You make assumptions. Backbone operators won't block anything that stops commerce, and yes the bad guys will use the protocols and encryption methods that the good guys are using if they need to.
Also, by "backbone" the slashdot article writer was also being presumptuous. The FBI director was talking about stopping bad guys at their "choke point", and Ars Technica gave their own interpretation of what he meant by candidly assuming he meant an Internet backbone (or "hub"). Yes the US government can and does access these hubs (illegally perhaps, that is something the courts may not have the executive power to decide). The FBI also presumably wants access to the information that the NSA does (talk about information sharing between disparate government agencies!). Alas, however, a "choke point" could very well just mean the initial spotting (or IP address, gateway, etc) of a botnet virus that could be garnered from more liberal eavesdropping laws. Let's not make assumptions (in the article topic) and take them as is.
On Sunday they noticed a sharp fall in the crime rates... In Russia when they imposed martial law during the Yeltsin-era coup attempt, the crime rate also dropped dramatically. I suppose it all depends on what type of world we want to live in.
Fail. Slippery slope is not a valid argument. Nope. You fail. While slippery slope may be used as a logical fallacy, it does not mean that it is a logical fallacy.
So for example, while people (most often police officers [an appeal to authority BTW] and the like who teach about capital-D Drugs in school) will often say that marijuana leads to "harder drugs". Although there may be some correlation (amongst people who are inclined to use illegal recreational drugs), there certainly is no cause and effect or trend towards marijuana users becoming heroine or crack users for example. Thus in this situation we have a logical fallacy.
One can also see this trend in cigarette laws. Where I live they first raised the smoking age, and over the years it has gotten more and more repressive (and seemingly easier) to get even more repressive anti-smoking legislation passed. It appears (to me at least) that the same (types) of people who want smoking completely outlawed are and the one's introducing more and more legislation are the same people. And yes they use the think-of-the-children fallacy in their arguments as well.
From Wikipedia:
In debate or rhetoric, the slippery slope is an argument for the likelihood of one event or trend given another. And,
The slippery slope argument may or may not involve a fallacy...
There is a high profile local murder case in the news these days about a child molester who raped his two daughters repeatedly. While he was on bail for the first charges, he then molested and killed another girl. Speaking of logical fallacies... I will leave it up to you to figure out why your statement is a logical fallacy. It is so obvious that if you can't figure it out then you shouldn't be posting.
So you're comparing file-sharers to pedophiles and terrorists? He is paraphrasing the trends of repression. Haven't you been reading Slashdot anytime within the past few years about how general P2P file sharing (among other things) is becoming more and more repressive over time?
56,000 allegations of child molestation in Brazil linked to Orkut should be enough reason for Google to look at that data. That is more than a hunch. That is probable cause. Your (continued) use of "probable cause" is highly spurious. Unfortunately when it comes to children people will use their emotions to decide what is right and wrong and not their logic.
...your persistence in reframing the debate in terms of 'sex' and not 'child pornography' is dishonest. The re-framing was more a point of being intellectually lazy (and perhaps over-tired and overzealous) when I made my last posts. I try to be sincere with what I post. There is of course a relationship between sex and pornography, however with pornography there is always the "I know it when I see it" aspect (and the corresponding arguments of art versus obscenity). The whole topic of 'child pornography' is more complex than meets the eye; there are issues of censorship, freedom, consent, etc and the problems with defining all of these. For me at least the issue is more complex than just 'pimping' children (as you alluded to in one of your posts).
Doesn't matter if the act was "consensual". We've deemed that children cannot consent to sex with adults. That the entire nature of being a child is that they are not qualified to make these decisions. It does matter BIG TIME if the act is "consensual. When it comes to "children" (those under the legal age of majority) then people will arrogantly assume they have no rights. This is a moral issue.
You said; "We've deemed that children cannot consent to sex with adults." No "we" haven't. A small percentage of power players (priests, politicians and the commercial media who have traditionally ass-kissed to these types have however given way to this authoritarian bias, and have thus influenced the larger population).
You said: "That the entire nature of being a child is that they are not qualified to make these decisions." You are presumptuous about the nature of childhood. You sound as if you cannot remember what it is like to be a helpless child that was pressured into abstinence. You make broad moral claims but you give absolutely zero evidence.
Again: We've deemed that children cannot make that decision for themselves. Porn stars are adults. They can make their own decisions. A rhetorical question, but one worth asking; if a parent made the decision that sex is ok for them then would this be OK with you? (I'm assuming the answer to be in the negative, but if you are serious about the issue then you should put some thought into this question).
Nope. But I do prefer to err on the side of caution. AND my views are enshrined in law precisely because the majority of society agrees on the subject. And at the end of the day, that's how democracy works. Most of us, on the balance of benefits and risks to allowing child porn in any form have deemed the risks outweigh the benefit. Its really that simple. Granted democracy is a preferred form of government for me, but I think it is important that people realize the disadvantages of lowest-common-denominator populous thinking. Democracy is no haven for freedom.
Trouble is, there is no reliable way to separate the mature person from the immature person. And either of them can think they 'KNOW' they are ready; but only one of them is right. You are assuming that maturity is a pre-requisite or a requirement for sex. This is an argument I have heard from moralists that offer no scientific quantification of their facts. If in fact maturity is a requirement for sex then the vast majority of 18 to 65 year old adults would not be allowed to have sex.
Although you may not realize this explicitly, you are casting children who don't suppress their sexuality into deviants, and by the same manner you are doing the same to adults (who don't have a psychological hang-up about child sexuality). This is wrong, and people need to be educated that sex is natural instead of the abstinence type education that people are given in the modern Western world.
The viewing of child porn further degrades and humiliates the victims. Your fallacious biases along with your propaganda make your arguments very weak. But as always with such arguments I always experience hypocrisy. Do you believe that viewing video tapes of child baptisms is humiliating and degrading to the victims? If not then you are a hypocrite.
Making real children have 'simulated sex' is still abuse. It should still be a crime. Do you believe fictional characterizations of religious activities should be a crime? If not then you are a hypocrite.
I still think its sick and demented. And I think the same of religion. Since religion does far more harm than sex I am sure you will want it banned (if you are not a hypocrite).
And maybe Rambo III does affect some small percentage of people. Maybe some movie did feed into some killers psyche and motivate a real world murder. I don't think its much of a risk myself... You are saying that portrayals of violence is less harmful than portrayals of sex. This is just plain perverted thinking.
But as cliche as it may sound, I'm willing to do something extra when children's welfare is involved, to err on the side of caution. They are defenseless, so I don't feel its inappropriate or irrational to take an extra step to defend them. I agree whole heartedly. Children should be defended against those that strive to hurt them the most; the religious and the authoritarian (right-wing).
I have always been a defender of children's rights (even when I was very, very young myself). My voice has always been subjugated by the right wing, but thanks to forums like Slashdot I can speak for children and children's rights.
My memory fails me. I did not realize it was so long ago that the Tin Drum was banned. I do believe I saw this movie on television more than once (on the independent stations) long after it was banned.
...my point was simply that people can be coerced into things that are harmful for them, so it's impossible to make blanket statements like "sex is not harmful". Wrong! I in fact did make that "blanket" statement. You will in fact have to prove that this statement is wrong without introducing additional variables like 'coercion'.
I didn't suggest that all porn involves coercion - but if any porn (or in fact any sex) has ever involved coercion then your statement that "sex is not harmful" is false. I must disagree. You are adding a variable to a constant. Sex is neither good nor bad, and in that sense it may involve coercion, submission, or any other variables. And so too water is not inherently bad (and is in fact life saving in many respects) but it can also be used to drown people or "waterboard" (torture) people.
Sex (Ceteris paribus) is not inherently harmful. How it is approached and used may very well be harmful (rape; non-consensual sex that is arguably harmful, or sex without a condom may be harmful), but saying that sex is harmful just because something negative has happened or may happen that is only ancillary to sex is a fallacy.
Pornography is sex. Sex is not harmful.
Obviously you've never been coerced or pressured into having sex. Good for you. Want to bet how many people in the porn industry can say the same?
Your quote: "Obviously you've never been coerced or pressured into having sex." My answer: irrelevant, although if I was (or wasn't pressured into sex) this would obviously bias my arguments (assuming that I would be persuaded by my own anecdotal evidence.)
Want to bet how many people in the porn industry can say the same? I don't bet on such things, and I generally don't bet (once every ~5 years at a blackjack table perhaps, but only for an hour or so).
I am sure coercion does happen, as it has happened with me in most of the (non-sex related) jobs that I have had.
We must define coercion however, and more specifically to the specific context of discussion. If there is coercion then one must not make the logical fallacy that coercion is implicit to pornography. There is certainly corruption in politics for example but that does not mean that all politicians are corrupt (I may stand corrected on this point, but there has to be statistically verifiable proof).
Thanks for your reply. It should be noted that it is the assumptions that you (and most people) make that I am arguing against. When it comes to making points of argument (especially think-of-the-children type arguments) most people seem to exhibit their assumptions without thinking of the overall concepts involved.
I wish for people to put thought into the ideas they express and not merely parrot common consensus.
I do thank you for considering my arguments (with an apparently open mind).
That's a pretty weak straw man you have there. No one is actually killed in those movies, but actual children are violated in child porn. Again I'll take issue with your moral fantasies:
NOBODY is violated in a "porn" movie. Pornography is sex. Sex is not harmful. Sex may very well be illegal in some cases (involving children, animals, homosexuals, dead people, etc... depending on what your country's laws are).
I will in this case belabor the point; "child porn" is a vague and undefined reference that could mean almost anything. I personally consider corporal punishment to be (in your words) "child porn", but this is LEGAL!!! in most places throughout the world (and even the Western world). Again, it amazes me that people would be so condoning of violence and "abuse" against children and so much against sex. It is amazing how perverted our world is.
The difference is that those [horror] movies don't exploit minors during production. I'll call your bullshit and raise you an Informative.
During the filming of The Exorcist, Linda Blair was tied to a board during an exorcism scene and violently throttled up and down. When she was screaming in them movie (during this scene) this wasn't acting.
If you want to talk about child exploitation then Hollywood is perhaps the worst offender (in terms of quantity of children exploited).
But your arguments, like most arguments I see about child exploitation, is filled with hypocrisy. To be more specific; if the movie involves violence then this is acceptable, but if the movie involves sex then this is unacceptable.
You can make a horror film without killing someone. In order to make a child porno film, you have to sexually abuse a child. Wrong! And I smell hypocrisy here; you are implying that the movie with violence can be simulated and the one with sex cannot. Also, I can only presume you are equating sex with "abuse" (I use quotes here because it is a vague word that is used only for political reasons. The very use of the word itself is a Troll).
So right now in Ontario, Canada the award winning film the Tin Drum was recently classified as "child pornography" (a film I happened to have watched (legally) on Canadian television when I was a child). This is an example of morality being adopted into law. If I was to impose my own morals on people then parents who expose their children to religion would be put in jail for their perversions. It's lucky for those parents that I neither have the power or hypocrisy to do this.
What happens if your laptop is encrypted? They will demand encryption keys.
If you can't supply the encryption keys (or even if you do them them the keys) they can and will (at their discretion) confiscate your laptop. This was discussed on Slashdot before IIRC.
From the washingtonpost.com reference:
"This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.
Since when is "loose morals" an illegal act? In the US there is the Vice Squad, in Toronto Canada there is (or was?) the Morality Squad, in Saudi Arabia there is the Religious Police.
"Loose morals" are illegal so long as they are written into law (or at least enforced by Authority).
You can't carry drugs or bombs on a hard disk. Yes, but you can carry ideas, perversions, business contacts, dirty pictures, and trade secrets. All of these are of interest to inquiring minds.
So it doesn't really matter if privacy is violated as long as the government gets to meet its agenda.
From the Slashdot article:
Might want to think hard about what's on your laptop if you're going to be passing through a US international airport. If you have nothing on your laptop of relevance then there is probably no need to even carry a laptop with you. The minute they figure out a way to do brain scans is when I start to become even more insular.
But if there's noone in the universe, then who's doing the imagining? I'm guessing this all has something to do with string theory. I think it has more to do with "modern" philosophy.
Turn in your geek card for not recognizing The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy obviously makes some spurious scientific claims. I would suggest that it needs to be peer reviewed.
Slashdot Mirror
You make assumptions. Backbone operators won't block anything that stops commerce, and yes the bad guys will use the protocols and encryption methods that the good guys are using if they need to.
Also, by "backbone" the slashdot article writer was also being presumptuous. The FBI director was talking about stopping bad guys at their "choke point", and Ars Technica gave their own interpretation of what he meant by candidly assuming he meant an Internet backbone (or "hub"). Yes the US government can and does access these hubs (illegally perhaps, that is something the courts may not have the executive power to decide). The FBI also presumably wants access to the information that the NSA does (talk about information sharing between disparate government agencies!). Alas, however, a "choke point" could very well just mean the initial spotting (or IP address, gateway, etc) of a botnet virus that could be garnered from more liberal eavesdropping laws. Let's not make assumptions (in the article topic) and take them as is.
Slippery slope is not a valid argument. Nope. You fail. While slippery slope may be used as a logical fallacy, it does not mean that it is a logical fallacy.
So for example, while people (most often police officers [an appeal to authority BTW] and the like who teach about capital-D Drugs in school) will often say that marijuana leads to "harder drugs". Although there may be some correlation (amongst people who are inclined to use illegal recreational drugs), there certainly is no cause and effect or trend towards marijuana users becoming heroine or crack users for example. Thus in this situation we have a logical fallacy.
On the other hand, people who are inclined to hurt (non-human) animals are also inclined to violence in general (towards the human animal). So there is very definitely a logical slippery slope here.
One can also see this trend in cigarette laws. Where I live they first raised the smoking age, and over the years it has gotten more and more repressive (and seemingly easier) to get even more repressive anti-smoking legislation passed. It appears (to me at least) that the same (types) of people who want smoking completely outlawed are and the one's introducing more and more legislation are the same people. And yes they use the think-of-the-children fallacy in their arguments as well.
From Wikipedia: In debate or rhetoric, the slippery slope is an argument for the likelihood of one event or trend given another. And, The slippery slope argument may or may not involve a fallacy...
...your persistence in reframing the debate in terms of 'sex' and not 'child pornography' is dishonest. The re-framing was more a point of being intellectually lazy (and perhaps over-tired and overzealous) when I made my last posts. I try to be sincere with what I post. There is of course a relationship between sex and pornography, however with pornography there is always the "I know it when I see it" aspect (and the corresponding arguments of art versus obscenity). The whole topic of 'child pornography' is more complex than meets the eye; there are issues of censorship, freedom, consent, etc and the problems with defining all of these. For me at least the issue is more complex than just 'pimping' children (as you alluded to in one of your posts).Your replies are appreciated.
Best regards,
UTW
You said; "We've deemed that children cannot consent to sex with adults." No "we" haven't. A small percentage of power players (priests, politicians and the commercial media who have traditionally ass-kissed to these types have however given way to this authoritarian bias, and have thus influenced the larger population).
You said: "That the entire nature of being a child is that they are not qualified to make these decisions."
You are presumptuous about the nature of childhood. You sound as if you cannot remember what it is like to be a helpless child that was pressured into abstinence. You make broad moral claims but you give absolutely zero evidence. Again: We've deemed that children cannot make that decision for themselves. Porn stars are adults. They can make their own decisions. A rhetorical question, but one worth asking; if a parent made the decision that sex is ok for them then would this be OK with you? (I'm assuming the answer to be in the negative, but if you are serious about the issue then you should put some thought into this question). Nope. But I do prefer to err on the side of caution. AND my views are enshrined in law precisely because the majority of society agrees on the subject. And at the end of the day, that's how democracy works. Most of us, on the balance of benefits and risks to allowing child porn in any form have deemed the risks outweigh the benefit. Its really that simple. Granted democracy is a preferred form of government for me, but I think it is important that people realize the disadvantages of lowest-common-denominator populous thinking. Democracy is no haven for freedom. Trouble is, there is no reliable way to separate the mature person from the immature person. And either of them can think they 'KNOW' they are ready; but only one of them is right. You are assuming that maturity is a pre-requisite or a requirement for sex. This is an argument I have heard from moralists that offer no scientific quantification of their facts. If in fact maturity is a requirement for sex then the vast majority of 18 to 65 year old adults would not be allowed to have sex.
Although you may not realize this explicitly, you are casting children who don't suppress their sexuality into deviants, and by the same manner you are doing the same to adults (who don't have a psychological hang-up about child sexuality). This is wrong, and people need to be educated that sex is natural instead of the abstinence type education that people are given in the modern Western world.
I have always been a defender of children's rights (even when I was very, very young myself). My voice has always been subjugated by the right wing, but thanks to forums like Slashdot I can speak for children and children's rights.
My memory fails me. I did not realize it was so long ago that the Tin Drum was banned. I do believe I saw this movie on television more than once (on the independent stations) long after it was banned.
...my point was simply that people can be coerced into things that are harmful for them, so it's impossible to make blanket statements like "sex is not harmful". Wrong! I in fact did make that "blanket" statement. You will in fact have to prove that this statement is wrong without introducing additional variables like 'coercion'.Sex (Ceteris paribus) is not inherently harmful. How it is approached and used may very well be harmful (rape; non-consensual sex that is arguably harmful, or sex without a condom may be harmful), but saying that sex is harmful just because something negative has happened or may happen that is only ancillary to sex is a fallacy.
Your quote:
"Obviously you've never been coerced or pressured into having sex."
My answer: irrelevant, although if I was (or wasn't pressured into sex) this would obviously bias my arguments (assuming that I would be persuaded by my own anecdotal evidence.) Want to bet how many people in the porn industry can say the same? I don't bet on such things, and I generally don't bet (once every ~5 years at a blackjack table perhaps, but only for an hour or so).
I am sure coercion does happen, as it has happened with me in most of the (non-sex related) jobs that I have had.
We must define coercion however, and more specifically to the specific context of discussion. If there is coercion then one must not make the logical fallacy that coercion is implicit to pornography. There is certainly corruption in politics for example but that does not mean that all politicians are corrupt (I may stand corrected on this point, but there has to be statistically verifiable proof).
Thanks for your reply. It should be noted that it is the assumptions that you (and most people) make that I am arguing against. When it comes to making points of argument (especially think-of-the-children type arguments) most people seem to exhibit their assumptions without thinking of the overall concepts involved.
I wish for people to put thought into the ideas they express and not merely parrot common consensus.
I do thank you for considering my arguments (with an apparently open mind).
Best regards,
UTW
NOBODY is violated in a "porn" movie. Pornography is sex. Sex is not harmful. Sex may very well be illegal in some cases (involving children, animals, homosexuals, dead people, etc... depending on what your country's laws are).
I will in this case belabor the point; "child porn" is a vague and undefined reference that could mean almost anything. I personally consider corporal punishment to be (in your words) "child porn", but this is LEGAL!!! in most places throughout the world (and even the Western world). Again, it amazes me that people would be so condoning of violence and "abuse" against children and so much against sex. It is amazing how perverted our world is.
During the filming of The Exorcist, Linda Blair was tied to a board during an exorcism scene and violently throttled up and down. When she was screaming in them movie (during this scene) this wasn't acting.
If you want to talk about child exploitation then Hollywood is perhaps the worst offender (in terms of quantity of children exploited).
But your arguments, like most arguments I see about child exploitation, is filled with hypocrisy. To be more specific; if the movie involves violence then this is acceptable, but if the movie involves sex then this is unacceptable.
So right now in Ontario, Canada the award winning film the Tin Drum was recently classified as "child pornography" (a film I happened to have watched (legally) on Canadian television when I was a child). This is an example of morality being adopted into law. If I was to impose my own morals on people then parents who expose their children to religion would be put in jail for their perversions. It's lucky for those parents that I neither have the power or hypocrisy to do this.
If you can't supply the encryption keys (or even if you do them them the keys) they can and will (at their discretion) confiscate your laptop. This was discussed on Slashdot before IIRC.
I'm a bit lazing with references ATM, so I will give you a general Google listing:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+customs+confiscate+laptop&btnG=Search
From the washingtonpost.com reference: "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.
"Loose morals" are illegal so long as they are written into law (or at least enforced by Authority).
So it doesn't really matter if privacy is violated as long as the government gets to meet its agenda.
Cogito ergo sum,
UTW
I am only hoping that your statement is only a half-assed attempt at humour (for which PETA is not impressed).
For a self-sustaining and abundant food supply people should use Soylent Green. But I digress, this is only a Modest Proposal.