I'd probably need psychological help if I had to watch images of Mr Salter having sex.
But is that a reason to have it criminalised? No, instead I keep my nose out and don't bloody watch it.
Seriously, am I supposed to feel sympathetic that a poor little police officer is having emotional problems, after looking at (possibly private) images he found searching through my confiscated PC, when I had no wish for him to do that? What about the emotional problems someone'll get from being arrested and labelled a "Sex Offender"?
Talking of rights, it's interesting to note that the bill states "these clauses constitute an interference" with the European Convention on Human Rights.
802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people. It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence, so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place. The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.
804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.
805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it. Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.
806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.
I'd like to see how they spell out exactly what cross the line and what is acceptable.
Me too. They only give a few examples ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/ cmbills/130/en/07130x-f.htm#index_link_104 ), including depicting "sexual assault involving a threat with a weapon" (remember this includes simulated/fictional images, so er, doing some roleplaying with some knifeplay apparentely counts as "life threatening") and "this could include the insertion of sharp objects" (so, play piercings?) and "mutilation of breasts or genitals" (unclear whether mutilation means the strict definition, or is broad enough to include cutting). It could easily catch plenty of consensual S&M images.
But ultimately, it'll be spelled out in court.
After you've been arrested, had your computer searched, perhaps your kids taken away, branded a "sick pervert" by the media, gone through a publicised trial where the prosecution and jury inspect every aspect of your sex life and any images you have, to decide whether they are acceptable or safe enough to be legal.
Or maybe the police will scare you into accepting a caution, which you take to avoid risking prison - but still get put on the Sex Offender Register.
Maybe this is just one of those WTFs brough about because IANAL, but seriously - any data which is capable of conversion into an extreme image?
I think that's to cover things like obfuscation/encryption(?) though I don't know how this works in practice. Of course, if you used encryption to hide such images from prying police officers, they'd just throw you in prison for being a suspected terrorist instead...
According to the bill, it would count if it was produced for the purposes of sexual arousal. It's not clear how that's actually decided, but presumably a TV programme wouldn't count (as you say, we have this logic that TV is always okay, but on the Internet it must be evil pr0n).
Also, even if it did come under the law, it would be exempt if it's a classified work (i.e., the British Board of Film Censors, er, Classification says we are allowed to watch it).
However, the really bizarre bit is that if a UK citizen makes screenshots of this legal TV programme, for the purpose of sexual arousal - even privately and doesn't distribute them - it would be illegal. Three years in prison, and slapped on the Sex Offender Register.
I'd rather have them ban some porn than spend resources "finding unbalanced people". I think that is a much more slippery slope.
Yes, this is a good point. In some sense, the issues are very much related anyway - the question would be how do you define an "unbalanced person", and the idea behind these laws is presumably that anyone who views "extreme" porn must be "unbalanced", who needs dealing with in some way.
"No-one is stopping people doing weird stuff to each other but they would be strongly advised not to put it on the internet."...which is a silly thing to say, since the law says it applies to possession, not publication. Even if you kept it on your hard disk private, surely it would be illegal under this law?
He insisted the law did not ban anything which was not already illegal under the Obscene Publications Act. "It simply plugs a hole in the law because the Obscene Publications Act is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard as far as the internet is concerned. This new law is designed to meet the challenge of the internet."
Well, I give him some points for using the term "chocolate fireguard", but otherwise, this doesn't make sense - after all, if the law criminalises an image extracted from a legal film, we have the situation that the image is illegal even though it was clearly legal to publish in the original film. (Plus, I thought the OPA requires the jury to believe that the image would "deprave and corrupt" those who viewed it, while the new law just bans categories of images based on their content.)
Another point - if it doesn't cover already illegal material, why does the bill need an exemption for "classified works"?
"These snuff movies are other stuff are seriously disturbing. Many police officers who have to view it as part of their job have to undergo psychological counselling."
Heh, OMG Please Won't Somebody Think Of The Police Officers!!!
Really though - snuff movies? Have they actually discovered some snuff movies, after all these years of it being an urban myth? Strange how they never seem to show evidence for these snuff movies...
This is correct - AmigaOS up until 1994 (version 3.1) was still released on floppies (6, IIRC). AmigaOS 3.5 (1999), 3.9 (2000) and 4.0 (2006) came out on CD ROM.
Although note that AmigaOS and MacOS back then also had much of the OS in ROM, so whilst moving to CD was a good step, it's not like they had to load the whole OS in, the disks were just for extra files.
Probably because it was one of the first computers (although originally sold as a console, you could get it with mouse and keyboard) to come with CD ROM as standard rather than an add-on. Why mention the Mac? Is "first Macintosh" worth of a category on its own?
Socialism would be that the software is owned by the public - i.e., giving it away to the public domain. But as you note, this isn't what the GPL is, and indeed, you criticise the GPL for being socialist, whilst at the same time criticising it for not being public domain!
Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
Software released under the GPL is still owned by private entities or individuals, and works fine under capitalism.
As for freedom, you have to realise that "freedom" is not an absolute - it's like saying you don't have true freedom because you aren't free to hit other people. Most people in a society accept that freedom does not include the right to take away other people's freedom. As a result, whether or not public domain is more free than GPL is a matter of opinion. What is clear is that both are more free than closed-source code.
Using the iPhone is like using something *from* Star Trek.
Consider me curious then - what features of the iPhone are like that portrayed in Star Trek, that aren't in existing phones?
(I mean, I'd say using mobile phones in general is like using something from Star Trek - so obviously I'm curious what is specifically new about the iPhone here.)
are like using Lynx compared to Firefox (and I don't mean lack of graphics)
What do you mean? I mean, okay, I appreciate analogies, but if you didn't mean that, what did you mean?
or DOS vs Macintosh (and here I *do* mean like going from keyboard to mouse).
Well some of us were using platforms where you could use both;)
Yes, heaven forbid we might want to make use of these new fangled devices known as laptops. When I take my laptop anywhere, I always bring my desk with me just in case.
And why in the ninth hell, WE (the rest of the world) are not forcing the US to eat their own fudge at our frontier ?
It sounds a nice idea, but that just harms citizens of both countries.
And I suspect that the Governments would actually like this to happen - the usual trick is that each country takes fingerprints on the other country's citizens, and then - they swap the information! Thus conveniently getting a fingerprint database of their own citizens, which would be much harder to do otherwise.
A much better protest would be to do this specifically for US politicians. Along with retina scans, taking DNA, and of course, strip search and thorough body search. They've got nothing to hide, right?
I don't have a problem with them teaching it in religious education lessons - although it should probably be under the various forms of Creationism (since ID is a pretend-science that's being pushed by a vocal minority with an agenda) - and it time should be given to other religions and myths also. It should be taught as "this is what some people believe", and not a chance to try to knock down evolution.
There is the problem though that there's no standard syllabus AFAIK, and as another poster notes, less accepted religions like Wicca are unlikely to be covered.
The bigger problem is that schools (even state schools) in the UK still have daily worship, prayers, hymms and preaching of Christianity to children (you can opt out, though it requires parental permission, and means you have to stand outside, being basically ostracised from your peers, and also missing out on the non-religious useful information that might form part of the assembly).
I think LiveJournal is good for this - easy to set up a blog, easy to link up with other people without it being restricted like Facebook (though you can still restrict certain things to only being visible to some people). Doesn't have the annoying profile pages (streaming-video etc) that MySpace has. Also based on open source software.
I'd also like a simpler brand of blog site for people who want to let their friends know what they're up to, but without the self agrandizing "personal diary" feel of most personal blogs. Maybe something like facebooks status messages that get broadcast to all of your friends.
Although ironically, I find that Facebook's status messages tend to result far more in "personal trivial details" than on blog posts - I think because with the former, people are tempted to type in whatever trivial thing they are up to, where as with the latter, people at least try to put thought into a post.
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if I logged into Facebook to see "So-and-so is now eating ___ for breakfast".
Meanwhile the dog thinks its a person. This is partly pack behavior but it's pretty clear that the dog doesn't really distinguish us on a social level, even if it does at a physical one.
I don't disagree with your general point, but I feel it's more plausible that instead your dog is treating humans as other dogs - after all, dogs still have social interaction.
Have you observed your dog taking up human customs? Or is it that the interaction between you is just like what dogs would do in their packs?
And I forgot to add... another obvious distinction is that Facebook generally requires your real name and must be tied to a University email (or that used to be the case). So I think in a lot of cases, people will be more likely to present a job/family-friendly aspect of their lives, so even when you look at two profiles of the same people, the Facebook one is more likely to give a "squeaky-clean impressive-hard-working-college-educated" image than MySpace.
MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
Like what, University doesn't contain geeks? I mean yes, I know that you have the "in crowd" and the ostracised people, but it's rather stereotyping to equate these respectively with "go to University and get good jobs" and "get a job after high school"!
It's true that these things don't equate, but I was reading it the other way round - it sounds like someone stereotyping "geeks, freaks, or queers" as being people who don't go to University, and hence someone who doesn't fall into the group she's stereotyping.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd probably need psychological help if I had to watch images of Mr Salter having sex.
But is that a reason to have it criminalised? No, instead I keep my nose out and don't bloody watch it.
Seriously, am I supposed to feel sympathetic that a poor little police officer is having emotional problems, after looking at (possibly private) images he found searching through my confiscated PC, when I had no wish for him to do that? What about the emotional problems someone'll get from being arrested and labelled a "Sex Offender"?
Talking of rights, it's interesting to note that the bill states "these clauses constitute an interference" with the European Convention on Human Rights.
/ cmbills/130/en/07130x-n.htm#index_link_206 ):
But it's interesting, shall we say, to see what justifications it gives for doing so ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607
802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people. It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence, so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place. The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.
804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.
805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it. Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.
806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.
I'd like to see how they spell out exactly what cross the line and what is acceptable.
/ cmbills/130/en/07130x-f.htm#index_link_104 ), including depicting "sexual assault involving a threat with a weapon" (remember this includes simulated/fictional images, so er, doing some roleplaying with some knifeplay apparentely counts as "life threatening") and "this could include the insertion of sharp objects" (so, play piercings?) and "mutilation of breasts or genitals" (unclear whether mutilation means the strict definition, or is broad enough to include cutting). It could easily catch plenty of consensual S&M images.
Me too. They only give a few examples ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607
But ultimately, it'll be spelled out in court.
After you've been arrested, had your computer searched, perhaps your kids taken away, branded a "sick pervert" by the media, gone through a publicised trial where the prosecution and jury inspect every aspect of your sex life and any images you have, to decide whether they are acceptable or safe enough to be legal.
Or maybe the police will scare you into accepting a caution, which you take to avoid risking prison - but still get put on the Sex Offender Register.
Maybe this is just one of those WTFs brough about because IANAL, but seriously - any data which is capable of conversion into an extreme image?
I think that's to cover things like obfuscation/encryption(?) though I don't know how this works in practice. Of course, if you used encryption to hide such images from prying police officers, they'd just throw you in prison for being a suspected terrorist instead...
According to the bill, it would count if it was produced for the purposes of sexual arousal. It's not clear how that's actually decided, but presumably a TV programme wouldn't count (as you say, we have this logic that TV is always okay, but on the Internet it must be evil pr0n).
Also, even if it did come under the law, it would be exempt if it's a classified work (i.e., the British Board of Film Censors, er, Classification says we are allowed to watch it).
However, the really bizarre bit is that if a UK citizen makes screenshots of this legal TV programme, for the purpose of sexual arousal - even privately and doesn't distribute them - it would be illegal. Three years in prison, and slapped on the Sex Offender Register.
I'd rather have them ban some porn than spend resources "finding unbalanced people". I think that is a much more slippery slope.
Yes, this is a good point. In some sense, the issues are very much related anyway - the question would be how do you define an "unbalanced person", and the idea behind these laws is presumably that anyone who views "extreme" porn must be "unbalanced", who needs dealing with in some way.
"No-one is stopping people doing weird stuff to each other but they would be strongly advised not to put it on the internet." ...which is a silly thing to say, since the law says it applies to possession, not publication. Even if you kept it on your hard disk private, surely it would be illegal under this law?
He insisted the law did not ban anything which was not already illegal under the Obscene Publications Act. "It simply plugs a hole in the law because the Obscene Publications Act is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard as far as the internet is concerned. This new law is designed to meet the challenge of the internet."
Well, I give him some points for using the term "chocolate fireguard", but otherwise, this doesn't make sense - after all, if the law criminalises an image extracted from a legal film, we have the situation that the image is illegal even though it was clearly legal to publish in the original film. (Plus, I thought the OPA requires the jury to believe that the image would "deprave and corrupt" those who viewed it, while the new law just bans categories of images based on their content.)
Another point - if it doesn't cover already illegal material, why does the bill need an exemption for "classified works"?
"These snuff movies are other stuff are seriously disturbing. Many police officers who have to view it as part of their job have to undergo psychological counselling."
Heh, OMG Please Won't Somebody Think Of The Police Officers!!!
Really though - snuff movies? Have they actually discovered some snuff movies, after all these years of it being an urban myth? Strange how they never seem to show evidence for these snuff movies...
More information about this law is available on Backlash's homepage, a group opposing the law.
This is correct - AmigaOS up until 1994 (version 3.1) was still released on floppies (6, IIRC). AmigaOS 3.5 (1999), 3.9 (2000) and 4.0 (2006) came out on CD ROM.
Although note that AmigaOS and MacOS back then also had much of the OS in ROM, so whilst moving to CD was a good step, it's not like they had to load the whole OS in, the disks were just for extra files.
Probably because it was one of the first computers (although originally sold as a console, you could get it with mouse and keyboard) to come with CD ROM as standard rather than an add-on. Why mention the Mac? Is "first Macintosh" worth of a category on its own?
Socialism would be that the software is owned by the public - i.e., giving it away to the public domain. But as you note, this isn't what the GPL is, and indeed, you criticise the GPL for being socialist, whilst at the same time criticising it for not being public domain!
Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
Software released under the GPL is still owned by private entities or individuals, and works fine under capitalism.
As for freedom, you have to realise that "freedom" is not an absolute - it's like saying you don't have true freedom because you aren't free to hit other people. Most people in a society accept that freedom does not include the right to take away other people's freedom. As a result, whether or not public domain is more free than GPL is a matter of opinion. What is clear is that both are more free than closed-source code.
The proprietary platform and proprietary license are more "free" to that developer than the (L)GPL,
You have a point for the GPL, but not the LGPL - you can use LGPL libraries without having to share your code.
Also I'm not sure what you mean by "and on the compilers provided." - using a GPL compiler doesn't place any restrictions on my code.
Using the iPhone is like using something *from* Star Trek.
;)
Consider me curious then - what features of the iPhone are like that portrayed in Star Trek, that aren't in existing phones?
(I mean, I'd say using mobile phones in general is like using something from Star Trek - so obviously I'm curious what is specifically new about the iPhone here.)
are like using Lynx compared to Firefox (and I don't mean lack of graphics)
What do you mean? I mean, okay, I appreciate analogies, but if you didn't mean that, what did you mean?
or DOS vs Macintosh (and here I *do* mean like going from keyboard to mouse).
Well some of us were using platforms where you could use both
But I don't recall loads of stories for all the other successful phones out there such as the RAZR (Motorola sell up to 10 million in a single quarter, never mind a year!). Obviously it deserves a story, but even big-thing-of-the-week only needs to be posted once.
:/
Honestly, it's bad when the Slashdot dupes become intentional
Nevermind 3rd parties, I got a spam about the iPhone direct from Apple themselves! (No I haven't ever signed up to their list.)
How much??
Yes, heaven forbid we might want to make use of these new fangled devices known as laptops. When I take my laptop anywhere, I always bring my desk with me just in case.
And why in the ninth hell, WE (the rest of the world) are not forcing the US to eat their own fudge at our frontier ?
It sounds a nice idea, but that just harms citizens of both countries.
And I suspect that the Governments would actually like this to happen - the usual trick is that each country takes fingerprints on the other country's citizens, and then - they swap the information! Thus conveniently getting a fingerprint database of their own citizens, which would be much harder to do otherwise.
A much better protest would be to do this specifically for US politicians. Along with retina scans, taking DNA, and of course, strip search and thorough body search. They've got nothing to hide, right?
I don't have a problem with them teaching it in religious education lessons - although it should probably be under the various forms of Creationism (since ID is a pretend-science that's being pushed by a vocal minority with an agenda) - and it time should be given to other religions and myths also. It should be taught as "this is what some people believe", and not a chance to try to knock down evolution.
There is the problem though that there's no standard syllabus AFAIK, and as another poster notes, less accepted religions like Wicca are unlikely to be covered.
The bigger problem is that schools (even state schools) in the UK still have daily worship, prayers, hymms and preaching of Christianity to children (you can opt out, though it requires parental permission, and means you have to stand outside, being basically ostracised from your peers, and also missing out on the non-religious useful information that might form part of the assembly).
I think LiveJournal is good for this - easy to set up a blog, easy to link up with other people without it being restricted like Facebook (though you can still restrict certain things to only being visible to some people). Doesn't have the annoying profile pages (streaming-video etc) that MySpace has. Also based on open source software.
I'd also like a simpler brand of blog site for people who want to let their friends know what they're up to, but without the self agrandizing "personal diary" feel of most personal blogs. Maybe something like facebooks status messages that get broadcast to all of your friends.
Although ironically, I find that Facebook's status messages tend to result far more in "personal trivial details" than on blog posts - I think because with the former, people are tempted to type in whatever trivial thing they are up to, where as with the latter, people at least try to put thought into a post.
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if I logged into Facebook to see "So-and-so is now eating ___ for breakfast".
Meanwhile the dog thinks its a person. This is partly pack behavior but it's pretty clear that the dog doesn't really distinguish us on a social level, even if it does at a physical one.
I don't disagree with your general point, but I feel it's more plausible that instead your dog is treating humans as other dogs - after all, dogs still have social interaction.
Have you observed your dog taking up human customs? Or is it that the interaction between you is just like what dogs would do in their packs?
And I forgot to add ... another obvious distinction is that Facebook generally requires your real name and must be tied to a University email (or that used to be the case). So I think in a lot of cases, people will be more likely to present a job/family-friendly aspect of their lives, so even when you look at two profiles of the same people, the Facebook one is more likely to give a "squeaky-clean impressive-hard-working-college-educated" image than MySpace.
Same here - and I'm rather shocked that this "research" is being reported by the BBC.
That's basically it, yes.
Though I'm confused by this bit of the artice:
MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
Like what, University doesn't contain geeks? I mean yes, I know that you have the "in crowd" and the ostracised people, but it's rather stereotyping to equate these respectively with "go to University and get good jobs" and "get a job after high school"!
It's true that these things don't equate, but I was reading it the other way round - it sounds like someone stereotyping "geeks, freaks, or queers" as being people who don't go to University, and hence someone who doesn't fall into the group she's stereotyping.