As some people have (IMHO) rightly pointed out, a big part of the problem is defining what exactly is child porn. In conservative times, that definition can be stretched to cover items well outside your standard offshore FrontPage kiddie porn special.
Take for instance, the famous case of the "The Tin Drum", winner of the 1979 Best Foreign Film Oscar. For simply suggesting, not even depicting, sexual behavior on the part of children, the film was banned as obscene in a number of areas. ACLU lawsuits followed, of course, which means you can read about the whole thing courtesy of their site.
Am I for protecting children against sexual predators? Yup. But am I worried when the government gets yet another chance to move the goalposts on what's art and what's indecent? You betcha.
Far as I can tell, the industryclick.com article doesn't suggest Allconet would be funded through county tax revenues. Rather, the new network would be operated as a utility -- i.e., you use it, you pay for it; you don't, you don't.
(Of course, there's always a third option: you use it, you don't pay for it, and you end up in a nice jail funded by county taxes. So indirectly, you might be onto something there...)
...are still out there, just waiting for you to waste your life on them in arbitrarily sized chunks.
Avernum is one that comes to mind right away. Turn-based play, epic storyline, 100+ hours of gametime, more awards than you can shake a stick at -- and, oh yeah, it's shareware. =)
I remember getting hooked on this years ago in its original incarnation (the Exile trilogy) and it's only gotten better with time. The programmer gave the game a complete overhaul within the past year or so -- new engine, more content, etc. -- and it seems to be holding up well.
Such fond memories. This was one of the first games that had me so engrossed that I burned sick days to keep playing. =)
Great -- now don't I feel guilty. I was all set to buy a Dreamcast after hearing about the fantastic Shmoo game that was flying off the shelves.
Then a friend had to ruin it for me by saying I'd misheard the title the whole time; it was "Shenmue" or some such nonsense. Now where's the fun in that...?
Keep in mind that IANAL, but the "oregano as cannabis" comparison seems to be little off the mark.
A better analogy here would be me selling you what I clearly state to be tasty Italian herbs and spices as a cheap 'n' healthy alternative to pot -- "the high's almost as good, man." No foul, no laws broken, far as I know. That line gets crossed the moment I misrepresent the bag of oregano as being an illegal substance (in this case, cannabis).
By the same token (and all moral considerations aside) the material under review in the court case is CG and is marketed/sold as such. The crime wouldn't be in the production of the flicks themselves, but the misrepresentation of them as real-life kiddie porn.... and that's something that seems to be outside the scope of this case.
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Take for instance, the famous case of the "The Tin Drum", winner of the 1979 Best Foreign Film Oscar. For simply suggesting, not even depicting, sexual behavior on the part of children, the film was banned as obscene in a number of areas. ACLU lawsuits followed, of course, which means you can read about the whole thing courtesy of their site.
Am I for protecting children against sexual predators? Yup. But am I worried when the government gets yet another chance to move the goalposts on what's art and what's indecent? You betcha.
(Of course, there's always a third option: you use it, you don't pay for it, and you end up in a nice jail funded by county taxes. So indirectly, you might be onto something there...)
Ehhh... not quite. Look up the definition for acronym:
a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term
Thus, the first letter of each word does not necessarily an acronym make, however hard one might try to pronounce that resulting string as a word.
...are still out there, just waiting for you to waste your life on them in arbitrarily sized chunks.
Avernum is one that comes to mind right away. Turn-based play, epic storyline, 100+ hours of gametime, more awards than you can shake a stick at -- and, oh yeah, it's shareware. =)
I remember getting hooked on this years ago in its original incarnation (the Exile trilogy) and it's only gotten better with time. The programmer gave the game a complete overhaul within the past year or so -- new engine, more content, etc. -- and it seems to be holding up well.
Such fond memories. This was one of the first games that had me so engrossed that I burned sick days to keep playing. =)
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Then a friend had to ruin it for me by saying I'd misheard the title the whole time; it was "Shenmue" or some such nonsense. Now where's the fun in that...?
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A better analogy here would be me selling you what I clearly state to be tasty Italian herbs and spices as a cheap 'n' healthy alternative to pot -- "the high's almost as good, man." No foul, no laws broken, far as I know. That line gets crossed the moment I misrepresent the bag of oregano as being an illegal substance (in this case, cannabis).
By the same token (and all moral considerations aside) the material under review in the court case is CG and is marketed/sold as such. The crime wouldn't be in the production of the flicks themselves, but the misrepresentation of them as real-life kiddie porn.... and that's something that seems to be outside the scope of this case.
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