In that case, could you define human rights? The right to have sex with random adults before marriage and even after marriage? The right to kill your neighbor when they stumbled upon your house "as self defense"? The right to show pornography to minors? The right to abuse substances?
I don't know, but human rights seem like a very bad thing if that's the case. For me at least, it means the right of an individual person to have the freedom to do as he/she feels like it as long is there is no direct physical and unwanted harm done to that person or his or her property.
I will defend this right with as much force as I can. I will attempt to be as fanatical as my opponents are to do me harm if I exercise these freedoms.
To answer your direct questions:
The right to have sex with random adults before marriage and even after marriage? Yes, this would be one example of a human right.
The right to kill your neighbor when they stumbled upon your house "as self defense"? No. Killing to protect your life is self-preservation and is understandable and very human. Killing merely to protect your property is wrong (though some people in the West would disagree). Killing to protect your property in a military sense (protecting one's land from invaders) is a more complex subject, but there are reasons where it can be justified. This is a tangent and I won't elaborate.
The right to show pornography to minors? If there is no force or coercion involved (that is, no harm done to the minor), then yes this is a right. Granted a lot of people will say that a minor does not have the intellectual capacity to consent. But to me the consent issue here is irrelevant, since the viewing of pornography is not harmful. You will have to give me the benefit of the doubt here because arguing about this issue would be a tangent and off-topic.
The right to abuse substances? It depends what you mean by "abuse substances". If you mean drink alcohol or use other mind / mood altering substances then yes. Sex and drugs are moral issues. They do not cause harm to an individual. Of course they MAY cause harm depending on how they are used. Again I'm not going to argue here.
But more important to having these freedoms, however trivial they may appear to you; is the right (not so much) to be free to do something, but to have the right to be free from oppression and punishment. If what a person "hurts" is nothing more than some religious, political, ethnic or traditional dogma or moral; then these rights should be paramount and superceding. I don't mean to insult a persons traditions, but these traditions cannot harm me, or anybody else. If a person imposes their own morals or traditions on me then this would be offensive. In the same vein, I will not impose my morals on you or anybody else. And no, giving somebody freedom is not imposing.
I don't know, but human rights seem like a very bad thing if that's the case. To me puting people in jail, breaking up families, and destroying a person's career just because you do not like that person's morality is wrong. Some cultures even kill people because of their morals. Even in the West we have vigilantes who kill people because of their morals: this is wrong and violates human rights. If you disagree with this then you are wrong and I will do everything possible to stop you. When you say "I don't know", I certainly hope that you do indeed have some doubt's about your beliefs. Keeping an open mind and having the ability to feel empathy and have tolerance can be very helpful in having a peaceful and happy world.
I will say that the issues you bring up do not reflect on my personal moral outlook (for example, adultery is something that I personally feel uncomfortable with) or lifestyle, but I wish for people to have freedom of choice and more importantly freedom from repression.
Thank you for posting. I appreciate different view points. If a person like you appears to post an honest and unbiased opinion of a different point of view, then I am sure that me and others will appreciate it.
Yes it is certainly harder for people (like me) to understand how posting these things can be viewed as bad or dangerous. I wish there were an easy way to get rid of bad policies or bad governments. The US has certainly showed us that the simple approach (like using brute force) doesn't always work.
Investigated the effects of emotional desensitization to films of violence against women and the effects of sexually degrading explicit and nonexplicit films on beliefs about rape and the sexual objectification of women. Males viewed either 2 or 5 R-rated violent "slasher," X-rated nonviolent "pornographic," or R-rated nonviolent teenage-oriented ("teen sex") films. The objectivity of this research is in question. The abstract uses language that presupposes conclusions (i.e. "violence against women", "sexually degrading", "explicit" are value-judgment terms which are undefined [in the abstract at least] but have generally negative conotations). These researchers are not objective, so therefore no objective evidence can (accurately) be determined. This is not science. There is no evidence to back up your statements.
However you not only fail to prove your point, you give evidence to completely invalidate your point:
There were no differences in response between the R-rated teen sex film and the X-rated, sexually explicit, nonviolent film, and the no-exposure control conditions on the objectification or the rape trial variables. And in no way does this abstract conclude that there is a cause and effect relationship as you so blatantly state:
watching porn will make people more likely to allow another person to be hurt. However, I'm sure any advocacy group could do their own research and come up with their own unscientific and unverifiable conclusions. Nor is this research on-topic. "Horror" movies != "whore" movies.
It is quite often that/. are commenting not about the main subject of the post, but about general attitude or racial prejudices expressed in the post. That is what AC did. And this is normal.
Thanks for input, offtopic police. The fact is the AC is using racism as an excuse for bad behavior. Human rights are colour-blind. And yes the AC is being racist for suggesting that Chinese are immune from human rights because of their race.
Another fact is that governments have always played the race card against their own citizens: that is excusing their own malignant behavior to other governments that would dare condemn them. Excuses are just that.
To elaborate on my position you should probably read my follow-up (if you haven't already).
So what are you looking for in a game? - Above all it should be fun to play. This means that arcane puzzles or Boss levels would not be existent in an otherwise good first person shooter, for example (Yeah I know I am not a capital-G Gamer)
- Something totally original, if at all possible. Much like Sim City was totally different than the more traditional arcade style games at the time, or like Crazy-climber was different from the more traditional shoot-em-up arcade games of the day.
- Although not necessary, it would be good if a game had an educational quality to it, like flight simulators or Risk type games that had more use of history or geography. It makes me feel like I'm not just completely wasting my time otherwise:P
- Turn-based strategies like Civilization are rather nice. I can sit back and relax without having some asshat destroy my armies while I grab a coffee:P I like the more complex God-like aspect of nation building as well (like in Sim City).
- For FPS's great graphics with an interesting story line. I liked the original Half Life and Shadow Warrior. They were original and very well done for their time.
The style of game really doesn't matter. My tastes are eclectic. Make the easy levels indeed EASY, so one can play the game without going through walk-throughs or cheats, or having to spend untold amounts of time trying to get past a level.
I suppose a lot of people here wouldn't consider me a True or serious Gamer. I just like to have fun and divert my attention occasionally. I haven't even played GTA yet! Though one of these days... Mainly I'm too busy gluing cats to a bicycle or something.
The Chinese people I know learnt that it happened in 1989. It was the turning point because the soldiers were reluctant to run people down at the end of it. Next question? I was hoping that the general tone of my post meant that it would not be taken literally. However you only offer anecdotal evidence.
To me "human rights" is not a UN definition, nor is it based on any one political entity or historical fact or process. If I wanted to define it as such I would have referenced a specific definition. Human rights to me are rights that are applied to humans. In this case we are talking about censorship; and so my arguments are presented. I do not need a Wikipedia article to tell me what human rights are; and in the same vein a victim of a robbery does not need to know the laws or Wikipedia definitions of robbery. A person does not need to be a history expert to comment on historical events, nor a cultural expert to comment on culture. A good argument needs no propping up.
WOW. For wont of feeding an Off-topic Troll spouting Flaimbait; I must say I will not even attempt to discredit anything you say. Your fallaciousnous is too obvious. I'm sure the Moderators will so judge you even before I finish typing this.
It would be interesting to hear your non recursive definition of a 'dictator', as I wonder how many other leaders may fall into this category. All? Most?
It is a matter of degree. For the sake of this topic, and the Western perspective given this Web site, I will let the definition rest with people's pre-conceived notions.
This is a non-answer for sure. I almost feel like a politician:P
Mao Zedong killed a hell of a lot of people, mostly with his idiotic policies that produced a famine. Who in that country needs horror movies when their grandparents were swapping babies to eat ? Or the more recent Tiananmen Square. If it aint in the history books it aint never happened. All is bliss in the Utopia.
did Greece remove all their statues because of homophobic people? I'm not sure about Greece, but where I live the relevant parts of the statues would be removed by the general population. No need for a legislative body to decide.
We are two entirely different cultures and what are you doing passing judgment on the Chinese? I am not passing judgment on the Chinese. I am passing judgment on human beings. More specifically I am passing judgment on human beings who are dictators.
You can dilute and diverge the argument over more trivial cultural differences (nice try), but the topic is about censorship and more generally human rights, and not more specifically (as you imply) about a cultures spitting habits.
And just how exactly is it supposed to improve their image with the rest of the world to look like a bunch of censorious tyrants? If you need to try to improve your image, then that shows that there is already something wrong with your image. It's what gives sales people a bad name. Attempting to make a bad image appear good is amplifying the lie. It makes me think of Bill Clinton stating that he never had sex or smoked marijuana; like all politicians, no matter what country they are from, they will make themselves look like more of an asshat than they may actually be.
In the end it doesn't really matter; asshats will always be asshats, and Leaders will always be Leaders. Never ideal in any practical sense but charismatic and manipulative enough to be in power.
But meh.. if you want to close your eyes to the possibilities here then go ahead, keep to your linear little books, keep letting someone else do your thinking for you;) (I noted the winkie). Indeed, I always try to keep an open mind. It is for me however more a point of analogies. Analogies can themselves be spurious, although instructive when trying to communicate ideas that may be outside the comprehension or Weltanschauung of the audience. There certainly may be games out there that can enlighten like great works of literature (Shakespeare was just an example here).
As a more modern example, one could never IMHO get the feeling that a very cerebral and surrealistic book like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has in a video game, or even a movie. Ken Kesey was himself quite angry over the movie because he felt it did not portray the book accurately. I would contend however that they are two different mediums, and trying to portray the metaphorical and often hallucinogenic / psychedelic thinking of the author and it's characters in a movie would have made it seem more cartoonish than serious. One cannot visually portray thought patterns visually without any degree of accuracy after all. And so too I would suggest that making the book into a video game would yield disappointing results. And with books you are implicitly the backseat driver; like old black and white movies, there is a whole different approach to their easthetics altogether. Shakespeare I used as an example because it is a much more recognized name.
Comparing video game to literature is spurious to me. They are two completely different mediums. If a video game ever had the complexities and subtleties of a Shakespearian play then maybe we could talk.
Like the old joke about watching movies; I'll wait for the book to come out.
Solutions: If you want to create something that isn't subject to lowest-common-denominator marketing then open-source it. Leave it up to the programmers, designers, etc to decide how a game will evolve instead of the marketing people. You will have complete freedom (I'm being presumptuous here, but all things being equal...).
Yes like a lot of great works of art it may not be popular in the creators life time, but it will exist. I have always found the "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" aphorism to be correct. And like business ideas, if you leave them to the venture capitalists, then you are quite literally selling yourself out. Art and business are two different things. They can compliment each other, but the latter will often dilute and subjugate the former.
You could choose which bribes to accept, who to lie to, and all the other fun things that come along with being a politician. Indeed, in a truly realistic simulation. I think we are seeing some of this in some online virtual worlds already, like terrorism (in the form of griefers) and fraud (not living up to trade agreements). IIRC, I think the online version of Sim City was more politically based.
Sadly, I speak mainly from theory now, since I have very little time for games.
The best example of innovation came from a game that many of the business people just didn't want to finance, and that is Sim City (and the Sim off shoots). It was a truly think-outside-the-box game; no obvious win scenario, with the real pleasure coming from just creating cities and learning how different elements interacted with each other. As the years went on it proved itself to be an enduring contender.
Unfortunately the business people (as opposed to the creative minds) will have the ultimate say in how long a franchise like this lives. In order to try and maximize their profits these people and the games they finance will inevitably be constrained by their economic and marketing equations. Take for example the decision to turn Sim City into Sim Societies; a much easier to understand marketing vehicle: easier and more intuitive to play than developing Sim City into a yet more complex and compelling game / simulation, and thus making it harder to play and more niche-like. Sim City could probably be profitable for decades to come, but with diminishing returns due to the increasing realism and complexity that would be had as it is further developed.
Much the same can be said for the pre-mature death of Sim Earth. A very interesting and educational game, and I suspect that at least part of its demise was the rather poor windows port of this game (the Mac Version was awesome).
Of course if people start bringing politics into the game creation equation then this will also be a hindrance to creativity. Games like politics also strive towards the lowest common denominator. So it goes.
In the end, after the BPI had sucked everything out of the UK, citizens would move back into caves and watch their cities fall apart, fight-club style. Only weeks after being put into office, the BPI would have completed it's quest and move on to destroy other civilizations. Perhaps I should reconsider my proposal.
Excuse my asking, but how do you do that without copying their webpage and thus breaking their copyright, (and having your internet cut-off?) Every time a person looks at a Web page they are looking at a copy of it that is loaded onto their own computer. The copyright issue here is appropriating that Web page for one's own use and hosting it on a server for use by the public. There is "fair use" that is already implicit in the mere act of using the WWW. It's very different from television where you have to make the effort to copy; copying is an inherent part of the way the Internet works, even for streaming.
Yes one could make laws on how to actually use this already copied material (if these laws don't already exist). Unless the content were DRMed in some way, and you break the DRM, then you are probably not breaking a law. Of course there could always be some Draconian (and probably unenforceable) TOS on the Web site, like stating you can't cache content.
There should be a movement where all Britians download p2p software and break the law. ISPs would go out of business for lack of customers, the British economy would collapse, and the government would be kicked out of office and the laws changed to something more reasonable. It would be the Streisand Effect at its best.
Or if there are more Sheeple than people in Britian, then White Hats can install proxy servers on the computers of Britians and pass P2P traffic on it. The same effect in the end, but not quite as ideal as this time there would be unwanted collateral damage. But ultimately the damage would be the result of these Draconian laws.
Yes it's extreme, but even politicians have to realize that there is consequences for their actions.
The fallacy is that you are using anecdotal evidence from an agency which would have an obvious bias (that sex with children is abuse). I don't see any neutral, objective, scientific grounding in any social service agency. There should at least be an attempt to suspend ones belief system if one were to be neutral in a controversial topic like pedophilia.
It is analogous to the agency (in my part of the world) that does research into recreational drug use; the Addiction Research Foundation (their name itself implies that they view drugs use negatively i.e. "addiction").
I don't really care what peoples views are, as long as they are presented in an unbiased manner then I can at least have respect for them. Trying to convince me of something through the use of biased language is unlikely to work.
It's the reason why I'm so turned off by the news media in general. They go for sensationalism over rationalism. Yeah I know it makes sense since most news outlets are either commercial or political. It is however unfortunate IMHO. I would rather just get the facts without the opinion.
BTW: The CAPS to me is a lazy way for me to do italics. I'm not going anywhere either. The reason I joined slashdot is to be a pain in the ass to fanatics.... Don't matter what the subject matter is. If I read something fanatical, I will point it out. I will be here forever. I will be the fly on the neck of a fanatic. I will be a reminder to you and to other people that you can't always say anything you want and get away with it. You will always be reminded that their are people like me out there pointing out your fanaticism and showing you what you truely are.
I've already decided that you're wrong. That's one of the reasons why I didn't bother looking up references, etc in the first place. There's realy no point. It's a lot of work for me but with no return for the effort.
As for the article(s)... I would have to look them up on (one of) my hard drive(s). Again, very little return on the effort (some of my hard drives are in storage and need to be installed).
"Incidently, it's not my Wikipedia." Yeah I know, sorry for that. If you look at my user page I've been arguing all night. It's an excuse I know.
I should also point out I'm about to become a father. If anyone took a video of my little girl being abused and posted it on the Internet, they'd want to make very sure they never revealed who they were. Again, your attitude reveals it is not even worth discussing. I'm sure most people would rather assume me to be a pedophile (and likewise dealt with) rather than to have an intelligent discussion.
You should first start looking at your own Wikipedia. There were dozens of references to many scientific papers (if they haven't been deleted already be the anti-pedo fanatics over the years). No I'm talking about real objective articles (nothing reminiscent of advocacy groups like NAMBL or Perverted Justice).
You go first. Prove it. I'm sure we could spend weeks of you posting references to things like that anecdotal evidence you have gotten from DOCs, and me pointing out its fallacies.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, but human rights seem like a very bad thing if that's the case. For me at least, it means the right of an individual person to have the freedom to do as he/she feels like it as long is there is no direct physical and unwanted harm done to that person or his or her property.
I will defend this right with as much force as I can. I will attempt to be as fanatical as my opponents are to do me harm if I exercise these freedoms.
To answer your direct questions: The right to have sex with random adults before marriage and even after marriage? Yes, this would be one example of a human right. The right to kill your neighbor when they stumbled upon your house "as self defense"? No. Killing to protect your life is self-preservation and is understandable and very human. Killing merely to protect your property is wrong (though some people in the West would disagree). Killing to protect your property in a military sense (protecting one's land from invaders) is a more complex subject, but there are reasons where it can be justified. This is a tangent and I won't elaborate. The right to show pornography to minors? If there is no force or coercion involved (that is, no harm done to the minor), then yes this is a right. Granted a lot of people will say that a minor does not have the intellectual capacity to consent. But to me the consent issue here is irrelevant, since the viewing of pornography is not harmful. You will have to give me the benefit of the doubt here because arguing about this issue would be a tangent and off-topic. The right to abuse substances? It depends what you mean by "abuse substances". If you mean drink alcohol or use other mind / mood altering substances then yes. Sex and drugs are moral issues. They do not cause harm to an individual. Of course they MAY cause harm depending on how they are used. Again I'm not going to argue here.
But more important to having these freedoms, however trivial they may appear to you; is the right (not so much) to be free to do something, but to have the right to be free from oppression and punishment. If what a person "hurts" is nothing more than some religious, political, ethnic or traditional dogma or moral; then these rights should be paramount and superceding. I don't mean to insult a persons traditions, but these traditions cannot harm me, or anybody else. If a person imposes their own morals or traditions on me then this would be offensive. In the same vein, I will not impose my morals on you or anybody else. And no, giving somebody freedom is not imposing. I don't know, but human rights seem like a very bad thing if that's the case. To me puting people in jail, breaking up families, and destroying a person's career just because you do not like that person's morality is wrong. Some cultures even kill people because of their morals. Even in the West we have vigilantes who kill people because of their morals: this is wrong and violates human rights. If you disagree with this then you are wrong and I will do everything possible to stop you. When you say "I don't know", I certainly hope that you do indeed have some doubt's about your beliefs. Keeping an open mind and having the ability to feel empathy and have tolerance can be very helpful in having a peaceful and happy world.
I will say that the issues you bring up do not reflect on my personal moral outlook (for example, adultery is something that I personally feel uncomfortable with) or lifestyle, but I wish for people to have freedom of choice and more importantly freedom from repression.
Best regards,
UTW
Thank you for posting. I appreciate different view points. If a person like you appears to post an honest and unbiased opinion of a different point of view, then I am sure that me and others will appreciate it.
Yes it is certainly harder for people (like me) to understand how posting these things can be viewed as bad or dangerous. I wish there were an easy way to get rid of bad policies or bad governments. The US has certainly showed us that the simple approach (like using brute force) doesn't always work.
Regards,
UTW
However you not only fail to prove your point, you give evidence to completely invalidate your point: There were no differences in response between the R-rated teen sex film and the X-rated, sexually explicit, nonviolent film, and the no-exposure control conditions on the objectification or the rape trial variables. And in no way does this abstract conclude that there is a cause and effect relationship as you so blatantly state: watching porn will make people more likely to allow another person to be hurt. However, I'm sure any advocacy group could do their own research and come up with their own unscientific and unverifiable conclusions. Nor is this research on-topic. "Horror" movies != "whore" movies.
- QED (I will not comment on this matter further)
Thanks for input, offtopic police. The fact is the AC is using racism as an excuse for bad behavior. Human rights are colour-blind. And yes the AC is being racist for suggesting that Chinese are immune from human rights because of their race.
Another fact is that governments have always played the race card against their own citizens: that is excusing their own malignant behavior to other governments that would dare condemn them. Excuses are just that.
- Something totally original, if at all possible. Much like Sim City was totally different than the more traditional arcade style games at the time, or like Crazy-climber was different from the more traditional shoot-em-up arcade games of the day.
- Although not necessary, it would be good if a game had an educational quality to it, like flight simulators or Risk type games that had more use of history or geography. It makes me feel like I'm not just completely wasting my time otherwise
- Turn-based strategies like Civilization are rather nice. I can sit back and relax without having some asshat destroy my armies while I grab a coffee
- For FPS's great graphics with an interesting story line. I liked the original Half Life and Shadow Warrior. They were original and very well done for their time.
The style of game really doesn't matter. My tastes are eclectic. Make the easy levels indeed EASY, so one can play the game without going through walk-throughs or cheats, or having to spend untold amounts of time trying to get past a level.
I suppose a lot of people here wouldn't consider me a True or serious Gamer. I just like to have fun and divert my attention occasionally. I haven't even played GTA yet! Though one of these days... Mainly I'm too busy gluing cats to a bicycle or something.
We all should know that China has been censoring Tiananmen Square issues.
To me "human rights" is not a UN definition, nor is it based on any one political entity or historical fact or process. If I wanted to define it as such I would have referenced a specific definition. Human rights to me are rights that are applied to humans. In this case we are talking about censorship; and so my arguments are presented. I do not need a Wikipedia article to tell me what human rights are; and in the same vein a victim of a robbery does not need to know the laws or Wikipedia definitions of robbery. A person does not need to be a history expert to comment on historical events, nor a cultural expert to comment on culture. A good argument needs no propping up.
WOW. For wont of feeding an Off-topic Troll spouting Flaimbait; I must say I will not even attempt to discredit anything you say. Your fallaciousnous is too obvious. I'm sure the Moderators will so judge you even before I finish typing this.
It is a matter of degree. For the sake of this topic, and the Western perspective given this Web site, I will let the definition rest with people's pre-conceived notions.
This is a non-answer for sure. I almost feel like a politician
You can dilute and diverge the argument over more trivial cultural differences (nice try), but the topic is about censorship and more generally human rights, and not more specifically (as you imply) about a cultures spitting habits.
In the end it doesn't really matter; asshats will always be asshats, and Leaders will always be Leaders. Never ideal in any practical sense but charismatic and manipulative enough to be in power.
Indeed, I always try to keep an open mind. It is for me however more a point of analogies. Analogies can themselves be spurious, although instructive when trying to communicate ideas that may be outside the comprehension or Weltanschauung of the audience. There certainly may be games out there that can enlighten like great works of literature (Shakespeare was just an example here).
As a more modern example, one could never IMHO get the feeling that a very cerebral and surrealistic book like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has in a video game, or even a movie. Ken Kesey was himself quite angry over the movie because he felt it did not portray the book accurately. I would contend however that they are two different mediums, and trying to portray the metaphorical and often hallucinogenic / psychedelic thinking of the author and it's characters in a movie would have made it seem more cartoonish than serious. One cannot visually portray thought patterns visually without any degree of accuracy after all. And so too I would suggest that making the book into a video game would yield disappointing results. And with books you are implicitly the backseat driver; like old black and white movies, there is a whole different approach to their easthetics altogether. Shakespeare I used as an example because it is a much more recognized name.
Comparing video game to literature is spurious to me. They are two completely different mediums. If a video game ever had the complexities and subtleties of a Shakespearian play then maybe we could talk.
Like the old joke about watching movies; I'll wait for the book to come out.
Solutions:
If you want to create something that isn't subject to lowest-common-denominator marketing then open-source it. Leave it up to the programmers, designers, etc to decide how a game will evolve instead of the marketing people. You will have complete freedom (I'm being presumptuous here, but all things being equal...).
Yes like a lot of great works of art it may not be popular in the creators life time, but it will exist. I have always found the "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" aphorism to be correct. And like business ideas, if you leave them to the venture capitalists, then you are quite literally selling yourself out. Art and business are two different things. They can compliment each other, but the latter will often dilute and subjugate the former.
Sadly, I speak mainly from theory now, since I have very little time for games.
The best example of innovation came from a game that many of the business people just didn't want to finance, and that is Sim City (and the Sim off shoots). It was a truly think-outside-the-box game; no obvious win scenario, with the real pleasure coming from just creating cities and learning how different elements interacted with each other. As the years went on it proved itself to be an enduring contender.
Unfortunately the business people (as opposed to the creative minds) will have the ultimate say in how long a franchise like this lives. In order to try and maximize their profits these people and the games they finance will inevitably be constrained by their economic and marketing equations. Take for example the decision to turn Sim City into Sim Societies; a much easier to understand marketing vehicle: easier and more intuitive to play than developing Sim City into a yet more complex and compelling game / simulation, and thus making it harder to play and more niche-like. Sim City could probably be profitable for decades to come, but with diminishing returns due to the increasing realism and complexity that would be had as it is further developed.
Much the same can be said for the pre-mature death of Sim Earth. A very interesting and educational game, and I suspect that at least part of its demise was the rather poor windows port of this game (the Mac Version was awesome).
Of course if people start bringing politics into the game creation equation then this will also be a hindrance to creativity. Games like politics also strive towards the lowest common denominator. So it goes.
Yes one could make laws on how to actually use this already copied material (if these laws don't already exist). Unless the content were DRMed in some way, and you break the DRM, then you are probably not breaking a law. Of course there could always be some Draconian (and probably unenforceable) TOS on the Web site, like stating you can't cache content.
There should be a movement where all Britians download p2p software and break the law. ISPs would go out of business for lack of customers, the British economy would collapse, and the government would be kicked out of office and the laws changed to something more reasonable. It would be the Streisand Effect at its best.
Or if there are more Sheeple than people in Britian, then White Hats can install proxy servers on the computers of Britians and pass P2P traffic on it. The same effect in the end, but not quite as ideal as this time there would be unwanted collateral damage. But ultimately the damage would be the result of these Draconian laws.
Yes it's extreme, but even politicians have to realize that there is consequences for their actions.
The fallacy is that you are using anecdotal evidence from an agency which would have an obvious bias (that sex with children is abuse). I don't see any neutral, objective, scientific grounding in any social service agency. There should at least be an attempt to suspend ones belief system if one were to be neutral in a controversial topic like pedophilia.
It is analogous to the agency (in my part of the world) that does research into recreational drug use; the Addiction Research Foundation (their name itself implies that they view drugs use negatively i.e. "addiction").
I don't really care what peoples views are, as long as they are presented in an unbiased manner then I can at least have respect for them. Trying to convince me of something through the use of biased language is unlikely to work.
It's the reason why I'm so turned off by the news media in general. They go for sensationalism over rationalism. Yeah I know it makes sense since most news outlets are either commercial or political. It is however unfortunate IMHO. I would rather just get the facts without the opinion.
BTW: The CAPS to me is a lazy way for me to do italics. ... Don't matter what the subject matter is. If I read something fanatical, I will point it out. I will be here forever. I will be the fly on the neck of a fanatic. I will be a reminder to you and to other people that you can't always say anything you want and get away with it. You will always be reminded that their are people like me out there pointing out your fanaticism and showing you what you truely are.
I'm not going anywhere either. The reason I joined slashdot is to be a pain in the ass to fanatics.
As for the article(s)... I would have to look them up on (one of) my hard drive(s). Again, very little return on the effort (some of my hard drives are in storage and need to be installed).
"Incidently, it's not my Wikipedia."
Yeah I know, sorry for that. If you look at my user page I've been arguing all night. It's an excuse I know. I should also point out I'm about to become a father. If anyone took a video of my little girl being abused and posted it on the Internet, they'd want to make very sure they never revealed who they were. Again, your attitude reveals it is not even worth discussing. I'm sure most people would rather assume me to be a pedophile (and likewise dealt with) rather than to have an intelligent discussion.
You should first start looking at your own Wikipedia. There were dozens of references to many scientific papers (if they haven't been deleted already be the anti-pedo fanatics over the years). No I'm talking about real objective articles (nothing reminiscent of advocacy groups like NAMBL or Perverted Justice).
You go first. Prove it.
I'm sure we could spend weeks of you posting references to things like that anecdotal evidence you have gotten from DOCs, and me pointing out its fallacies.