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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!"
As if millions of Eurogeeks breathed a sigh of relief.
"The proposal, titled 'Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU'..."
What an Orwellian purpose.
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 No amount of 'suffrage' or other outdated 1950s era rubbish justifies a police state.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.
The European Parliament also decided not to rescind gravity.
I thought violence against women went down when porn was available.
Surely, with the law on their side, Europe would've never seen porn again!
Right?! This would have been an even bigger failure than the war on drugs. How in the fuck did they think they could stop it?
Better yet, how do morons of this caliber get to be so high up in government?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
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."
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
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?
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.
Better yet, how do morons of this caliber get to be so high up in government?
These 'morons' are some members of parliament that are on the women's committee.
They are a small group of (probably) technically inept people that represent a small part of the European people.
porn bans YOU!
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.
Wow! - More or less exactly as I would have said it.
The only issue I have is that I don't agree that there is sexist advertising at all. Lightly clad women are not sexist per definition. They might be bad taste or vulgar, but so is (IMHO) semi-naked men. They are all valid expressions and valid means to 'catch the eye' IMHO and we certainly don't need laws regulating stuff like this.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
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.
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!
Democracy.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Haha, they're chat bots, not "people employed in the sex industry.
If my daughter/mother/sister is a grown adult making her own decision to get gangbanged and broadcast to the entire world, that's her choice, not mine.
... 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.
We don't want to work beside such morons, so we promote (vote) them up the chain until they feel validated in their opinions, and justified to run our lives.
--Udo.
Its a common straw man argument, pretending this is about lightly clad women. It isn't. That's fine. The problem is when women are portrayed constantly as mere objects. Take a look: Sexist Modern Ad Examples and Sexist Superbowl Ads. The point you both are missing is that constant sexism has an impact on society, and Europe wants to address that impact. That the sexism itself IS the cause of some societal problems, rather than a mere symptom. It is both a symptom and a cause.
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
We have holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis over here in the US, too. They're considered fringe nutjobs--because they air their views in public, speak freely, and everyone can see for themselves what idiots they are. When you ban that kind of nonsense, you drive it underground--its adherents easily convince themselves they are a persecuted minority speaking Truth to Power, or otherwise onto something real and important, because they are threatening enough to the powers-that-be to be banned. That makes them more attractive to those who are disaffected and not used to dealing with fringe nonsense because it's all a big, underground secret.
Secrecy encourages this kind of nonsense; repeated public exposure reveals it in all its stupidity and vileness.
Also, we have a large category of people who trade in Nazi paraphenalia in the U.S. that have nothing to do with neo-Nazis; they are people who collect WWII and other historical memorabilia. Not everyone who has an SS dress dagger in their desk is a secret Nazi; more often, they or their parents fought in WWII and it's a part of their history. I see what Germany does as trying to suppress history, and you know what is said about those who forget history...
The Communist Party was banned in the U.S. because it advocated violent overthrow of the US government. Notice that the various Socialist parties over here, who advocate "let's get elected and change the laws legally", are perfectly legal.
---dragoness
The adverts listed in the smoosh article seem to conflate female sexuality with objectification of women I would argue that a woman has the right to use her sexuality in a way that is to there advantage. I consider it sexist to censor women and there sexuality in such a way. This is not a simple matter as many advertising firms do use the the sexual objectification of women as a meketing ploy, some of these adverts do some don't. Some use the image of female sexuallity and the strength that gives them.
Going though the adverts:
Got Milk/PMS: I would agree that there is sexist suggestion in this. The idea tha women are incapable of rational and or reasonable thought while experiancing PMS is wrong. So yes sexist.
Hunky Dorys: This one is more difficult yes the women are clearly sexualised in this advert, But they are portrayed playing a male dominated sportand. All in All I think this advert portrays women sexually for the benefit of a crass pun and probably does fall down on the side of sexist
BK 7"My initial response to this was also that the woman was being portrayed in a sexist way with the, with the obvious nod to felatio and a woman looking in shock/awe at a oversized phallus/ but then I thought about the opposite advertisment. If an attractive man was was pictured looking in awe at a pair of watermelons then the advert may also be considerd sexist. possible more so as the advert would directly equate female wort with the size of there breasts. So looking at it the other way maybe this advert is sexist maybe it suggests that the primary judgment of a mans self worth is penis length. I'm pretty certain the woman here is not being objectified (well no more than any person in an advert)
Che first off sorry about the lack of accent but screw it. I do not see how this woman has been objectified at all, yes the woman is extreamly sexulised but this seems to be her choice, to me the woman in the advert is strong and aware of her sexuallity, she has not cowtowed to the traditinol meek woman and is not afraid of her feminiity and is prepared to do what she want to get where she wants. In this case she is advertising for suiters by offering out phone numbers with an enticement of her bueaty in this way she can have a series of men competing for her affection. So this image puts the woman in the position of power.
Dale Wurfel OK I think this is sexist but possible not for the imdiatley obvious reason. I would consider the frannkness of the woman and how comfortable she can be with her previous sexual encounters shows a strong woman, the suggested lack of competion a healthy response to sex. I do have a problem with the effective equation of this woman with a car. This advert is weird the catch image and suggestion are fine but the attepmt to tie it to the product changes it from a portrayel of a strong sexually liberated woman to a sexually objectified woman. saddly sexist.
BMW The suggestion that a man could find a machine more sexually desireable than a woman is not inhearently sexist (well maybe it is in that it portrays a subset of men as materiaLastic). Apprillia adverts did it better though the inclusion of a seminaked woman (without a face) probably tips this into sexist.
Stil VodkaWithout context this advert is difficult but the suggestion of russian brides, who are culturally seen as thing that are bought and the idea of a woman as a gift (perminatly) does seem to equate to slavery. Possible sexist but I think far more alarming than that a brand thought slavery (of any description) a suitible topic for a joke to base there brand on. Sexist but so much more wrong than that.
Vouge Vanity A woman is being held down and brutalised by law enforcment officers. Unless the the idea was that the cause of this was she was a woman, or that the officers had a right to do this because she was a woman then I do not see this as a problem. In fact the image I see is of a woman who has defied unjus
Most Damage is done by people who are AWAKE
Because if it was banned, dial-up would be enough for everyone again.