Give them a chance. All of them: Wikileaks, Assange, mainstream press. They really pulled together on this one and their combined bullshit ratio is down to 99 from 100. A noticeable improvement.
Dude, almost no one wants to look at these pics. I don't. I would be wary of a person who does. But what is the benefit of making it a criminal act? Who exactly is hurt when a childless wanker is looking at 30 year old photos of unknown origin?
No, I defend legality of porn possession, and you are full of it. If I
did defend child porn possession and you punched me for it, you would go to prison as a result. You would never be that dumb, would you? So I know you are full of it. And the only reason I argue for legality of mere possession is that mere possession does not hurt children. Unlike you, I think of the children first, not Jesus or any other unrelated topic. If you could offer even a shred of evidence... If you could just give us actual statistical evidence of legalized file possession hurting children while commercial distribution is outlawed (as it should be), or a even a thought experiment that makes a tiny bit of sense, then I would reconsider my position. Go ahead.
No one claimed a 1 million dollar prize? Whoopty-do, so no murder film ever was a commercial success. What does it have to do with availability of film where a real murder can be seen? Are you going to make it about semantics of snuff, or are you going to recognize that we are discussing subject matter here, not directors' intentions or critical reception.
Throw the people who make the porn by abusing children in the process to jail for abusing children, and leave everyone else alone. By throwing some childless wanker in jail, you save zero children and deter zero pedo-dads. By throwing a pedo-dad in jail, you save at least one child and deter other pedo-dads. If you really think that a psycho who has sex with his pre-pubescent child will be deterred by inability to share photos online, you should also be interested in a bridge I am selling. If you believe that people who merely look at these pictures will tend to abuse children more as a result, you should also believe the same thing with respect to mass murder and genocide. I hope you agree that mass murder is a more heinous crime than child abuse. In which case I suggest you start a campaign to criminalize books like, mmm, uh, I don't know, Torah, which teaches the reader that mass murder is Good as long as you are a Jew and YHWH is on your side. But you are not on such a campaign, are you? You don't really believe that simply reading about glorified violence and glorified crime, or watching it acted out on a big screen somehow twists you into a monster against your will? Except when it's child porn. Grow the fuck up.
Hahaha after reading replies I cannot believe I got modded up, there are so many things wrong with my post just above.
Should snuff films also be legal to own, in your view?
Absolutely. If we learned one thing from Hollywood, it's that kids who grow up watching shit like Lethal Weapon and Rambo do NOT tend to develop into crazy, suicidal, masochistic, ego-maniacal, trigger-happy killing machines. They just have fun watching the movies. I think that commercial distribution of snuff (and child porn, for that matter) should still be illegal, but that's an entirely different issue, isn't it? Prohibiting possession of photos and videos from Internet does nothing to address the behavior of murderers and pedo-dads who continue to murder and rape, respectively, for reasons that have nothing to do with monetizing the optional videos. If you think about it, we should make sure that all snuff gets reviewed by people who care, since that may help to catch a murderer, as opposed to some bored wanker with a terrible taste in movies.
The effect of possession-related laws on production I want to know more about. Seems unlikely to me that they would curb production any more than a law that only criminalizes production. With the razor-thin margins (of publishing, the same thing Playboy was doing before Internet drove them out of business), who would be mad enough to risk decades in jail and a near-universal condemnation?
You guessed it, I think that abusing children is bad, and reducing child abuse is good.
And the stupidest thing I said was of course the 4chan bit. It sounded funny, but then I realized that these people have to look at everything, and felt pity:)
I think it's ridiculous that just possessing an image is illegal. Not only this law utterly fails to curb child abuse and child porn (sans fictional drawings!) production, but it also has the hilarious side effect of my tax money going to pay some dude for perusing 4chan. If you tell me you wouldn't want his job, you must be a girl or something.
True in general, but in this case we don't even have "warfare", IMO. What these self-proclaimed "Wikileaks defenders" are doing amounts to douchebaggery. So they are going to wget the shit out of amazon.com? It amazes me that people have to invoke the image of war to describe an activity with the same outcome as being too popular.
But I agree, it is a good prediction. Piss off the Anonymous, and you are almost guaranteed to get some aggro directed back at your servers. It is their way of saying that fighting Anonymous has its price too: short-term DOS to get everyone's attention and a protracted period of verbal abuse after that.
Does putting people down arbitrarily necessitate insecurity? Why? Did Parker and Stone betray their poor self-image when they ripped SJP a new one for looking like a horse? It's a joke, dude. Our entire life is a freaking joke.
Ya ne sledil za Rossiyskoy politikoy i ekonomikoy s teh por kak ya pereyehal v Redwood City v 1998-om, no to, chto vi soobshayete, menya sovsem ne udivlyayet.
Gorazdo udivitel'neye, chto/. ne podderzhivayet kirilitsu, v 2010-om.
Some things are legitimately kept secret for a reason. Others, not so much. Wikileaks doesn't concern itself with the difference.
Why should they? Things they get are not secret, by any sensible definition of the word. The cables, for example, were legally accessible to some 2.8 million people, and certainly have been leaked many times and long before Wikileaks got its copy.
You should not judge the quality of comedy by the comedian's political beliefs.
I personally just don't think he's funny, that's all. I only hear myself laugh when he's made fun of. This has nothing to do with his beliefs (does he really have any firm ones?). I could not figure out what, if anything, your link has to do with Glenn Beck, but it wasn't funny either. And you probably shouldn't call him a comedian: he doesn't.
Dude, they are afraid of being exposed themselves, they regard Wikileaks as an enemy. So the government "asked" them and "pressured" them? These are some of the richest cats on Earth, couldn't they afford to hire a few lawyers to ask the government politely, just which laws Wikileaks is breaking? And which laws PayPal is breaking while routing transactions? And could they do it in court? Because that is what they would do if the government tried to "pressure" them into pretty much anything else: they would go bat-shit insane and Fox would run 4-hour marathons about how Communists in the government are trying to tell bankers what to do.
Hehe I didn't even know about that leak. Anyway, it's not the same as a leak from inside of PayPal or Visa would be. This just shows that US government and financiers are allies. Just like the rest of the cables, it only provides documentation for what everyone knew already anyway. But if and when a major scam gets leaked by Visa itself, the shit will really hit the fan.
They cannot block major news outlets spread across the globe. They wish they could, but they cannot. They cannot even block NY Times: they will be torn to shreds in court. They are successful at boycotting Wikileaks because it's a small non-profit organization out of US jurisdiction, a tiny group of volunteers whose entire capital is in their journalist cred.
Wikileaks cannot retaliate. They either have a leak that scares PayPal or they don't, and PayPal's actions won't change the release date by much. In particular, if they don't have a leak already, then PayPal and Co. are essentially buying time. The leak is not going to arrive any sooner just because Wikileaks is pissed, since (and this is the truly beautiful part) leaks will be done by greedy people inside PayPal who think they got shortchanged. But if the world sees Wikileaks in dire straits, the leak may not happen at all, or happen later, or go somewhere else, and once it arrives, it may take more time to process it.
If they can slow it down, they will. If a huge financial company like Visa is running a barely legal scam right now (just like US banks, who scammed investors but mostly escaped liability), then its execs are probably making extra billions every year. Even if a leak doesn't send anyone to jail, it will result in restructuring and the money fountain will dry up. If they can delay that leak by just a single month at a reasonable cost, they will.
And the leaks are coming. A major US bank is already confirmed, and if Wikileaks is allowed to go on, soon the US will have some of the most honest and efficient financiers in the world. Instead of sending billions to their private islands, they will be modest accountants who work for mere tens of millions. You can see how US financiers may have a problem with that, right?
That's what I am saying: may be working with Wikileaks is not at all in PayPal's interest. And that would be the case if PayPal's higher management had unethical (or, god forbid, illegal) practices to hide. And I am willing to bet my easy-earned money that no major financial institution in the world today has any morals. They all cheat us, the poorer public, as much as they can get away with, and all can be made vastly more efficient and honest through transparency. Which is what Wikileaks is about to deliver.
And why do you believe them? This is just hearsay. Of course they would want to unload the blame onto someone else. I am sure they were asked to cooperate, but who made them? If US government asked them to do pretty much ANYTHING ELSE, it would be "communists are trying to take over our financial institutions" shit all over again. If they didn't hate Wikileaks and weren't afraid of it, they could simply go to court and whoop some ass, since Wikileaks is not doing anything illegal.
Ah, in Russia we called it propiska. It works great when almost everyone is a wage slave, with no real way to leave their shitty farms and factories and move to the place where all the food and material goods just happen to be collected and redistributed.
IMHO, companies like PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard are not caving in to the government pressure. They are boycotting Wikileaks because it already has buckets of dirt on financial institutions, and so they are afraid that they are next. Unlike the US government, though, they won't be able to just ignore the problem: if they cheated many enough people, they will be hit very hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Give them a chance. All of them: Wikileaks, Assange, mainstream press. They really pulled together on this one and their combined bullshit ratio is down to 99 from 100. A noticeable improvement.
Dude, almost no one wants to look at these pics. I don't. I would be wary of a person who does. But what is the benefit of making it a criminal act? Who exactly is hurt when a childless wanker is looking at 30 year old photos of unknown origin?
No, I defend legality of porn possession, and you are full of it. If I did defend child porn possession and you punched me for it, you would go to prison as a result. You would never be that dumb, would you? So I know you are full of it. And the only reason I argue for legality of mere possession is that mere possession does not hurt children. Unlike you, I think of the children first, not Jesus or any other unrelated topic. If you could offer even a shred of evidence... If you could just give us actual statistical evidence of legalized file possession hurting children while commercial distribution is outlawed (as it should be), or a even a thought experiment that makes a tiny bit of sense, then I would reconsider my position. Go ahead.
No one claimed a 1 million dollar prize? Whoopty-do, so no murder film ever was a commercial success. What does it have to do with availability of film where a real murder can be seen? Are you going to make it about semantics of snuff, or are you going to recognize that we are discussing subject matter here, not directors' intentions or critical reception.
Throw the people who make the porn by abusing children in the process to jail for abusing children, and leave everyone else alone. By throwing some childless wanker in jail, you save zero children and deter zero pedo-dads. By throwing a pedo-dad in jail, you save at least one child and deter other pedo-dads. If you really think that a psycho who has sex with his pre-pubescent child will be deterred by inability to share photos online, you should also be interested in a bridge I am selling. If you believe that people who merely look at these pictures will tend to abuse children more as a result, you should also believe the same thing with respect to mass murder and genocide. I hope you agree that mass murder is a more heinous crime than child abuse. In which case I suggest you start a campaign to criminalize books like, mmm, uh, I don't know, Torah, which teaches the reader that mass murder is Good as long as you are a Jew and YHWH is on your side. But you are not on such a campaign, are you? You don't really believe that simply reading about glorified violence and glorified crime, or watching it acted out on a big screen somehow twists you into a monster against your will? Except when it's child porn. Grow the fuck up.
Hahaha after reading replies I cannot believe I got modded up, there are so many things wrong with my post just above.
Should snuff films also be legal to own, in your view?
Absolutely. If we learned one thing from Hollywood, it's that kids who grow up watching shit like Lethal Weapon and Rambo do NOT tend to develop into crazy, suicidal, masochistic, ego-maniacal, trigger-happy killing machines. They just have fun watching the movies. I think that commercial distribution of snuff (and child porn, for that matter) should still be illegal, but that's an entirely different issue, isn't it? Prohibiting possession of photos and videos from Internet does nothing to address the behavior of murderers and pedo-dads who continue to murder and rape, respectively, for reasons that have nothing to do with monetizing the optional videos. If you think about it, we should make sure that all snuff gets reviewed by people who care, since that may help to catch a murderer, as opposed to some bored wanker with a terrible taste in movies.
The effect of possession-related laws on production I want to know more about. Seems unlikely to me that they would curb production any more than a law that only criminalizes production. With the razor-thin margins (of publishing, the same thing Playboy was doing before Internet drove them out of business), who would be mad enough to risk decades in jail and a near-universal condemnation?
You guessed it, I think that abusing children is bad, and reducing child abuse is good.
And the stupidest thing I said was of course the 4chan bit. It sounded funny, but then I realized that these people have to look at everything, and felt pity :)
I think it's ridiculous that just possessing an image is illegal. Not only this law utterly fails to curb child abuse and child porn (sans fictional drawings!) production, but it also has the hilarious side effect of my tax money going to pay some dude for perusing 4chan. If you tell me you wouldn't want his job, you must be a girl or something.
True in general, but in this case we don't even have "warfare", IMO. What these self-proclaimed "Wikileaks defenders" are doing amounts to douchebaggery. So they are going to wget the shit out of amazon.com? It amazes me that people have to invoke the image of war to describe an activity with the same outcome as being too popular.
But I agree, it is a good prediction. Piss off the Anonymous, and you are almost guaranteed to get some aggro directed back at your servers. It is their way of saying that fighting Anonymous has its price too: short-term DOS to get everyone's attention and a protracted period of verbal abuse after that.
Does putting people down arbitrarily necessitate insecurity? Why? Did Parker and Stone betray their poor self-image when they ripped SJP a new one for looking like a horse? It's a joke, dude. Our entire life is a freaking joke.
Shhhh, you gonna shatter script bunnies' illusions of grandeur.
Ya ne sledil za Rossiyskoy politikoy i ekonomikoy s teh por kak ya pereyehal v Redwood City v 1998-om, no to, chto vi soobshayete, menya sovsem ne udivlyayet.
Gorazdo udivitel'neye, chto /. ne podderzhivayet kirilitsu, v 2010-om.
Some things are legitimately kept secret for a reason. Others, not so much. Wikileaks doesn't concern itself with the difference.
Why should they? Things they get are not secret, by any sensible definition of the word. The cables, for example, were legally accessible to some 2.8 million people, and certainly have been leaked many times and long before Wikileaks got its copy.
You should not judge the quality of comedy by the comedian's political beliefs.
I personally just don't think he's funny, that's all. I only hear myself laugh when he's made fun of. This has nothing to do with his beliefs (does he really have any firm ones?). I could not figure out what, if anything, your link has to do with Glenn Beck, but it wasn't funny either. And you probably shouldn't call him a comedian: he doesn't.
Glenn Beck Program, although laughable is not really the same as funny.
While possible, I think this outcome is unlikely.
Oh, I totally agree. In the long run, Assange has already won.
Dude, they are afraid of being exposed themselves, they regard Wikileaks as an enemy. So the government "asked" them and "pressured" them? These are some of the richest cats on Earth, couldn't they afford to hire a few lawyers to ask the government politely, just which laws Wikileaks is breaking? And which laws PayPal is breaking while routing transactions? And could they do it in court? Because that is what they would do if the government tried to "pressure" them into pretty much anything else: they would go bat-shit insane and Fox would run 4-hour marathons about how Communists in the government are trying to tell bankers what to do.
Hehe I didn't even know about that leak. Anyway, it's not the same as a leak from inside of PayPal or Visa would be. This just shows that US government and financiers are allies. Just like the rest of the cables, it only provides documentation for what everyone knew already anyway. But if and when a major scam gets leaked by Visa itself, the shit will really hit the fan.
They cannot block major news outlets spread across the globe. They wish they could, but they cannot. They cannot even block NY Times: they will be torn to shreds in court. They are successful at boycotting Wikileaks because it's a small non-profit organization out of US jurisdiction, a tiny group of volunteers whose entire capital is in their journalist cred.
Wikileaks cannot retaliate. They either have a leak that scares PayPal or they don't, and PayPal's actions won't change the release date by much. In particular, if they don't have a leak already, then PayPal and Co. are essentially buying time. The leak is not going to arrive any sooner just because Wikileaks is pissed, since (and this is the truly beautiful part) leaks will be done by greedy people inside PayPal who think they got shortchanged. But if the world sees Wikileaks in dire straits, the leak may not happen at all, or happen later, or go somewhere else, and once it arrives, it may take more time to process it.
If they can slow it down, they will. If a huge financial company like Visa is running a barely legal scam right now (just like US banks, who scammed investors but mostly escaped liability), then its execs are probably making extra billions every year. Even if a leak doesn't send anyone to jail, it will result in restructuring and the money fountain will dry up. If they can delay that leak by just a single month at a reasonable cost, they will.
And the leaks are coming. A major US bank is already confirmed, and if Wikileaks is allowed to go on, soon the US will have some of the most honest and efficient financiers in the world. Instead of sending billions to their private islands, they will be modest accountants who work for mere tens of millions. You can see how US financiers may have a problem with that, right?
AAAAAAAARGGHHH! OK, I am perfectly calm now.
That's what I am saying: may be working with Wikileaks is not at all in PayPal's interest. And that would be the case if PayPal's higher management had unethical (or, god forbid, illegal) practices to hide. And I am willing to bet my easy-earned money that no major financial institution in the world today has any morals. They all cheat us, the poorer public, as much as they can get away with, and all can be made vastly more efficient and honest through transparency. Which is what Wikileaks is about to deliver.
And why do you believe them? This is just hearsay. Of course they would want to unload the blame onto someone else. I am sure they were asked to cooperate, but who made them? If US government asked them to do pretty much ANYTHING ELSE, it would be "communists are trying to take over our financial institutions" shit all over again. If they didn't hate Wikileaks and weren't afraid of it, they could simply go to court and whoop some ass, since Wikileaks is not doing anything illegal.
Will the same technology work with porn? What am I saying... That was probably the original intention.
Ah, in Russia we called it propiska. It works great when almost everyone is a wage slave, with no real way to leave their shitty farms and factories and move to the place where all the food and material goods just happen to be collected and redistributed.
IMHO, companies like PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard are not caving in to the government pressure. They are boycotting Wikileaks because it already has buckets of dirt on financial institutions, and so they are afraid that they are next. Unlike the US government, though, they won't be able to just ignore the problem: if they cheated many enough people, they will be hit very hard.