Not distribute -- sell. COPA specifically applies to communication for commercial purposes. Posting free porn, for instance, wouldn't fall under COPA unless it's something like advertising/teasers for a pay service, or otherwise part of a for-profit enterprise like getting banner clicks.
Also, it's an affirmative defense if the seller, in good faith, restricts access to minors by, say, credit card age verification, or the various adult-checking services. If the minor stole an adult's credit card and uses it to pass the check, the vendor doesn't get nailed for a COPA violation as long as it's still operating in good faith.
If you actually read the law, you'll notice that it uses a Miller-style test for determining "harmful to minors", which requires that a work "taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors".
Hence, picture of the nude Statue of David -- fine. Print of Venus de Milo: fine. Bestiality pictures on basketballs inside a fishtank: hmmm, no.
It has everything to do with religion, when one religion is being used to teach that the other side must be destroyed, that death for the cause results in going to heaven and a few score of willing virgins, and that their cause is the only true cause in the entire world.
And yes, Bomber Command and Bomber Harris were, basically, war criminals for favoring the not particularly useless "firebomb German cities" approach -- the elitist justification was to demoralize cities and try to panic the lower classes, but smashing factories, airfields, et al would have been more useful... That's why historians like Keegan castigate them today, instead of praising them as heroes.
Oh, and Barak offered one hell of a peace deal, despite his own side telling him that the offer was too good. Arafat turned it down, despite his own negotiators telling him to accept it, and to this day, certain Palestinian leaders keep Israel off the map and insist on a Palestine from the Jordan river to the sea.
Can you prove that martyrdom does not lead to an afterlife in Paradise? AFAIK, that is one thing that the Germans did NOT claim -- all their conquests and goals were firmly in the actual during-life world, and the collapse of the Wehrmacht demonstrated that those goals were no longer even remotely attainable. Afterlife arguments are a bit harder to disprove...
There is a pseudo-Christian (it deviates somewhat, IIRC, such as having leaders who claim the usual magical powers -- invulnerability to weapons, most notably) fanatical rebellion in Sudan, but then the Sudan government is heavily Islamist, and I don't recall who started it...
Other than that, yup, it's mostly Muslims, and to some degree, Hindus against Muslims in one part of the world, if you count rioting, train-burning and that sort of thing. 'tho again, I don't recall "who started it" there.
Wiping out the petty warlords and dictators and forcibly halting their perpetual squabbling would probably help. A Coke plant (and that's probably what would happen; that is, foreign companies would have the most capital to start new plants, although a ruthless government might invite them, then nationalize -- that is, forcibly steal -- the plants and try to run it itself) might not help that much if there's a civil war caused by hundred-year-old tribal, religious, or other feuds. Nor would it help if the local government just moves the proceeds to officials' bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
I'd say that in some cases, you do have to start with eliminating the local authorities. Then, probably some Marshall Plan-like reconstruction / investment in education and infrastructure.
Would it take a long time? Hell yes. Expensive? Yup. Is there a simple, inexpensive solution? I really doubt it. Is it even possible to HAVE a complete solution? Probably not, other than the fairly extreme "eliminate all humanity" solution....
It can be technology, when the technology is used to spread rumors. Quite a few Arabs, for instance, believe that the 11-Sep incident was the result of a worldwide Jewish plot to frame the Arabs, and that bin Laden was perfectly innocent. Oh, and that Jews run the banks, and the media, and control the US Government, and eat children for religious rituals, and create chewing gum that drives Arab women horny but infertile, and so forth.
And no, I'm not even making up the "chewing gum" myth, bizarre as it is. Do a google search; there was a Washingon Post article on it once, for instance.
Hell, the Saudi government is basically pro-martyr. The Saudi ambassador to the UK even wrote a poem praising them, and one in particular, writing that "the gates of heaven were open to her", IIRC. And, like the Iraqis, they fund terrorists' next-of-kin these days, on the excuse that they're suffering and possibly didn't know what their family members were going to do. Short take? In the long run, they're more dangerous than the Iraqis, because they've got more oil, more friends, more money, and more religious fanaticism than the Iraqis; plus they're fully aware that short of their invading a neighbor or proof of Saudi gov't support in a major terrorist attack against the US, that the US has little excuse to strike out at them.
It's not surprising, then, that people who listen to those ideas hate the Israelis, whom they see as controlling the world, and therefore the source of all their problems, and therefore the people to blame when anything remotely bad happens.
Of course, throwing rocks at a tank is pretty stupid, unless those rocks are seriously wired with shaped charges or it's merely a distraction so the tank commander doesn't notice the RPG being aimed in his direction. It's probably not the geniuses that openly riot in the streets...
(Likewise, the Falun Gong protesters are just being imbeciles. What, they think that the PRC government is just going to give up and go away, or that the Western powers or Russia will forgo the theoretically huge, if remarkably capricious and corrupt, market there and pressure the PRC on the behalf of what's basically a occultist cult? If you're going to fight a dictatorship, fight -- waving signs and staging sit-ins probably won't help.)
a) Wait it out, if it's the sort that goes away before doing permanent damage. b) Destroy the contagion within the host, if you can get to it without killing the host. c) Kill all the hosts.
The contagion is misinformation. The carriers are people and their media sources. Take your pick of options.
Just a FYI -- it's been doing pretty well here at Carnegie Mellon, where apparently the system administrators decided to use it for flagging mail on the entire Andrew network.
It does sometimes flag Bloomberg.com's daily market news e-mails as spam, mostly due to all-caps stock symbols and the occasional all-caps line, AFAICT. *shrug* Some database mailing list messages also get flagged as spam, not too surprising when certain members have a habit of using all-caps lines and HTML...
Hmmm. I'd say that roughly 80-90% of the spam I get is in some ks_ font, probably Korean, and through Korean servers with administrators that don't give a damn given the vast amounts of spam coming from their networks.
Also, (under "UBS Warburg Makes Expensive Gaffe on Dentsu IPO") UBS once had a typo with an IPO, offering 610,000 shares of Dentsu at 16 yen each instead of 16 shares at 610,000 yen each. Ouch.
It would, at least, remove part of the stigma. And if it encouraged people to delve into hard-core science fiction -- the sort that actually demands that people think about reality and the possible, instead of the fluffier kind that ignores it -- hey, that might not be a bad thing.
I'd put "Alien", "The Manchurian Candidate" (mind control), or "A Clockwork Orange" (future dystopia) up against, say, "Kate and Leopold" or "Pearl Harbor" any day. Hollywood pumps out vast quantities of tripe in all genres.
Hell, for that matter, how many "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" novels are there? At least the former probably has a deliberate merchandising strategy incorporating books, dolls, clothing, "collectibles" of all kinds...
I don't have numbers for it, but when "Bridges of Madison County" came out, it seemed to be considered a best-seller. At the time, I was working part-time in a local library, and the reserve list for that book was pretty damn long, too (despite, IIRC, it being pretty much universally panned by professional literary critics).
. Enforcing this rule will only further discourage American companies from shipping to Europe -- something they're already aggravatingly unwilling to do.
And from the viewpoint of an EU government official, this would be a problem why? The bill sponsors would probably be thrilled if online business shifted from American companies to EU companies.
In "Jagged Alliance 2", one of the quests is rescuing a woman from captivity and forced prostitution (and thus, presumably, rape since it's involuntary captivity). It's just implied as back story for the quest, but it's there.
JA2 would mostly be covered for the violence, 'tho -- making people's heads explode and all that.
Other than that, *shrug* there are probably pr0n games involving rape. Assuming that this article isn't simply a bizarre hoax, a twisted game called "Custer's Revenge".
...genocide ...eating of corpses (or, depending on your body, live monsters!) ...chopping them up and putting them in cans for later consumption ...sacrifice of monsters ...wanton violence with deadly weapons and hand-to-hand combat ...sex with demons ...worshipping pagan gods
It'd still probably be covered, since HR 4645 does specify depictions of
"(1) decapitation, amputation, dismemberment, or mutilation;"
(the phrase "human or human-like beings" only appears in the "killing with lethal weapons or hand-to-hand fighting" clause). And some might claim that chimps are human-like beings as well (Argh, vagueness. I can understand why that phrase was used -- e.g. to prevent workarounds like "they're not human, but instead incredibly humanlike androids with green blood and red eyes" -- but it's an obvious can of wyrms).
It does say "sells at retail or rents, or attempts to sell at retail or rent". A free download that's completely unconnected to commerce shouldn't fall under that. Even if it's a demo for a commercial product, that would be a stretch...
H.R. 4645 does not mention parental consent. You're probably thinking of the completely different ordinance that was recently looked at by a Judge Limbaugh mentioned in not one, but at least two recent Slashdot stories.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI, COPA specifies "...in interstate or foreign commerce", so yes, I think you'd still potentially be held liable if the law is upheld in the end.
Not distribute -- sell. COPA specifically applies to communication for commercial purposes. Posting free porn, for instance, wouldn't fall under COPA unless it's something like advertising/teasers for a pay service, or otherwise part of a for-profit enterprise like getting banner clicks.
Also, it's an affirmative defense if the seller, in good faith, restricts access to minors by, say, credit card age verification, or the various adult-checking services. If the minor stole an adult's credit card and uses it to pass the check, the vendor doesn't get nailed for a COPA violation as long as it's still operating in good faith.
If you actually read the law, you'll notice that it uses a Miller-style test for determining "harmful to minors", which requires that a work "taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors".
Hence, picture of the nude Statue of David -- fine. Print of Venus de Milo: fine. Bestiality pictures on basketballs inside a fishtank: hmmm, no.
It has everything to do with religion, when one religion is being used to teach that the other side must be destroyed, that death for the cause results in going to heaven and a few score of willing virgins, and that their cause is the only true cause in the entire world.
And yes, Bomber Command and Bomber Harris were, basically, war criminals for favoring the not particularly useless "firebomb German cities" approach -- the elitist justification was to demoralize cities and try to panic the lower classes, but smashing factories, airfields, et al would have been more useful... That's why historians like Keegan castigate them today, instead of praising them as heroes.
Oh, and Barak offered one hell of a peace deal, despite his own side telling him that the offer was too good. Arafat turned it down, despite his own negotiators telling him to accept it, and to this day, certain Palestinian leaders keep Israel off the map and insist on a Palestine from the Jordan river to the sea.
No, that's just yet another liberal lie.
Can you prove that martyrdom does not lead to an afterlife in Paradise? AFAIK, that is one thing that the Germans did NOT claim -- all their conquests and goals were firmly in the actual during-life world, and the collapse of the Wehrmacht demonstrated that those goals were no longer even remotely attainable. Afterlife arguments are a bit harder to disprove...
There is a pseudo-Christian (it deviates somewhat, IIRC, such as having leaders who claim the usual magical powers -- invulnerability to weapons, most notably) fanatical rebellion in Sudan, but then the Sudan government is heavily Islamist, and I don't recall who started it...
Other than that, yup, it's mostly Muslims, and to some degree, Hindus against Muslims in one part of the world, if you count rioting, train-burning and that sort of thing. 'tho again, I don't recall "who started it" there.
Wiping out the petty warlords and dictators and forcibly halting their perpetual squabbling would probably help. A Coke plant (and that's probably what would happen; that is, foreign companies would have the most capital to start new plants, although a ruthless government might invite them, then nationalize -- that is, forcibly steal -- the plants and try to run it itself) might not help that much if there's a civil war caused by hundred-year-old tribal, religious, or other feuds. Nor would it help if the local government just moves the proceeds to officials' bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
I'd say that in some cases, you do have to start with eliminating the local authorities. Then, probably some Marshall Plan-like reconstruction / investment in education and infrastructure.
Would it take a long time? Hell yes. Expensive? Yup. Is there a simple, inexpensive solution? I really doubt it. Is it even possible to HAVE a complete solution? Probably not, other than the fairly extreme "eliminate all humanity" solution....
It can be technology, when the technology is used to spread rumors. Quite a few Arabs, for instance, believe that the 11-Sep incident was the result of a worldwide Jewish plot to frame the Arabs, and that bin Laden was perfectly innocent. Oh, and that Jews run the banks, and the media, and control the US Government, and eat children for religious rituals, and create chewing gum that drives Arab women horny but infertile, and so forth.
And no, I'm not even making up the "chewing gum" myth, bizarre as it is. Do a google search; there was a Washingon Post article on it once, for instance.
Hell, the Saudi government is basically pro-martyr. The Saudi ambassador to the UK even wrote a poem praising them, and one in particular, writing that "the gates of heaven were open to her", IIRC. And, like the Iraqis, they fund terrorists' next-of-kin these days, on the excuse that they're suffering and possibly didn't know what their family members were going to do. Short take? In the long run, they're more dangerous than the Iraqis, because they've got more oil, more friends, more money, and more religious fanaticism than the Iraqis; plus they're fully aware that short of their invading a neighbor or proof of Saudi gov't support in a major terrorist attack against the US, that the US has little excuse to strike out at them.
It's not surprising, then, that people who listen to those ideas hate the Israelis, whom they see as controlling the world, and therefore the source of all their problems, and therefore the people to blame when anything remotely bad happens.
Of course, throwing rocks at a tank is pretty stupid, unless those rocks are seriously wired with shaped charges or it's merely a distraction so the tank commander doesn't notice the RPG being aimed in his direction. It's probably not the geniuses that openly riot in the streets...
(Likewise, the Falun Gong protesters are just being imbeciles. What, they think that the PRC government is just going to give up and go away, or that the Western powers or Russia will forgo the theoretically huge, if remarkably capricious and corrupt, market there and pressure the PRC on the behalf of what's basically a occultist cult? If you're going to fight a dictatorship, fight -- waving signs and staging sit-ins probably won't help.)
Not if you're browsing Stormfront, or Hizbollah's website for that matter.
Or, if your messages comes primarily from sources regurgitating the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", for that matter
To cure a disease, you can...
a) Wait it out, if it's the sort that goes away before doing permanent damage.
b) Destroy the contagion within the host, if you can get to it without killing the host.
c) Kill all the hosts.
The contagion is misinformation. The carriers are people and their media sources. Take your pick of options.
Just a FYI -- it's been doing pretty well here at Carnegie Mellon, where apparently the system administrators decided to use it for flagging mail on the entire Andrew network.
It does sometimes flag Bloomberg.com's daily market news e-mails as spam, mostly due to all-caps stock symbols and the occasional all-caps line, AFAICT. *shrug* Some database mailing list messages also get flagged as spam, not too surprising when certain members have a habit of using all-caps lines and HTML...
Hmmm. I'd say that roughly 80-90% of the spam I get is in some ks_ font, probably Korean, and through Korean servers with administrators that don't give a damn given the vast amounts of spam coming from their networks.
It's worse when it happens in, say, a news release.
Also, (under "UBS Warburg Makes Expensive Gaffe on Dentsu IPO") UBS once had a typo with an IPO, offering 610,000 shares of Dentsu at 16 yen each instead of 16 shares at 610,000 yen each. Ouch.
Hm. Would (2) possibly be legally actionable as constituting fraud for financial gain?
It would, at least, remove part of the stigma. And if it encouraged people to delve into hard-core science fiction -- the sort that actually demands that people think about reality and the possible, instead of the fluffier kind that ignores it -- hey, that might not be a bad thing.
I'd put "Alien", "The Manchurian Candidate" (mind control), or "A Clockwork Orange" (future dystopia) up against, say, "Kate and Leopold" or "Pearl Harbor" any day. Hollywood pumps out vast quantities of tripe in all genres.
Hell, for that matter, how many "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" novels are there? At least the former probably has a deliberate merchandising strategy incorporating books, dolls, clothing, "collectibles" of all kinds...
I don't have numbers for it, but when "Bridges of Madison County" came out, it seemed to be considered a best-seller. At the time, I was working part-time in a local library, and the reserve list for that book was pretty damn long, too (despite, IIRC, it being pretty much universally panned by professional literary critics).
. Enforcing this rule will only further discourage American companies from shipping to Europe -- something they're already aggravatingly unwilling to do.
And from the viewpoint of an EU government official, this would be a problem why? The bill sponsors would probably be thrilled if online business shifted from American companies to EU companies.
In "Jagged Alliance 2", one of the quests is rescuing a woman from captivity and forced prostitution (and thus, presumably, rape since it's involuntary captivity). It's just implied as back story for the quest, but it's there.
JA2 would mostly be covered for the violence, 'tho -- making people's heads explode and all that.
Other than that, *shrug* there are probably pr0n games involving rape. Assuming that this article isn't simply a bizarre hoax, a twisted game called "Custer's Revenge".
Heh. It's got...
;)
...genocide
...eating of corpses (or, depending on your body, live monsters!)
...chopping them up and putting them in cans for later consumption
...sacrifice of monsters
...wanton violence with deadly weapons and hand-to-hand combat
...sex with demons
...worshipping pagan gods
Heh. You'd need Johnny Cochran.
It'd still probably be covered, since HR 4645 does specify depictions of
"(1) decapitation, amputation, dismemberment, or mutilation;"
(the phrase "human or human-like beings" only appears in the "killing with lethal weapons or hand-to-hand fighting" clause). And some might claim that chimps are human-like beings as well (Argh, vagueness. I can understand why that phrase was used -- e.g. to prevent workarounds like "they're not human, but instead incredibly humanlike androids with green blood and red eyes" -- but it's an obvious can of wyrms).
It does say "sells at retail or rents, or attempts to sell at retail or rent". A free download that's completely unconnected to commerce shouldn't fall under that. Even if it's a demo for a commercial product, that would be a stretch...
With U.S. bills, thomas.loc.gov is your friend.
Type 'HR 4645' into the search box. I'd give a direct link, but it seems that the links are dynamically generated.
H.R. 4645 does not mention parental consent. You're probably thinking of the completely different ordinance that was recently looked at by a Judge Limbaugh mentioned in not one, but at least two recent Slashdot stories.