
From Bullshit!
If you haven't seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k-mjxnFmxo
And you will see just how much scientific evidence she got about her claims.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
— John Stuart Mill
We fought for freedom, and all we got was democracy.
— Pieter-Dirk Uys
Johnny-cum-lately!
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
If men didn't see a guy eating out a gal in almost every single porn scene then cunnilingus would remain the weird, kinky act it was before the wide distribution of porn. Every time you get your bean flicked you should be thankful that your man is tuned into porn enough to know that is what you're supposed to do.
They must mean *regressive*.
"the harm it does to the women who appear in it"
So male gay porn is OK?
My studio - www.graylands.ca
is uptight.
I don't see why a profession which damages women should be outlawed for that reason alone ... I guess these pencil pushers haven't done a menial job in their fucking life. Between chemical exposure and repetitive strain both the duration and quality of my life has been substantially reduced ... all in perfectly legal jobs these assholes have no problem with.
Is porn an ideal job? No ... so what, most of us have far from ideal jobs.
A sexual partner?
Remove porn from the internet! Good one!
Maybe after that we can solve teen pregnancy by telling high school kids sex is bad.
Oh, and then we move all our computers, and everything else on the internet, into the cloud, so it'll be secure!
Im Icelandic so straight from the hourses mouth.
Seriously nothing to see here...
There was a poll where if i remember correctly (citation needed) 80 % were against it, men and women alike.
His party the left green coalition was really down in the dump at that point and had gone below 10%.
This was a "huge one man" public stunt that happened over a week ago and most people over here have already forgotten about it.
No ideas came forth as to how he intended to manage this, with what methods or laws and without much congressional support to boot.
The same congressman/minister has come with crazy ideas of a moral internet police regularly for the past 10 years, and always been left standing alone even by his own party members.
But then again it is one way of trying to grab that minority vote.
As a woman who is proud of her sexuality, this offends me. There are many other things that can be done to improve equality than ban porn. If anything, banning porn may well increase sexual violence.
With an affadavit that all performers were willing participants. Require a small tax to copyright/distribute the porn in Iceland.
Obviously no "civil rights" are being violated. But JUST PRETEND:
What about news and reporting over people who are being abused all around the world? Should such NEWS be banned, as it clearly documents civil rights violations?
What about history books that cover past tragedies? Those were "civil rights" violations (and often much worse). Should their mention be banned?
The difference, of course, is that porn titilates the viewer. That's really all this is about. Their logic falls flat on its face, as the documentation (and pictures of) "civil rights violations" have never been subject to ANY manner of censorship (with the occasional exception of a government trying to hide what it is doing by preventing proof of it from getting out).
The idea here is that a person (presumably a man, because underlying any law like this is the assumption than men, and men's thoughts, are evil), sitting at their desk at home, is capable of injuring someone through their thoughts. Men aren't just evil in the eyes of someone writing such a law- they are evil WIZARDS!
They still have a choice, even if they find it distasteful, it's still their CHOICE!
Rape/slavery is another crime altogether. Stop this idiotic attempt to equate porn with crime.
How does one get to be an "expert on pornography," and do I qualify?
Yea, that kind of "progressive" approach is usually the kind of thing that Iran or China would do.
This is already the case in Iceland -- it's illegal to product pornography in the country. So if your art is not arty-enough (however that's measured), you are now a criminal instead of an artist.
Banning pr0n would open up 99% of the tubes for other uses.
os just trying to save women and forget about the poor men who are just stunt cocks? Don't male porn stars make less than female porn stars?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
"If porn gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society."
I don't follow your argument. If we ban porn, then we lose something that will improve our society, because porn improves our society. What exactly do you mean?
The population of Iceland is about 320,000. Yet it seems to get a fair amount of attention. Preston in Lancashire never gets told to fuck off for having some weird loitering laws. Countries threaten war with Iceland when it changes its fishing policy.
I imagine your weather is shittier than ours (here in Scotland). Do you while away the dark months planning the overthrow of the world? We just moan a lot. You seem to be a great country. (I may be prejudiced. I was brought up on the BBC program, Noggin The Nog)
An interesting social experiment. I can't wait to hear what happens. Will rape rates go up? Will childbirth rates go down? Will a black market form, or incarceration rates go up for "possession?" Or will testicles start exploding? Will men simply lose their sex drive, and women start feeling inadequate? Or will nothing happen at all, and Iceland just move on to the next big witch hunt?
I sure am glad it's Iceland trying this, because frankly it's discrimination against the celibate (we DO need outlets, you know).
Fortunately, society doesn't care if you don't like it. The rules of society, mores, should be, and in most cases are, formed by those who comprise it and their collective desires. If the good people of Iceland choose to ban something they feel is damaging to their society, good for them. There is a sad lack of utilitarianism these days. The government should provide for the greatest benefit for the greatest number. In theory, yes, if you are really being marginalized, and really marginalized, not just that you can't jerk off, then the government should pay attention to the needs of the few. Otherwise, your interests are outliers and you can work to see them recognized by the many.
FWIW, they aren't saying all porn is banned, just internet porn, which as we all know, has A LOT of regulation.
as long as the human in it is male.
Bestiality FTW!
Dear Iceland,
Whilst i'm not gay, I greatly respect your stance on same-sex marriage you instituted in 1940. In some ways you're a pioneer compared to many other western societies.
However, I couldn't find anything that described Iceland's view on violent movies and games. Iceland has banned any form of sex in media, so what about violence? This could include war movies, gangster movies, documentaries, first person shooting games, etc. Are these banned too, or do you deem that violence is acceptable and porn is not. If I was forced to ban one of these, I would not hesitate for a second in making my choice ... it would not be sex in media (also referred to as porn).
Sincerely,
Joe D Plumber
There is a sad lack of utilitarianism these days
Utilitarianism is what I'm asking for. Provide evidence of the utility of banning porn.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If I want to live in a porn-free society, that's my only option. Are you OK with that?
Children can consent to many things, including porn. Just ask them.
Whether that's the case legally is another matter, but the past 50 years have shown us that legal standards change quite a bit regarding sexuality.
If NAMBLA contributes a few million to an election campaign, it could be legal sooner than you think. Free speech!
Again, I will defy popular opinion and make my unfashionable point:
What do we lose, if religion is banned?
Speech is political or social commentary, which is what actually needs to be protected. If religion gets banned, we don't lose anything that will improve our society. If politicians attack political and social speech as religion, it must be defended there, as it has with cases online like the ones defending the Youtube Videos that attack the Prophet Muhammad. However, political speech on religion is much more easily censored by having six media companies, run by rich religionists, control the news who refuse to report on certain things.
I think "free speech" as we want to practice is now is an illusion. It has a very bad consequence, which is that the signal-to-noise ratio becomes almost all noise. Even more, it prevents us from having a community with standards. Since religion is common, everyone gets desensitized to their world of make-believe and lets it shape their worldview.
In the name of freedom of speech, expression, etc. we have permitted ourselves to become crass and to support outright destructive ideas, and in fact force them on others, just to prove we're "open-minded" and that we like government and big media are supporters of freedom, liberty, peace, sexual liberation, diversity, porn, etc.
This is entirely disingenuous. There are innumerable jobs that depend on the resources you were born with, from sports to modeling to soldiering to becoming an astronaut or a scientist. You're trying to make some kind of exception if the sport is sexual, and it doesn't hold up.
These roles in society are not corrupt; they are based upon perfectly natural and reasonable preferences that we have for one another. Would you prefer an ugly, smelly, stupid companion, or a beautiful, naturally pleasant, brilliant one?
Would sports fans prefer an "athelete" who had a poor physique and could not win? Would the actresses in Hollywood be of such great interest to everyone if they were ugly? Would a stupid person make a good scientist? We are what we are, and if someone else were lucky enough to be gifted with some physical resource that they can market, who are you to say this is a bad thing?
It is ridiculous to attempt to make the case that only earned skills and knowledge have value, or, conversely, that those things we are lucky enough to find innate, do not.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm an Icelander here and this is just outragious. I haven't even heard about this yet myself! I definetly know 'most' of my fellow Icelanders aren't going to be happy about this. I mean how often do you go searching for porn? We do it just as much as you the-rest-of-the-world would. My goverment is being unfair again.
...the following rule: If a porn movie is made, there is an investigation. If the investigation reveals that the women war forced in any way it is a life sentence for the producers. If the women voluntarily participated to make money they are mutilated in a way that no man can ever look into their faces again without throwing up. Sounds crazy? Not much crazier than what I hear from feminazis from time to time.
Who is to say this is not a free speech issue?
I am not sure scientific data is the right basis for a position on this issue. The issue both sides are arguing is whether the choice for women to appear in porn is or can be a free choice in a meaningful way.
"What is freedom?" and "how can we have it?" are questions that are not amenable to scientific analysis.
For the record, I think banning porn because some performers are coerced/exploited is as stupid as banning mortgages because predatory lending happened. And by that I don't mean to imply blaming the victim, but rather that one should go after the bad apples who are duping vulnerable people.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
How in the fuck is banning something considered progressive?
Now gamers in Iceland will have much better ping times and lower latency, plus much more time for WoW!
From a feminist standpoint, both the legislation and the quotes in the article are outrageous. "Vulnerable women and children"... really? I have to be looked after like a child? Porn exploits women, but not men? I guess we're just so helpless and and defenseless, we need lots of laws to protect us since we're clearly so incapable of doing it ourselves.
Now, someone go take my trash out and check my oil. I'm too fragile to do it myself.
According to OSC's Enderverse....
Then stop using negative regulation to trash my society, which influences a lot more than either of our noses.
Internet people are amazing. They repeat the same things over and over again, even when oblivious to context, and assume it somehow makes them profound.
Philosophically, it's no different than copypasta.
What do we lose, if porn is banned?
My temper, for starters. Also an entire generation of teenage boys. I mean, you think it's hard to stop a teenage boy from downloading music ...?
What do we lose, if porn is banned?
What would we lose if you were arrested for making that comment? I find it rather disgusting, and I don't find it very useful.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Aside from the issue of exploitation of women who participate in pornography, we should ask ourselves what pornography does to all the men who consume it. And no, I'm not talking about how it warps men's perceptions of women, because I don't think it necessarily does, or, even if it does, I don't think that that is the most important thing at stake.
What are we doing to our teenagers if we tell them that sex is wrong and bad and dangerous, and therefore that they should abstain? Teenagers (particularly boys) will find a sexual outlet, and so is it better to let them engage in the real thing (albeit with better education than currently exists about pregnancy and disease and tumultuous emotions), or is it better to let those desires unfurl in evolutionarily novel ways, like via pornography use? What happens when men spend years fapping to unreal images of women in magazines, television, and the internet?
I think porn is highly addictive. Not in obvious ways like alcohol cravings to a long-sober man, but in more subtle ways, like the inability to stop drinking after the first sip. If porn should be blocked, I think it should be for the sake of men, not because of some babble about harming women. Of course, then you have to deal with all sorts of sexualized female imagery in media and adverts, and I think the genie may be permanently out of the bottle on that..... I guess I just don't think you can take away pornography without maybe having a real, serious talk about how much more actual sex teenagers may and ought to begin to have, and how society should deal with that. Granted, I think that may be the better discussion to have.
Yeah... we Americans think that the pursuit of pleasure is the meaning of life. Like, if it feels good, how can it be wrong? And I think we've taken the wrong attitude towards pornography: I feel like pornography was a natural thing to evolve, but then we came to justify it by saying, "Oh, it's a reaction against all the Puritanical bullshit, and it feels good so it _must_ be good!" And certainly that Puritanical mumbo-jumbo _was_ bullshit, but I think the real answer was just to have more sex and focus on real relationships, not to help a generation of young men waste their time with technology-enhanced masturbation.
But aren't there many other things that contribute just as little to society as porn? (Violent) sports for example. How does society benefit from seeing guys smash into each other or hit each other? Doesn't that desensitize us to violence? Or religion that desensitizes us to stupidity.
Unless we're willing to ban anything that is not For The Common Good, then don't start banning things just because you don't like them.
The department of equal rights found out, that, interestingly, the men in porn are all not harmed at all and their civil rights are not touched either.
Captcha: liberty :)
Ha
it is in everyone's best interest to have a safe, civil society in which to live. While it is true freedom implies we have certain liberties and rights, it is not a license for everyone to do as they please. This is anarchy; not freedom. Whether you choose to accept it or not, pornography destroys the family, which is the most basic and fundamental glue that holds a society together. Freedom requires that we build and maintain a society where people are free to choose the *good*.
The wonderful free societies that some of us are lucky to live in have given us the luxury to have this thing called the internet where all kinds of images are just a click away.... But just like we can saw that it's harmful to society if we are causing global warming by the free choices we make, we can also decide that the harm that pornography does to society outweighs whatever good it does (whatever that is, besides just providing a self-indulgent personal pleasure).
Also, I don't think it's fair to equate internet porn to magazines or other types of pornographic media. It is important to consider the amount of and accessibility to porn that the internet enables.
I watch a lot of porn, and the only place I ever see women being violently abused is in movies and on regular TV shows. So no more CSI, Law and Order, etc.
Everyone that investigates the REAL hard-core rapists discovers the crime is about power, not sex. The women that are taking advantage of generations of 'political correctness' training in Icelandic schools and wider society to 'ban' pornography are also political criminals who get off on abusing power.
There is a saying that the last people you want in charge of a country are those that have worked hard to get there. When the corrupt scummy politicians are merely enriching themselves, most people don't worry. When these monsters use their power to wage war against the people, the down-sides of out mock democratic governments become all too easy to see.
Only very recently, a horror cast from the same material as Gail Dines was convicted of Crimes against Humanity in some African nation. This genocidal criminal had been "Minister for Female Rights" in her government. Her crime? She had IN PERSON selected young women to be taken away by her troops to be gang-raped and then murdered. As minister she had attended conferences all over the globe, and had probably sat in the same room as Gail Dines, and clapped at the same proposals. Google the story yourself if you care.
America already experienced politically correct insanity from profoundly unrepresentative female pressure groups when it banned booze. The 'war on drugs' that ruins the lives of so many people, and puts unthinkable numbers of black people in prison, is more of the same.
A free society is a free-thinking society, where uniformity is feared and despised. Live and let live. Unfortunately, power desires fear, and there is no better 'fear' than fear of what your neighbour is up to.
Depravities like Ogmundur Jonasson understand the psychology preached by Edward Bernays decades earlier. Gain control of the mass media the mob is indoctrinated by, and ruthlessly regulate the schooling the children of the mob receive. Now turn the screw, and alter society into any form you desire. All that is required beyond power is enough time.
The pictures of frenzied mobs of males attacking and sexually assaulting females in Egypt shows exactly how far this form of sexual suppression can be taken. Did you know that in Egypt, the vast majority of women of ALL religions (Jew, Christian and Muslim) and all socio-economic backgrounds are circumcised in nearly the most extreme form, as a result of years of power abuse by analogues of Gail Dines. Deviate and evil Alphas will happily seek to control the sexuality of ordinary people- in which way hardly matters, because it is the thrill of knowing your actions have effected the lives of millions of Humans.
Banning porn. Forcing young women to parade naked through the village. Sending unmarried women to the Magdalene laundries. Female genital mutilation. Banning booze. Banning sex outside of marriage. Banning women from wearing trousers. Banning women from NOT wearing trousers. Banning topless women. Banning women from covering their breasts. Widow cleansing. The rules are arbitrary and contradictory because they are NOT about achieving a higher form of morality in society.
Each of these things in the list happens today, authorized by the highest leaders and female authorities in a nation. Even the 'laundries', although this is now a thing in nations like Saudi Arabia, rather that Ireland. When the depraved Clinton was President, his greatest thrill and achievement was sticking a cigar in the private parts of some women while they were both in the Oval Office. Do you idiots NEVER learn what this tells you about the true nature of those that gain power over you?
Gail Dines and Ogmundur Jonasson are monsters, and will go exactly as far as you allow them to. They are psychopaths that define their success in life by the number of 'lesser' Humans that fall prey to their whims. In turn, these scumbags are used by higher political monsters, like those responsible for the rolling program of wars across our planet. Go read about Hitler, and the legion of 'righteous' nutcases that worked day and night to ensure his political supremacy amongst the German people.
Strippers and ladies who accept money for sex with strangers, while not mutually exclusive, are predominately damaged and/or drug-addicted and/or predisposed to promiscuity. Should they be able to make a living doing what they do? Absolutely. Are they a bright, oppressed underclass of women struggling to better their station in the long run using those shallow physical characteristics most men find attractive in a woman? Infrequently. Do the night's plans revolve first around securing the means to get high and paying for that night's motel room. Very often.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The only good government is a government that is digging its own grave.
--libman
And Iceland is not an exception, sadly.
I was actually thinking of moving to Iceland, but this bullshit makes me
think I'd be making a mistake if the government has fools who waste
time on idiocy like this.
Someone said it very well recently: Isn't it the most hostile-to-women thing you can imagine to treat them all the time as if they are not sexual creatures, too? To claim that every time women and sex meet, there has to be something evil going on?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
2. Initiating force against an adult woman to forcibly prevent her from being allowed to do what she actually voluntarily wants to do, is 'protecting her rights'.
If that's "progressive" thinking then I think I prefer "regressive" thinking.
My other UID is three digits.
Some facts about pornography:
1. It is addictive.
2. It is harmful to all those involved; these include the people being photographed, the people making the photographs, and the person using the photographs.
3. It is destructive. It destroys marriage, careers, and lives.
4. It wreaks havoc in the brain circuitry that governs a person's sexuality. There are people who actually prefer to wank off to porn than have sex with their partners. This becomes even more damaging when the user of the porn is a child.
5. Porn has no socially redeeming attributes.
Having said all this, good luck to Iceland in actually blocking porn sites. New ones will sprout up faster than they can be blocked.
This is a shot across the bow of Jews. It's pretty common knowledge that they own the porn industry, and just as in banking Iceland has decided to take a hard line against their predatory behavior.
Iceland's a nice place. They simply don't want it Jewified like the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
Hmmm... They want to protect me by violating my right to choose what I want to do and how I want to do it without harming anyone else??? So if I take a video of myself masturbating and posting it online this will be illegal. This is massively regressive!
I have no expectation that the public space (or anyone else's private space) will be tailored to my liking. The only place I expect things to go my way is inside my home, and to a much more limited extent, within the borders of land I own. If someone wants to make a lot of noise, paint their house like a Dr. Suess story, board up all their windows, or swim butt-ugly naked in the town center fountain, I wish them well. Men can wear skirts and women can wear pants, anyone can marry anyone else or not, and the "acceptable" number of tattoos and piercings, no matter how unlikely or crude, shall be unlimited. I don't agree that it is legitimate that people have the right to regulate anyone else's actions in the public space, unless those actions actually cause direct physical harm or direct financial injury to a non-consenting party.
No. When in doubt, it's best to do nothing and let individuals decide for themselves.
I absolutely can tell you it would lead to a better world. The arguments are many and extremely well founded, from reduction in harm done by evil legislation (such as huge jail sentences, ruined families, lost opportunities), to tax revenues, to personal liberty issues, to healthcare issues such as appetite enhancement, to elimination of it as a viable income source for gangs and cartels, to replacement for alcohol as a much, much safer intoxicant.
You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to my opinion.
You know nothing of the sort. You have an opinion you want to inflict on everyone else. For my part, I absolutely support your choice to not engage with porn on any or all levels. But that's where your liberties end and the liberties of others begin.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"At the moment, we are looking at the best technical ways to achieve this. But surely if we can send a man to the moon, we must be able to tackle porn on the internet."
He clearly doesn't understand the Internet.
This will certainly not stop people from viewing or paying for porn anywhere. I hope other countries follow suit and it becomes the chief domestic export of the US. The desire for porn is predictable and stable if not growing. Moves like this could very well stabilize the economy.
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html
Porn speaks for itself.
This must be some new usage of the word "progressive" I was not previously familiar with. As for civil rights, how the fuck is Iceland going to apply its perverted notion of what constitutes "civil rights" to other countries and their citizens?
I guess it's their idea that you have the RIGHT to remain covered up. You have the right to wear a burqa, I guess.
Also, while we're at it, Iceland, who the fuck do you think you are to try to censor the rest of the planet? Fuck YOU!
I guess Iceland is going to go along with the backward-ass trend of restricting freedom in the name of... freedom. What utter bullshit. Are all their lawmakers retarded, or just a pathetic few?
You cut all of Group Captain Lionel Mandrakes' lines! WTF, man?
When porn is common, everyone gets desensitized to porn and lets it shape their worldview.
So this is a reason to ban it? Rock Music is popular, everyone is desensitized to it, so lets ban it. Baseball is popular, lets ban it...
It should really read "Onanymous Coward".
A violation of their civil rights? Come on! It's a violation of their civil rights if someone holds a gun to their head and forces them to take their clothes off while taking pictures of them. That is not how most porn works. Someone gives the girl a couple hundred bucks to take their clothes off or have sex with someone in exchange for the ability to record it and sell the recording. That's part of what we in the US call free enterprise. It does not indicate a violation of your civil rights if you agree to do it.
First you think regulation can destroy our society, now you're claiming it's weak.
What exactly are you arguing here?
No, it's not. I want to live in a society without the effects of legal pornography. Every action has effects, remember?
In the same way, if society legalized child porn, I'd want to live in a society without the effects of legal child porn, which would be a slow but steady legitimization of intergenerational underage sex.
In the same way, if society legalizes the Holocaust, and decides to put Jews in death camps, I can personally not put any Jews in death camps, but that doesn't change the result and the consequences for my society and myself.
What necessary function does porn serve?
What does it contribute?
Religion seems to be a mixed bag, in that a lot of good comes of it along with the alleged bad. Porn has no such record.
When the Internet was more free, there were hundreds of tiny websites springing up all over sharing every nuance of sexuality, some for money. Some of these tiny sites did very well as the few people who were into a certain thing were free to experiment and realize they weren't alone. Then the DOJ tightened up the regulations (Google "2257") surrounding the records that had to be kept on all the models and images (in the name of Protecting The Children, of course), and the threat of an unannounced FBI investigation at your house and an automatic 5-year sentence for a record-keeping mistake made it too expensive and dangerous for the mom and pop operations to continue. So all that was left were the biggest producers who had to aggressively market to the lowest common denominator to stay in business, giving the strong impression that porn is by definition degrading to its participants. Feeding into the argument that it must be prohibited.
Also, what about gay male porn? Are the men who work in that also having their civil rights infringed?
Also also, today's porn is tomorrow's erotica. It has always been thus. The standards of what is to be banned will always be arbitrary and should shift minute to minute, but they won't, which means that any law passed will immediately seem antiquated.
She was on Penn and Tellers BS. If you go by the epesode and the garbage she has on line , you can tell she is a complete nutjob ...
It's definitely not Iceland as a whole doing this; Ögmundur Jónasson will probably be voted out before this can come to pass. However, the reason this is a thing at all is because of the "nei ýðir nei!" (no means no!) popular movement in response to increasing reports of rape against women by inebriated men.
Having said that, in my humble opinion, internet porn and the numerous adult toy shops should of course continue to be available as healthy outlets for consenting adults; on the other hand, Iceland's ingrained binge drinking culture should be held up to scrutiny, which seems to be bolstered by the government monopoly on booze not sold in restaurants nor bars.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
"...from the perspective of the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights".
It would appear that the women (not appearing in porn) claim harm, thus wishing to limit the civil rights of others (possibly including, but not mandating) appearing in porn.
Like you've done?
I'm sure I can find more study references, but here's one, referring to one (of many) studies showing that access to port *CUTS* violence against women.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-sunny-side-of-smut&PHPSESSID=b78ca943dd5e6cf79c6baa2504c1b47b >
And I believe others have noted that the states that repress port also have high violence against women rates.
Sexuality, if repressed, is going to come out in some other way....
mark
If they ban a form of speech, then they aren't good people. They're criminals, and their wishes should be ignored, and any attempt on their part to enforce their wishes should be met with violence.
Wait, I thought it was Americans that were uptight about sex, not the progressive, liberal Europeans!
Interesting how their is this correlation of an increase in consumption of porn and the sales of ED drugs no? Maybe Icelanders want to have actual sex rather than just watch...
If men do not have access to porn, they will not know about sex. Then they will spend all their time fishing instead of hurting gals.