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The UK's War On Porn: Turning ISPs Into Parents
New submitter SMABSA writes: With British Prime Minister David Cameron announcing plans for porn users to be required to register their bank account/debit card as a means of age verification, Spiked-Online writer Stephen Beard explores the privacy implications, technical feasibility and motivations of such a plan. Here's an excerpt that gives a feel for Beard's take: Not only are the plans to regulate porn sites intrusive, they are also technically infeasible (as are many bright ideas that come from central government). In the amount of time, for example, it would take to identify a site not complying with the new rules, that site could be mirrored multiple times. Such ineffectiveness has been evident in the government’s futile attempts to censor torrent tracker Pirate Bay.
The posturing about protecting children is irksome, too. To pretend that children in decades past haven’t been sneaking a look at mucky images, albeit in magazines and newspapers, is naive at best.
The government knows damn well that ideas like this are unenforceable. It's not about banning porn anymore than it's about protecting children (as if the government gives a shit about your kids safety). It's about revenue. You can't keep kids from seeing porn - but you can fine the hell out of anyone you catch not following the law. The harder it is to follow the law, the better! If nobody can actually be compliant, then everyone pays a fine.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
The whole point of that farce is to always have a reason to charge or at least threaten to charge any citizen of something. The "think of the children" aspect of it is just an easy mean to get it through the legislative system.
British kids have had Page 3 girls forever. Why weren't people blaming that for the collapse of society?
As a Brit it never fails to amaze me how stupid our Government has become, now this crap about needing a CC or Debit card to provide proof of age, Like there isn't a teen with an IQ of 60 or over that will work out that dads CC works just fine while he sleeps, takes a bath or whatever. Seriously this is as stupid as looking for terrorists on social media. Idiots, the lot of them.
http://chimpbox.us
VPN
It's definitely about money, not outcome -- but it's not the fines they're after. That's chump change to government. It's the adminstration costs, which will not only dwarf the revenue from fines, but set a precedent for the next round of government expansions.
I thought the UK had left the Mary Whitehouse times behind? Apparently the UK government needs another bogeyman to distract people from the issues it's not like they haven't forced UK ISPs to have a family friendly filter turned ON by default. Guessing that didn't work the way they wanted to but hey ... politicians wont admit failure.
We get it. The new rulers of /. are Republicans and hate us.
You do realize that Republicans (at least publicly) are generally the ones that are the most against porn right?
I swear I wish I could found the "Hands off" party with the simple goal of not messing with people.
Guns? It's a constitutional right - don't mess with them.
Porn? Same. Leave it alone.
Video games? It's not turning kids into murderers. Leave them alone too.
Weed? Doesn't harm anyone else. Legalize it.
Prostitution? As long as its between consenting adults (and if it's not its rape, not prostitution anyways), then legalize it too.
Each party is pandering to their respective bases trying to ban whatever that group doesn't like - I just want politicians to leave things alone for once.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
A daily email of all the latest porn on rapidly changing and ip addresses, subscribe now!
Exactly! Republicans hate efficiency so they hate central planning and want anyone that supports it to die. Things like this are best left to central planning so you have uniform rules. Instead, Republicans support racist made-up garbage like "state's rights" in order to be anti-central planning. They want a spew of different rules that are impossible to follow and make life miserable. After all, that is their ultimate goal. Human misery.
> You do realize that Republicans (at least publicly) are generally the ones that are the most against porn right?
Exactly! Tipper Gore is a DINO so therefore her big anti-porn and anti-music campaign was the fault of the Republicans rather than the Democrats.
"You do realize that Republicans ( at least publicly ) are generally the ones that are the most against porn right?"
That is interesting, considering how many Republicans are involved in pedophilia and other sex crimes.
See The Washington Post, The Franklin Cover-Up, and Conspiracy of Silence.
There's a reason they are called the GOP (Gay Old Pedophiles).
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Replublican Party: n. A political party opposed to overbearing government regulation, except when dealing with gay marriage, abortion, free speech, or whatever is found offensive by the mystical sky being its constituents follow.
Silence is a state of mime.
You are all cows. ...
Where were you when the Lenovo persistent malware discussion drifted into the "administrative" backdoor, clandestine control channel, phone-home-capable, UNDER the OS, "features" built into modern Intel and AMD processors?
I, and a handful of others, have been bringing this up for YEARS, but somehow the discussions just die out, as if nobody was any more interested in this than your metaphorical herd of cows.
I actually looked for your rant but didn't find it - even modded to have-to-dig-for-it oblivion.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The war on drugs was safe as it targets a subset on society the value drugs (as business) or drugs as lifestyle, over societal values.
The war on people "yankin' it like a monkey in a tree" is equally safe.
And the question remains, wouldn't people be better off drug free and not wanking themselves into oblivion?
Is this targetteding specifically at UK porn sites?
As we all know, porn is simply files: typically images and video.
There are perhaps a million websites, imageboards, newsgroups, ftps, IRC networks and countless other services that allow distribution of files (a large portion of which is porn).
Why would these dumbfucks go after a handful of UK porn sites, when the vast majority of the internet at large allows and celebrates files of a pornographic nature?
Are they trying to kill off the UK porn industry?
Has it ever been directly proven that porn *harms* children in some manner?
When I was a young kid I came across porn accidentally once, and I found it disgusting. It just didn't make any sense to me because I was too young.
By the time I was a teenager it certainly started to make sense, and like any teenage boy I wanted to acquire more of it.
I enjoyed porn! So do 99% of teenagers. Yet you don't see most people growing up to be deranged sexual predators or something.
What's the real harm in porn? PROVEN harm, not "oh durrr not for young eyes"?
Perhaps if that is your feeling, you should call a constitutional convention to have the constitution amended to correct the error of our forefathers. Either that or shut the fuck up and stop trying to take other's rights away from them because you don't agree with them.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How do you clean up the environmental problems caused by the central government?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The government knows damn well that ideas like this are unenforceable. It's not about banning porn anymore than it's about protecting children (as if the government gives a shit about your kids safety). It's about revenue.
No, it's about control.
This gives them the camel's nose into the tent on controlling content. Chipping away at some basic rightalways starts with going after some unpopular behavior - pornography, child molestation, incest, etc. - and setting a precedent that the right isn't absolute. Once this is done, and the right converted to a privilege, there is the matter of setting the line defining what behavior is still allowed - a subset that steadily shrinks. Anyone who calls them on it, of course, can be labelled a supporter of pornography, child molestation, incest, etc., helping them get the initial precedent set.
Meanwhile, when the "protective measures" don't work, the government will use the failure as an excuse to impose progressively more, and more draconian, interventions. So they both increase the amount of behavior they claim to "legitimately" prohibit and the tools they claim to "legitimately" use to enforce the prohibitions.
Of course it isn't the pornographers, child molesters, and such that they're after. Its their political opposition. (Money too, of course, and anyone doing anything that interferes with their wishes.)
The harder it is to follow the law, the better! If nobody can actually be compliant, then everyone pays a fine.
More importantly: When nobody can follow the law they can bust anybody at their whim. The rule of law is replaced by the rule of the police - the definition of a "police state".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Guns? It's a constitutional right - don't mess with them.
The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns. Like it's the case in every other country on Earth I can think of.
Those that founded our nation felt it necessary. Given history, I can understand it.
And after watching what governments can do to their own people when they know the entire nation cannot defend itself is more fucking sickening than your illusions that we don't need that protection.
That's mere hypocrisy ... but the Republicans are far more likely to be ye olde "family values" types.
Often the ones screeching the loudest about the sins of others are just as likely to get caught doing the same thing.
Like that "wide stance" guy in the airport a few years back.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
To suffer? Oh, how naive you are. We don't want you to merely suffer. We want you to hate your own existence and wish for it to end. We want you to think about suicide every given second of your days. And deny you that release, keeping you depressed, tortured and in complete misery forever. We want you to pray for death all the time, and all the time be denied. We want you to dread every minute, knowing that we have even worse in store for you and the garbage you call "loved ones". We'll make them suffer in horrible ways too, by your own hands. You will be their tormentor, they will scream in pain and anguish cursing your name. And you will curse them as well. Trust us, we will do it. Because to some we are demons. To some we are the Cenobites. But to you... We are the Republicans. You will learn the true ways of our kind.
I disagree with your point. And also with the bandwagon fallacy that you used to justify it. The fact that you are relying on demonstrably irrational reasoning does not, in-and-of-itself, disprove your point...but it sure makes it look weak.
Police protection is simply insufficient. Disarming civilians just makes them attractive targets. The ability to defend one's self in one's home is therefore paramount.
You can't make the world safer by taking guns away from otherwise decent people (who are the only people that will comply). But you sure can make people even more dependent on the government that way! (which sucks, in case that wasn't obvious).
As others have noted, just about anything can be pushed through wrapped in a cloak of concern for kids. Is pornography too prevalent? Probably. Is it appropriate to circumvent basic freedoms and liberties to address what is, truly, a minor concern? No.
But for those losing their minds: Conservative thought is usually defensive, by definition. Further, it usually supports whatever is perceived as protection of property or home. The inexorable result of this focus is a moral police state based on knee-jerk reactions against any kind of positivity toward anything involving things running contrary to their tastes. The weird part is the focus on protecting children from sex (and the associated media), which is a part of a normal, healthy adult life, but not protecting them from images of violence, which is not a healthy part of life at any stage.
A very simple thing would be assign ratings to domains, pages, and posts. Build filtering based on these into browsers, and hold parents responsible for what they do/don't set up. I for one don't mind paying for public education of kids' programs or the like whether I have kids or not. However, let those who made the choice to have children be responsible for policing their kid's access to things.
You have run afoul of Poe's law.
You make one seriously wrong assumption... Central planning is more efficient... History proves that it isn't.
The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns.
So you're in favor of rape, armed robbery, assault, battery, murder, genocide, and war?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have retroshare. I have porn. I will share.
Why is it such a big deal in these countries? Is underage pornography that widespread?
I get the feeling that the governments of those countries seem to see porn = child porn...or something like that. Like they are trying to turn it into a taboo thing even though every red blooded male with an internet connection has viewed porn (if not daily, probably weekly)....I just don't get it..??
You know that saying that there shouldn't be any gun control because it is a constitutional right is by itself a fallacy, right?
And I wasn't saying that the US shouldn't have gun control because other countries don't. I was just showing that it was possible not to have this "right" in the constitution.
The majority of home computer users want the computer to work well without requiring them to learn much about it. They also love it when tech support can just remotely fix their problem without them having to do anything.
They are more than happy to give up a level of control (and privacy) that isn't valuable to them in order to get this higher level of ease of use.
And there are a lot more of them than there are of you. And they have their wallets out.
You are outvoted.
I will agree to that... the minute it becomes illegal for government to use guns.
Rationale: I have no reason to trust OR distrust a fellow citizen with guns. I also have no reason to trust government with guns, but on the other hand, many reasons to distrust government with guns, starting with the fact that my relationship with government is ultimately defined by guns (i.e. coercion). In other words, my fellow citizen has shown no inclination towards using his guns against me. Government, on the other hand... you get the point.
Yes, it is exactly what I said.
Would you have the same rational for tanks or jet fighters? Nukes?
Do you have another argument other than your appeal to popularity?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns.
So you're in favor of rape, armed robbery, assault, battery, murder, genocide, and war?
Not to mention totalitarianism (both despotism and other forms), which is why it IS a constitutional right.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Don't worry, the 2nd Amendment will go. Along with the First.
My point was that other countries have different levels of gun control. All this without the need to be in the constitution. The right to have a car isn't in the constitution either.
When the text of the amendment reads as such:
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
it really makes you wonder when people then try to claim it is perfectly acceptable to infringe on the rights of gun owners. How would you feel if I was campegning to take away the right of everyone to speak out against the federal government? After all, many countries today feel it is perfectly acceptable to take this right from their people, so it must be the one and only path to true enlightenment.
Feel free to call the constitutional convention, just don't be surprised when your amendments fail.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/179...
Less than half of Americans feel the laws need to be stricter. Last I checked, it requires a 2/3 majority to amend the constitution.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"That's mere hypocrisy ..."
No, actually it isn't. Do some research. Google "republican Larry King". He was (is) a child pimp, sadist, and homosexual pedophile - among whose many rich and powerful "clients" included many republican party members. It's all about blackmail. You should read "The Franklin Cover-Up". It is one of the most important books ever written.
But that's not to say that all republicans are involved in this sort of activity. In fact, Sen. Loran Schmidt, along with Sen. John DeCamp - both republicans - led the charge against these disgusting people in the 1980's.
"Often the ones screeching the loudest about the sins of others are just as likely to get caught doing the same thing."
It sounds like you are suggesting that almost anyone who has a problem with people raping little children are pedophiles themselves.
That is ridiculous!
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
It is always taken as true that children need to be 'protected.' There is an assumption that seeing pornography is destructive - and if you ask many, supremely destructive, to the point that it is compared to cocaine. No-one dares even raise the possibility that this assumption is false for fear of bring branded a pedophile-enabler.
Yet I've never actually seem some good evidence to support this assumption - no dependable studies that link moderate levels of porn exposure or viewing by minors (either 18, or actual children) to any form of psychological harm. You can find plenty of anecdotes, yes, but those are worthless.
The young adults of today grew up with the internet. They had ready access to porn - they could see it any time they wanted, and most will have seen a bit unintentionally. If pornography was one-tenth as destructive as some people claim then the public health implications would be clear right now, possibly in the form of daily porn-fueled orgies in the street.
if you want some amusing reading, try the website for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. They used to be known as Morality in Media, but they rebranded a while ago because their previous name was a laughing stock and this new name sounds more respectable and politically-neutral. The name change is only superficial - the agenda and arguments haven't changed a bit, and they still spew a stream of hyperbole and scare tactics. Their current approach is to argue that viewing pornography fuels sex trafficking and violence against children. Somehow. They illustrate very nicely arguments of the modern anti-pornography movement.
You have to understand my reasoning - I'm against laws against things because of potential domino effects.
For example, a lot of people "justify" outlawing drugs or prostitution because if it's legal it will "cause other crimes" just by their very nature.
My viewpoint is always that only things that are already bad - in and of themselves - should be illegal. Rape? Already bad. Illegal. Murder? Same. Theft? Yep, that's bad, it should be illegal.
HOWEVER, simply owning a gun does not harm anyone. Even if you completely set the constitutional angle aside, guns are only "bad" to people worrying about ancillary crimes that they might "cause". That's a line of reasoning I will never accept, because it leads to a nanny state.
If you seek to prevent murder, then outlaw murder, not guns. If you seek to prevent rape, then outlaw rape, not prostitution. If you seek to outlaw theft, then outlaw theft, don't impose curfews.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You didn't address a single point from my post. Instead, you pointed out a fallacy that I didn't use in my post.
I don't get your point. For one, thanks to people who fought for our rights, we're allowed to possess weapons that are a lot more formidable than a revolver. The second point is that the only thing that keeps us from having any of those weapons would be a law-- and that kind of proves the point, that allowing citizens those weapons keeps the government honest, while banning them protects tyranny. FWIW, only the nukes are actually illegal-- and frankly, such weapons are mere tools of destruction and not useful for the purpose.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Strawman arguments are lies.
Putting the right to smoke weed in the constitution would be as stupid as the right to have guns.
No one has ever proven that porn is a problem for children
"How do you clean up the environmental problems caused by the central government?"
Mr. Clean.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Yes I did. I pointed the fact that I didn't use the fallacy you are accusing me of.
So you're in favor of rape, armed robbery, assault, battery, murder, genocide, and war?
Yes, it is exactly what I said.
It's nice of you to admit it.
But why do you WANT people to be raped, robbed, assaulted, battered, murdered, have their races "cleansed" out of existence, or killed/wounded/conquered in wars, and/or subject to totalitarian governments. Do you get some thrill from it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
My viewpoint is always that only things that are already bad - in and of themselves - should be illegal. Rape? Already bad. Illegal. Murder? Same. Theft? Yep, that's bad, it should be illegal.
HOWEVER, simply owning a gun does not harm anyone. Even if you completely set the constitutional angle aside, guns are only "bad" to people worrying about ancillary crimes that they might "cause".
By this logic, we shouldn't outlaw speeding or drunk driving, only murder and damage to other's property.
We also shouldn't outlaw bringing a bomb in an airplane, as there is already a law against murder.
Your over-simplistic logic is ridiculous.
But, but its for the children. You can't possibly object because it's for the children. I mean why do you hate children so much? Oh you must be one of THOSE people..
By this logic, we shouldn't outlaw speeding or drunk driving, only murder and damage to other's property.
I would vote for someone who ran for president based on that platform.
In addition to raising issues of privacy and government overreach, shouldn't we be concerned that private, for-profit, and criminal banks have become de facto government agencies for age verification?
It is just laughable that porn industry seems to think it has right to distribute material unsuitable for children and teens to everybody on internet.
This is move to the right direction. Credit card checks etc. don't stop every teen but certainly protects most children who still has access to internet.
There have been some serious problems with members of Parliment and other high officials involved in paedophilia. Rather than engage in some introspection as to the linkage between power, leadership and sexual deviancy*, the British have gone on a campagin of, "Hur, dur. Porn made me diddle children."
*To their credit, at least the British collected some statistics. But both in the USA and UK, the investigations started out by looking at the Catholic Church (politically an outsider in both countries) and its institutions. Anecdotally, we have just as many problems with Protestant (particularly Evangelical) leaders. But in some cases, we couldn't even get the local police force to investigate and the victims had to go shopping for a nearby jurisdiction to take the case.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's the real problem. Politicians and their super-retarded bullshit is just one of the prime exemplars of that fact. We pollute the fuck out of the only planet we have to live on, to the point where it's probably going to end up looking like Venus or Mars; we, as a race of supposedly sentient beings, treat each other like absolute shit, waging war for the stupidest of reasons; 99.99% of everyone on the planet can't see past the needs of their stomachs and genitals, or a week down the road for that matter; and, finally, the Internet, which was (past tense) the one thing that had (again, past tense) the potential to educate everyone, connect everyone, and improve the quality of life for everyone, everywhere, is used for the most base, stupid, and greedy purposes. If there are actual alien civilizations out there who have solved the riddle of interstellar (or intergalactic, for that matter) travel, and if indeed they've come here and observed us, it's no wonder why they won't contact us openly: we've got to look like a bunch of dumb animals to them, barely above the level of the rest of the animals on this planet. I'm disappointed and disgusted by my own species; if I had the ability to overcome my own sense of self-preservation, I'd remove myself from the entire equation, and go sequester my own carbon in the ground instead. Maybe the whacko environmentalists are right: The best thing we can do for the Earth is to die.
When will people learn that the elites see you as mere 'tax slaves' ?
The political class tell you that you must do with less while they fly to the Davos circlejerk in ten thousand private jets.
The Government is the problem, and globally is greatest statistical hazard to your health (last century various flavors of Collectivists killed 100 million and oppressed hundreds of millions more; and with the new Energy Poverty agendas it looks like they might kill a Billion poor this century).
The Government is not your friend. It is a necessary evil, but it must be on a leash. And Government should be a small as required, and no bigger.
In the Internet Age citizens can (and do) organize themselves to solve many problems through voluntary charity. You don't need a bloated bureaucracy in the modern age - and increasing Sttate power necessarily decreases Individual Liberty.
There is no substitute for Liberty !
First, it's not because it's a right that it should be in the constitution. Second, it's not because some people wrote a text in the 18th century that its content is perfect and should not be modified.
just a new control mechanism for the capitalistic class.
When the voters repeatedly demand that the government protect them from the consequences of their own decisions, that's what the government will do. Insist that the government protect you from 'hate speech' or 'racism' or 'sexism' or anything that makes you sad, the government will then ask for tools to do so. If you give them these tools, you can hardly be surprised when they then use these tools to follow some other majority-agenda that you might not be comfortable with.
And governments have never been notoriously good at giving up power, once they have it.
-Styopa
Dude, no you didn't. Allow me to recap:
Most recently, you said:
"You know that saying that there shouldn't be any gun control because it is a constitutional right is by itself a fallacy, right?"
This statement is not pointing out the fact that you didn't use the fallacy I am accusing you of. If you were pointing that out, you would say something like "I didn't use that fallacy. That fallacy has this form....and my argument, as you can see, has that form..." or whatever. Instead you accused me of using a fallacy. That rejoinder, whether true or not, is in no way the same thing as pointing out that you didn't use a fallacy.
The fallacy in question (the one I accused you of in this quote from me "I disagree with your point. And also with the bandwagon fallacy that you used to justify it.") was in this quote from you:
"The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns. Like it's the case in every other country on Earth I can think of."
This statement, by itself (which is how I read it) implies that the fact that other countries don't have such a right means that there should not be such a right. Maybe you didn't actually mean that. If that is the case, then you could defend yourself by explaining that you didn't mean that. instead you accused me of using a different fallacy, which I didn't use (at no point did I say that the reason we should have gun rights is because it is in the constitution).
It's like you just arbitrarily change what you previously said, and what I previously said, to suit your needs at the moment. What I said, and what you said, are clearly in the thread history, and they are not as you are describing them.
I am pretty sure that I am arguing with an idiot, so I am done.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I pointed the fact that I didn't use the fallacy you are accusing me of.
You did use the fallacy, and you did point out the "fact" that you didnt use it.
See the problem? You used a fallacy, and when that failed you then started lying. if you had some sort of valid argument anywhere you wouldnt need to do either of these things. But instead, you are just a fucking lying asshole that fails at logic.
"His name was James Damore."
As I recall the 2/3 is for passing the amendment normally. In a constitutional convention, the entirety of the constitution is up for grabs. It is a big rewrite party. I don't envision it being invoked except perhaps after some sort of governmental collapse.
I dislike censorship and I dislike that porn websites (especially those catering to women) are being targeting and forced off-line. So I asked around and it turns out there is a group called Blacklash which is providing legal support for porn websites and ISPs in an effort to push back the government's censorship laws.
If you want to help Internet free speech (and keep porn alive in the UK) then please consider donating: http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/donating/
The right to have a car isn't in the constitution either.
No, it's not. Probably because cars, or even the internal combustion engine, wouldn't be invented for another 100+ years. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that citizens do have the freedom of movement.
file:
maybe you don't know many countries. plenty of countries where guns are a constitutional right.
I agree. A large percentage (0.185%) of the two-hundred-fifty million guns in this country (the USA) are used in crimes, including murder, and shootings! Watching the news on television makes it clear that these shootings are quite common. It is clear from the numbers that guns have no legitimate use, and should be banned. It's worked with drugs and alcohol, so let us proceed with confidence in this endeavor. Indeed, there are many other things which I disapprove of, and which ought to be banned.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
In recorded history, not a single person has died directly from the use of cannabis. This is contrasted with the legal and accepted drugs tobacco and alcohol, which kill multiple people EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Bring your best arguments. I've heard them all, and they are easily defeated.
file:
you're stuck in a 17th century mindset where the thing that keeps politicians honest is the fear of being violently dispatched, and they likewise use force to remain in control. they were also above the law largely, being the ones that controlled it.
in the 21st century we vote them in or out of office via democracy, and keep them honest by actually enforcing the laws against them equally as regular citizens.
we've grown past the need to use violence to run our own countries.
you should join us.
Bad attempt at pointing out a fallacy.
it's not an appeal to popularity, but pointing out simple statistics:
Other countries: fewer guns, fewer murders, and less crime.
The US: more guns, a lot more murders and deaths, and more crime.
I actually have no issue with speeding. People tend to drive at a speed they're comfortable with anyways and all "speeding" typically does is act a revenue generator by making a crime to drive above a speed usually ~10 MPH under what is actually safe for an area.
Drunk driving I attribute to reckless endangerment, which is bad. Owning the gun is equitable with being able to get drunk in the first place - no problem. Driving drunk would be the equivalent of walking outside and pointing it at your neighbors.
Bringing a bomb on an airplane I think shouldn't be a crime (because I actually have no issues with people owning them in general), but against airline regulations to carry one aboard on your person, and willful violation of a contract should be a crime.
Freedom comes with some costs. We'll send a million men to war to fight and die to preserve our freedom but if a half-dozen people die in a shooting the plebs all start thinking about ways to ban things and make things illegal.
For the most part, let people live their lives unobstructed by the government except for the most obvious of crimes. I don't want the government to ban just about anything: guns, video games, porn, gay marriage, drugs, prostitution, large sodas, or any other "vice" from EITHER side of the political spectrum: just let people live their lives how they want.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
> The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns.
There is a nice change control method built into the document in question. All you have to do is to get enough people to agree with you.
Some people find that too difficult apparently. Then they pretend that they could just magically confiscate guns from all of the law abiding types that they disagree with. Never mind the criminals.
There's plenty of stuff like this on both sides. Measures that are clearly more difficult than advocates like to let on. Things that the nation has no will to implement. Things that come with a lot of complications no one is willing to admit to.
There are also measures that are clearly contrary to well established jurisprudence or well established common political values.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As long as Barney Fife is armed, smarter gangsters will always have a ready source of guns. One of our recent mass shooters even managed to steal the rifle he used from the local rent-a-goon.
Plus there's a recent escalation in the militarization of our police that needs to be undone before any thought of disarming the citizenry can even be considered.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, treating auto homicide as simple homicide is redundant and only seems to serve to reduce the punitive effect of more specialized laws. If you are danger to yourself and others on the road, it really shouldn't matter what the "root cause" is. Any of the other traffic violations would do.
You could even distill it down to a small list of things that almost mirror the common law crimes.
Redundant laws add complexity that may serve no useful purpose.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Fixed line ISPs already know who the bill payer is and to where they deliver the service.
This nonsense is intended to remove anonymity from mobile Internet users. In the UK it is still possible to buy a prepay smartphone or data dongle without giving any identity information at the point of sale. Tying bank details or other identity information to an access device removes this degree of freedom, so that THEY (tm) know who you are.
What keeps them (relatively) honest isn't the threat of being violently dispatched so much as it is the cost of a violent confrontation. Win or lose, dealing with an armed insurrection is expensive, not only financially but politically as well. An armed populace almost certainly can't prevail over a real military in open conflict, but it doesn't need to - it only needs to outlast the political will of those in charge (see: Iraq, Vietnam). And that is why the "tank beats pistol" argument falls flat - at best it misses the point, and at worst it's a disingenuous strawman.
That's the point; they're only the ones that control it if the populace is forcibly disarmed. Arm the people, and that monopoly goes away.
What do you think "enforce" means? Here's a hint: it always involves violence, even only the implied threat thereof.
You haven't and you never will. There are layers of abstraction in the system that keep you from personally witnessing or experiencing violence, and that's a good thing - but never mistake that abstraction for an absence.
That's nice and sensational but that still probably doesn't add up to all of the damage that's being done by all of the fracking going on. That stuff just happens under the radar or gets suppressed if anyone tries to bring it up.
Fracking is so bad that even Texas municipalities have started banning it.
You know it's bad when...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Removing that right from the constitution doesn't mean banning all guns.
While I think the constitution probably isn't the right place for cannabis law
But is it for a gun law?
In recorded history, not a single person has died directly from the use of cannabis
Why is jumping out a window while out of your mind somehow better than hitting an LD50 threshold? You end up dead either way. Just an odd place to draw the line is all.
And here I thought the UK had had the good sense of shipping all the Puritans to the New World.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
at a speed they're comfortable with anyways
Plenty of people drive around me at a speed that I'm not comfortable with. I don't think that it's safe just because it's fine with them.
People tend to drive at a speed they're comfortable with anyways
Some people drive faster than that and kill innocents. I am not talking about going 10 km/h too fast.
Drunk driving I attribute to reckless endangerment, which is bad
Why? Some people will drive slowly just fine. Some other will kill only themselves and won't harm anyone else. Why remove this freedom? You are a statist.
Bringing a bomb on an airplane I think shouldn't be a crime (because I actually have no issues with people owning them in general), but against airline regulations to carry one aboard on your person, and willful violation of a contract should be a crime
Uh? Willful violation of a contract should be a crime? So you should go to jail if you don't pay your cell phone bill? Reselling your airline ticket is also a violation of the contract.
Violating the airline contract should never be a crime. It's a civil matter, not criminal.
That being said, why don't you want to change the constitution to add the right to carry a bomb on a plane? That would prevent those airplanes from limiting our freedom, isn't it?
So I take it that you think that drunk driving should be legalized? Maybe protected as a right in the constitution too?
I see nothing that could possibly go wrong with this brilliant plan.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Your pathetic attempts at reverse trolling are utterly transparent and not even entertaining.
Don't you realise that you're wasting precious time that could be much better spent watching porn?
Yeah, have fun with your pea shooters when tanks come a-knocking.
You fucking gun-nuts are ludicrous and obtuse, living in a fantasy world.
Grow the fuck up already, you aren't living in a Western film.
If people had access to valid information about how to use cannabis safely, and had the ability to obtain it in a legal manner, that would be very unlikely.
Since Colorado legalized cannabis in 2012, traffic fatalities have declined each year.
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http://www.reuters.com/article...
The reason it's in the constitution is that it allows the people a defense against a tyrannical government, so I think it's in exactly the right place, the highest level legal document available.
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But the point is your fixation on direct toxicity.
If it passes, I will create a porn site just to collect debit/credit cards and bank account info. Guess what I could do with all that info.
porn is only a start because it is relatively easy to justify in light of the public outcry once someone is publicly identified as a porn consumer. the real target of course is free speech and the governments of this world only want to be sure they have the infrastructure in place once the proverbial shit hits the fan. since the Chinese approach of creating a Great Firewall wouldn't fly in most western countries they resort to otherwise thought to be legitimate ways and the already well trained sheep follow maeh maeh.
On a side note, of course, humanity in 2015 is no less hypocritical than it was 2000 years ago. It thrives on sex (literally, where else did the 7+ bn humans come from that have come to live on this planet on top of the 1 bn that was here at the beginning of the last century?), of which porn is the entertainment variant, but denies doing so in the public eye.
Ok. Guilty of Hitler absurdium. That said, Cameron is an authoritarian racist prick. Xenophobic and GCHQ pretty much sums him up.
I wonder how would the British politicians react if their would suddenly receive lots and lots of telephone calls from a little boy asking: "Are you my mommy?"
When the text of the amendment reads as such:
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
You missed a whole lot of that :
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We are IN a nanny state.
A "constitutional convention" is a fantasy idea. It's never happened in living memory, and it's not necessary anyway.
The thing being discussed is called an 'amendment', there's a process (specified in the constitution) for passing those. However, there's no specified process for proposing them. You can propose one right now, for all the good it will do you. Of course you'll have your work cut out to get Congress to debate and vote on it, but that's a political problem (that's where the 'convention' idea comes in - it's seen as a way of making Congress take you seriously, but it's not legally required).
Note that there's no limit to the scope of a constitutional amendment. There's no reason in principle why it can't read "Delete the entire constitution and amendments, and replace it with the following". And if you can persuade Congress to pass it and the states to ratify it, there's nothing legally wrong with that.
Unless the government decides to put you on the no-fly list. And they can do that without a judge, or you having any recourse. Of course that only stops you flying, until they come out with a no-drive list and a no-train list. But then you could still walk, until they come out with a no-walk list.
register their bank account/debit card
Because no child can copy (or photograph) the text written on a credit card.
Alas, demanding children be given more protection, while simultaneously running a government that denies such protection to known sexual assault victims, is a minor plank in the Tory platform:
Whole article
Sounds like one big epic fail for people to be hacked. Thanks UK! and your kids are still watching YOUR porn!
shooting randomly in public places being illegal is a different "ancillary" crime from shooting directly at someone who is a target. both illegal.
the car isn't illegal.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This is what happens aftr the government gets the guns out of your hands. They begin to conrol EVERYTHING, and that is not freedom.
Are the exclusive privilege of the House of Lords.
To let the peasantry access it as easily as we do the cocaine on a prostitute's titties is to demean the entire industry; to throw steak at a gang of wild pigs who know nothing better than to defecate all over themselves so everything will be as shitty as they.
Leave the whores to those whoa re in charge. We'll know what to do.
They just want to build universal censorship infrastructure, have someone else pay for it, and suppress any opposition/critique by presenting a strawman purpose that is impossible to disagree with. Think of the children!
Yes, grandpa, we know you're not comfortable driving the posted speed limit. In fact, several of us thinks that you should have lost your license a few years ago, when the optometrist gave up on your eyesight.
You think it does. It doesn't mean it's effective.
The reason I'm starting with toxicity, is that I can state with a high degree of certainty that you can ingest as much cannabis as you want, and you'll still be here to talk about it in a few days. The same cannot be said for alcohol, oxycontin, or xanax. If the toxicity and risk from use of cannabis are so low, why do you feel a need to have it so restricted?
If there was a system in place to provide actual education around use and abuse, and a regulated market place, the cannabis related "deaths" would be expected to go down even further. I guess I think people should have the freedom to alter their mind and body in the way they see fit, assuming they aren't infringing on someone elses rights when they do it.
Don't you think it would be a better use of our collective time and money to go after the more dangerous drugs?
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You keep spouting off so many off-topic arguments. I don't care about the legality or illegality or the safety. I was only saying that it's not technically accurate to say "not a single person has died directly from the use of cannabis" and that there have in fact been several. And yes, that is the direct cause in those cases.
If you can just acknowledge that and stop changing the subject, this will be over.
My hopes are lowered a little bit by every story of willful corporate and government abuse. I wish I had an answer for how to turn that around, as it seems to be getting worse, not better.
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In the mean time (while we wait for an hypothetical insurrection of the people against a tyrannic government, which will probably fail anyways since the government has bigger guns and an organized army), gun ownership and gun culture makes the USA by far the developed country with the highest murder rate.
Real problems happening right now.
Well regulated: Trained
Militia: EVERY man of military age
Now, what did I miss exactly? As that is only a reason being given for the right to keep and bear arms. Its saying "we need this" so "this shall be true". The "we need this" is just a reason, not the whole sentence as you are trying to imply.
I was highlighting a specific portion of the sentence, the rest of the sentence does not modify that section. You could in fact drop off the first section of the sentence, and it has the exact same meaning. Unless you don't speak English.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I was highlighting a specific portion of the sentence, the rest of the sentence does not modify th.
Bitch, please you wrote:
"When the text of the amendment reads as such:
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
I am simply wondering why you did not include the entire sentence.
Because to be accurate, you wrote part of the sentence, and should have marked it as such.
Because when you take things out of context, and partial quotes of one sentence are just that. it makes you look like some liberal misquoting someone on purpose to suit their own ends.
Just sayin'
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A direct cause means, if I take action A, then the result is B. There is no other factor that influences the process. If I drink a quart of concentrated sulfuric acid, nothing about my mental state, previous training or knowledge or physical ability will change the resulting course of events.
An indirect (or if you'd like some finer shades of grey, Proximate, Unforeseeable, and Remote Causes) cause is one that is a contributing factor. Some small number of people who ingest cannabis, when combined with OTHER FACTORS, do things that are stupid, or possibly dangerous or deadly to themselves or others. Tens of thousands of people ingest cannabis every day, without jumping out of windows or hurting themselves or others in any way. Actually, "tens of thousands" is probably a very low estimate. According to a 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, there were 19.8 million past-month users.
If cannabis use was a direct cause of people jumping out windows, or harming themselves or others, why are there so few such incidents when compared to the rate of usage?
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Why are you pulling out a legal dictionary? And what is the other factor involved in jumping out a window if the direct cause of your mental state is the substance itself?
If you're going to go that route, sulfuric acid won't kill you but the hemorrhaging semi-dissolved tissues will.
Why are you pulling out a legal dictionary?
Because you seem to think that there is only one type of cause. If a butterfly flaps it's wings in Asia, how much of a factor is that in a hurricane in the Atlantic? Did the butterfly directly cause the hurricane, or was it some other type of cause? I understand that this is an absurd example, but you seem to be saying that this is all black and white, with no shades of grey and that no other factors contributed to the end result.
And what is the other factor involved in jumping out a window if the direct cause of your mental state is the substance itself?
Are you claiming that the persons mental state and the setting in which they were in before ingestion wasn't a factor? Have you heard of the concept of "set and setting"? The internal mindset and external setting where usage takes place affects the resulting experience of drug usage.
sulfuric acid won't kill you but the hemorrhaging semi-dissolved tissues will.
Probably a bad example. The causal chain in that case would look more like: Ingest acid > catastrophic organ and tissue damage > death.
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What keeps them (relatively) honest isn't the threat of being violently dispatched so much as it is the cost of a violent confrontation. Win or lose, dealing with an armed insurrection is expensive, not only financially but politically as well.
Facts are proving you wrong.
Politicians in the US aren't any more honest than politicians in other western rich countries with strict gun control laws.
This statement, by itself (which is how I read it) implies that the fact that other countries don't have such a right means that there should not be such a right. Maybe you didn't actually mean that. If that is the case, then you could defend yourself by explaining that you didn't mean that.
I did just that in post #50310795.
You see an implication where there isn't.
Such as?
The national highway system vs the national railway system.
Which was centrally planned and which was not?
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Moldova, for one.
Ahem,... Dare one raise one's voice in disagreement here? I think you are getting carried away by conspiracy theoretical silliness. There is no need to invoke fantasies, when reality will do.
First of all, the government doesn't have the power to do as they please - we have seen this time and again - but you seem to think that they can 'just go out and shut down this and that'. If it was that easy, why haven't they long ago wiped the world clean of political dissent? Why do they allow the press to keep embarrassing them over and over? I think the simple explanation is that they actually believe in the ideals of democratic government, however twisted their ideologies might otherwise be. By comparison, we have seen what a totalitarian government is capable of - Europe and America are both quite far from that.
No, I think this is just the old struggle between the two forms of prudishness: the ones that believe pornography is evil, and the ones that pornography has anything to do with real sex. You see, pornography expresses a very prudish view on sexuality - a kind "Berührungsangst" as the Germans call it. That is why pornography always seems so unrealistic - there are no emotions, the participants are usually waxed to look as asexual as possible etc. (And yes, I have actually watched porn - even the supposedly more rauchy kind; I'm sorry to say, I found it boring).
The Tories in UK know that a large part of their constituency long back to the good old days of Queen Victoria and the Empire, when the Colonies knew their place and decent people were rich and wore ten layers of wool, and only procreated because it was your duty to Queen and Country. So they pander to their voters, as all politicians do, and they have a reasonably well-founded suspicion that a lot of people in UK of all classes are rather worried about the complete lack of control with everything happening on the internet. These people would welcome a lot of the proposed measures to exert control over things, even if they don't really work, simply because it feels like somebody is doing something.
... are the sort of genderless, risk averse little shits who wouldn't have the balls (or female equivalent) to actually look at their parent's porn collection.
This is a multigeneration thing, possibly.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I still don't think Moldova and the US are "plenty of countries".
But I looked at a translation of the constitution of Moldova and I can't find any reference to guns or arms: http://www.constcourt.md/publi...
Which article are you refering to exactly?
granted, moldova has a rich oral tradition that governs the constitution and provides contextual elements. but if you're looking for more countries, consider that US and Moldova are just the tip of the sphere, or iceberg if you will. haiti and guatemala come to mind.
To pretend that children in decades past haven’t been sneaking a look at mucky images, albeit in magazines and newspapers, is naive at best.
To compare the prevalence of pornography on the internet to what many of us grew up with is naive at best. I can get porn on the internet as fast as I can type "porn" into google.
I didn't even see "porn" until I was in 5th grade and a friend had a stash of Playboy magazines. Playboy back in those days would be considered softcore porn, by the way. Seriously, I looked for Victoria's Secret catalogs and even the Sears catalogs to look at women in underwear back then. These days I can find things so hardcore within seconds on the internet that they disgust even me and I consider myself somewhat of a pervert.
Once I even grabbed a copy of Penthouse off the magazine stand in either a Waldenbooks or a B. Dalton store at the mall and tried to buy it. The cashier took it back to the magazine rack and told me I couldn't buy it. I was probably about 13 at the time. No - you could not just get porn easily if you were 13 way back when. Now you just click, click, click.
I don't agree with this approach to what many consider a problem but to say that earlier generations could get porn as well is just stupid.
If I were a parent I'd definitely want to filter my children's internet access. I'd certainly at least try to monitor it. I see that as a parent's job though, not the government's. And no, you're never going to prevent your kid from seeing anything pornographic, but why let it be so easily accessible?
Back when I was a 13 year old kid seeing a woman in a bra meant something, dammit! wa
It seems to be true for Guatemala, altough somewhat limited to your house only.
The right to own weapons for personal use, not forbidden by law, in the person's home, is recognized. It will not be obligatory to hand them over except in cases ordered by a competent judge.
The right to bear arms, regulated by the law, is recognized.
As for Haiti, article 268.1 says the exact opposite, again with some limitations to your house:
Every citizen has the right to armed self defense, within the bounds of this domicile, but has no right to bear arms without express well-founded authorization from the Chief of Police.
In both cases it seems far from the absolute "right to bear arms" of the US constitution, but still, I agree we see US influence in these constitutions.
Is there a single other developped, western country with "rights to bear arms" in the constitution?