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EU To Vote On Proposal That Could Ban All Online Pornography
An anonymous reader writes "The European Union is voting on a proposal next week that could lead to a blanket ban on porn in member states, and it seems the measure may well be approved. The proposal, called 'Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU,' mentions issues such as women carrying a 'disproportionate share of the burden' when raising a family, violence against women as 'an infringement of human rights,' and gender stereotypes that develop early in life. From the proposal: "Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism." Update: 03/07 19:05 GMT by T : Pirate MEP Christian Engström writes on his blog that citizens writing to the European Parliament about the proposal are not necessarily being heard: "Before noon, some 350 emails [on this topic] had arrived in my office. But around noon, these mails suddenly stopped arriving. When we started investigating why this happened so suddenly, we soon found out: The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens."
Up next: EU proposes new law that says all sex is rape.
then gay male porn is all good, yeah?
I doubt that it is erotic imagery or copy that they are banning.
has to do with topless women peddling orange juice in adverts on television.. not "porn" in general.
Why is it that so few leaders are willing to ignore violence against men, one form of which is the forced circumcision and genital mutilation of boys which remains legal in many countries that protect girls from similar. Can't violence just be opposed in all it's forms without regard to sex?
Next on the lawmakers' agenda: requiring all politicians to be honest, and banning all people from eating junk food.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm quickly downloading the Internet before it becomes contraband here.
Porn is a release, not an inspiration.
I travel in Europe occasionally and some of the commercial billboards I have seen in airports would be considered pornography in the US...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Because power isn't about taking enlightened logical decisions for the greater good.
And speaking of women's rights, are they going to ban Berlesconi too? I mean, I'm in favor of banning him, but not for that reason.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'm getting tired of "Violence against women" being portrayed as a special case worthy of special laws at the expense of everyone else.
Violence in general is the problem. All violence has victims. Violence typically occurs where society needs new rules and new norms. Right now there is lots of violence against against women, more in some cultures than others. It's ugly.
Still, when we start getting laws designed to combat violence against group X that end up doing violence to the rights and freedoms of people outsideof group X, we're doing it wrong.
By all means, let's make rules that discourage violence against everyone - childredn, the elderly, women, men, pets, gingers, neckbeards. Short of widespread deployment of G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate, though, humans will keep bashing each other. There's a limit to prevention.
Xena reruns only go so far.
This is exactly why consolidation and centralization of power is so dangerous: it leverages the injustice that inevitably results from coercive authority. Whatever flavor of injustice is currently in fashion will be extended and compounded by orders of magnitude. Instead of the isolated cases of injustice that result from small independent states, what you get with consolidation of political power is a nuclear explosion of injustice.
Of course, for the elite few at the top of the pyramid, consolidation of power is the road to riches.
17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism
I'm not sure anything at all will change even if this passes.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party has a good summary of the attempt to ban porn as well as a call to action. Apparently getting e-mail through to the parliamentarians is not as straight forward as one might wish. Christian EngstrÃm, MEP, also of the Swedish Pirate Party has a good analysis of the attempted ban. Basically it's a grab at control and censorship under another guise.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Two words only are needed to show why any attempt to ban anything on the Internet is doomed to fail. Both words are proper nouns. The first is "Tor", an onion routing system that means it can be virtually impossible to connect an end user with a particular server. Moreover, there are "hidden" services that do not even show on the main web. The second is "Freenet", the distributed peer-to-peer encrypted network (with built in darknet for those who want or need it). A third word, "Bitcoin", allows a thriving marketplace, and when proper laundries are in place, an effectively anonymous marketplace.
The mere fact of countries like the USA, where pornography cannot be banned, means that any attempt to ban it in another freeish place will be quite difficult.
But that's technical stuff.
While I can understand the desire to eliminate gender stereotypes, and it is something I fully support, I don't see how banning pornography in the media can help. I also think that it's a wrong-headed move from a free speech point of view.
Pornography is not just men fucking women for the pleasure of other men. Human sexuality is so broad and varied, and porn is, as a consequence, broad and varied. Personally, I see porn as a positive thing in society, allowing people to experience their sexuality in the privacy of their own bedroom. A young teenage boy wondering whether it is really wrong, as his class mates, teachers, parents, and community say, for boys to like other boys, can find solace in the Internet. And jack-off to gay porn. And that's a good thing. Maybe a young teenage girl is wondering if her feelings towards some of her friends are normal. She can find lesbian, bisexual, and varied other porn on the Internet to help her confront her feelings. And that's a good thing. And the stories can be much broader than those as well.
I do object to a lot of porn out there. The degrading humiliating porn. The stuff where it looks like the female actor is actually not enjoying herself at all. But that does not mean the answer is to ban all porn.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
No need to monitor the internet, just monitor the users. Apparently Kinect can now detect a clenched fist.
Anybody want a peanut?
The proposal is not calling for porn to be banned. It is saying that mainstream newspapers should not contain porn, like the Sun in the UK does. For those that don't know the Sun, Britain's most popular newspaper, has a picture of a topless women on page 3 of every edition.
Porn is also used extensively in marketing, even of children's products and during daytime TV viewing hours. Banning ads for sex tourism should be a no-brainier I would hope.
Internet porn will not be banned. That is absolutely not what this is about. It is merely trying to remove negative stereotypes from everyday media. The media has been given countless opportunities to clean up, to stop using stick figure models and heavy photoshopping, to stop using porn to sell things, but it has largely failed to do so. If anything it has become more mainstream now.
It isn't about being puritanical, it is about protecting people from well understood psychological harm.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It doesn't only depict gender discrimination; it even glorifies it, presenting it as law, albeit an antiquated one. You can call it history, or art, or fiction, or material for cultural studies, but it's no less "discriminating" than pornography.
You can have my pr0n when you pry it from my dead, hair covered hand.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You know they can't even get rid of the child porn out there and somehow they think they'll succeed with porn in general? Luck with that.
This is the EU, obviously gay porn is acceptable.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
"the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." - Tom Wolfe
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Just from TFS, the headline of the proposal is "Eliminating Gender Stereotypes in the EU." I am not sure that is even a goal that is worthy of support. Are they trying to say that the gender roles that developed over the last 2500 years of European history are without value and need to be expunged from 21st century civilization?
I'm all in favor of correcting historical inequities like giving women equal pay and practical equality before the law. I also will go so far as to admit it's possible that women as a population might benefit from certain changes in workplace culture or other aspects of society.
What I don't accept is that everyone is supposed to pretend women are indistinguishable from men. I embrace my role as the bug-squasher and fix-it man, and my wife embraces her role as the cook. Social equality is not the same as mathematical equality. The language of "eliminating stereotypes" is worrisome for that reason. What we need is not a world without differences, but a world where the norms are inclusive of differences.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Those silly Americans and their prudish- wait, wat?
I guess all the other problems facing EU have been solved?
1. Define 'pornography' in a non-vague way. Just sex acts? What about nudity? Suggestive clothing? Suggestive language? Numerous countries have been down this road at one point or another and have failed. The line between what is 'art' and what is 'pornography' will always be 100% subjective.
2. You can't legislate what people want. There will always be people who want pornography in one form or another, and where there is a demand there will be someone supplying it.
3. You can't legislate morality, either, which is in essense what this will do.
4. And how do they think this will be enforced? Existing profitable porn sites will just switch their hosting to a non-EU member country. Are they going to try blocking access in EU member countries (aka censorship)? Good luck with that. See #2, above to cover how that subject will be handled.
Really, this sounds like just another case of politicians being woefully ignorant when it comes to matters of science and technology.
Finally, this one last blast:
So, EU, you've stabilized the economies of all your member states, unemployment is 100% under control, crime and terrorism is 100% under control, etc etc etc therefore you can spend time, money, and energy on something like this? And here I thought that only politicians here in the U.S. acted retarded.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Yeah, women having sex is such a stereotype. Actually, I think women not wanting sex is the stereotype; therefore everyone must view porn at every opportunity.
Then let's build enough prisons (concentration camps?) to put those scumbags in.
"Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls;"
Thank God. I was worried because we hadn't had a strong government control over the media since the 1930s in Europe. I look at this as positive signs of a strengthening EU, and the champion of this should be Germany, what with them having the only sound economic basis.
I wasted time reading the whole "proposal". I'm not sure why they couldn't have just used the word "citizens" or "people" instead of micromanaging it to "girls" and "women". Next you'll need every other damn subgroup there is. Why the hell can't they just say "We seek to limit discrimination and sterotyping of citizens based on religion , national original, gender, whatever"...why do they always have to divide and conquer? Other than the obvious reasons.
This proposal sucks. Not the least of which they keep spelling it "Labour". They sound like a bunch of damn Canadians.
I'm a satanic clam.
Scanned the report. No pictures.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Even if violence against women were the most important issue today, this resolution is lacking some sort of reference to actual SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that pornography is the cause. For years, people have been blaming games, movies, and TV for everything with no actual reasoning behind it.
So even if they ban overt pornography it doesn't change the fact that covert subliminal pornography will exist. You watch TV and ads selling inanimate objects shaped like a phallus? Why aren't feminists angry at the shake weight? That is what they'll end up with if this passes.
Actually, people came to America because they couldn't properly oppress the people back in Europe that did not have quite their exact brand of puritanism...
We in the US tried to warn you -- we have experience with states creating a federal government, giving it limited, well-defined powers, and no others, and seeing it grow, expanding its power over the centuries, until it fancies itself the one and only government, with the states being historical curiosities.
If that can happen with an "iron clad" Constitution, how much moreso without one?
"Long stream of words", and it grabs more power it didn't use to have. Repeat ad collapse.
You were warned. God help you, you were warmed.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Excuse me? Hello!? How they bloody dare to complain about getting emails from their employers?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The story just gets funnier as you read it:
"...The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens."
EU Parliament is a triumph of democracy, clearly.
Really, the moment I start to think that nothing could be more ridiculous than the US Congress, there I go, proved wrong again.
-Styopa
I don't believe that the intention is to ban all pornography because it is all viewed as sexist and discriminatory to women. Rather, I believe that the true intention is to reduce or, if possible, eliminate its commercialization.
The real problem isn’t homegrown vids of what I’m going to call “real people”. The discriminatory and socially harmful issue is what we’re being fed by production companies. The women and men involved in these have been waxed, bleached, fasted, surgically enhanced, lit, filtered, and made up to such extremes that no “real person” (including the actors themselves outside of production) could live up to these standards. (abs and penis size, ahem) That, on top of the fact that the actresses usually need to be drugged to be able to take the pain, the men need fluffers, and everything in between is so scripted and fake that it no longer resembles anything close to a real sexual situation. This can be very harmful for the sexual development of young people as pornography is the first and most abundant sexual experience they have as they are discovering themselves and their interests. The overwhelming amount of “overdone” pornography do lead some to not only believe that they are lacking in some way but can also lead to future dissatisfaction in their partners who cannot live up to the unrealistic standards that these fantasy films have created... leading them to revert back to their easily accessible film fetish instead of working on their issues and expectations with personal intimacy.
Like it or not, everything you experience shapes your views and behavior. Just like chick flicks can cause girls to expect unrealistic romance from their partners and get all uppity when you don't do it well or often enough, redtube may be turning you into a creepy sex-fiend that acts out.
Yes.
Read the interesting section
17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism
It calls on the EU to do something, which means more talk and talk :)
This, sounds like a call for concrete action, not an actual concrete action. There's a huge difference... Calls for action usually leads to discussion..
Whilst, I wouldn't be surprised if "the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality" wanted to take action against to ban porn, at least partially or in public spaces.
I seriously doubt European countries such as Denmark, the first country to legalize porn is going to ban it...
(One of the few things I can take "pride" in as a Danish citizen).
Pornography is unhealthy and, among other evils, makes men stop desiring their wives (because they are not willing to do the bizarre fantasies of their husbands).