I wonder if there are also different versions with intentionally added URLs, in order to help tracing it - if it's leaked, they know which ISP it came from.
Don't they block sites too, no matter where they're hosted?
If they block Wikipedia, it generates a load of publicity against their action (as shown by the UK's IWF recently). If they don't block it, or back down, it shows a double standard, as well as making the whole thing seem pointless (again, as shown by the recent IWF case in the UK).
I can't work out whether you're being serious, being naive or being a troll....
The act of posting anything to sites such as Facebook should be made on the assumption that it *might* become public. Assuming otherwise is just naive. If I post stuff, I only *expect* my friends to see it, but I tailor what I write on the assumption that it is completely public.
This is completely irrelevant - the issue was about using encryption to prevent the Government snooping on it, in which case, the fact that the information isn't published to all is certainly relevant. Yes, if Facebook one day suddenly decided to publish it all, it wouldn't work, but that's no different to them one day deciding to stop using encryption.
Do you not say anything in email that you wouldn't want the entire world to know, btw, in case your ISP publishes your email? Or not say anything to anyone at all, in case they might tell the newspapers?
If you are so scared of trusting anyone such that you treat telling one person equivalent to telling everyone, you must either be a very secretive person, or you don't mind the whole world knowing about anything you do.
Why don't you post your credit card numbers on Slashdot? After all, your credit company *might* do that, so it's naive to think there's any difference, right?
Thanks for the info, I was curious myself - to be honest I assumed it must be something more advanced that that. When I connect my cheap old phone to my computer via USB as a modem, as people have been doing for years, I don't even think of it as a feature. But then again, I didn't think of copy/paste being a feature, until Apple announced it in a future version...
The apple fan boys haven't arrived yet, so I'll fill in for them We don't need obvious functionality that is available in the most low end phones, like MMS messaging and video recording. Oh no. All we need is a sexy interface with a glossy product and we're happy. In fact, we'll pretend our phone is the best phone in the world simply because it has the apple logo on it. Oh wait, hang on, Apple is introducing those features in it's new product? Well praise the lord, we've been waiting for those features for so long. Never mind the fact we said we didn't want them, now they're here our phone is AWESOME
The fact that your perfectly fair portrayal is modded flamebait - yet the post that started it isn't flamebait, shows that the hater-haters outnumber any alleged haters (as with a recent article on Japan - just because people don't use the Iphone doesn't mean we hate it, anymore than we hate any other phone we don't use). (Hint to mods, flamebait is the one that starts the flamewar.)
But now that Apple have finally entered the 21st Century, and joined the sub-£50 low end market with features such as video and MMS, I predict that no longer will we hear "Why would I need that?", instead, they'll be touted as great features.
Consider, if it was really true that the Iphone was better off by lacking these features (as some claimed), doesn't this mean the Iphone is now worse? They can't have it both ways. But they'll try to, anyway.
I have this feature on my Nintendo 64. My blackberry has a direct T-1 to God. Etc. Etc.
The point is, we don't have endless articles about "Nintendo 64 can do this", "Blackberry can access the Internet!" Consider - you're complaining because there's an occasional comment from someone who says a particular device can do such and such, but with the Iphone, we get an endless stream everytime it has some trivial non-new feature added, or even if there's just a rumour or wishlist, or even when people launch websites that can also be viewed on an Iphone.
Not to mention, that for any other device, if there was an article proposing how you could hack something, it would be interesting to hear of other devices that could achieve this in a less hacky way. Not so with Apple - it seems you'd rather bury your head in the sand instead of considering, or even merely hearing about, a non-Apple solution.
As far as I have been able to tell, at least in the Western world, it currently works like this: Mock a Christian and it's comedy, mock a Muslim and it's free speech, mock a Jew and it's hate.
In the UK, the law that outlawed specifically Christian blasphemy was only repealed last year. Yes, the laws on what constitute "hate" are confusing, but please don't play the "no one cares about Christians" card.
Note also that "Jew" can also refer to both the race of Jews, and a follower of Judaism. I agree that criticism of religious beliefs should never be considered "hate", but if you see a different standard, it may be because you are also confusing the issue with examples of racism against Jews.
Right, you're now facing a hefty fine and possible prison sentence for linking to those sites - don't you know a child could be accessing this site?
The point isn't so much whether we'd be better off with or without particular sites. You also have to look at the consequences for breaking that law. This is even more of a problem for laws where people can't be sure if a site is legal or not. This is the point: yes we hate it when someone tricks us into a goatse, but no one here thinks "How dare he - now he should be spending years in prison for that!"
And as much as I am no fan of anti-abortionists, the fact that you are in favour of suppressing political content - under the grounds that it is "disgusting" - rather than arguing with reason why they are wrong, shows why your stance is wrong. Yes, I'm pro-choice, and part of that is not opposing abortion merely because the images look horrible.
Deciding that we should ban images because they look horrible isn't really that different from the anti-abortion point of view that we should ban abortion because it looks horrible.
As for your "think of the children argument", there are ways to control access to underage. If we banned for everyone anything unsuitable for children, then that's an argument for banning vast amounts of material.
This term is misleading. The Government have made no secret of the fact that they want all ISPs to be using it, and they will do something about it if they do not do it "voluntary". See the article linked from this more recent story - http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/17/2321252 : "Despite being clueless about how the IWF rates content, the Home Office admitted it was forcing ISPs to sign up to the organisation's blacklist in order to meet targets it set itself."
Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7904607.stm : "The government had asked all internet service providers (ISPs) to block illegal websites by the end of 2007."; "The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%."
That's not to say it will stay that way for long, since the government has recently talked about making it compulsory.
Well yes, exactly. It's not voluntary in any meaninful sense, as the Government has long been telling them to do so, with the threat of making it compulsory if they don't.
Furthermore, the fact that it's a private independent body means that it's the worst of both worlds. If this was the Government doing it directly, they would be at least in principle accountable, and perhaps subject to laws such as Freedom of Information. With the IWF, they are accountable to no one, and can say "Well we're a private organisation, we do what we like", and people say, as you do "It's voluntary", yet at the same time, it is compulsory for 95% of users, and will soon be compulsory for the remaining 5%.
If you mean that it's not a real firewall because 5% aren't affected, well, a firewall is still a firewall even if it isn't 100% secure. I'm sure there are ways round the Chinese one, too.
If it's only a court ruling, rather than what's written in the statute, surely there is a possibility of it being overturned?
I've no idea if this could be taken to a higher court, but I wouldn't expect it to be overturned myself. And there's no chance of the Government amending the law.
Common sense would seem to suggest that this is not to be what was intended by the lawmakers, however muddled/dunk they may have been.
Indeed, though sadly common sense goes out of the window when it comes to children.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect a PR man to understand the finer points of internet censorship
I think it's reasonable to expect the HO to send someone with a clue.
or to respond to questions perfectly from what appears to be a much more technically able interviewer.
The problem was not a lack of perfection, nor was it a problem of technical proficiency. The questions were obvious and straightforward: When the IWF visit a website to determine if it's potentially illegal, are they breaking the law? If no, why not? If they don't visit websites, how do they know if it's potentially illegal?
It wasn't that he gave the wrong answer, it was that he didn't even get the question.
The HO guy didn't seem to know what the IWF even did (talking as if they already had the list, and merely enforced it). If he doesn't know that, then why didn't the HO send someone who did?
even with the magic words child porn any competent journalist could have a field day
Journalists had a field day after Operation Ore.
However, that's little consolation to people who'd already gone through the stress of being accused, arrested, had all their electronic possessions confiscated for months as evidence, and gone through a traumatic trial. That's little consolation to those who committed suicide. And a well written article in a computer magazine sadly does not outdo tabloid reporting read by millions.
And after some journalists had a field day with Operation Ore, there was no fallout for the police officers (I think Jim Gamble even got promoted), nor any sign of change. So the idea that this would prevent police officers following the law and arresting someone is laughable.
Three, accidentally viewing such images is not a crime; possession and redistribution are, but accidentally catching a glance is not.
"Viewing" in the sense of looking in real life is not illegal, but the point here is that we are talking about someone's computer. If it's on your computer (as in this case), it's possession. That's illegal, unless you can prove to the jury it comes under an allowed defence. In fact, the courts have ruled that downloading counts as *making* an image, and hence is treated even worse than simple possession.
I have no idea if his story is really true or not, but events like them have happened for real, well, except for the bit where the police officer showed some sense (read up on Operation Ore).
But it's not illegal to delete such images, it's illegal to actually possess it, produce it or reproduce it - it's not illegal to delete it, which is what they do.
Which makes no sense - obviously it's not illegal to delete images. Does that mean deleting them from the server (which they obviously don't do), or deleting them from the cache? The Government are completely clueless as to the straightforward question being asked: how do they determine the legality of a website, without looking at it - or if they look at it, are they breaking the law?
If the Home Office really meant to say that it's legal to look as long as you delete the cache, then this is false. This doesn't even depend on the definition of possession - the courts have ruled that downloading (including viewing on a webpage) counts as making any image! So this is not only illegal, but in fact carries a heavier penalty than simple possession (10 years instead of 5, IIRC).
(Even for simple possession - when discussing new laws in the House of Commons Committee debates on the new law that criminalises non-realistic images, the Director of Public Prosecutions stated that they would prosecute someone for possession even for viewing streamed material, where no content is ever saved to a cache in the first place.)
As someone who's followed the law on "extreme" images since it was first proposed, to becoming law, I have to say that this level of cluelessness sadly doesn't surprise me. Remember, these incompetent and clueless fools are the ones writing and passing laws, on matters that they don't understand. Even with a straightforward question that should be understandable to someone with a reading age about 10, they are either incapable, or unwilling, to give a straight answer.
But there are many countries that criminalise non-realistic images such as cartoons (and the UK are currently passing such a law through Parliament, as part of the Coroners and Justice Bill - it's so broadly worded that it includes cartoons of 16/17 year olds, and even adults of any age, if they have some impression of someone under 18).
Moreover, even in realistic cases, it should always be a defence if you can show that the participants were over the age of consent. But legislators aren't even willing to allow that, even if the burden was on the defendant.
Indeed, and just to add to that, even my cheap 4 year old non-smart phone does copy and paste.
The thing is that a landline phone doesn't have any capacity for text input. But I would seriously hope that anything that allows text input would, as standard, allow copy and paste.
Copy and paste isn't even a feature - I'd argue that lacking it is a fundamental UI bug. Considering that the Iphone is allegedly good for it's UI, it makes me suspicious of the validity of such claims, when it misses out on such basic UI functionality.
Similarly with the "Just Works" Mantra. Well when I edit text, I don't expect to have to wait until a future software update, I expect to just copy and paste, and have it Just Work.
And how many of those phones are getting front page news? If they got front page news for adding copy-n-paste support, along with other features long available even on non-smart phones, then yes I'm sure people would rightly be tagging it Slashvertisement, and questioning why it's news.
But for some reason, with the IpHoNe, it's different.
Not sure why you got modded down[*], but I entirely agree - the same goes for other things. Why exactly is it front page news that a random make of phone finally supports MMS? Congratulations Apple, welcome to 2002!
I don't recall seeing articles for mere software updates of other phones at all - let alone for ones that just add in functionality that has been around for years, even in basic non-high-end phones. The fact that adding these basic features are trumpted as being revolutionary for the Iphone makes me suspicious that there's not anything good about it - I'd be more interested in a phone from the market leaders, and seeing what features they are adding in. Can we have a story on that?
Perhaps it's part of Apple's free-advertising strategy? Ship a product that misses out on fundamental basic functionality, so you get lots of hype when finally you get round to adding it in?
Another point - defenders of the Iphone claimed that the Iphone was better off without these features as they Iphone did it better other ways (even though this could never be explained). So surely, by this reasoning, the Iphone is now worse, right?
[*] Well I do - because whilst Slashdot's moderation works for every other topic, it's broken on Apple stories, because any criticism of Apple gets modded down, rather than debated. It's the only topic I have to browse at -1.
Indeed. On a similar note, when people call for things to be censored or banned (as with the recent law criminalising possession of "extreme" images of adults), a common tactic is to wheel out the story of how traumatic it is for the poor liddle IWF employees and police officers who have to look at this material, as an argument for it to be banned.
So um, who asked them to look at it? It's one thing when we're talking about police officers investigating a traumatic crime (such as with child abuse), but here the argument is banning things that are "disgusting", using the argument that the police officers find it difficult to look at them - but if they didn't pass the law, they wouldn't have to look at them! It's nonsensical. "I as a police officer don't like looking at your train spotting collection photos, so I want a law criminalising them, which'll mean I'll have to spend hours looking at them all..."
And as you note, it's a nonsensical double standard. If normal people view images, it turns them into killers; if police officers, politicians and IWF employees look at them, they get disgusted. Which is it?
This was also exemplified in the House of Lords debates last March or April over the aforementioned law on adult images. Lord Hunt invited fellow peers to attend a session at a police station to see the kind of images he was talking about, so they could see how "disgusting" they were - this invitation was not available for organisations opposing the law (who have tried to get information about what kind of images the law will affect, with no success - it's like talking to a brick wall), presumably on the grounds that those people would be perverted by the images.
A spider that is somehow able to crawl the entire internet, primarily the bits that people have tried very hard hide from spiders
I presume the intent was primarily not to uncover the list of naughty sites, but more to see what sites have been incorrectly classified, in which case, there's no need to worry about focusing on hard to find sites.
Even if spidering the entire web is unfeasible, it would be interesting to go over a large number of non-hidden sites and test them. Anyone have estimates on the feasibility? E.g., how many sites could be tested in what sort of time?
the fact by the time you've got to scan number two, the first set of results are now weeks out of date
I presume that any possible hits would be rechecked. So as long as your lists aren't completely different, this isn't a problem.
Do you have a citation for your claim btw? The list is secret, after all. Also, beware of misleading statistics. Perhaps 99% of the list is valid, which would reasonably be the "vast majority", but that 1% could still be a large number of websites.
And if someone is criminalised for linking to that 1%, do you think they'll be let off? No, the problem is that linking to anything on the list is, apparently, illegal. Similarly, is there any possibility for appealing a decision for the websites that are incorrectly classified?
What is it with the recent spate of trying to make something look more impressive by claiming "And you can access it on your Iphone" - I was accessing the web on my Motorola V980 years earlier. You might as well say "accessing the web via their Commodore Amiga 4000". The whole point of the web is that it's not dependent on specific platforms, telling me about accessing the site on one particular niche platform isn't particularly relevant.
By "all", you mean "all cases except where it's something else instead, such as an anti-abortion site".
This is a usage of "all" I was not previously aware of.
(But yes, I agree with your last paragraph; it's unclear what the intent of censorship is, and the problem is when the scope widens beyond that of abusive non-consensual material.)
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if there are also different versions with intentionally added URLs, in order to help tracing it - if it's leaked, they know which ISP it came from.
Don't they block sites too, no matter where they're hosted?
If they block Wikipedia, it generates a load of publicity against their action (as shown by the UK's IWF recently). If they don't block it, or back down, it shows a double standard, as well as making the whole thing seem pointless (again, as shown by the recent IWF case in the UK).
I can't work out whether you're being serious, being naive or being a troll. ...
The act of posting anything to sites such as Facebook should be made on the assumption that it *might* become public. Assuming otherwise is just naive. If I post stuff, I only *expect* my friends to see it, but I tailor what I write on the assumption that it is completely public.
This is completely irrelevant - the issue was about using encryption to prevent the Government snooping on it, in which case, the fact that the information isn't published to all is certainly relevant. Yes, if Facebook one day suddenly decided to publish it all, it wouldn't work, but that's no different to them one day deciding to stop using encryption.
Do you not say anything in email that you wouldn't want the entire world to know, btw, in case your ISP publishes your email? Or not say anything to anyone at all, in case they might tell the newspapers?
If you are so scared of trusting anyone such that you treat telling one person equivalent to telling everyone, you must either be a very secretive person, or you don't mind the whole world knowing about anything you do.
Why don't you post your credit card numbers on Slashdot? After all, your credit company *might* do that, so it's naive to think there's any difference, right?
Thanks for the info, I was curious myself - to be honest I assumed it must be something more advanced that that. When I connect my cheap old phone to my computer via USB as a modem, as people have been doing for years, I don't even think of it as a feature. But then again, I didn't think of copy/paste being a feature, until Apple announced it in a future version...
The apple fan boys haven't arrived yet, so I'll fill in for them We don't need obvious functionality that is available in the most low end phones, like MMS messaging and video recording. Oh no. All we need is a sexy interface with a glossy product and we're happy. In fact, we'll pretend our phone is the best phone in the world simply because it has the apple logo on it. Oh wait, hang on, Apple is introducing those features in it's new product? Well praise the lord, we've been waiting for those features for so long. Never mind the fact we said we didn't want them, now they're here our phone is AWESOME
The fact that your perfectly fair portrayal is modded flamebait - yet the post that started it isn't flamebait, shows that the hater-haters outnumber any alleged haters (as with a recent article on Japan - just because people don't use the Iphone doesn't mean we hate it, anymore than we hate any other phone we don't use). (Hint to mods, flamebait is the one that starts the flamewar.)
But now that Apple have finally entered the 21st Century, and joined the sub-£50 low end market with features such as video and MMS, I predict that no longer will we hear "Why would I need that?", instead, they'll be touted as great features.
Consider, if it was really true that the Iphone was better off by lacking these features (as some claimed), doesn't this mean the Iphone is now worse? They can't have it both ways. But they'll try to, anyway.
No haters, just hater-haters.
I have this feature on my Nintendo 64. My blackberry has a direct T-1 to God. Etc. Etc.
The point is, we don't have endless articles about "Nintendo 64 can do this", "Blackberry can access the Internet!" Consider - you're complaining because there's an occasional comment from someone who says a particular device can do such and such, but with the Iphone, we get an endless stream everytime it has some trivial non-new feature added, or even if there's just a rumour or wishlist, or even when people launch websites that can also be viewed on an Iphone.
Not to mention, that for any other device, if there was an article proposing how you could hack something, it would be interesting to hear of other devices that could achieve this in a less hacky way. Not so with Apple - it seems you'd rather bury your head in the sand instead of considering, or even merely hearing about, a non-Apple solution.
Indeed - so much for "Just Works", more like "Works, Just".
If I want to use my laptop to access the Internet using my four year old non-smartphone, I just plug it in via USB, and it Just Works.
As far as I have been able to tell, at least in the Western world, it currently works like this: Mock a Christian and it's comedy, mock a Muslim and it's free speech, mock a Jew and it's hate.
In the UK, the law that outlawed specifically Christian blasphemy was only repealed last year. Yes, the laws on what constitute "hate" are confusing, but please don't play the "no one cares about Christians" card.
Note also that "Jew" can also refer to both the race of Jews, and a follower of Judaism. I agree that criticism of religious beliefs should never be considered "hate", but if you see a different standard, it may be because you are also confusing the issue with examples of racism against Jews.
Right, you're now facing a hefty fine and possible prison sentence for linking to those sites - don't you know a child could be accessing this site?
The point isn't so much whether we'd be better off with or without particular sites. You also have to look at the consequences for breaking that law. This is even more of a problem for laws where people can't be sure if a site is legal or not. This is the point: yes we hate it when someone tricks us into a goatse, but no one here thinks "How dare he - now he should be spending years in prison for that!"
And as much as I am no fan of anti-abortionists, the fact that you are in favour of suppressing political content - under the grounds that it is "disgusting" - rather than arguing with reason why they are wrong, shows why your stance is wrong. Yes, I'm pro-choice, and part of that is not opposing abortion merely because the images look horrible.
Deciding that we should ban images because they look horrible isn't really that different from the anti-abortion point of view that we should ban abortion because it looks horrible.
As for your "think of the children argument", there are ways to control access to underage. If we banned for everyone anything unsuitable for children, then that's an argument for banning vast amounts of material.
There is a voluntary body
This term is misleading. The Government have made no secret of the fact that they want all ISPs to be using it, and they will do something about it if they do not do it "voluntary". See the article linked from this more recent story - http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/17/2321252 : "Despite being clueless about how the IWF rates content, the Home Office admitted it was forcing ISPs to sign up to the organisation's blacklist in order to meet targets it set itself."
Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7904607.stm : "The government had asked all internet service providers (ISPs) to block illegal websites by the end of 2007."; "The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%."
That's not to say it will stay that way for long, since the government has recently talked about making it compulsory.
Well yes, exactly. It's not voluntary in any meaninful sense, as the Government has long been telling them to do so, with the threat of making it compulsory if they don't.
Furthermore, the fact that it's a private independent body means that it's the worst of both worlds. If this was the Government doing it directly, they would be at least in principle accountable, and perhaps subject to laws such as Freedom of Information. With the IWF, they are accountable to no one, and can say "Well we're a private organisation, we do what we like", and people say, as you do "It's voluntary", yet at the same time, it is compulsory for 95% of users, and will soon be compulsory for the remaining 5%.
If you mean that it's not a real firewall because 5% aren't affected, well, a firewall is still a firewall even if it isn't 100% secure. I'm sure there are ways round the Chinese one, too.
It was R v. Bowden:
http://www.iwf.org.uk/police/page.99.209.htm
http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/rvbowden.htm
If it's only a court ruling, rather than what's written in the statute, surely there is a possibility of it being overturned?
I've no idea if this could be taken to a higher court, but I wouldn't expect it to be overturned myself. And there's no chance of the Government amending the law.
Common sense would seem to suggest that this is not to be what was intended by the lawmakers, however muddled/dunk they may have been.
Indeed, though sadly common sense goes out of the window when it comes to children.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect a PR man to understand the finer points of internet censorship
I think it's reasonable to expect the HO to send someone with a clue.
or to respond to questions perfectly from what appears to be a much more technically able interviewer.
The problem was not a lack of perfection, nor was it a problem of technical proficiency. The questions were obvious and straightforward: When the IWF visit a website to determine if it's potentially illegal, are they breaking the law? If no, why not? If they don't visit websites, how do they know if it's potentially illegal?
It wasn't that he gave the wrong answer, it was that he didn't even get the question.
The HO guy didn't seem to know what the IWF even did (talking as if they already had the list, and merely enforced it). If he doesn't know that, then why didn't the HO send someone who did?
even with the magic words child porn any competent journalist could have a field day
Journalists had a field day after Operation Ore.
However, that's little consolation to people who'd already gone through the stress of being accused, arrested, had all their electronic possessions confiscated for months as evidence, and gone through a traumatic trial. That's little consolation to those who committed suicide. And a well written article in a computer magazine sadly does not outdo tabloid reporting read by millions.
And after some journalists had a field day with Operation Ore, there was no fallout for the police officers (I think Jim Gamble even got promoted), nor any sign of change. So the idea that this would prevent police officers following the law and arresting someone is laughable.
Three, accidentally viewing such images is not a crime; possession and redistribution are, but accidentally catching a glance is not.
"Viewing" in the sense of looking in real life is not illegal, but the point here is that we are talking about someone's computer. If it's on your computer (as in this case), it's possession. That's illegal, unless you can prove to the jury it comes under an allowed defence. In fact, the courts have ruled that downloading counts as *making* an image, and hence is treated even worse than simple possession.
I have no idea if his story is really true or not, but events like them have happened for real, well, except for the bit where the police officer showed some sense (read up on Operation Ore).
To quote them exactly:
But it's not illegal to delete such images, it's illegal to actually possess it, produce it or reproduce it - it's not illegal to delete it, which is what they do.
Which makes no sense - obviously it's not illegal to delete images. Does that mean deleting them from the server (which they obviously don't do), or deleting them from the cache? The Government are completely clueless as to the straightforward question being asked: how do they determine the legality of a website, without looking at it - or if they look at it, are they breaking the law?
If the Home Office really meant to say that it's legal to look as long as you delete the cache, then this is false. This doesn't even depend on the definition of possession - the courts have ruled that downloading (including viewing on a webpage) counts as making any image! So this is not only illegal, but in fact carries a heavier penalty than simple possession (10 years instead of 5, IIRC).
(Even for simple possession - when discussing new laws in the House of Commons Committee debates on the new law that criminalises non-realistic images, the Director of Public Prosecutions stated that they would prosecute someone for possession even for viewing streamed material, where no content is ever saved to a cache in the first place.)
As someone who's followed the law on "extreme" images since it was first proposed, to becoming law, I have to say that this level of cluelessness sadly doesn't surprise me. Remember, these incompetent and clueless fools are the ones writing and passing laws, on matters that they don't understand. Even with a straightforward question that should be understandable to someone with a reading age about 10, they are either incapable, or unwilling, to give a straight answer.
But there are many countries that criminalise non-realistic images such as cartoons (and the UK are currently passing such a law through Parliament, as part of the Coroners and Justice Bill - it's so broadly worded that it includes cartoons of 16/17 year olds, and even adults of any age, if they have some impression of someone under 18).
Moreover, even in realistic cases, it should always be a defence if you can show that the participants were over the age of consent. But legislators aren't even willing to allow that, even if the burden was on the defendant.
Not many. There are many countries that have state funded healthcare, but none that I know of that have the politicians providing it.
Indeed, and just to add to that, even my cheap 4 year old non-smart phone does copy and paste.
The thing is that a landline phone doesn't have any capacity for text input. But I would seriously hope that anything that allows text input would, as standard, allow copy and paste.
Copy and paste isn't even a feature - I'd argue that lacking it is a fundamental UI bug. Considering that the Iphone is allegedly good for it's UI, it makes me suspicious of the validity of such claims, when it misses out on such basic UI functionality.
Similarly with the "Just Works" Mantra. Well when I edit text, I don't expect to have to wait until a future software update, I expect to just copy and paste, and have it Just Work.
And how many of those phones are getting front page news? If they got front page news for adding copy-n-paste support, along with other features long available even on non-smart phones, then yes I'm sure people would rightly be tagging it Slashvertisement, and questioning why it's news.
But for some reason, with the IpHoNe, it's different.
He couldn't cut the irony with a knife, as he only had ten thousand spoons.
Not sure why you got modded down[*], but I entirely agree - the same goes for other things. Why exactly is it front page news that a random make of phone finally supports MMS? Congratulations Apple, welcome to 2002!
I don't recall seeing articles for mere software updates of other phones at all - let alone for ones that just add in functionality that has been around for years, even in basic non-high-end phones. The fact that adding these basic features are trumpted as being revolutionary for the Iphone makes me suspicious that there's not anything good about it - I'd be more interested in a phone from the market leaders, and seeing what features they are adding in. Can we have a story on that?
Perhaps it's part of Apple's free-advertising strategy? Ship a product that misses out on fundamental basic functionality, so you get lots of hype when finally you get round to adding it in?
Another point - defenders of the Iphone claimed that the Iphone was better off without these features as they Iphone did it better other ways (even though this could never be explained). So surely, by this reasoning, the Iphone is now worse, right?
[*] Well I do - because whilst Slashdot's moderation works for every other topic, it's broken on Apple stories, because any criticism of Apple gets modded down, rather than debated. It's the only topic I have to browse at -1.
Indeed. On a similar note, when people call for things to be censored or banned (as with the recent law criminalising possession of "extreme" images of adults), a common tactic is to wheel out the story of how traumatic it is for the poor liddle IWF employees and police officers who have to look at this material, as an argument for it to be banned.
So um, who asked them to look at it? It's one thing when we're talking about police officers investigating a traumatic crime (such as with child abuse), but here the argument is banning things that are "disgusting", using the argument that the police officers find it difficult to look at them - but if they didn't pass the law, they wouldn't have to look at them! It's nonsensical. "I as a police officer don't like looking at your train spotting collection photos, so I want a law criminalising them, which'll mean I'll have to spend hours looking at them all..."
And as you note, it's a nonsensical double standard. If normal people view images, it turns them into killers; if police officers, politicians and IWF employees look at them, they get disgusted. Which is it?
This was also exemplified in the House of Lords debates last March or April over the aforementioned law on adult images. Lord Hunt invited fellow peers to attend a session at a police station to see the kind of images he was talking about, so they could see how "disgusting" they were - this invitation was not available for organisations opposing the law (who have tried to get information about what kind of images the law will affect, with no success - it's like talking to a brick wall), presumably on the grounds that those people would be perverted by the images.
A spider that is somehow able to crawl the entire internet, primarily the bits that people have tried very hard hide from spiders
I presume the intent was primarily not to uncover the list of naughty sites, but more to see what sites have been incorrectly classified, in which case, there's no need to worry about focusing on hard to find sites.
Even if spidering the entire web is unfeasible, it would be interesting to go over a large number of non-hidden sites and test them. Anyone have estimates on the feasibility? E.g., how many sites could be tested in what sort of time?
the fact by the time you've got to scan number two, the first set of results are now weeks out of date
I presume that any possible hits would be rechecked. So as long as your lists aren't completely different, this isn't a problem.
In the article I wrote "The Vast Majority"
But not in the more prominent title.
Do you have a citation for your claim btw? The list is secret, after all. Also, beware of misleading statistics. Perhaps 99% of the list is valid, which would reasonably be the "vast majority", but that 1% could still be a large number of websites.
And if someone is criminalised for linking to that 1%, do you think they'll be let off? No, the problem is that linking to anything on the list is, apparently, illegal. Similarly, is there any possibility for appealing a decision for the websites that are incorrectly classified?
accessing the web via their iPhones etc
What is it with the recent spate of trying to make something look more impressive by claiming "And you can access it on your Iphone" - I was accessing the web on my Motorola V980 years earlier. You might as well say "accessing the web via their Commodore Amiga 4000". The whole point of the web is that it's not dependent on specific platforms, telling me about accessing the site on one particular niche platform isn't particularly relevant.
By "all", you mean "all cases except where it's something else instead, such as an anti-abortion site".
This is a usage of "all" I was not previously aware of.
(But yes, I agree with your last paragraph; it's unclear what the intent of censorship is, and the problem is when the scope widens beyond that of abusive non-consensual material.)