Firefox 3.0 RC1 is not out yet. There is a build 1 for RC1, but RC1 is not expected until near the end of the month. Dude. I know this is slashdot, and I wouldn't expect you to RTFA, but at least you could read the summary.
I'm all FOR castrating the sick fucks who look at this kind of crap Really? You support castrating people who look at a picture of a 17 year old girl flashing her boobs?
Or to broaden the scope a bit: you support castration for people that look at pictures? Fucking sigh indeed.
So what if I go onto 4chan and see some Child Porno some other guy posted? Am I going to Jail? Yes. You are personally raping each and every child/teenager you see on 4chan in that context. You will be going to jail for a very long time and everyone will applaud because another sex-predator is off the "streets".
Let's try a thought experiment. Sigh. Yes, lets.
Neither pornographer, in producing their photograph, has harmed his subjects. The harm comes from when the photographs are distributed. In the case of pornographer #1, the photo displays child #1 in a way that will cause great embarrassment, and could subject the child to ridicule or worse, and I doubt you'll find many people arguing that child porn should be OK to produce as long as the child is merely being spied on performing sexual or erotic acts on their own and don't realize they are being recorded. So the worst case scenario in either #1 or #2 is that a child would be subject to embarrassment or ridicule? What do you think an appropriate prison sentence for such a "child pornographer" should be? Currently, under federal law, they would be facing a minimum of five years in prison; many states deal out much harsher sentences. While you ponder that answer, consider how long a person should go to prison for filming a child in a non-sexual embarrassing situation; perhaps filming a child while they are picking their nose and eating their boogers or scratching their ass. Does the presence of sexual activity automatically require an incredibly harsh penalty?
Basically, appearing in child porn is probably harmful to a child, as long as they are recognizable, even if the photos have been altered somewhat. Do you believe this to be true even if the material is never distributed? Or alternatively, what if the material is distributed to a few people but the child is halfway across the world and is never aware of the photo or it's alteration? Is there still harm to the child? Should pornographer #2 still be punished despite this?
Also, note that if #2 is OK but #1 is not, pornographer #1 is just going to claim when caught that his photos aren't real. Put this in another perspective. If I possess a videotape of me murdering someone, but it looks like it may be digitally altered, should I be charged with murder anyway, just in case it might be real? The difference of course, is that videos of murder aren't illegal, but videos of sexual activity with minors is. But the principle still applies. You advocate punishing someone for a crime just in case they may in fact be guilty. It's not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it's guilt with any semblance of doubt.
Instead of the child being directly abused, it's their image that is being abused. Take a step back and look at what you wrote. You're talking about making possession of an altered image highly illegal, because "an image is being abused". An image is being abused?!?
Think about how you'd feel if you saw your child's picture pasted onto porn, or how the child would feel, and I think there are legitimate, rational issues regarding the child's rights here. That's what we should be trying to protect. The problem is, this type of thinking ("think of your child being raped, and then pass this law") is what allows these preposterous thought-crimes to exist. Again, we're talking about possession of these photographs. If we already have laws regarding using someone's likeness without their consent, why do you want more laws (with infinitely harsher penalties)?
Now I used the word "abuse" in the last paragraph, but clearly it isn't the same kind of abuse. I don't think the penalties for this form of privacy violation should match those of child rape or having recordings of child rape. We should be vigilant protecting a child's rights, but not with same force with which we protect their person. Golly, what a concession. So if I paste a picture of 16 year old's head on a naked woman's body I shouldn't receive the same prison sentence as someone who rapes a child? Thank you for your leniency and sense of justice.
This type of crap should be dismissed out of hand. Instead, you treat it like it should be given consideration and might be a close call.
I think we all like some censorship. Not me. I'm responsible enough to decide for myself what type of content I like or do not like to see.
I would like to avoid ever hearing about or seeing child porn Why, do you often run across child porn on the internet? Given the incredible penalties involved for anyone distributing or possessing the material, it seems to have been pushed to the far, dark corners of the internet (I assume, I never see the stuff, and I download a disturbing amount of adult pornography).
If you dislike even hearing the words "child porn" then I'm afraid I can't offer a solution for you. A good start would be to stop bringing it up in Slashdot discussions.
File sharing? FILE SHARING? You gotta be joking! Oh, no, let's ignore.. oh I don't know... sexual predators... or, identity theft... and jump straight to the fsck'n FILE SHARING! "Sexual predators" are hardly being ignored. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of law enforcement agents sitting around in chat rooms right now pretending to be 14 year old girls in the hope that some idiot will talk with them and try to arrange a meeting. And, at least in the US, being caught as an internet sexual predator is not a three-strikes offense. It is a one-strike offense, with the end result likely being a long prison term and lifetime sex offender registration (along with heavy computer usage restrictions in many states).
This is (ahem) child's play in comparison with the amount of resources allocated to stopping sexual predators online.
But imagine for a moment you are the now grown up boy or girl whose picture depicting your rape has been taken against your will and you know fat creepy guys all over the globe are exchanging your picture and wanking off to it all the time. You know a picture of you showing you in a traumatizing, degrading, humiliating situation gets exchanged and is in the possession of other people. Would you care? What if there is a humiliating video of me getting a gigantic wedgie at school or pooping my pants in public? What if there is a video of me as a child getting horribly (physically, not sexually) abused? What if there are fat creepy guys wanking off to the video of me getting a wedgie? How come one circumstance demands extreme penalties for anyone that possesses the material, no matter what their mindset, but the other circumstances deserve no punishment at all?
There are other arguments like the de-sensibilization of viewers which require more expert knowledge about psyche and sexuality which I do not have. But I think those actually do argue that viewing those pictures can increase the likelihood of the viewer to actually do something. And others make arguments that viewing these pictures can decrease the likelihood of the viewer to actually do something because their desire is satiated.
The point being that there are no crimes against posting pictures of murder, but their are crimes against posting pictures of (even) consensual sex between two minors or of a minor and an "adult". That's the thing; our laws are perverted. Exactly. But no one understands or comprehends this point anymore since somewhere along the line, possessing a picture of child pornography has become the same as actually abusing the child in the photograph personally. It's completely preposterous, but most people (in the US/UK at least) no longer make the distinction; to them, downloading child pornography off of freenet is abusing a child.
And what exactly makes this a "free" country? You have the freedom to write or say anything you want... as long as the majority (or vocal religious minority) approves.
Hasn't written material traditionally been exempt from obscenity laws? Absolutely not. There have been many books declared to be obscene, with resultant court battles over the matter. Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill are some of the more famous examples.
Very interesting. It was almost an identical discussion to the current one.
Users: We don't like this new behavior, please give us an option to change it.
Devs: Why don't you like this new behavior?
Users: It is uncomfortable to use, aesthetically unpleasing, and awkward. We don't like it.
Devs: Those aren't reasons. Give us detailed reasons why you don't like it.
Users: We just don't like it. Why did you implement the new behavior?
Devs: It is more comfortable to use, more aesthetically pleasing, and less awkward. We like it.
Users: There are lots of us complaining about this. At least give us an option.
Devs: Go ahead and use another IM program then. We are only making Pidgin for ourselves, not for users.
Users: ?!?!
I am running Pidgin 2.4.1, and didn't even notice; apparently this bug/feature is very low-impact on my usage habits. But it seems to me that the big problem is the attitude of certain central developers. "This is the way we're doing it, and if you don't like it, fuck off and die!" Open source is all about community. No community and the projects wither. Exactly. It's the snotty attitude of the developers that was the problem here. If they just said, "try this auto-resizing input box for a while and see if you like it, if not, we'll add an option to change it back," there likely wouldn't be this much of an uproar. Instead they went with the, "our way is better, we're never changing it, get used to it or use another program" tact, and they are of course met with hostility from users.
If by "most people" you mean "a small handful of people" then yes.. "most people". It is true that it is very difficult to accurately judge how many users like or dislike a new "feature".
However, given the number of people that commented on the pidgin buglist, the number of people who started threads in various linux forums complaining about the new behavior, and the number of people criticizing the move here on slashdot, I'd say it's disingenuous to say it is "a small handful of people" who don't approve of the auto-resizing input field.
Probably the best way to measure the size of the opposition is to compare this negative reaction with the reactions received previously for other UI changes. Were there as many complaints? Was there a fork made? Was there a slashdot article about the controversy? Taking all these factors into consideration, I'd be pretty confident in assuming that there is a very sizable number of users who are extremely displeased with this feature change.
There is a plugin available that does just that, but the Pidgin developers don't want to include it as a default plugin. Partly because they don't want to clutter the plugin list, and party because they wish to force users to get used to their auto-resize input area.
Options suck.
Every option means doubling the number of possible configurations - which makes proper testing of the application twice as hard. It also provides twice as many weird ways that the developers can have their apps configured that will prevent them from noticing issues as they personally develop. Fine, then with this much negative feedback about a supposed design "improvement", then perhaps the best answer is to scrap the idea and go back to letting the users resize the text input area. Problem solved.
But in this particular case the best solution really seems to be for the Pidgin guys to just tell the forkers to "have fun" and then proceed to ignore them because the feature they're offering is silly and pointless. It is the auto-resizing text input area that most people feel is silly and pointless.
I think the main reason to not make it an option is because it is such a tiny obscure detail that you wouldn't even think to look for an option in the first place. And thus adding the option to the GUI would be useless clutter. Which is why Pidgin offers the use of plugins. Yet the developers refuse to add a "resize input area" plugin to the list of default plugins (despite the demand) for fear of cluttering up the plugin area.
In the article they provide a short list of some high profile cases in which digital forensics played a role, but I'd like to see a rough breakdown on what type of investigations the FBI was scanning through 1,288 terabytes of information for.
I know it is routine now for investigators to seize computer equipment even in drug arrests, and I wonder how much taxpayer money is being wasted so federal agents can look through internet histories and MSN buddy lists.
17 aint kiddy porn, no matter how you cut it. I know the US has some odd laws but even they wouldn't call a 17 year old a child. You couldn't be more wrong. 17 is most certainly kiddy porn in the US.
People (myself included) are okay with banning child pornography because it is a crime with a definite victim Please remember that with the way child pornography offenses are being prosecuted, this isn't necessarily true. Teenagers are being charged with creating child pornography for taking pictures of themselves, and adults are being arrested for pasting the pictures of heads of children on adult bodies.
There's a reason the US has the worlds largest prison population by percentage. Not only that, but the US has the world's largest prison population period.
There is a difference here - this law bans having photographs or video of consenting adults. 16/17 year olds are not (legally) adults. I think you missed his point. I assume he meant that in many places (much of the US and UK) it is perfectly legal to have sex with 16 or 17 year olds. Yet photographing or making a video of the same act would be very illegal. It's the same insanity.
This means that possession of such an image is not in itself a crime (under this act). It is only a crime if you possess the image "principally for the purpose of sexual arousal". Since this is a mental state, and therefore a thought-process, this must be a thought crime... You're essentially correct, but I think you're misreading the act a bit. If this act were passed it would be a crime to possess an "extreme pornographic" image regardless of whether it is for your sexual arousal. The phrase "produced... principally for the purpose of sexual arousal" is used in the context of defining what an extreme pornographic image is.
Of course, the intent of the law is based on punishing people for their deviant sexual thoughts, but it makes it that much easier on the government when they don't even have to bother with proving the mindset of the possessor, and the ill-intent is just assumed. This is the case with child pornography possession. If an investigator possesses a picture of child pornography, then no harm is done because it is assumed he does not have any prurient interest in the photograph; however, if you or I possess the same photograph, we are assumed to have it for the purpose of sexual arousal.
Slashdot Mirror
Or to broaden the scope a bit: you support castration for people that look at pictures? Fucking sigh indeed.
Most insightful comment I've seen on this topic in a while.
Sad.
This type of crap should be dismissed out of hand. Instead, you treat it like it should be given consideration and might be a close call.
I would like to avoid ever hearing about or seeing child porn Why, do you often run across child porn on the internet? Given the incredible penalties involved for anyone distributing or possessing the material, it seems to have been pushed to the far, dark corners of the internet (I assume, I never see the stuff, and I download a disturbing amount of adult pornography).
If you dislike even hearing the words "child porn" then I'm afraid I can't offer a solution for you. A good start would be to stop bringing it up in Slashdot discussions.
This is (ahem) child's play in comparison with the amount of resources allocated to stopping sexual predators online.
Very interesting. It was almost an identical discussion to the current one.
Users: We don't like this new behavior, please give us an option to change it.
Devs: Why don't you like this new behavior?
Users: It is uncomfortable to use, aesthetically unpleasing, and awkward. We don't like it.
Devs: Those aren't reasons. Give us detailed reasons why you don't like it.
Users: We just don't like it. Why did you implement the new behavior?
Devs: It is more comfortable to use, more aesthetically pleasing, and less awkward. We like it.
Users: There are lots of us complaining about this. At least give us an option.
Devs: Go ahead and use another IM program then. We are only making Pidgin for ourselves, not for users.
Users: ?!?!
However, given the number of people that commented on the pidgin buglist, the number of people who started threads in various linux forums complaining about the new behavior, and the number of people criticizing the move here on slashdot, I'd say it's disingenuous to say it is "a small handful of people" who don't approve of the auto-resizing input field.
Probably the best way to measure the size of the opposition is to compare this negative reaction with the reactions received previously for other UI changes. Were there as many complaints? Was there a fork made? Was there a slashdot article about the controversy? Taking all these factors into consideration, I'd be pretty confident in assuming that there is a very sizable number of users who are extremely displeased with this feature change.
There is a plugin available that does just that, but the Pidgin developers don't want to include it as a default plugin. Partly because they don't want to clutter the plugin list, and party because they wish to force users to get used to their auto-resize input area.
In the article they provide a short list of some high profile cases in which digital forensics played a role, but I'd like to see a rough breakdown on what type of investigations the FBI was scanning through 1,288 terabytes of information for.
I know it is routine now for investigators to seize computer equipment even in drug arrests, and I wonder how much taxpayer money is being wasted so federal agents can look through internet histories and MSN buddy lists.
Of course, the intent of the law is based on punishing people for their deviant sexual thoughts, but it makes it that much easier on the government when they don't even have to bother with proving the mindset of the possessor, and the ill-intent is just assumed. This is the case with child pornography possession. If an investigator possesses a picture of child pornography, then no harm is done because it is assumed he does not have any prurient interest in the photograph; however, if you or I possess the same photograph, we are assumed to have it for the purpose of sexual arousal.