While I may have issue with the ACLU's selective view on the Bill of Rights (they refuse to acknowledge the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right), I must admit I give kudos to them for taking this up.
Between the ACLU, NRA, and the IJ, you have pretty much all of your rights covered. It's a shame there's no one who seems to want to stand up for them all, but as long as none of these organizations are actively working against something, it's no problem to me.
This is why you disable referer logging, and either block Google cookies or use the Firefox Customize Google extension to fuck with the cookie. Or, like I do, you run a local proxy blocking all sorts of ad-serving hostnames so the request never reaches Google even in modified form.
This is also another reason to not trust Google. How much of the Internet is being monitored by them through indirect means like this?
It's all a form of censorship. Removal of "kiddie porn and snuff pics" just happens to be a form of censorship that you agree with.
Some people really dislike the posting of copyright material online, too. Imagine an author finds out his works are being distributed online, and he concludes that this is why no one's buying them. You don't think he's going to be upset over this, that he's going to get as emotionally distraught as people seem to do over things like child pornography? I am sure he would not call taking down pirated copies of his work illegitimate censorship, yet you would.
And, I should point out that not all of China's censorship of the Internet is done by a "repressive regime" -- people in China actually support a lot of it. Many Chinese would agree with their government's suppression of anti-government literature, subversive material, Western propaganda, death cult propaganda (this is what they call the Falung Gong), and so on. A Chinese could argue as vociferously in favor of removing such dangerous and revolting material from the Internet as you are for kiddie porn; he will justify it on the grounds that such material could foment rebellion and revolution, costing the lives of many thousands of people. How is this position any less a valid argument than yours is for child pornography? Such people would not call this illegitimate censorship, yet you would.
Yet you wouldn't call removal of child or snuff pornography censorship. You justify it based on your own personal beliefs, so you don't have to call it what it is -- and then you go on to dismiss other's personal beliefs so you can call it censorship. My "perspective" seems to be a lot more circumspect than yours, in fact.
Restricting images for legality is different than censoship [sic] in the common parlance.
I'm not sure what definition of "censorship" you're using, but I know that if I were in, say, China and published a pro-Falung Gong website, they'd call it illegal but most everyone else would call it censorship. And by "common parlance" you meant "obfuscated government legalese," didn't you?
"hey please dont upload anything illegal." And given what the pirate bay does, i think we can safely assume that they're concerned less with the minutae of libelous or offensive images than not going to jail as part of a kiddie-porn ring.
The Pirate Bay is in favor of piracy of copyrighted materials, aren't they? This is quite illegal both in the US and many other countries. I think what's going on here is they're only adhering to laws they know they're not going to be able to easily evade (prudent). Or they're only adhering to laws their founder agrees with (hypocritical), which basically means they're just removing content they don't like, which really doesn't sound much different than what YouTube or anyone else does.
(They were able to get another bill passed, but it contains that oft-seen "lacks serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political value" clause that fortunately renders the law very hard to enforce.)
Posting pictures of kids being abused is an action...
Posting a picture is an action? (Beyond the obvious sense of clicking through a web form.) How so? And how is it different from me posting a picture of your cat with "I LOL'd" written across the front of it?
The harmful act was the taking of the photograph. Sticking it online isn't the harm here; taking it was. Downloading it causes no additional harm because the downloader had nothing to do with the initial act whatsoever.
... not a dialog - where the act hurts children.
"Freedom of speech" ought to only apply to speech that can be framed as a dialog? So I guess any form of advertising is out, since they don't exactly let you comment on it. News sites are out, unless they have some dinky blog or forum attached to them. Religious material is obviously out, because if there's one kind of people who hate critical dialog of their opinions, it's devout religious believers!
Overall you seem to have a pretty funny definition of what constitutes speech and actions. It's almost like one of those contrived ad hoc definitions some people like to make up to work around a point of hypocrisy in their worldview.
...thereby creating a demand [for child pornography] and ANOTHER reason for the previous people to exist, as if their mental issues weren't enough...
Ah, yes! Social engineering by trying to limit supply. Remember when we tried that with drugs, and now there are no more drug addicts out there? Yeah, it'll be just like that.
Freedom of speech isn't limitless; I think we've established that fact. What I and these other posts are advocating is that it ought to be, or at least any limits placed on it ought to be a lot lower than they already are. Of course you seem to think people advocating legalization of pedophilia are akin to murderers, so maybe this whole "advocating things should be different" idea is incomprehensible to you.
This is why large, decentralized, unowned networks like encrypted p2p protocols are really the way to go. Or if you want to interact with centralized services like TBP's site, encrypted proxies like Tor to get you there.
How about I take pictures of me in the act of murdering them and post those instead?
So long as you were actually prosecuted for the murder, why should you be further prosecuted for the photography? What purpose would that serve? What additional harm has been committed by the existence of the photos? And if you haven't been prosecuted for the murder yet, I suppose the pictures could serve as some pretty damning evidence in a trial... but again I wouldn't think there'd be any need to prosecute you for having the photos themselves. And I certainly wouldn't think going after all the people that downloaded them from your website would serve any purpose.
Right next to it I'll post pictures of my candid camera I have hidden in your bathroom to boot. Privacy shmivacy, your every move should be open for everyone to see at all times!
I don't think either of us were talking about taking pictures of people without their knowledge. Are you trying to say child pornography is usually made without the children even knowing about it? In all the stories I read online about pedophiles being caught, it always seems to involve people "enticing" or "luring" children into this or that act -- and that doesn't sound very covert to me at all.
Anyway, we weren't even talking about kiddie porn, although I still think that you think that we were. Both I and the article there were talking about The Pirate Bay hosting a website belonging to someone advocating legalizing such behavior. To you, such advocacy is comparable to photographing a murder?
If you want to set up a website advocating the legalization of murdering people who disagree with you, and their extended families, and their little dog too,...go right ahead. I'd defend its right to exist, too.
If you're going to have freedom of expression, you're going to have things you don't like. Even things you really don't like, and things even 99% of the people out there don't like, too. And the fact that you don't think it needs a venue, because you obviously disagree with it, is exactly why it does need a venue.
Also, that article there isn't about TBP hosting a child pornography site, it's about them hosting a "pro-pedophile activism" site -- in other words, a site expressing political and social viewpoints. Are you saying such people and their viewpoints should be censored?
The problem there is that if people know they can get outed for what they uploaded, a lot of people might hesitate to upload media that they otherwise wouldn't. YouTube has been used to expose videos of police brutality before, some of which have been taken down on pretty flimsy excuses. Knowing that the host is not going to take it down is one encouragement. Knowing they also can't even find out who put it there, easily, would be even moreso.
I just posted that they should actually try to go out of their way to make sure they're not logging such information, in order to protect their users. No anonymity means many people will still engage in self-censorship, not publishing something for fear of the consequences it could entail. But from a liability standpoint, your idea is probably better. Considering the existence of things like Tor, open proxies and the like, anyone who isn't absolutely clueless could still use the service and be relatively safe from being surveilled.
This is good, but if they really want to make it safe for users they should:
host it over HTTPS to avoid the possibility of third-party snooping on what people are uploading and downloading;
make absolutely sure their hosting server isn't retaining logs of IP addresses and timestamps;
and for reliability, have some sort of back-up hosting ready to go if they get shut down where it's now hosted (Sweden), and maybe even a few extra domain names on standby if their registrar decides to bow to pressure to get it cut off like GoDaddy does.
Otherwise this is, as numerous people have pointed out, going to get shut down shortly after people start screaming "kiddie porn!".
Really faulty logic there. Just because a government is capable of making incredibly mind-boggling mistakes, does not mean the same government is not capable of conducting other activities extremely well. Let's remember that the US government:
has to track, in order to collect taxes, the incomes of over a million Americans down to the nearest dollar,
is responsible for running the biggest military system in the world,
is apparently able to wiretap many if not all Internet users in the country,
has the largest prison system in the world (2.2 million Americans in prison),
has a law enforcement apparatus to enforce the war on drugs worth about $40 billion,
and has an intelligence-gathering infrastructure worth $60 billion dollars according to this very story.
Those are just a few data points to get you thinking about what they can do. Yes, the system is rife with corruption and inefficiency at all levels, but it works. If your government can do all of the above, on a yearly basis, what makes you think that coordinating a single strike on three buildings with three airplanes would be impossible?
[Footnote: I don't think the US government is "behind" 2001-09-11. My own theory is that they intentionally let it happen, but that's beside the point. My point here is that they are clearly capable of committing such an action.]
Saying that one can discover that someone's email address is registered at Match.com would be like saying one should be able to discover that someone's street address is on the ACLU's mailing list. You're confusing the fact that someone can find out simply that an address exists with finding out what other things the address has been linked to or used for.
So I assume this is yet another legal principle that's been watered down or outright abandoned in the US government's drive to get whatever it damn well wants, eh?
But only if the provider is a telecommunications service in some way, shape, or form, right? If a business is purely an information or electronic messaging service provider (e.g., a webmail provider, hosting provider), would you interpret such a business as subject to CALEA? If so, how?
Now, for companies that do provide both types of services (e.g., broadband ISP that also provides customers with email, webspace, whatever), in which the latter services' data travels over the former's wires, I wonder if they could protect themselves by spinning off the latter services into a subsidiary, affiliate, or some other kind of quasi-independent entity not legally a "part" of the telecom provider.
Slashdot Mirror
Between the ACLU, NRA, and the IJ, you have pretty much all of your rights covered. It's a shame there's no one who seems to want to stand up for them all, but as long as none of these organizations are actively working against something, it's no problem to me.
They were also talking about states in the US, so I thought it would be useful to point this out.
This is why you disable referer logging, and either block Google cookies or use the Firefox Customize Google extension to fuck with the cookie. Or, like I do, you run a local proxy blocking all sorts of ad-serving hostnames so the request never reaches Google even in modified form.
This is also another reason to not trust Google. How much of the Internet is being monitored by them through indirect means like this?
It's all a form of censorship. Removal of "kiddie porn and snuff pics" just happens to be a form of censorship that you agree with.
Some people really dislike the posting of copyright material online, too. Imagine an author finds out his works are being distributed online, and he concludes that this is why no one's buying them. You don't think he's going to be upset over this, that he's going to get as emotionally distraught as people seem to do over things like child pornography? I am sure he would not call taking down pirated copies of his work illegitimate censorship, yet you would.
And, I should point out that not all of China's censorship of the Internet is done by a "repressive regime" -- people in China actually support a lot of it. Many Chinese would agree with their government's suppression of anti-government literature, subversive material, Western propaganda, death cult propaganda (this is what they call the Falung Gong), and so on. A Chinese could argue as vociferously in favor of removing such dangerous and revolting material from the Internet as you are for kiddie porn; he will justify it on the grounds that such material could foment rebellion and revolution, costing the lives of many thousands of people. How is this position any less a valid argument than yours is for child pornography? Such people would not call this illegitimate censorship, yet you would.
Yet you wouldn't call removal of child or snuff pornography censorship. You justify it based on your own personal beliefs, so you don't have to call it what it is -- and then you go on to dismiss other's personal beliefs so you can call it censorship. My "perspective" seems to be a lot more circumspect than yours, in fact.
I'm not sure what definition of "censorship" you're using, but I know that if I were in, say, China and published a pro-Falung Gong website, they'd call it illegal but most everyone else would call it censorship. And by "common parlance" you meant "obfuscated government legalese," didn't you?
The Pirate Bay is in favor of piracy of copyrighted materials, aren't they? This is quite illegal both in the US and many other countries. I think what's going on here is they're only adhering to laws they know they're not going to be able to easily evade (prudent). Or they're only adhering to laws their founder agrees with (hypocritical), which basically means they're just removing content they don't like, which really doesn't sound much different than what YouTube or anyone else does.
Seven hundred people, eh? I can't wait until another story like this comes out.
Wrong, in the US at least.
(They were able to get another bill passed, but it contains that oft-seen "lacks serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political value" clause that fortunately renders the law very hard to enforce.)
If it's hosting copyright material, it'll probably get blocked in the US first, at least for AT&T's customers.
Posting a picture is an action? (Beyond the obvious sense of clicking through a web form.) How so? And how is it different from me posting a picture of your cat with "I LOL'd" written across the front of it?
The harmful act was the taking of the photograph. Sticking it online isn't the harm here; taking it was. Downloading it causes no additional harm because the downloader had nothing to do with the initial act whatsoever.
"Freedom of speech" ought to only apply to speech that can be framed as a dialog? So I guess any form of advertising is out, since they don't exactly let you comment on it. News sites are out, unless they have some dinky blog or forum attached to them. Religious material is obviously out, because if there's one kind of people who hate critical dialog of their opinions, it's devout religious believers!
Overall you seem to have a pretty funny definition of what constitutes speech and actions. It's almost like one of those contrived ad hoc definitions some people like to make up to work around a point of hypocrisy in their worldview.
Ah, yes! Social engineering by trying to limit supply. Remember when we tried that with drugs, and now there are no more drug addicts out there? Yeah, it'll be just like that.
Freedom of speech isn't limitless; I think we've established that fact. What I and these other posts are advocating is that it ought to be, or at least any limits placed on it ought to be a lot lower than they already are. Of course you seem to think people advocating legalization of pedophilia are akin to murderers, so maybe this whole "advocating things should be different" idea is incomprehensible to you.
This is why large, decentralized, unowned networks like encrypted p2p protocols are really the way to go. Or if you want to interact with centralized services like TBP's site, encrypted proxies like Tor to get you there.
So long as you were actually prosecuted for the murder, why should you be further prosecuted for the photography? What purpose would that serve? What additional harm has been committed by the existence of the photos? And if you haven't been prosecuted for the murder yet, I suppose the pictures could serve as some pretty damning evidence in a trial... but again I wouldn't think there'd be any need to prosecute you for having the photos themselves. And I certainly wouldn't think going after all the people that downloaded them from your website would serve any purpose.
I don't think either of us were talking about taking pictures of people without their knowledge. Are you trying to say child pornography is usually made without the children even knowing about it? In all the stories I read online about pedophiles being caught, it always seems to involve people "enticing" or "luring" children into this or that act -- and that doesn't sound very covert to me at all.
Anyway, we weren't even talking about kiddie porn, although I still think that you think that we were. Both I and the article there were talking about The Pirate Bay hosting a website belonging to someone advocating legalizing such behavior. To you, such advocacy is comparable to photographing a murder?
If you want to set up a website advocating the legalization of murdering people who disagree with you, and their extended families, and their little dog too, ...go right ahead. I'd defend its right to exist, too.
If you're going to have freedom of expression, you're going to have things you don't like. Even things you really don't like, and things even 99% of the people out there don't like, too. And the fact that you don't think it needs a venue, because you obviously disagree with it, is exactly why it does need a venue.
Also, that article there isn't about TBP hosting a child pornography site, it's about them hosting a "pro-pedophile activism" site -- in other words, a site expressing political and social viewpoints. Are you saying such people and their viewpoints should be censored?
The problem there is that if people know they can get outed for what they uploaded, a lot of people might hesitate to upload media that they otherwise wouldn't. YouTube has been used to expose videos of police brutality before, some of which have been taken down on pretty flimsy excuses. Knowing that the host is not going to take it down is one encouragement. Knowing they also can't even find out who put it there, easily, would be even moreso.
I just posted that they should actually try to go out of their way to make sure they're not logging such information, in order to protect their users. No anonymity means many people will still engage in self-censorship, not publishing something for fear of the consequences it could entail. But from a liability standpoint, your idea is probably better. Considering the existence of things like Tor, open proxies and the like, anyone who isn't absolutely clueless could still use the service and be relatively safe from being surveilled.
This is good, but if they really want to make it safe for users they should:
Otherwise this is, as numerous people have pointed out, going to get shut down shortly after people start screaming "kiddie porn!".
Looks like its hosted in Sweden and the domain is registered to a Swedish address via a German registrar.
Just wait. This will be an attempt to stealthily pass a bunch of anti-privacy legislation, such as data-retention laws.
Really faulty logic there. Just because a government is capable of making incredibly mind-boggling mistakes, does not mean the same government is not capable of conducting other activities extremely well. Let's remember that the US government:
Those are just a few data points to get you thinking about what they can do. Yes, the system is rife with corruption and inefficiency at all levels, but it works. If your government can do all of the above, on a yearly basis, what makes you think that coordinating a single strike on three buildings with three airplanes would be impossible?
[Footnote: I don't think the US government is "behind" 2001-09-11. My own theory is that they intentionally let it happen, but that's beside the point. My point here is that they are clearly capable of committing such an action.]
Saying that one can discover that someone's email address is registered at Match.com would be like saying one should be able to discover that someone's street address is on the ACLU's mailing list. You're confusing the fact that someone can find out simply that an address exists with finding out what other things the address has been linked to or used for.
RSS 0.9x was developed by Netscape; having the originator host it, forever, is how we got in this problem in the first place.
So I assume this is yet another legal principle that's been watered down or outright abandoned in the US government's drive to get whatever it damn well wants, eh?
But only if the provider is a telecommunications service in some way, shape, or form, right? If a business is purely an information or electronic messaging service provider (e.g., a webmail provider, hosting provider), would you interpret such a business as subject to CALEA? If so, how?
Now, for companies that do provide both types of services (e.g., broadband ISP that also provides customers with email, webspace, whatever), in which the latter services' data travels over the former's wires, I wonder if they could protect themselves by spinning off the latter services into a subsidiary, affiliate, or some other kind of quasi-independent entity not legally a "part" of the telecom provider.