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European Parliament Decides Not To Ban Internet Porn
An anonymous reader writes "The European Parliament passed a proposal Tuesday which included a blanket ban on pornography, including Internet porn, in European Union member states. However, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) removed explanatory wording from the porn ban section, essentially limiting the ban to advertising and print media. The proposal, titled 'Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU,' was put to a vote in Strasbourg. MEPs passed it 368-159."
the internet is for porn
nobody's perfect
"Wait, if I support this then I can't watch porn on the internet!"
They still passed the advertising and print media part, which is considered bad to anyone with a brain.
But to my knowledge, it isn't as if all countries in the EU will suddenly ban these things if they haven't already.
As if millions of Eurogeeks breathed a sigh of relief.
"The proposal, titled 'Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU'..."
What an Orwellian purpose.
I suppose if a government wanted to go the way of Betamax, banning porn would do it.
I saw a charity advertising film where someone who was supposed to stereotype a wealthy executive didn't give money to a beggar on the street. How can I get those responsible jailed and the stereotype completely eliminated from the public sphere?
...decides to not make itself irrelevant.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
They are based on elements of truth, and while basing judgments solely on them will result in incomplete understanding, purposefully avoiding them by whitewashing the media with contrarian examples also denies reality. In many cases, it'll end up denying more of it! Ideology is not reality no matter how much the society is filtered.
If you read the latter link from falkvinge, it becomes obvious very quickly that this is a white knight feminist power grab. Only they would push for such draconian demands to prevent 'the sexualization of girls', whatever that means. There are segments of the legislation that scare the shit out of me, and should scare anyone potentially living under its influence. Frankly, the fact any politician in the supposedly 'free' west would draft such a thing at all should be cause for concern. No amount of 'suffrage' or other outdated 1950s era rubbish justifies a police state. None. This kind of thing is a perfect example of ideology going so far as to eat its own tail.
I actually read TFA and these thoughts were running through my head the whole time. American or European, we gotta stop voting these idiots into office.
... because I remembered a joke after reading the last story, too late to post it. :-)
"I'm fairly sure if they took porn off the Internet, there'd only be one website left, and it'd be called 'Bring Back the Porn!'"
-- Dr. Cox, Scrubs
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Just finished downloading my second terabyte of Brazilian horse cock tranny porn.
The European Parliament also decided not to rescind gravity.
I thought violence against women went down when porn was available.
Thanks be to God! Redtube is the best way I have to get close to my bandwidth allocations.
Surely, with the law on their side, Europe would've never seen porn again!
Way to go EU!
Have gnu, will travel.
Or breastfeeding men?
Or women forgetting to put the seat down?
Europe is a strange place...
Banning porn, like drugs, alcohol, weapons only profits the criminal element and their exorbitant prices. This is also a two-edged sword, make money from an illicit trade and then prosecute the users for more money. The government has learned well from the criminal element. Most bans are for behavior modification, do this but not that, or else. Cha-ching. What is needed is an understanding of why something is banned. Answers like it's for the children or national security are just jingoistic catchphrases which may or may not have credence. If you cannot understand the logic of a situation, then follow the money, you may be surprised where it leads.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
The problem with a very liberal way of thinking is, that if the state knows better than you naturally it follows that the state should control all aspects of your activity.
Thus as you say, social engineering is no longer scary, but required in all actions you take so you have only "right minded people" in your populace.
Human nature is not something to understand, but to be ironed and whitewashed over to get that perfect homogenous bland - er, I mean, blend.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Looking at the actual law, can you point out how they are regulating thoughts?
By controlling what inputs people receive, to some extent you limit or reduce possible thoughts that result from them.
It's the same line of thinking that bans all publicans of anything with Nazi logos.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the world would be a better place if porn weren't ubiquitous
I browse a number of websites all day and none of them ave porn.
Readily accessible is NOT THE SAME AS ubiquitous.
It wouldn't help the earth, or the people on it, one bit if porn were less easy to find.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Banning porn would undermine everything that democracy has provided. I hate to conjure up bad metaphors, but how much more fascist can you get than banning porn?
http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox_DIY
Brian Roedecker: " It's a little more 'James Bondian' but we are living in a more Blofeldian world."
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
This now means porn magazines and DVDs are now illegal.
Though in my case, it'd be importing eroge and dakimakura. (That's right, I like 2D girls!)
Does this mean that cosmopolitan magazine now has a lot to worry about? Women are sexualised (as if that's a bad thing???? WTF) from things that influence them. Girl targing magazines influence girls more than man targeting magazines. Cosmo and other female magazines have extremely sexy photos in them. I think that's why the girls like them.
the EU bans books ("print media") and nobody cares because they read everything on the Internet now.
Just remember folks, when you're reading an actual book, nobody is recording how long you spend on each page for later analysis.
It's obvious that unless it is illegal, the NY Times, Washington Post and every other daily newspaper in the US would have nude chicks on every page
If that really worked they would simply run bikini-clad women every issue, which is perfectly legal.
The fact they they do not is testament that titilation is only engaging when novel. Doing so all the time helps you not a bit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It baffles me that there are men out there so oblivious to the impact of sexist advertising on women
It baffles me that some people think the answer to all problems is not to reduce demand, but to hit the symptom of the moment with a shovel, dig a grave for it and hope no new troubles arise even though the demand that created the problem is still present.
Whatever "works" for you I guess.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
for the important decisions. Because porn is the reason for all our problems.
Sorry, but aren't that still banning all porn not on the internet?
Are Playboy magazines and porn DVDs still legal?
Also, how, exactly, is porn defined according to these statutes?
No wonder so manny comments .... as the first comment said, the internet is porn :D
What next? Will they try to ban cats as well? I say we have to draw a line in the sand now!
They probably realized they're doing it in the wrong order.
You have to establish a police-state first and *then* you ban porn.
We have the EU to give our politicians something meaningless to do. It is wonderful that our politicians talk about not too important things, and then decide to do nothing.
It may not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than what they used to do in the last two millennia, which was to talk, then get angry, and start a war.
It is not a question of being offensive or not. The fact is that there still exist people in Europe who deny for instance that the Holocaust ever existed, even respected academics, e.g. Faurisson. This sort of "speech" is recognized as hate speech and is banned. Least I know, I think hate speech is also banned in the US. There are still active Neo-Nazi groups in Germany and elsewhere who would like the thousand Reich to rise again. They do indeed worship Nazi paraphernalia, and so trading such items is indeed restricted in many countries in Europe. This is a way to control them. There are already far too many people in Europe who think racist, eugenist and fascist ideas are perfectly OK. Conversely, in the US, some political parties with far milder agendas are banned, e.g. the Communist party. Who is the worst ?
Some people would like to live in an ideal system where simple things like "free speech" are forever guaranteed above all other principles. In fact there is no simple definition of what free speech is, and consequently the actual system we all live in is a compromise. It is far easier to see the flaws in the compromises of your neighbors rather than your own, but in fact they are almost the same.
porn bans YOU!
This was a tempest in a teacup.
The European Parliament "accepts" all the time resolutions from all areas of life and are equally silly because some group with representation of special interest groups got to write the memo. Because this included the words "Internet" and "Porn" for an example Falkvinge got the attention of the whole geekdom and made every porn-loving geek to send email. Of course it is important to point out if a resolution is silly, bad, full of nonsense etc. But accepting the resolution has absolutely no effect on anything (well, maybe the writers will get a special badge and get to say that we told you we were right). As one MEP said - this would never, ever get into legislation, not on EU level, not on per-member state level (if it is not there already in some form, different states treat porn differently - surprise!) - regardless of how a general memo like this is treated.
Would you still support porn if your own daughter/mother/sister was filmed being gangbanged and then broadcasted to entire world where thousands of children and men would mastrubate on it?
Perhaps your support or indifference to porn stems from lack of compassion for the actors involved and their families, as opposed to some intellectual argument for free speech?
Sugar is not fattening? Any calories over what your body immediately needs is converted to fat. Sugar, fat, carbohydrates, protein, if it has calories, it can become fat.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Haha, they're chat bots, not "people employed in the sex industry.
... opinion that seems to dominate this discussion, which is
male and female are biologically different so for christ sake treat them different!
This is because the basic idea of this paper is quite a good one, and it's pretty much in the title: "Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU".
Of course you can interpret a shitload of crap into this title IF YOU PREFER TO, but it might be worthwhile to check the background a little bit.
Gender stereotypes is all about "girls don't like tech stuff" and "man don't like to dress up in beautiful clothing's", and so on.
Could we at least agree on the fact that there are a lot of talented girls out there that we dreadfully miss in our IT world, and that would bring in a lot of interesting innovations? Ask Lady Ada - as an example.
So THIS is what the paper is about. It's about thinking how to tell girls, hey you are not just girls, and boys that they are not just boys.
Of course it's a crazy shame that some people added this puritarian anti-porn bullshit to the otherwise not that stupid document (in fact it seems to be the same person that had all the clever ideas, which does not falsify the ideas, just the person), but thankfully there is a tiny tiny bit of democracy still working in the EU, so that part was skipped.
Sorry for the strong language - but I'm a bit sick of it all.
After a long session behind close doors, the EU decided not to ban porn after all...
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Much of the e-commerce infrastructure on the net started because of the porn industry. At least, that's what I've been told.
In the above video, they likely used lube.
The taxpayers often get a much more raw experience, and it's less voluntary...
too bad I'm out of points
Because if it was banned, dial-up would be enough for everyone again.