The major point of the iMac was the "just works" philosophy
Is that the best you can say of it, that it just works? This statement "just works" seems to be a cool phrase people throw around for the Mac, but what does it actually mean? All computers work - if they don't, I suggest you take it back and get a replacement. What else does it do, besides working?
a kid set up the iMac including internet access in a fraction of a time a HP engineer could do it with a PC
With a PC, I plug in and go. Just like I did with the Amiga at the time.
It was all about reducing the complexity that network access, multimedia and all the other nifty features had brought to computing during the last years.
Multimedia was brought along in an easy to use manner with the Amiga in 1985. By the early 1990s, the PC was using "multimedia" as a buzzword. And Macs finally catch up in 1998?
And that theme stuck with the iPod and the iPhone and is now widely regarded as the best way to bring technology to the masses.
And it was long before the Imac.
Honestly, I love niche platforms too, but I don't understand this desire to rewrite computing history.
Re:It wasn't all roses.
on
iMac Turns 10
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I agree.
It's also false to suggest that lack of a floppy was forward thinking.
Yes, we don't use floppy drives now, but that doesn't mean an the Imac was right to drop them ten years ago. By that logic, it would be "forward thinking" for a computer to come without DVD, because at some point in the future, we'll no longer be using DVDs!
The point is that today we have alternatives to the floppy - the Imac didn't. It would be like dropping the DVD, but not including any alternatives that future computers will have.
The Amiga CDTV dropped the floppy drive years before the Imac did it, anyway. But people don't try to pretend that being "forward thinking" is a good thing, rather, it means you're producing something before it's time, that isn't what people want.
Agreed - whilst I personally have no desire to ban it for under-18s, this would be the logical response if the Internet is as dangerous as pro-censorship people claim. Better that than banning things for everyone.
It's not like children (under 16s, at least) should be able to get Internet access anyway, unless they have their parents' permission - in which case, it's the parents' responsibility.
Pro-censorship people often claim that it's okay to ban things because "there is no need for it" - well, why is their a need for there young children to be roaming adult places like the Internet unsupervised?
Apologies for the off-topic comment, but I have to comment.
he is saying that images of such activities shouldn't be illegal. And he is making a pretty logical argument.
Agreed - in fact, this law (which was covered recently on Slashdot, with most comments objecting to the plans) covers entirely staged acts or fictional images, i.e., someone play-acting.
I'm amused that RMS is seemingly most concerned about corpses (although he makes a good point about that bit of the law); the problem with this law is that it also criminalises acts (even staged acts) between consenting adults (as RMS notes, "Never mind that in making movies of violence, typically nobody is actually hurt").
The OP may have been a troll, but I'm glad to see the link to what RMS has to say on this issue.
It's a category defined entirely by scarcity. There are only 8. Not 8000.
You completely miss his point. The question is why we are so keen to define planet in terms of scarcity, but not when it comes to moons?
It's just an act of intellectual honesty to note that Pluto is only unique historically for being seen early.
It's a good thing no one suggested that, then.
Any object orbiting a planet is automatically a satellite, any satellite that is naturally occurring is automatically a moon (by some definitions, anyway).
Yes, it's the "some" definitions that is being debated here.
Perhaps you should invest in a good dictionary.
Perhaps you should too - this is a discussion forum where people may debate certain definitions. And what we are debating here is how planet and moon are or should be defined.
So your argument is that a moon should be defined this way, because that's how the dictionary defines it? That's a circular argument.
FYI, the definition of a planet is set by the IAU, not by the dictionary writers!
Thank goodness we don't have to rely on your inane concepts of 'fairness' in celestial bodies for our language needs.
Another straw man. Who said anything about "fairness"?
Let me see if I have this straight - Pluto is NOT a planet, because it falls beneath some arbitrary threshold for 'planet', but ANY object orbiting a planet is automagically a moon?
I find it odd that people can't cope with there being hundreds of planets, and need some arbitrary distinction between "planet" and "natural satellite of the Sun", but 240 moons in the solar system is considered fine.
It's also strange that a body orbiting a dwarf planet is still considered a moon, and not a "dwarf moon"...
Another scenario: Stephen King spends two years of his life researching, writing, and publishing his latest novel. He then earns next to zero dollars, because his fans decided to DOWNLOAD or PHOTOCOPY the novel for free.
Which has bugger all to do with "stealing" an idea. The analogy here would be a fan deciding to spend two years of his life writing a horror novel, then Stephen King accuses him of "stealing" his idea.
If anything, I'd say it's Rowling who is doing the stealing here, trying to steal the work that he has spent on the encyclopedia.
But what are the important differences between a porn shoot and shooting pornographic videos, other than quality? The audience may be smaller, but it is still a photograph of a minor performing sexual acts.
No it isn't, not in the UK - that's the point, it's a photograph of someone legally performing sexual acts.
If you play the "it's a minor performing sexual acts" card, that logic only works with under 16s in the UK. If you try to compare it to "doing a porn shoot", then that's a separate issue.
It's like complaining that (in the UK) children of most ages are allowed a single alcoholic drink with a meal but they aren't allowed to buy it themselves.
I can't fathom out how that situation is irrelevant.
What's the worst that can happen? You prevent your wife/partner from shaving? So what? No one gets hurt.
No one gets hurt if I roleplay rape or knifeplay with my consenting adult partner.
And even if we do induldge in S&M, that's none of your business, and not what I consider "violent", but it will be caught by this law. The only "sick fucks" are people who have a perversion about locking people up for three years because they don't like what they get up to or fantasise about in private.
So? Is murder wrong? Says who? What about stealing? How about fucking that 10-yr old girl down the street if she's willing? How about exposing yourself to children? Are these all not moral situations?
These are not issues of taste - these are issues of non-consensual harm towards others.
Eventually seeing it in a Flash window won't cut it anymore. It increases the odds that eventually, they will venture out and try the real thing. See my dieter in a bakery example a few posts up. Also read how it may desensitize someone to the horrors of what rape is all about.
Evidence, please, not speculation. We're talking about locking people up here.
If you had a video of someone being beheaded, would you assume it's fake, or, that the victim was consenting? In a similar vein, if you've got video of violent porn, how does one tell if the person being raped is consenting?
Well the real question is, do we treat it as evidence of a crime and investigate it, or do we criminalise the person possessing it, and leave it at that?
Also note there is no defence in the law even for images that are known beyond any reasonable doubt to be staged or made with consenting adults. Even an image of yourself would be illegal to possess!
It's obvious that Die Hard II commercial motion picture, and easy to verify
Note that screenshots from such a commercial movie will also come under the law.
The idea that images might be non-consensual is a red herring - images will be illegal even if they're known to be consensual, whilst depictions of many non-consensual acts (rape porn, or a non-porn image of someone being beheaded, both as you suggest) will not be covered by the law.
(I know you disagree with the law too, I'm just pointing out why these issues are no justification for such a law.)
An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following
(a) an act which threatens a persons life, (b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a persons anus, breasts or genitals, (c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or (d) a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive),
and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person or animal was real.
I.e., the reasonable person... thinks it was real test applies to the person/animal, but the actions themselves must be "realistic".
but the fact that there are people who want this kind of stuff is scary, disgusting and an example of how sad and pathetic parts of our world has become.
Wait - it's scary that there are consenting adults who do sexual acts in private?
No, what's scary is that there are perverts out there who want to lock people up because they disapprove of those people's sex lives.
don't ever confuse your 'right' to free speech to mean that you are involved with anything but the most despicable, disgusting of things.
Freedom of speech that does not apply to things you think are merely "disgusting" is no freedom of speech at all. Otherwise, I just point out that I think what you say and think is disgusting.
Already, violent sex acts between consenting adult individuals are banned in the UK - look up the Spanner case. All this bill does is make an illegal act in the UK illegal to possess pictures of.
Indeed - the bill explicitly mentions the Spanner case, and the Government is keen to expand the law based on this precedent. There seems little doubt that consenting sadomasochists are being targeted here.
Although note that this law criminalises even entirely staged images. It's entirely legal to act out a scene where someone pretends to be harmed, or even something trivial like pretending to threaten someone with a knife, but these images will be criminalised.
It actually pains me that the unelected house is the only thing keeping the governments nastiest instincts in check now.
I agree - but what also saddens me is that despite the extensive criticism given to this law in the House of Lords (to which Lord Hunt, the Government spokesperson can only respond with "But, but - these images are disgusting!"), they are unable to overturn the law, because the Government still turns out all of its Labour drones to vote in support of the Government. Sure many of them defected, but there were too many of them who were loyal to the Government, which evidently can still exert an influence in the second house.
The last hope is that some sane amendments will be voted through, but I fear this will be unlikely. The final debate in the Lords is tomorrow (Wednesday) - we'll know by tomorrow just what the wording of this trainwreck of a law will be. And it'll be law by May 9, according to the Government.
No Hentai do not fall under that legislation, because you can not kill or actually damage a hentai character.
It won't fall under the law because it isn't realistic. However, fictional/staged images, even where no one is killed or damaged, will certainly be covered by the law, as long as they are "realistic".
I am fine with this. People who have pics of people doing corpses or animals, or pics of people basicly ripping someone apart or killing them are screwed up big time. Anyone that gets off on that sort of thing needs to have their head checked. This law dosent affect soft stuff like bondage, it just affects the stuff that would be illegal to do to another person.
OH THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT! Stop the press! When someone is sent to prison for possessing an acted image of someone being threatened with a knife, or taking a screenshot from a legal film, we can tell the court that the bill is wrong, and it's okay, because Expert Witness Anonymous Coward on Slashdot told us that only images where people were being ripped apart or killed would be affected...
I think you'll find that's the same in a lot of countries. France, Germany and other parts of Europe have a younger age of consent, but just about every nation I've heard of won't let you do a porn shoot until you're 18.
But it's not about when you can do a porn shoot. Having an age for commercial porn would be fine. The problem is treating it as child porn, with all the connotations that that entails (e.g., that simple possession is illegal, that you're treated the same as someone in possession of an image of children having sex, that even private images are illegal).
This isn't quite true. The law contains a specific exception for images of somebody you are involved in a sexual relationship with.
That isn't quite true either - the exception only applies to a married couple, or people living together as man and wife; a sexual relationship on its own is not enough.
When people like myself get marked as pedophile sympathizers for raising red flags about laws intended to protect people from thought crimes, we're not just trolling or doing it to play devil's advocate or anything like that. The slippery slope is REAL
Indeed - several years ago when having debates on whether fictional child porn images should be illegal, part of my argument of why it shouldn't be was the slippery slope: that by the same reasoning, should fictional images of non-consensual adult acts (e.g., rape porn) be illegal?
My argument was based around the idea of this being ludicrous. Never did I imagine that not only would such images become illegal, but even depictions of openly consensual acts (there is no requirement that the scene appears non-consensual - just that it depicts injury or a risk or injury, or a threat). And indeed, one of the arguments being put in favour of this law is "Fictional child porn is illegal, so this should be too". You are right - the slipperly slope is real.
(Though having said that, I still think there are reasons why criminalising adult images is mad, even if we accepted that fictional child porn should be criminalised. For one, real child porn exists, whilst there are no known examples of non-consensual adult porn, so the argument that we need to criminalise it in case it's non-consensual is far harder to apply to adult material; secondly, an argument for child porn is that it's used to "groom" children, which doesn't apply to adults.)
Your reaction exemplifies the problem here - that it's only the unpopular things that get banned. No one would ban bread, bowling - or say, possession of Bibles, even though the same anecdotal "evidence" exists. It'll always be things like porn, rock music, computer games, horror films and Marilyn Manson. And it'll always be kinky/S&M/"weird" porn before heterosexual mainstream porn (despite the latter often being far more sleazy and sexist than any of the former).
If only;) That's what people are trying to debate (such as on the BBC News article, and in the House of Lords). The Government, and those who support this law, are not interested in debate - the law will be forced through tomorrow, and any criticisms brushed aside with "But these images are disgusting! No one must be allowed to see them!")
The images which will be banned are those which are real or which might be taken by a rational person to be real.
I agree that it'll be a few years befoere CGI alone catches up, but note that "rational person" is probably "member of police or jury who thinks snuff films exist".
The threshold is that the images are realistic - even if you know they're bound to be staged/faked/consensual, if it looks as real as say any film, it'll be illegal. You don't need much CGI to act out a scene such as holding a knife.
Sorry to disappoint you, but you cannot engage in a criminal activity even if you have consent from the victim. In other words, even if your girlfriend gives you permission to hit her with a whip, it is still common assault under british law.
Sadly, yes the Government seems to be using the mad precedent of Spanner, where consenting adult sadomasochists were criminalised for actual bodily harm upon themselves. In fact, under the law, even his girlfriend would be criminalised, for aiding and abetting assault upon herself!
However, note that this law even criminalises fictional images and images of staged acts, where no one is harmed. The bill explicitly states that a "threat" with a weapon will count. So it is still true that photographs will be illegal even though the act was legal.
Even screenshots from legally available BBFC films will be criminalised by the law, if the police think you made them for the purpose of sexual arousal!
I agree, but don't worry, in the UK they're planning on soon fixing this inconsistency by criminalising possession of "violent" adult images, even if it's consensual or even fictional, and including screenshots from legally available films.
Slashdot Mirror
'Take all the pieces out of the box, and connect everything to wherever it will fit.'
That's what I've done with all my computers, from Spectrum to PCs. They "just work" - and do lots more useful things besides just working.
The major point of the iMac was the "just works" philosophy
Is that the best you can say of it, that it just works? This statement "just works" seems to be a cool phrase people throw around for the Mac, but what does it actually mean? All computers work - if they don't, I suggest you take it back and get a replacement. What else does it do, besides working?
a kid set up the iMac including internet access in a fraction of a time a HP engineer could do it with a PC
With a PC, I plug in and go. Just like I did with the Amiga at the time.
It was all about reducing the complexity that network access, multimedia and all the other nifty features had brought to computing during the last years.
Multimedia was brought along in an easy to use manner with the Amiga in 1985. By the early 1990s, the PC was using "multimedia" as a buzzword. And Macs finally catch up in 1998?
And that theme stuck with the iPod and the iPhone and is now widely regarded as the best way to bring technology to the masses.
And it was long before the Imac.
Honestly, I love niche platforms too, but I don't understand this desire to rewrite computing history.
I agree.
It's also false to suggest that lack of a floppy was forward thinking.
Yes, we don't use floppy drives now, but that doesn't mean an the Imac was right to drop them ten years ago. By that logic, it would be "forward thinking" for a computer to come without DVD, because at some point in the future, we'll no longer be using DVDs!
The point is that today we have alternatives to the floppy - the Imac didn't. It would be like dropping the DVD, but not including any alternatives that future computers will have.
The Amiga CDTV dropped the floppy drive years before the Imac did it, anyway. But people don't try to pretend that being "forward thinking" is a good thing, rather, it means you're producing something before it's time, that isn't what people want.
Agreed - whilst I personally have no desire to ban it for under-18s, this would be the logical response if the Internet is as dangerous as pro-censorship people claim. Better that than banning things for everyone.
It's not like children (under 16s, at least) should be able to get Internet access anyway, unless they have their parents' permission - in which case, it's the parents' responsibility.
Pro-censorship people often claim that it's okay to ban things because "there is no need for it" - well, why is their a need for there young children to be roaming adult places like the Internet unsupervised?
Apologies for the off-topic comment, but I have to comment.
he is saying that images of such activities shouldn't be illegal. And he is making a pretty logical argument.
Agreed - in fact, this law (which was covered recently on Slashdot, with most comments objecting to the plans) covers entirely staged acts or fictional images, i.e., someone play-acting.
I'm amused that RMS is seemingly most concerned about corpses (although he makes a good point about that bit of the law); the problem with this law is that it also criminalises acts (even staged acts) between consenting adults (as RMS notes, "Never mind that in making movies of violence, typically nobody is actually hurt").
The OP may have been a troll, but I'm glad to see the link to what RMS has to say on this issue.
It's a category defined entirely by scarcity. There are only 8. Not 8000.
You completely miss his point. The question is why we are so keen to define planet in terms of scarcity, but not when it comes to moons?
It's just an act of intellectual honesty to note that Pluto is only unique historically for being seen early.
It's a good thing no one suggested that, then.
Any object orbiting a planet is automatically a satellite, any satellite that is naturally occurring is automatically a moon (by some definitions, anyway).
Yes, it's the "some" definitions that is being debated here.
Perhaps you should invest in a good dictionary.
Perhaps you should too - this is a discussion forum where people may debate certain definitions. And what we are debating here is how planet and moon are or should be defined.
So your argument is that a moon should be defined this way, because that's how the dictionary defines it? That's a circular argument.
FYI, the definition of a planet is set by the IAU, not by the dictionary writers!
Thank goodness we don't have to rely on your inane concepts of 'fairness' in celestial bodies for our language needs.
Another straw man. Who said anything about "fairness"?
Let me see if I have this straight - Pluto is NOT a planet, because it falls beneath some arbitrary threshold for 'planet', but ANY object orbiting a planet is automagically a moon?
Apparentely so - the 63 Moons of Jupiter include the 1 km in diameter 2003 J 9.
I find it odd that people can't cope with there being hundreds of planets, and need some arbitrary distinction between "planet" and "natural satellite of the Sun", but 240 moons in the solar system is considered fine.
It's also strange that a body orbiting a dwarf planet is still considered a moon, and not a "dwarf moon"...
Another scenario: Stephen King spends two years of his life researching, writing, and publishing his latest novel. He then earns next to zero dollars, because his fans decided to DOWNLOAD or PHOTOCOPY the novel for free.
Which has bugger all to do with "stealing" an idea. The analogy here would be a fan deciding to spend two years of his life writing a horror novel, then Stephen King accuses him of "stealing" his idea.
If anything, I'd say it's Rowling who is doing the stealing here, trying to steal the work that he has spent on the encyclopedia.
PS - you stole my idea to post to Slashdot.
But what are the important differences between a porn shoot and shooting pornographic videos, other than quality? The audience may be smaller, but it is still a photograph of a minor performing sexual acts.
No it isn't, not in the UK - that's the point, it's a photograph of someone legally performing sexual acts.
If you play the "it's a minor performing sexual acts" card, that logic only works with under 16s in the UK. If you try to compare it to "doing a porn shoot", then that's a separate issue.
It's like complaining that (in the UK) children of most ages are allowed a single alcoholic drink with a meal but they aren't allowed to buy it themselves.
I can't fathom out how that situation is irrelevant.
What's the worst that can happen? You prevent your wife/partner from shaving? So what? No one gets hurt.
No one gets hurt if I roleplay rape or knifeplay with my consenting adult partner.
And even if we do induldge in S&M, that's none of your business, and not what I consider "violent", but it will be caught by this law. The only "sick fucks" are people who have a perversion about locking people up for three years because they don't like what they get up to or fantasise about in private.
So? Is murder wrong? Says who? What about stealing? How about fucking that 10-yr old girl down the street if she's willing? How about exposing yourself to children? Are these all not moral situations?
These are not issues of taste - these are issues of non-consensual harm towards others.
Eventually seeing it in a Flash window won't cut it anymore. It increases the odds that eventually, they will venture out and try the real thing. See my dieter in a bakery example a few posts up. Also read how it may desensitize someone to the horrors of what rape is all about.
Evidence, please, not speculation. We're talking about locking people up here.
If you had a video of someone being beheaded, would you assume it's fake, or, that the victim was consenting? In a similar vein, if you've got video of violent porn, how does one tell if the person being raped is consenting?
Well the real question is, do we treat it as evidence of a crime and investigate it, or do we criminalise the person possessing it, and leave it at that?
Also note there is no defence in the law even for images that are known beyond any reasonable doubt to be staged or made with consenting adults. Even an image of yourself would be illegal to possess!
It's obvious that Die Hard II commercial motion picture, and easy to verify
Note that screenshots from such a commercial movie will also come under the law.
The idea that images might be non-consensual is a red herring - images will be illegal even if they're known to be consensual, whilst depictions of many non-consensual acts (rape porn, or a non-porn image of someone being beheaded, both as you suggest) will not be covered by the law.
(I know you disagree with the law too, I'm just pointing out why these issues are no justification for such a law.)
The threshold is not that they look "realistic" but that they look "real", which is a very different thing.
... thinks it was real test applies to the person/animal, but the actions themselves must be "realistic".
I don't think I particularly disagree with you, but note that there's two slightly different phrases in the bill:
An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following
(a) an act which threatens a persons life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a persons anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or
(d) a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive),
and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person or animal was real.
I.e., the reasonable person
but the fact that there are people who want this kind of stuff is scary, disgusting and an example of how sad and pathetic parts of our world has become.
Wait - it's scary that there are consenting adults who do sexual acts in private?
No, what's scary is that there are perverts out there who want to lock people up because they disapprove of those people's sex lives.
don't ever confuse your 'right' to free speech to mean that you are involved with anything but the most despicable, disgusting of things.
Freedom of speech that does not apply to things you think are merely "disgusting" is no freedom of speech at all. Otherwise, I just point out that I think what you say and think is disgusting.
Already, violent sex acts between consenting adult individuals are banned in the UK - look up the Spanner case. All this bill does is make an illegal act in the UK illegal to possess pictures of.
Indeed - the bill explicitly mentions the Spanner case, and the Government is keen to expand the law based on this precedent. There seems little doubt that consenting sadomasochists are being targeted here.
Although note that this law criminalises even entirely staged images. It's entirely legal to act out a scene where someone pretends to be harmed, or even something trivial like pretending to threaten someone with a knife, but these images will be criminalised.
It actually pains me that the unelected house is the only thing keeping the governments nastiest instincts in check now.
I agree - but what also saddens me is that despite the extensive criticism given to this law in the House of Lords (to which Lord Hunt, the Government spokesperson can only respond with "But, but - these images are disgusting!"), they are unable to overturn the law, because the Government still turns out all of its Labour drones to vote in support of the Government. Sure many of them defected, but there were too many of them who were loyal to the Government, which evidently can still exert an influence in the second house.
The last hope is that some sane amendments will be voted through, but I fear this will be unlikely. The final debate in the Lords is tomorrow (Wednesday) - we'll know by tomorrow just what the wording of this trainwreck of a law will be. And it'll be law by May 9, according to the Government.
No Hentai do not fall under that legislation, because you can not kill or actually damage a hentai character.
It won't fall under the law because it isn't realistic. However, fictional/staged images, even where no one is killed or damaged, will certainly be covered by the law, as long as they are "realistic".
I am fine with this. People who have pics of people doing corpses or animals, or pics of people basicly ripping someone apart or killing them are screwed up big time. Anyone that gets off on that sort of thing needs to have their head checked. This law dosent affect soft stuff like bondage, it just affects the stuff that would be illegal to do to another person.
OH THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT! Stop the press! When someone is sent to prison for possessing an acted image of someone being threatened with a knife, or taking a screenshot from a legal film, we can tell the court that the bill is wrong, and it's okay, because Expert Witness Anonymous Coward on Slashdot told us that only images where people were being ripped apart or killed would be affected...
I think you'll find that's the same in a lot of countries. France, Germany and other parts of Europe have a younger age of consent, but just about every nation I've heard of won't let you do a porn shoot until you're 18.
But it's not about when you can do a porn shoot. Having an age for commercial porn would be fine. The problem is treating it as child porn, with all the connotations that that entails (e.g., that simple possession is illegal, that you're treated the same as someone in possession of an image of children having sex, that even private images are illegal).
This isn't quite true. The law contains a specific exception for images of somebody you are involved in a sexual relationship with.
That isn't quite true either - the exception only applies to a married couple, or people living together as man and wife; a sexual relationship on its own is not enough.
When people like myself get marked as pedophile sympathizers for raising red flags about laws intended to protect people from thought crimes, we're not just trolling or doing it to play devil's advocate or anything like that. The slippery slope is REAL
Indeed - several years ago when having debates on whether fictional child porn images should be illegal, part of my argument of why it shouldn't be was the slippery slope: that by the same reasoning, should fictional images of non-consensual adult acts (e.g., rape porn) be illegal?
My argument was based around the idea of this being ludicrous. Never did I imagine that not only would such images become illegal, but even depictions of openly consensual acts (there is no requirement that the scene appears non-consensual - just that it depicts injury or a risk or injury, or a threat). And indeed, one of the arguments being put in favour of this law is "Fictional child porn is illegal, so this should be too". You are right - the slipperly slope is real.
(Though having said that, I still think there are reasons why criminalising adult images is mad, even if we accepted that fictional child porn should be criminalised. For one, real child porn exists, whilst there are no known examples of non-consensual adult porn, so the argument that we need to criminalise it in case it's non-consensual is far harder to apply to adult material; secondly, an argument for child porn is that it's used to "groom" children, which doesn't apply to adults.)
Did you just compare rape porn to bread and water? I understand your point but... c'mon really?
Yes, he did. Graham Coutts admitted problems long before he had Internet access. The material being criminalised will be far more than simply what he viewed (e.g., consensual S&M).
Your reaction exemplifies the problem here - that it's only the unpopular things that get banned. No one would ban bread, bowling - or say, possession of Bibles, even though the same anecdotal "evidence" exists. It'll always be things like porn, rock music, computer games, horror films and Marilyn Manson. And it'll always be kinky/S&M/"weird" porn before heterosexual mainstream porn (despite the latter often being far more sleazy and sexist than any of the former).
but that's what we're debating right now.
;) That's what people are trying to debate (such as on the BBC News article, and in the House of Lords). The Government, and those who support this law, are not interested in debate - the law will be forced through tomorrow, and any criticisms brushed aside with "But these images are disgusting! No one must be allowed to see them!")
If only
The images which will be banned are those which are real or which might be taken by a rational person to be real.
I agree that it'll be a few years befoere CGI alone catches up, but note that "rational person" is probably "member of police or jury who thinks snuff films exist".
The threshold is that the images are realistic - even if you know they're bound to be staged/faked/consensual, if it looks as real as say any film, it'll be illegal. You don't need much CGI to act out a scene such as holding a knife.
Sorry to disappoint you, but you cannot engage in a criminal activity even if you have consent from the victim. In other words, even if your girlfriend gives you permission to hit her with a whip, it is still common assault under british law.
Sadly, yes the Government seems to be using the mad precedent of Spanner, where consenting adult sadomasochists were criminalised for actual bodily harm upon themselves. In fact, under the law, even his girlfriend would be criminalised, for aiding and abetting assault upon herself!
However, note that this law even criminalises fictional images and images of staged acts, where no one is harmed. The bill explicitly states that a "threat" with a weapon will count. So it is still true that photographs will be illegal even though the act was legal.
Even screenshots from legally available BBFC films will be criminalised by the law, if the police think you made them for the purpose of sexual arousal!
I agree, but don't worry, in the UK they're planning on soon fixing this inconsistency by criminalising possession of "violent" adult images, even if it's consensual or even fictional, and including screenshots from legally available films.