As I understand it, soon after the ipad was introduced, most book publishers renegotiated their contract with amazon and B&N. The retail chains had acted previously like a normal brick and mortar store and could set their own prices for ebooks, but after the renegotiation they switched to the "agency model" which lets the publisher set the price. Amazon and B&N have no control over ebook prices now, they only receive a certain percentage of the profits.
As a result, prices skyrocketed nearly overnight. The last 4 or 5 books I have been interested in buying have been more expensive as ebooks than in hardover or paperback form. So yes, it is a complete ripoff. Especially since you don't really own the ebooks you purchase and cannot lend them easily or sell them.
Not really. The focus should be on dismantling organized criminal networks. They cause far more damage in terms of numbers of victims.
You are obviously referring to American laws on the subject, we don't have the same laws. It's perfectly legal in the Netherlands for example for the mentioned 17 year old. Commercial production and distribution is actually subject to different laws here. You really should think about the context of this discussion.
The context here being a set of replies to a poster wondering why the evidence of child abuse is often treated as if it were the very crime itself and conflated as such. You seem to do the same, weaving in and out of discussing organized child abuse networks and child sex tourism, when the OP was commenting about simple possession.
Do you even know what trafficking means? The same people that trade in people for prostitution are involved in other forms of organized crime.
See above.
There's also the horrible facts of the matter on the ground in countries such as Thailand, Gambia, Cambodia [childwise.net] and so on. This rather short report is a very informative summary.
Again, I believe what the OP was bemoaning was the very short logical leap that seems to occur from possessing pictorial evidence of child abuse to actual in-person child abuse. Then when I bring up doubts about the amount of money involved in online child pornography, you post a link to a study involving sex tourism.
You're correct that I'm seeing things from an american perspective. Perhaps most europeans have a much more nuanced view of the matter. It has devolved to the point here that the vast majority of people being charged with federal crimes involving child pornography have obtained the material from peer to peer networks or otherwise off the internet without any financial transaction involved. Many are college students or relatively young. They are sent to prison for many years for possessing pictures, and then placed on the sex registry for a very long time after that, and treated as a pariah in society. The public at large makes little to no distinction between possessing photographs of child abuse and actually abusing a child. In fact, the penalties are often much harsher for the former. Thousands of people every year are turned into societal monsters for possessing pictures or video, while the real monsters, the ones actually abusing children, are unaffected by these arrests and convictions. And it's no coincidence that it is far easier for police and law enforcement authorities to arrest child porn possessors by the thousands than to investigate allegations of real child sexual abuse.
In that respect, you are correct that I may be misinterpreting the european perspective. I apologize if I am. I hope the subject is treated more rationally across the ocean, but given the original topic of this article, I doubt it.
I can't be bothered to reply beyond this, I find your attitude rather puzzling and irreverent.
but it is in fact an organized industry! Did you perhaps not know this?
But child pornography laws make no distinction between photos from some organized industry and photos of some 17 year old taken of themselves. Just as they make no distinction between those who are paying for the material and those who are not. Given your theory, that would be an important distinction, no?
It's not just the lone man taking photos at home.
Russian and Ukrainian criminals are unfortunately involved in most forms of exploitation and abuse of women and children.
Sounds like those people need to be arrested and punished.
There is a clear link, as proven by research, between trafficking and abuse.
Wait, you say there is a link between evidence of a crime and the crime itself?!? I'm shocked! We should make it highly illegal to possess evidence of any crime! There's a clear link!
I did some studies of this in Law school here in Europe, perhaps you don't read the same research materials and law journals as me?
Apparently not. Just based on that statement alone, I'd say you are an expert in the child pornography field.
It is in fact all about the money because there's a market for it all over the world. From deviant Japanese to Americans/Europeans.
Sure. Of course there's no way we could ever verify this, because it's all so highly illegal. I guess we'll just have to take the authorities' word for it.
The Internet created a new and larger market due to the anonymity.
Anonymity involved with payments on the internet? Do you have any idea how rare that is? The percentage of CP busts at this point that involve financial transactions are minuscule. Most of these jackasses are caught through p2p progams and email attachments.
If you attack the producers, someone will replace them soon enough. However if you remove the market, reducing the demand, production and profits will naturally stop.
Right... because there are massive windfall profits being made in the child pornography industry. I'm sure there are a number of government organizations that will even tell you so. Billions and zillions of dollars annually and so forth.
I remember learning in school that the only effective way to stop the production and distribution [of drugs] was to target the market.
Yes, that has been a very effective strategy for the "war on drugs" in the US. It's been a rousing success.
Do people actually believe that the majority of child porn producers are abusing children not because they have a sexual interest, but because of the profit motive? Seriously?
Porn is neither, no matter how much some would wish it was so.
Umm what exactly do you think it is then? Prostitution? Because then it would be illegal.
You may not think it qualifies as art, but that is just your misinformed opinion. Just because I don't consider Uwe Boll movies art doesn't mean they aren't treated as such and protected by copyright. You're wrong.
Well, most would say no, that doesn't count, and this hypocrisy is exactly why most of the rage about child porn is actually directed at what should be considered a thought crime. A cop/judge/jury can look at a picture of child pornography and no harm is done. But if an ordinary citizen looks at the same picture, many will say (NCMEC for one) that the child is being molested all over again. This is how punishments for possession of child pornography have successfully been ratcheted up to levels equal to (and in many cases greater) than the punishment for sexual abusing a child.
The use of child pornography as justification to restrict other rights won't end anytime soon. Law enforcement and interested groups have successfully convinced most of the public that possession of child porn is equivalent to molesting a child. Literally, one and the same. This has inflamed any conversation about child pornography well past the point of any rationality.
Your entire argument accepts at face value that child porn is universally produced for profit, yet if you look at a sample of recent arrest reports for child porn possession seldom few appear to have any financial exchange involved. People are arrested every day for downloading child porn for free off of P2P networks. And of course when people use P2P to download movies and games it is harmful to their respective industries, but when P2P is used to download child porn it supposedly supports the industry.
He attempts to justify and defend the thorough integration of neopomuk and akonadi with KDE4 in his post and the subsequent comments. He mostly fails.
In my opinion Aaron Seigo needs to go. He seems like a really nice guy and all, but he still defends the release strategy of KDE4.0 (and this despite being one of the lead devs of the -at the time- completely bug-ridden and barely functional plasma), and seems to always be at the forefront of KDE4's questionable future plans. They've reached feature parity(?) with 3.5.X. Now they need to work on stability and speed. Stability and speed. Stability and speed. The obsession with social networking integration is stupid and shortsighted. The SC naming scheme is lame. And almost as many users are now annoyed by neopomuk and akonadi as they are by that damn cashew.
Child pornography does exploit children and minors and needs to be rigorously enforced
Even if the child pornography is created by the one being exploited? A lot of the "child porn" being produced today is self-shot by teenagers. People have to stop taking the black and white approach to child pornography because time and technology has changed. Laws originally intended to stop a financially driven market for child porn are being used against teenagers sending cell-phone pictures to their friends.
If they keep this up, it's going to dilute honest, real efforts to fight child pornography because people will be conditioned to equate "child pornography" with "government power grab".
It's already been diluted beyond recognition. The original intent behind child pornography laws was to try and cut off the market for pictures and videos of children engaged in sex acts. Now there is virtually no market to speak of, and thousands of people each year are arrested for simple possession without having engaged in any financial transaction to buy the stuff. Not to mention the teenagers being arrested for taking pictures of themselves in the mirror. And the penalties are completely out of line. In most jurisdictions, you're much better off facing a criminal charge of actually molesting a child then you are facing any sort of child porn charge (which can inevitably be prosecuted on the federal level).
Whether an actual child is being exploited is no longer of any concern. It's simply the easiest way for governments and law enforcement agencies to have some control over the flow of information on the internet.
I tried to install that a while ago on kubuntu and it didn't work for whatever reason. Yes, yes I know, kubuntu sucks, every other kde4 implementation is perfect. Regardless, it didn't work. I just wish there would be a simple option to disable it, like opensuse has added; it makes no sense to me to have it on my desktop when I can just right click and get the same functionality.
IMO it's a prime example of the stubbornness and inflexibility of the current KDE dev team.
On a related note, Aaron Seigo had an interesting post on his blog (http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-dont-need-no-stinking-nepomuk-right.html) where he struggled (mostly in vain) to explain to people why akonadi and nepomuk were needed or even useful. A lot of comments were similar to yours... basically, just give us a stable KDE desktop to run apps and stop messing around with whizzbang buggy features and eye-candy.
I haven't seen any posts here claiming that child pornography is a positive thing. They are just disputing the rationality of penalizing aspects of it.
But again, you're avoiding the question. Do you think a 16 year old taking a sexual picture of themselves should be illegal or not?
It's not a trap question. You're vehemently against child porn, correct? What I described is child porn. Do you support such prosecution or not. Yes or No.
And yes, your desire to break bones and report to the FBI anyone that dares even discuss whether child porn laws are appropriate speaks volumes about your common sense.
Stop dodging the question. You've made it quite clear that you are adamantly against child porn, whether it be production, distribution, or just possession. It therefore follows that you believe that if a 16 year old girl takes a nude sexual picture of herself in the mirror, she should be charged with production and possession of child pornography.
In that hypothetical scenario, do you support prosecuting that 16 year old girl? Yes or No. BTW, if you say no, then you (by your own statements) are enabling sexual predators to rape a child. If you say yes you lack enough common sense for anyone to bother taking any more of your comments seriously.
Maybe I just don't like to watch people tell me that child pornography is a victimless crime. Maybe I don't like that Slashdot has so suddenely entrenched itself with ADVOCATES of child pornography
Wait... so you want to physically harm people just for making a simple argument on a text-based web site? That's pretty fucked up. You should seek counseling.
And also: I assume since you're sooo anti-child porn that you also support prosecuting teenagers who possess and distribute pictures of themselves. Because it's black and white right? Right and wrong? And child pornography, as everyone has told you... err I mean as everyone knows, is horrible terrible stuff. So we should lock those teens away for victimizing themselves. Right? Right?!?
So victims of child abuse that becomes child porn should not expect that pictures of humiliation
Wait, are you talking about any pictures of humiliation? Because if we could make it a federal felony to possess pictures of when I shat my pants in 2nd grade, that would be great.
Mod me flamebait all you want, you sick fuck. Ignoring me won't change what a sick fuck you've become. My opinion doesn't change the fact that masturbating to children means you are a sick fuck. I wasn't the one who drew the lines, I'm just letting you know that you Are A Sick Fuck That Needs To Get Help Like NOW, you sick childfucker.
Well, well, aren't you a rational one. I can't imagine why you're having trouble getting your points across.
You seem angry. Maybe you watched too many Hulk tv shows when you were younger?
Slashdot Mirror
As I understand it, soon after the ipad was introduced, most book publishers renegotiated their contract with amazon and B&N. The retail chains had acted previously like a normal brick and mortar store and could set their own prices for ebooks, but after the renegotiation they switched to the "agency model" which lets the publisher set the price. Amazon and B&N have no control over ebook prices now, they only receive a certain percentage of the profits.
As a result, prices skyrocketed nearly overnight. The last 4 or 5 books I have been interested in buying have been more expensive as ebooks than in hardover or paperback form. So yes, it is a complete ripoff. Especially since you don't really own the ebooks you purchase and cannot lend them easily or sell them.
Not really. The focus should be on dismantling organized criminal networks. They cause far more damage in terms of numbers of victims.
You are obviously referring to American laws on the subject, we don't have the same laws. It's perfectly legal in the Netherlands for example for the mentioned 17 year old. Commercial production and distribution is actually subject to different laws here. You really should think about the context of this discussion.
The context here being a set of replies to a poster wondering why the evidence of child abuse is often treated as if it were the very crime itself and conflated as such. You seem to do the same, weaving in and out of discussing organized child abuse networks and child sex tourism, when the OP was commenting about simple possession.
Do you even know what trafficking means? The same people that trade in people for prostitution are involved in other forms of organized crime.
See above.
There's also the horrible facts of the matter on the ground in countries such as Thailand, Gambia, Cambodia [childwise.net] and so on. This rather short report is a very informative summary.
Again, I believe what the OP was bemoaning was the very short logical leap that seems to occur from possessing pictorial evidence of child abuse to actual in-person child abuse. Then when I bring up doubts about the amount of money involved in online child pornography, you post a link to a study involving sex tourism.
You're correct that I'm seeing things from an american perspective. Perhaps most europeans have a much more nuanced view of the matter. It has devolved to the point here that the vast majority of people being charged with federal crimes involving child pornography have obtained the material from peer to peer networks or otherwise off the internet without any financial transaction involved. Many are college students or relatively young. They are sent to prison for many years for possessing pictures, and then placed on the sex registry for a very long time after that, and treated as a pariah in society. The public at large makes little to no distinction between possessing photographs of child abuse and actually abusing a child. In fact, the penalties are often much harsher for the former. Thousands of people every year are turned into societal monsters for possessing pictures or video, while the real monsters, the ones actually abusing children, are unaffected by these arrests and convictions. And it's no coincidence that it is far easier for police and law enforcement authorities to arrest child porn possessors by the thousands than to investigate allegations of real child sexual abuse.
In that respect, you are correct that I may be misinterpreting the european perspective. I apologize if I am. I hope the subject is treated more rationally across the ocean, but given the original topic of this article, I doubt it.
I can't be bothered to reply beyond this, I find your attitude rather puzzling and irreverent.
That's fine, have a pleasant evening.
but it is in fact an organized industry! Did you perhaps not know this?
But child pornography laws make no distinction between photos from some organized industry and photos of some 17 year old taken of themselves. Just as they make no distinction between those who are paying for the material and those who are not. Given your theory, that would be an important distinction, no?
It's not just the lone man taking photos at home.
Russian and Ukrainian criminals are unfortunately involved in most forms of exploitation and abuse of women and children.
Sounds like those people need to be arrested and punished.
There is a clear link, as proven by research, between trafficking and abuse.
Wait, you say there is a link between evidence of a crime and the crime itself?!? I'm shocked! We should make it highly illegal to possess evidence of any crime! There's a clear link!
I did some studies of this in Law school here in Europe, perhaps you don't read the same research materials and law journals as me?
Apparently not. Just based on that statement alone, I'd say you are an expert in the child pornography field.
It is in fact all about the money because there's a market for it all over the world. From deviant Japanese to Americans/Europeans.
Sure. Of course there's no way we could ever verify this, because it's all so highly illegal. I guess we'll just have to take the authorities' word for it.
The Internet created a new and larger market due to the anonymity.
Anonymity involved with payments on the internet? Do you have any idea how rare that is? The percentage of CP busts at this point that involve financial transactions are minuscule. Most of these jackasses are caught through p2p progams and email attachments.
If you attack the producers, someone will replace them soon enough. However if you remove the market, reducing the demand, production and profits will naturally stop.
Right... because there are massive windfall profits being made in the child pornography industry. I'm sure there are a number of government organizations that will even tell you so. Billions and zillions of dollars annually and so forth.
I remember learning in school that the only effective way to stop the production and distribution [of drugs] was to target the market.
Yes, that has been a very effective strategy for the "war on drugs" in the US. It's been a rousing success.
Do people actually believe that the majority of child porn producers are abusing children not because they have a sexual interest, but because of the profit motive? Seriously?
There is no "KDE4". What do you mean by "KDE4"? Platform 4(.5)? Plasma Workspaces 4(.5)? The whole Software Compilation 4(.5)?
Uh yeah, that's part of the problem. Enough with the silly names. Did you really not know what he meant?
I pretty much agree with you, but I can't help but cringe when I see the SC moniker after KDE. The amateur marketing crap has got to go.
Porn is neither, no matter how much some would wish it was so.
Umm what exactly do you think it is then? Prostitution? Because then it would be illegal.
You may not think it qualifies as art, but that is just your misinformed opinion. Just because I don't consider Uwe Boll movies art doesn't mean they aren't treated as such and protected by copyright. You're wrong.
The summary states that they turned away 600 participants. I'm betting all 600 were males.
Well, most would say no, that doesn't count, and this hypocrisy is exactly why most of the rage about child porn is actually directed at what should be considered a thought crime. A cop/judge/jury can look at a picture of child pornography and no harm is done. But if an ordinary citizen looks at the same picture, many will say (NCMEC for one) that the child is being molested all over again. This is how punishments for possession of child pornography have successfully been ratcheted up to levels equal to (and in many cases greater) than the punishment for sexual abusing a child.
The use of child pornography as justification to restrict other rights won't end anytime soon. Law enforcement and interested groups have successfully convinced most of the public that possession of child porn is equivalent to molesting a child. Literally, one and the same. This has inflamed any conversation about child pornography well past the point of any rationality.
What makes you believe that making guns completely illegal in both countries is going to work out better?
Wait... you can grow guns in closets? Or in national forests? Or make them in homemade "gun labs"? I did not know that.
Your entire argument accepts at face value that child porn is universally produced for profit, yet if you look at a sample of recent arrest reports for child porn possession seldom few appear to have any financial exchange involved. People are arrested every day for downloading child porn for free off of P2P networks. And of course when people use P2P to download movies and games it is harmful to their respective industries, but when P2P is used to download child porn it supposedly supports the industry.
Well said. I agree completely. If you haven't already, you should check out one of Aaron Seigo's posts from earlier this year on his blog:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-dont-need-no-stinking-nepomuk-right.html
He attempts to justify and defend the thorough integration of neopomuk and akonadi with KDE4 in his post and the subsequent comments. He mostly fails.
In my opinion Aaron Seigo needs to go. He seems like a really nice guy and all, but he still defends the release strategy of KDE4.0 (and this despite being one of the lead devs of the -at the time- completely bug-ridden and barely functional plasma), and seems to always be at the forefront of KDE4's questionable future plans. They've reached feature parity(?) with 3.5.X. Now they need to work on stability and speed. Stability and speed. Stability and speed. The obsession with social networking integration is stupid and shortsighted. The SC naming scheme is lame. And almost as many users are now annoyed by neopomuk and akonadi as they are by that damn cashew.
Child pornography does exploit children and minors and needs to be rigorously enforced
Even if the child pornography is created by the one being exploited? A lot of the "child porn" being produced today is self-shot by teenagers. People have to stop taking the black and white approach to child pornography because time and technology has changed. Laws originally intended to stop a financially driven market for child porn are being used against teenagers sending cell-phone pictures to their friends.
If they keep this up, it's going to dilute honest, real efforts to fight child pornography because people will be conditioned to equate "child pornography" with "government power grab".
It's already been diluted beyond recognition. The original intent behind child pornography laws was to try and cut off the market for pictures and videos of children engaged in sex acts. Now there is virtually no market to speak of, and thousands of people each year are arrested for simple possession without having engaged in any financial transaction to buy the stuff. Not to mention the teenagers being arrested for taking pictures of themselves in the mirror. And the penalties are completely out of line. In most jurisdictions, you're much better off facing a criminal charge of actually molesting a child then you are facing any sort of child porn charge (which can inevitably be prosecuted on the federal level).
People have inundated with the "child porn = worst evil evar on earth" propaganda for so long that they only weakly question if an upskirt pic of 17 year old Miley Cyrus taken in public should be considered child pornography: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/17/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main6590770.shtml
Whether an actual child is being exploited is no longer of any concern. It's simply the easiest way for governments and law enforcement agencies to have some control over the flow of information on the internet.
He came up with the name Purefoy from a book entitled Ulysses. Imagine that.
I tried to install that a while ago on kubuntu and it didn't work for whatever reason. Yes, yes I know, kubuntu sucks, every other kde4 implementation is perfect. Regardless, it didn't work. I just wish there would be a simple option to disable it, like opensuse has added; it makes no sense to me to have it on my desktop when I can just right click and get the same functionality.
IMO it's a prime example of the stubbornness and inflexibility of the current KDE dev team.
On a related note, Aaron Seigo had an interesting post on his blog (http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-dont-need-no-stinking-nepomuk-right.html) where he struggled (mostly in vain) to explain to people why akonadi and nepomuk were needed or even useful. A lot of comments were similar to yours... basically, just give us a stable KDE desktop to run apps and stop messing around with whizzbang buggy features and eye-candy.
The only way to truly fix the cashew is to enable a way to remove it (not just in opensuse). Have they done that yet?
I haven't seen any posts here claiming that child pornography is a positive thing. They are just disputing the rationality of penalizing aspects of it.
But again, you're avoiding the question. Do you think a 16 year old taking a sexual picture of themselves should be illegal or not?
It's not a trap question. You're vehemently against child porn, correct? What I described is child porn. Do you support such prosecution or not. Yes or No.
And yes, your desire to break bones and report to the FBI anyone that dares even discuss whether child porn laws are appropriate speaks volumes about your common sense.
Stop dodging the question. You've made it quite clear that you are adamantly against child porn, whether it be production, distribution, or just possession. It therefore follows that you believe that if a 16 year old girl takes a nude sexual picture of herself in the mirror, she should be charged with production and possession of child pornography.
In that hypothetical scenario, do you support prosecuting that 16 year old girl? Yes or No. BTW, if you say no, then you (by your own statements) are enabling sexual predators to rape a child. If you say yes you lack enough common sense for anyone to bother taking any more of your comments seriously.
Maybe I just don't like to watch people tell me that child pornography is a victimless crime. Maybe I don't like that Slashdot has so suddenely entrenched itself with ADVOCATES of child pornography
Wait... so you want to physically harm people just for making a simple argument on a text-based web site? That's pretty fucked up. You should seek counseling.
And also: I assume since you're sooo anti-child porn that you also support prosecuting teenagers who possess and distribute pictures of themselves. Because it's black and white right? Right and wrong? And child pornography, as everyone has told you... err I mean as everyone knows, is horrible terrible stuff. So we should lock those teens away for victimizing themselves. Right? Right?!?
So victims of child abuse that becomes child porn should not expect that pictures of humiliation
Wait, are you talking about any pictures of humiliation? Because if we could make it a federal felony to possess pictures of when I shat my pants in 2nd grade, that would be great.
Or does only the sexual stuff matter?
Mod me flamebait all you want, you sick fuck. Ignoring me won't change what a sick fuck you've become. My opinion doesn't change the fact that masturbating to children means you are a sick fuck. I wasn't the one who drew the lines, I'm just letting you know that you Are A Sick Fuck That Needs To Get Help Like NOW, you sick childfucker.
Well, well, aren't you a rational one. I can't imagine why you're having trouble getting your points across.
You seem angry. Maybe you watched too many Hulk tv shows when you were younger?