OK, you're right. I clearly misspoke myself. Now I know why Dan Quayle got nailed for it so often. However, my point still stands:
If you're doing this to "turn people on", I think it's sick. If you are making a point by describe something awful that happened, or could happen to someone, that is not. It's a fuzzy area because intent is a bad determinant for legality and one person's "making a point" is another person's perverted turn-on.
Yep, if Mr. Airline Pilot's reflexes are a little affected because he spent the weekend smoking crack and he augers a 757 full of nuns and orphans into the box seats at the Superdome on Superbowl Sunday, that's a victimless crime.
Yep, if insurance becomes unaffordable to Joe Sixpack and his kid with lukemia because all the money is being paid to save people who have OD'ed, that's a victimless crime.
Yep, if someone happens to accidently overdose and leave a widow and children behind, that's a victimless crime.
Despite what anyone around here thinks, the whole "Drugs are a Victimless Crime" argument is one of the lamest pieces of rationalization ever brought up in a political discussion. If a drug were safe and didn't cause people to be hurt it wouldn't be illegal. Look at alcohol and all the damage it does, and it _is_ legal. Just think what would happen if cocaine or heroin suddenly became legal.
Do you think all the innocent victims I described above would mind being sacrificed for a "victimless" activity?
>The other side of the argument is that it's all too tempting to stomp on speech that you find distasteful.
The problem with your argument is when is something speech and when is something an assault. I would argue that wearing a T-shirt in public with pornographic or violent images is no more just "speech" than walking up and punching someone in the nose. So I reiterate: It's not just a matter of expressing ideas. Free speech can be hard to define. Is writing a book speech? Sure. Is grabbing someone by the lapels and shouting at them? Yes, but...
If you recall, I started out by saying that virtual kiddie porn logically should be protected speech. However, the issue is not cut and dried.
This is an excellent argument I've also made in the past.
Just as important as your right to free speech, is my right, not to be subjected to extremely violent or pornographic images unless I actively intend to do so. Walking into an adult book store is active. Mistakenly logging into nasa.com looking for the latest pictures of Europa is not.
Unfortunately, this is where the real grey area occurs, because one right can conflict with the other. I think the obscenity laws try to walk the balance between these often conflicting interests. Community standards are a reasonable compromise given that a typical public display that would hardly be noticed in seedy part of New York for instance, could get you run out of town in other places. I've talked to a lot of people on Slashdot who think anyone should be free to display anything at anytime, anywhere to anyone. I would suggest that anyone holding this view should consider that people's reactions may be like DieHard 3 (a movie I actively chose to watch ) where Bruce Willis was forced by a terrorist to wear a racist placard on the streets in Harlem. I heard that when they filmed the scene they actually had the sandwich board say something else and digitally altered it for the movie since they were afraid of provoking a real reaction. Unlimited "free" speech is fine, but you have to be prepared to face those consequences. It's ironic that political correctness (or as Orwell so prophetically described: "Newspeak") is speading, yet people (often the same people) defend an "artist's" right to receive public funding to desecrate and attack another person's religion. If Mayor Williams in DC has to fire an employee because some ignorant dolt took offense at the word "niggardly", why must I as a tax-payer pay money to support someone to promote gay sex. Can we say "double standard"?
This is really tangential to this discussion, but it is very important nonetheless and is often overlooked by the knee-jerk Free Speech people.
To be fair, Christianity is based on the fact that morality is absolute (at least those sects that still have any philosophical integrity left) and that laws should reflect this absolute morality.
The fact of the matter is, laws do reflect a morality, or at least a subset of morality that 50.1% of the legislatures agree with or that 50.1% of the courts uphold. There is nothing wrong with calling for these kinds of laws, but the legislators who listen to these calls must obey his or her own rules as stated by the Constitution. Nevertheless, an unconstitutional law is not necessarily a bad one, except for its unconstitutionality.
Unfortunately, the subset of behaviors that have no positive value to society and the subset of bahaviors that are not protected by the Constitution do not completely overlap. However, this is a reasonable price to pay for a system of government that attempts to minimze the restrictions of any behaviors unless they adversely affect other people. Just remember, that those Christians you so love to bash are speaking from a different, but no less legitimate, point of view. I happen to agree that pornography should be flat-out illegal, but I understand that under our system of government, as devised by men far wiser than I, this is impossible.
Well, to be fair to me, I said that "virtual child pornography" is sick, not a fictional account, which might or might not be depending on the author's intent.
Appealing to prurient interests is the sine qua non of pornography and falls into _my_ definition of sick. I don't speak for anyone else.
Thank you for correcting me. My postings should read "constitutionally illegal" rather than just "illegal". That is actually how I was thinking about it.
Of course, you are right. But I was only talking about production and not distribution. Personally, I hope it would remain illegal, as long is it doesn't compromise legitimate rights.
You know, "Fire!" in a crowded theater is illegal too. So is libel and slander.
Freedom of Speech is really a rather vague concept and I think it is possible and even easy to extrapolate the idea too far in trying to determine how far to protect it.
You could easily prove you _did_ use real people. I don't think you could ever prove you didn't.
And when these virtual images become indistinguishable from the real thing, that is worth considering.
The other idea I had is that I'm sure part of the appeal of these pictures is that they _are_ real. So I don't think the real thing will ever die out. Of course, IANAP, so I can't say for sure.
I don't see how there would be one. Furthermore, the argument can be made that no children are harmed in the production of such material (although they might be when a user tries to act out what he sees, but that's another matter).
Of course, there's the whole issue of using the images or likenesses of real people in virtual productions. Can an actor sue you because you made a computer-generated movie starring a digital simulacrum of him or her? But that's somewhat tangential to discussion.
Just for the record, I am not condoning this behavior. I think it's awful. But I can't see how it would be illegal under the laws as I understand them. IANAL.
I would consider this to be equivalent to writing a piece of fiction that depicts these acts. It's a pretty sick puppy that would do this, or want to read it, but you could theoretically do this in a locked room by yourself and for yourself starting with no one else's work, which as far as I'm concerned pretty much makes legal issues moot.
It's a scary idea, because the obvious extrapolation on this idea is virtual reality, but from a legal point of view, no children are being harmed in its production, so I don't see how it could be illegal.
Which isn't to say I don't find the idea morally offensive, but there you go.
Speaking of Chinese, if their relationship with the U.S. ever sours to the point of war, we could just send 7 octogenarian commandos over to take over the whole country.!
Well, they tried marketing DVD's that expire (DIVX) and look how long that lasted!
I don't doubt that there would be an easy and economical way to recharge/reuse/replace the power cell.
Re:light stopped? Or destroyed and re-emitted...
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 2
I seem to recall this idea being discussed in the very first Star Trek novel, "Spock Must Die". It was a very chilling concept in the context of a world where matter transporters are common.
I haven't read the book in about 20 years, but a lot of the philosophy behind your topic is discussed in it, since the story revolves around a transporter accident.
Rick "Putting Plastic Pointy Ears Back in the Drawer Now" Gutleber
Re:We need more writers like Julian Assange
on
Underground Surfaces
·
· Score: 2
So, AC, you're saying that you are tired of hearing how men and women should be treated differently because of their different talents (certainly true in activities with physical components), but you state, correctly, that women can write as well as men. Um, that exactly what the original poster was saying. It's nice to see a successful woman in a field traditionally dominated by men, where there is no reason.
The poster is not calling for women in the infantry where there is a clear disadvantage, but is celebrating the fact that a woman is successful in a field where sex shouldn't matter. I appreciate your sentiment, but I think you are attacking someone who basically agrees with you.
I'm surprised this didn't get modded up as "Funny". What? You mean you're serious?
Besides, if NASA learns something from this little exercise, I'm sure they would share the information with all of humanity. If someone else wants the comet so much, they should say so.
IIRC, Amazon still hasn't turned a profit and is still riding on the fact that it provides a really good service. But stockholders won't wait forever.
Yahoo is valued greater than GM, that bubble's gonna burst.
Ebay's starting to realize that people can circumvent them and deal directly with each other.
AOL is just so big, it ain't going nowhere.
CDNow, which I frequent as a customer is in big trouble from what I've heard.
So three out of these 4 companies are on potentially shaky ground, and even if they and other well-established businesses continue to succeed, for each success story there are a thousand failures.
A lot of those businesses that are pouring massive resources into a Web presence are going to learn the hard way that once the novelty wears off (and it hasn't yet), they might be saddled with an expensive operation that isn't paying off.
Companies are starting to run out the leeway they had from the buoyant market and are now facing the reality that ad revenue, upon which many, many content providers rely just isn't there.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
The Internet won't go away, but how it works economically might change drastically in the next few years. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett by way of the Chinese: We are living in interesting times.
We hear on an almost daily basis that there are security holes... mostly in Microsoft and Netscape software. The latest idiocy is that Windows Media Player can be used to execute arbitrary programs. Many of these holes involve buffer overruns that allow execution of "arbitrary code".
Has there every actually been an actual and successful exploit using a buffer overrun that caused anything other than a GPF/segfault?
There's a lot of heat and noise about the sieve-like quality of software security of Internet software, but is it _really_ that much of a risk?
(Which isn't to say it shouldn't be addressed with all haste)
Rick
Due to a Y2K bug, all Y2K bugs occurred on 1 January 2001.
Fair enough. But he does represent more of an alternative than the choices we had this time around.
No doubt, McCain is part of the "establishment", but he is also someone who bases his actions on principle and isn't afraid to propose an idea people might not like. No one that high up in politics can not have sold his or her soul, but I think there are poeple who have sold it less than others.
I think the next generation is going to grow up even more cynical and distrusting of authority than this one... and that's a problem. More and more people believe the "System" is so broken that there's no point in even trying to fix it. Witness the apathy of the 2000 campaign season (at least before people started complaining about only be able to vote once). When we think the system can't be fixed, it can't be fixed.
So here's what we do: we must strive to find political candidates that understand the issues we believe in. There seemed to be a strong contingent on Slashdot that supported Nader, and aside of the fact that he's a total kook, this was a good thing, and that more and more people want different alternatives than the two slightly different shades of grey we normally get to choose from. I think the time is right in the first decade of the 2000's for an altenative candidate to gain some credibility and perhaps even some electroal votes. After all, if a nutcase like Perot can do it, so can someone who presents a real alternative (*cough*McCain*cough).
Secondly, at the end of the day this censorware issue is not the end of the world. It is a broken solution to a real problem. Everyone complains (rightly) that parents have to take responsibility for their children. Well, I know my child won't find a copy of Hustler at the local library, but if he or she can point-and-click up, say, donkey porn on the public Internet terminal, then I, as a parent, feel the obligation to be there. That was never true in the pre-Internet days, so something had fundamentally changed.
. A lot of conversations I've had in the past with/. folks leads me to believe that majority of people here think that children can be given, at an arbitrarily young age, the magical ability to discern what's right and wrong without fail. I hate to break the news to those folks, but kids are as dumb as a sack of hammers, and almost everyone below the age of 18 has the common sense of cabbage. Having an "open mind" won't change this. The process of educating and indoctrinating (in the non-perjorative sense) children to survive in the adult world is an on-going process that really only ends when they are adults.
Personally, I spend all my time on-line in real nerdnests like/., SourceForge, Freshmeat and other math and computer sites, so it doesn't really affect me. However, it sets a dangerous precedent, but I think the people in charge think that a flawed solution is better than no solution and I actually have to agree with them on this one. Something better will come along, eventually, and we should strive to educate people about how truly awful censorware is (from a practical point of view... it _might_ be a valid concept in theory, but it can never be implemented short of having true AI). People in these forums like to rant a lot, but I really haven't heard any good alternatives. There are many restictions in meatspace restricting "adult" material (which usurps a word and completely twists its meaning) and you rarely hear cries of censorship. But the moment someone even considers something similar with respect to the online world everyone gets their pocket protectors all in a bunch. The idea here is not sound you're angry because you can't access http://goatse.cx at your local branch library, but to raise consciousness about the fact that censorware is a bazooka trying to do a scalpel's job. I don't think the public at large realizes this.
If I sound like I can't make up my mind on the issue, it's because I really can't. But I think rather than pigeonholing Congress on this issue as being some kind of medieval Neanderthals (to mix metaphors) for even contemplating something so hideously awful as censorware, rather consider that they are trying to deal with legitimate concerns about a new resource that society really hasn't gotten its mind around. Like I said before, it's a bad solution, but I think it's the best one we have available right now.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, you're right. I clearly misspoke myself. Now I know why Dan Quayle got nailed for it so often. However, my point still stands:
If you're doing this to "turn people on", I think it's sick. If you are making a point by describe something awful that happened, or could happen to someone, that is not. It's a fuzzy area because intent is a bad determinant for legality and one person's "making a point" is another person's perverted turn-on.
Yep, if Mr. Airline Pilot's reflexes are a little affected because he spent the weekend smoking crack and he augers a 757 full of nuns and orphans into the box seats at the Superdome on Superbowl Sunday, that's a victimless crime.
Yep, if insurance becomes unaffordable to Joe Sixpack and his kid with lukemia because all the money is being paid to save people who have OD'ed, that's a victimless crime.
Yep, if someone happens to accidently overdose and leave a widow and children behind, that's a victimless crime.
Despite what anyone around here thinks, the whole "Drugs are a Victimless Crime" argument is one of the lamest pieces of rationalization ever brought up in a political discussion. If a drug were safe and didn't cause people to be hurt it wouldn't be illegal. Look at alcohol and all the damage it does, and it _is_ legal. Just think what would happen if cocaine or heroin suddenly became legal.
Do you think all the innocent victims I described above would mind being sacrificed for a "victimless" activity?
>The other side of the argument is that it's all too tempting to stomp on speech that you find distasteful.
The problem with your argument is when is something speech and when is something an assault. I would argue that wearing a T-shirt in public with pornographic or violent images is no more just "speech" than walking up and punching someone in the nose. So I reiterate: It's not just a matter of expressing ideas. Free speech can be hard to define. Is writing a book speech? Sure. Is grabbing someone by the lapels and shouting at them? Yes, but...
If you recall, I started out by saying that virtual kiddie porn logically should be protected speech. However, the issue is not cut and dried.
This is an excellent argument I've also made in the past.
Just as important as your right to free speech, is my right, not to be subjected to extremely violent or pornographic images unless I actively intend to do so. Walking into an adult book store is active. Mistakenly logging into nasa.com looking for the latest pictures of Europa is not.
Unfortunately, this is where the real grey area occurs, because one right can conflict with the other. I think the obscenity laws try to walk the balance between these often conflicting interests. Community standards are a reasonable compromise given that a typical public display that would hardly be noticed in seedy part of New York for instance, could get you run out of town in other places. I've talked to a lot of people on Slashdot who think anyone should be free to display anything at anytime, anywhere to anyone. I would suggest that anyone holding this view should consider that people's reactions may be like DieHard 3 (a movie I actively chose to watch ) where Bruce Willis was forced by a terrorist to wear a racist placard on the streets in Harlem. I heard that when they filmed the scene they actually had the sandwich board say something else and digitally altered it for the movie since they were afraid of provoking a real reaction. Unlimited "free" speech is fine, but you have to be prepared to face those consequences. It's ironic that political correctness (or as Orwell so prophetically described: "Newspeak") is speading, yet people (often the same people) defend an "artist's" right to receive public funding to desecrate and attack another person's religion. If Mayor Williams in DC has to fire an employee because some ignorant dolt took offense at the word "niggardly", why must I as a tax-payer pay money to support someone to promote gay sex. Can we say "double standard"?
This is really tangential to this discussion, but it is very important nonetheless and is often overlooked by the knee-jerk Free Speech people.
To be fair, Christianity is based on the fact that morality is absolute (at least those sects that still have any philosophical integrity left) and that laws should reflect this absolute morality.
The fact of the matter is, laws do reflect a morality, or at least a subset of morality that 50.1% of the legislatures agree with or that 50.1% of the courts uphold. There is nothing wrong with calling for these kinds of laws, but the legislators who listen to these calls must obey his or her own rules as stated by the Constitution. Nevertheless, an unconstitutional law is not necessarily a bad one, except for its unconstitutionality.
Unfortunately, the subset of behaviors that have no positive value to society and the subset of bahaviors that are not protected by the Constitution do not completely overlap. However, this is a reasonable price to pay for a system of government that attempts to minimze the restrictions of any behaviors unless they adversely affect other people. Just remember, that those Christians you so love to bash are speaking from a different, but no less legitimate, point of view. I happen to agree that pornography should be flat-out illegal, but I understand that under our system of government, as devised by men far wiser than I, this is impossible.
Well, to be fair to me, I said that "virtual child pornography" is sick, not a fictional account, which might or might not be depending on the author's intent.
Appealing to prurient interests is the sine qua non of pornography and falls into _my_ definition of sick. I don't speak for anyone else.
Thank you for correcting me. My postings should read "constitutionally illegal" rather than just "illegal". That is actually how I was thinking about it.
It's fine line but an important distinction.
Of course, you are right. But I was only talking about production and not distribution. Personally, I hope it would remain illegal, as long is it doesn't compromise legitimate rights.
You know, "Fire!" in a crowded theater is illegal too. So is libel and slander.
Freedom of Speech is really a rather vague concept and I think it is possible and even easy to extrapolate the idea too far in trying to determine how far to protect it.
You could easily prove you _did_ use real people. I don't think you could ever prove you didn't.
And when these virtual images become indistinguishable from the real thing, that is worth considering.
The other idea I had is that I'm sure part of the appeal of these pictures is that they _are_ real. So I don't think the real thing will ever die out. Of course, IANAP, so I can't say for sure.
...and your point would be?
Is it illegal to draw one?
I don't see how there would be one. Furthermore, the argument can be made that no children are harmed in the production of such material (although they might be when a user tries to act out what he sees, but that's another matter).
Of course, there's the whole issue of using the images or likenesses of real people in virtual productions. Can an actor sue you because you made a computer-generated movie starring a digital simulacrum of him or her? But that's somewhat tangential to discussion.
Just for the record, I am not condoning this behavior. I think it's awful. But I can't see how it would be illegal under the laws as I understand them. IANAL.
I would consider this to be equivalent to writing a piece of fiction that depicts these acts. It's a pretty sick puppy that would do this, or want to read it, but you could theoretically do this in a locked room by yourself and for yourself starting with no one else's work, which as far as I'm concerned pretty much makes legal issues moot.
It's a scary idea, because the obvious extrapolation on this idea is virtual reality, but from a legal point of view, no children are being harmed in its production, so I don't see how it could be illegal.
Which isn't to say I don't find the idea morally offensive, but there you go.
I can't think of anything to say, I just liked the subject...
Sorry.
Speaking of Chinese, if their relationship with the U.S. ever sours to the point of war, we could just send 7 octogenarian commandos over to take over the whole country.!
Well, they tried marketing DVD's that expire (DIVX) and look how long that lasted!
I don't doubt that there would be an easy and economical way to recharge/reuse/replace the power cell.
I seem to recall this idea being discussed in the very first Star Trek novel, "Spock Must Die". It was a very chilling concept in the context of a world where matter transporters are common.
I haven't read the book in about 20 years, but a lot of the philosophy behind your topic is discussed in it, since the story revolves around a transporter accident.
Rick "Putting Plastic Pointy Ears Back in the Drawer Now" Gutleber
So, AC, you're saying that you are tired of hearing how men and women should be treated differently because of their different talents (certainly true in activities with physical components), but you state, correctly, that women can write as well as men. Um, that exactly what the original poster was saying. It's nice to see a successful woman in a field traditionally dominated by men, where there is no reason.
The poster is not calling for women in the infantry where there is a clear disadvantage, but is celebrating the fact that a woman is successful in a field where sex shouldn't matter. I appreciate your sentiment, but I think you are attacking someone who basically agrees with you.
Rick
I'm surprised this didn't get modded up as "Funny". What? You mean you're serious?
Besides, if NASA learns something from this little exercise, I'm sure they would share the information with all of humanity. If someone else wants the comet so much, they should say so.
IIRC, Amazon still hasn't turned a profit and is still riding on the fact that it provides a really good service. But stockholders won't wait forever.
Yahoo is valued greater than GM, that bubble's gonna burst.
Ebay's starting to realize that people can circumvent them and deal directly with each other.
AOL is just so big, it ain't going nowhere.
CDNow, which I frequent as a customer is in big trouble from what I've heard.
So three out of these 4 companies are on potentially shaky ground, and even if they and other well-established businesses continue to succeed, for each success story there are a thousand failures.
A lot of those businesses that are pouring massive resources into a Web presence are going to learn the hard way that once the novelty wears off (and it hasn't yet), they might be saddled with an expensive operation that isn't paying off.
Companies are starting to run out the leeway they had from the buoyant market and are now facing the reality that ad revenue, upon which many, many content providers rely just isn't there.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
The Internet won't go away, but how it works economically might change drastically in the next few years. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett by way of the Chinese: We are living in interesting times.
Racism?! I find that hard to believe!
Now intelligencism....?
We hear on an almost daily basis that there are security holes... mostly in Microsoft and Netscape software. The latest idiocy is that Windows Media Player can be used to execute arbitrary programs. Many of these holes involve buffer overruns that allow execution of "arbitrary code".
Has there every actually been an actual and successful exploit using a buffer overrun that caused anything other than a GPF/segfault?
There's a lot of heat and noise about the sieve-like quality of software security of Internet software, but is it _really_ that much of a risk?
(Which isn't to say it shouldn't be addressed with all haste)
Rick
Due to a Y2K bug, all Y2K bugs occurred on 1 January 2001.
All we need now is a JonKatz commentary about patent abuse in the post-Columbine era.
I knew this story was a hoax because I checked it out on my Israeli encryption-breaking quantum computer. It took 12 microseconds.
Rick
Fair enough. But he does represent more of an alternative than the choices we had this time around.
No doubt, McCain is part of the "establishment", but he is also someone who bases his actions on principle and isn't afraid to propose an idea people might not like. No one that high up in politics can not have sold his or her soul, but I think there are poeple who have sold it less than others.
I think the next generation is going to grow up even more cynical and distrusting of authority than this one... and that's a problem. More and more people believe the "System" is so broken that there's no point in even trying to fix it. Witness the apathy of the 2000 campaign season (at least before people started complaining about only be able to vote once). When we think the system can't be fixed, it can't be fixed.
/. folks leads me to believe that majority of people here think that children can be given, at an arbitrarily young age, the magical ability to discern what's right and wrong without fail. I hate to break the news to those folks, but kids are as dumb as a sack of hammers, and almost everyone below the age of 18 has the common sense of cabbage. Having an "open mind" won't change this. The process of educating and indoctrinating (in the non-perjorative sense) children to survive in the adult world is an on-going process that really only ends when they are adults.
/., SourceForge, Freshmeat and other math and computer sites, so it doesn't really affect me. However, it sets a dangerous precedent, but I think the people in charge think that a flawed solution is better than no solution and I actually have to agree with them on this one. Something better will come along, eventually, and we should strive to educate people about how truly awful censorware is (from a practical point of view... it _might_ be a valid concept in theory, but it can never be implemented short of having true AI). People in these forums like to rant a lot, but I really haven't heard any good alternatives. There are many restictions in meatspace restricting "adult" material (which usurps a word and completely twists its meaning) and you rarely hear cries of censorship. But the moment someone even considers something similar with respect to the online world everyone gets their pocket protectors all in a bunch. The idea here is not sound you're angry because you can't access http://goatse.cx at your local branch library, but to raise consciousness about the fact that censorware is a bazooka trying to do a scalpel's job. I don't think the public at large realizes this.
So here's what we do: we must strive to find political candidates that understand the issues we believe in. There seemed to be a strong contingent on Slashdot that supported Nader, and aside of the fact that he's a total kook, this was a good thing, and that more and more people want different alternatives than the two slightly different shades of grey we normally get to choose from. I think the time is right in the first decade of the 2000's for an altenative candidate to gain some credibility and perhaps even some electroal votes. After all, if a nutcase like Perot can do it, so can someone who presents a real alternative (*cough*McCain*cough).
Secondly, at the end of the day this censorware issue is not the end of the world. It is a broken solution to a real problem. Everyone complains (rightly) that parents have to take responsibility for their children. Well, I know my child won't find a copy of Hustler at the local library, but if he or she can point-and-click up, say, donkey porn on the public Internet terminal, then I, as a parent, feel the obligation to be there. That was never true in the pre-Internet days, so something had fundamentally changed.
. A lot of conversations I've had in the past with
Personally, I spend all my time on-line in real nerdnests like
If I sound like I can't make up my mind on the issue, it's because I really can't. But I think rather than pigeonholing Congress on this issue as being some kind of medieval Neanderthals (to mix metaphors) for even contemplating something so hideously awful as censorware, rather consider that they are trying to deal with legitimate concerns about a new resource that society really hasn't gotten its mind around. Like I said before, it's a bad solution, but I think it's the best one we have available right now.