You also realize the Supreme Court upheld the pandering provision of the PROTECT Act and didn't overturn anything, right? Looks like you were wrong.
fine i'll reiterate the quote:
In May 2008, the Supreme Court, while ruling on the PROTECT ACT, ruled that the act cannot be used to punish persons who view or make virtual child porn, provided it is not promoted as actual child porn.
And that still doesn't bother you? That people could be thrown into prison because they possess drawn lolicon which they claim is real child pornography (who the hell knows the definition of that anymore), even though no actual children are involved? And all of this sanctioned and approved by the constitutional last line of defense, the supreme court? Some wingbat can be convicted on child porn charges even though he never actually possessed any child porn?!?
Does that seem acceptable to you?
The point is, they can't. Re-read my quotes.
Do I dislike the fact that people who are "different" from normal society are imprisoned for victimless crimes, even if they're later found unconstitutional? Of course I do!
Still, the USSC's record on lolicon is exemplary compared to the DMCA, and the fact they kicked puritanical congressmen to the curb on such a publicly villified subject indicates there is some residue left of the spirit our forefathers forged into the constitution.
On the whole, minority opinion is still protected more now than it was before the nation was born.
I did some further digging on the protect act as it applies to Lolicon
The court stressed that virtual child pornography remained under the protection of the First Amendment, except when it was offered or solicited under the mistaken impression that actual children were depicted.
In May 2008, the Supreme Court, while ruling on the PROTECT ACT, ruled that the act cannot be used to punish persons who view or make virtual child porn, provided it is not promoted as actual child porn.
This sounds like an opinion based more on conviction than on evidence.
In any case, even if you're absolutely correct, it doesn't change things. It is still illegal to break this law until such time as it actually is struck down.
Semantics.
In the words of anonymous: "Unconstitutional Law is Unconstitutional"
In other words, it has no force beyond the single person who gets it overturned.
I rather doubt it. The courts are the ones who do the striking down, recall.
Don't let your desire for a perfect world interfere with recognizing reality. There's a big difference between "this should be struck down" and "this will be struck down".
The ruling which established that "standard" pre-dated Larry Flynt's cases, among a lot of other judicial progress. It dates back to when my mother, now an old woman, was still a kid.
The key difference is that the new version of the law uses the court-endorsed standard for obscenity, whereas the old version did not. Given this, I would not be so optimistic about having it struck down.
then the "court-endorsed" standard for obscenity will be struck down.
You can draw an "obscene" picture of minors and go to prison for it in the United States.
1 - This was passed a mere year after that same provision was struck down in the CPPA.
2 - the qualifier of the "Miller test" is pure smokescreen, as looking it up on wikipedia shows this nebulous and entirely subjective criteria. Any DA, Justice, or Juror on a McCarthyist crusade can pretty much lump anything from scant clothing to showing an ankle into this "test".
he Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.[1] It has three parts: Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[2] specifically defined by applicable state law, Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific).
I get the feeling this too will be quashed under scrutiny, and this very case we're commenting on could be the landmark case.
"Prohibits drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition. The law does not state that images of fictional beings who appear to be under 18 engaged in sexual acts that are not deemed to be obscene are rendered illegal in and of their own condition (illustration of sex of fictional minors).
Notes: *the "Miller Test" as outlined by wikipedia is completely subjective.
*this has yet to pass muster on the courts, and this may in fact be a landmark case for it.
I tried kubuntu, and was not impressed. Practically nothing was properly polished, from the lack of compiz inclusion to basic functionality like knetworkmanager being kaput.
then there's the whole hooplah over kde 4, etc.. etc..
I'm sure this is a lack of knowledge issue, just like people who prefer windows to mac, but i'm open to relearning things, and was still having a serious hassle with it.
In contrast, most people buying a Mac end up having to fiddle around for hours choosing and installing the applications they need. And many people end up buying and installing one little Macintosh hack after another to work around the limitations and annoyances of the Mac interface.
as if this doesnt happen all the time for linux power users as well.
There's one difference though, and It's an inconvenient truth: there are more of those hacks consistently available for mac than there are for the gnome desktop environment.
Let's see.. get a mac, type a few urls into safari, run about 6 installers, and go on my way? or.. Get ubuntu, grab a bunch of development frameworks, compile and install those, find the global "mac menu" hack, try to compile and install it.. hope one of the hundreds of points of failure for this install process doesn't go wrong.. etc..etc.
The lack of consistent pre-built packages for most linux projects is to blame for this, and while i'm perfectly capable of compiling from source, the rule rather than the exception has been the undocumented requirement for libraries which did not come pre-packed in my distro, and which I had to hunt down myself.
Really, there needs to be a code of conduct, much like there are wc3 badges for compliant websites, which says "this will properly install/build/whatever on a beige install of most major distros"
You are on to something with your comment. Others have taken your point to the extreme. Studies have been done. People prefer some choice over not having any. People are happier when they do not have to make too may choices, however.
Some choice>No Choice
Too few choices>Too many choices.
Too many choices %gt no way to get what I want
the "some choice" or "I know what's best for you" mentality is how we got the "illusion of choice" and "illusion of freedom" with most US markets, including the electoral system.
Just as synthesizers were the end of "real" musicians, photography was the end of "real" paintings, etc.
I absolutely love that quote about synths.
My mother, who grew up in the beach boys era, holds to this.
Unfortunately, i've been exposed to the blood and guts of electronica composition, and the reality is that computer synths offer means to screw up as infinite as the means to produce compelling works. (all too many times, electronic diaRIAA music results.)
People illegally posting copyrighted binaries to Usenet are the bad guys
im sorry, but that's just not so black and white unless you're a "law = morality" zealot.
Case and point: rifftrax.
This service is cheap, and is one of the few ways hollywood dreck is palatable.. and hilarious. There's just one problem.. the sync work, assuming you can do it yourself, tends to deflate the punchlines, and because of the DMCA and derivative work case law, the good Mr. Nelson cannot market pre-made dvd's. It is to the community's advantage to buy the trax off the site, but share the job of syncing.
It's far from perfect, but with the law lagging so far behind or simply not making allowances for something like this, it's simply one of the best ways to gain full enjoyment from a purchased product.
I like to compare this aspect of the file-sharing phenomenon to the concept of the "tab" from older, more familiar times. Have a little more trust in the public than "i can subpoena your accounts and have them frozen if you don't pay me back"
i can't wait till they implement a DMCA notice-bot and start shutting down every single *chan, every single image mashup community, deviantart, etc. with false positives, and the identification of those patterns within larger images.
The "free speech for sale" cover art comes to mind.
In canada, the MSM has given this issue pervasive coverage, and most of it from Geist's point of view (e.g. it's the worst thing since Hitler's Germany)
Granted it's had a little while to cool down since introduction, but that while has been rife with op-ed's and official stories ripping it a new one.
This includes big tv news, and many local print publications.
according to the end of this video, some MP's are actually making this bill a major campaign issue.
Imagine if feinstein were suddenly bombarded for a month straight with nothing but reporters and constituents asking why she's selling them out to hollywood through letters, print, and live tv.
Dont belittle these efforts, they're actuall making headway there!
The DMCA was actually started by some lackey in the early 90's..
I wish I had bookmarked the page because I can't find it right now, but back in '94 or so, some lackey in either the US trade office or the US copyright office dreamed up this idea of "anti-circumvention".
The MAFIAA got whiff of it, and it went from there.
they tried to push laws through congress, and were laughed out as radical nutbags.
They then tried international organizations, and were unable to push it as a treaty through normal channels.
Finally, they simply invented their own forum and shrouded it in obscurity, where they drafted and rammed the treaty through the industrialized world.
Does this sound like ACTA to you yet? it should, because the same tactics used to advance ACTA related agendas were pioneered with the DMCA/wipo treaties.
We have stopped making things, and now increased automation is rendering the service industry pointless. To be honest, like most of the public, I would rather deal with a machine than another human being, if only because that other human being is inevitably some slack-jawed sack of cynicism and self-loathing who hates their job and thus a large percentage of their existence.
The economy of western Europe, therefore, is developing into one based entirely on producing reality TV shows and suing people for sharing them on the Internet. Hooray.
well, at least the self-serve checkouts cant rebel, form a machine nation called "zero-one", then crush humanity and plug them into a power grid
we all know image recognition is so much more advanced than weight sensitivity.
a little smear on the scanner (all the scanners ive seen even on the human operated machines are filthy) and it's mistaking apples for oranges, oranges for grapefruits, and pineapples for watermelons.
I stand by my analysis though, and predict utter failure if implemented.
Half the time, self-checkout scales are badly calibrated. To exacerbate this issue, about half the people who use them don't realize they operate on product weight.
This leads to accusations of theft when people lean on the wrong portion of the machine, or simply out of nowhere because the AC kicked in blowing onto the scale.
Adding yet more application of the scale's reading toward functionality will create even more glitches in this regard.
Additionally, the self checkouts in my area are used at nazi-mart, where half the inventory requires a card not by law, but because the waltons are invasive (explatives deleted)
I don't think you should have been modded flamebait, I do think we need a "-1 Not Even Wrong." tag.
we need a +1 "for the pillories" tag which will place a stupid comment at +5 as an example of the height of stupidity in a thread.
To prevent threads from turning into a morass of flamebait, only the post with the highest number of "for the pillory" mods will actually have those mod points in effect.
This way, we have a democratically elected "village idiot" post for each slashdot response column.
Slashdot Mirror
You also realize the Supreme Court upheld the pandering provision of the PROTECT Act and didn't overturn anything, right? Looks like you were wrong.
fine i'll reiterate the quote:
In May 2008, the Supreme Court, while ruling on the PROTECT ACT, ruled that the act cannot be used to punish persons who view or make virtual child porn, provided it is not promoted as actual child porn.
clearer now?
And that still doesn't bother you? That people could be thrown into prison because they possess drawn lolicon which they claim is real child pornography (who the hell knows the definition of that anymore), even though no actual children are involved? And all of this sanctioned and approved by the constitutional last line of defense, the supreme court? Some wingbat can be convicted on child porn charges even though he never actually possessed any child porn?!?
Does that seem acceptable to you?
The point is, they can't. Re-read my quotes.
Do I dislike the fact that people who are "different" from normal society are imprisoned for victimless crimes, even if they're later found unconstitutional? Of course I do!
Still, the USSC's record on lolicon is exemplary compared to the DMCA, and the fact they kicked puritanical congressmen to the curb on such a publicly villified subject indicates there is some residue left of the spirit our forefathers forged into the constitution.
On the whole, minority opinion is still protected more now than it was before the nation was born.
They expunge your record, including the requirement you register under "megans law".
Note, though, that in my heated exchange with Free the Cowards I dug and found this section of the protect act had already been overturned.
lolicon a-la 4chan is still legal under US law and now has two separate rulings, including one under Bush's supreme court, protecting it.
I did some further digging on the protect act as it applies to Lolicon
The court stressed that virtual child pornography remained under the protection of the First Amendment, except when it was offered or solicited under the mistaken impression that actual children were depicted.
In May 2008, the Supreme Court, while ruling on the PROTECT ACT, ruled that the act cannot be used to punish persons who view or make virtual child porn, provided it is not promoted as actual child porn.
A quick google of "Free Speech Coalition "PROTECT ACT"" brought up this helpful page with this helpful quote:
even if it is legal to hold privately (i.e. non-real child pornography)
This sounds like an opinion based more on conviction than on evidence.
In any case, even if you're absolutely correct, it doesn't change things. It is still illegal to break this law until such time as it actually is struck down.
Semantics.
In the words of anonymous: "Unconstitutional Law is Unconstitutional"
In other words, it has no force beyond the single person who gets it overturned.
I rather doubt it. The courts are the ones who do the striking down, recall.
Don't let your desire for a perfect world interfere with recognizing reality. There's a big difference between "this should be struck down" and "this will be struck down".
The ruling which established that "standard" pre-dated Larry Flynt's cases, among a lot of other judicial progress. It dates back to when my mother, now an old woman, was still a kid.
The standard will be struck down.
The key difference is that the new version of the law uses the court-endorsed standard for obscenity, whereas the old version did not. Given this, I would not be so optimistic about having it struck down.
then the "court-endorsed" standard for obscenity will be struck down.
The "standard" is the porn equivalent of OOXML.
You can draw an "obscene" picture of minors and go to prison for it in the United States.
1 - This was passed a mere year after that same provision was struck down in the CPPA.
2 - the qualifier of the "Miller test" is pure smokescreen, as looking it up on wikipedia shows this nebulous and entirely subjective criteria. Any DA, Justice, or Juror on a McCarthyist crusade can pretty much lump anything from scant clothing to showing an ankle into this "test".
he Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.[1] It has three parts:
Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[2] specifically defined by applicable state law,
Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific).
I get the feeling this too will be quashed under scrutiny, and this very case we're commenting on could be the landmark case.
Let's hope he has a competent attorney.
a year later they passed this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act
"Prohibits drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition. The law does not state that images of fictional beings who appear to be under 18 engaged in sexual acts that are not deemed to be obscene are rendered illegal in and of their own condition (illustration of sex of fictional minors).
Notes:
*the "Miller Test" as outlined by wikipedia is completely subjective.
*this has yet to pass muster on the courts, and this may in fact be a landmark case for it.
they seem to have missed this crucial change in American law.
one which has not passed muster in the courts, and whose predecessor was struck down.
Yeah, high chance of this staying on the books.
I tried kubuntu, and was not impressed. Practically nothing was properly polished, from the lack of compiz inclusion to basic functionality like knetworkmanager being kaput.
then there's the whole hooplah over kde 4, etc.. etc..
I'm sure this is a lack of knowledge issue, just like people who prefer windows to mac, but i'm open to relearning things, and was still having a serious hassle with it.
In contrast, most people buying a Mac end up having to fiddle around for hours choosing and installing the applications they need. And many people end up buying and installing one little Macintosh hack after another to work around the limitations and annoyances of the Mac interface.
as if this doesnt happen all the time for linux power users as well.
There's one difference though, and It's an inconvenient truth:
there are more of those hacks consistently available for mac than there are for the gnome desktop environment.
Let's see.. get a mac, type a few urls into safari, run about 6 installers, and go on my way? or.. Get ubuntu, grab a bunch of development frameworks, compile and install those, find the global "mac menu" hack, try to compile and install it.. hope one of the hundreds of points of failure for this install process doesn't go wrong.. etc..etc.
The lack of consistent pre-built packages for most linux projects is to blame for this, and while i'm perfectly capable of compiling from source, the rule rather than the exception has been the undocumented requirement for libraries which did not come pre-packed in my distro, and which I had to hunt down myself.
Really, there needs to be a code of conduct, much like there are wc3 badges for compliant websites, which says "this will properly install/build/whatever on a beige install of most major distros"
You are on to something with your comment. Others have taken your point to the extreme. Studies have been done. People prefer some choice over not having any. People are happier when they do not have to make too may choices, however.
Some choice>No Choice
Too few choices>Too many choices.
Too many choices %gt no way to get what I want
the "some choice" or "I know what's best for you" mentality is how we got the "illusion of choice" and "illusion of freedom" with most US markets, including the electoral system.
Just as synthesizers were the end of "real" musicians, photography was the end of "real" paintings, etc.
I absolutely love that quote about synths.
My mother, who grew up in the beach boys era, holds to this.
Unfortunately, i've been exposed to the blood and guts of electronica composition, and the reality is that computer synths offer means to screw up as infinite as the means to produce compelling works. (all too many times, electronic diaRIAA music results.)
People illegally posting copyrighted binaries to Usenet are the bad guys
im sorry, but that's just not so black and white unless you're a "law = morality" zealot.
Case and point: rifftrax.
This service is cheap, and is one of the few ways hollywood dreck is palatable.. and hilarious. There's just one problem.. the sync work, assuming you can do it yourself, tends to deflate the punchlines, and because of the DMCA and derivative work case law, the good Mr. Nelson cannot market pre-made dvd's. It is to the community's advantage to buy the trax off the site, but share the job of syncing.
It's far from perfect, but with the law lagging so far behind or simply not making allowances for something like this, it's simply one of the best ways to gain full enjoyment from a purchased product.
I like to compare this aspect of the file-sharing phenomenon to the concept of the "tab" from older, more familiar times. Have a little more trust in the public than "i can subpoena your accounts and have them frozen if you don't pay me back"
"rascals"?
i mean.. the rest is all well and good.. but "rascals"?
To adopt the jon stewart mindset... how was your service in the army of the potomac : )?
i can't wait till they implement a DMCA notice-bot and start shutting down every single *chan, every single image mashup community, deviantart, etc. with false positives, and the identification of those patterns within larger images.
The "free speech for sale" cover art comes to mind.
bzzt! the correct response is: "she needs to watch where she slings her stomach"
In canada, the MSM has given this issue pervasive coverage, and most of it from Geist's point of view (e.g. it's the worst thing since Hitler's Germany)
Granted it's had a little while to cool down since introduction, but that while has been rife with op-ed's and official stories ripping it a new one.
This includes big tv news, and many local print publications.
according to the end of this video, some MP's are actually making this bill a major campaign issue.
Imagine if feinstein were suddenly bombarded for a month straight with nothing but reporters and constituents asking why she's selling them out to hollywood through letters, print, and live tv.
Dont belittle these efforts, they're actuall making headway there!
The DMCA was actually started by some lackey in the early 90's..
I wish I had bookmarked the page because I can't find it right now, but back in '94 or so, some lackey in either the US trade office or the US copyright office dreamed up this idea of "anti-circumvention".
The MAFIAA got whiff of it, and it went from there.
they tried to push laws through congress, and were laughed out as radical nutbags.
They then tried international organizations, and were unable to push it as a treaty through normal channels.
Finally, they simply invented their own forum and shrouded it in obscurity, where they drafted and rammed the treaty through the industrialized world.
Does this sound like ACTA to you yet? it should, because the same tactics used to advance ACTA related agendas were pioneered with the DMCA/wipo treaties.
We have stopped making things, and now increased automation is rendering the service industry pointless. To be honest, like most of the public, I would rather deal with a machine than another human being, if only because that other human being is inevitably some slack-jawed sack of cynicism and self-loathing who hates their job and thus a large percentage of their existence.
The economy of western Europe, therefore, is developing into one based entirely on producing reality TV shows and suing people for sharing them on the Internet. Hooray.
well, at least the self-serve checkouts cant rebel, form a machine nation called "zero-one", then crush humanity and plug them into a power grid
it's based on photo scanning now..
we all know image recognition is so much more advanced than weight sensitivity.
a little smear on the scanner (all the scanners ive seen even on the human operated machines are filthy) and it's mistaking apples for oranges, oranges for grapefruits, and pineapples for watermelons.
I stand by my analysis though, and predict utter failure if implemented.
Half the time, self-checkout scales are badly calibrated. To exacerbate this issue, about half the people who use them don't realize they operate on product weight.
This leads to accusations of theft when people lean on the wrong portion of the machine, or simply out of nowhere because the AC kicked in blowing onto the scale.
Adding yet more application of the scale's reading toward functionality will create even more glitches in this regard.
Additionally, the self checkouts in my area are used at nazi-mart, where half the inventory requires a card not by law, but because the waltons are invasive (explatives deleted)
I don't think you should have been modded flamebait, I do think we need a "-1 Not Even Wrong." tag.
we need a +1 "for the pillories" tag which will place a stupid comment at +5 as an example of the height of stupidity in a thread.
To prevent threads from turning into a morass of flamebait, only the post with the highest number of "for the pillory" mods will actually have those mod points in effect.
This way, we have a democratically elected "village idiot" post for each slashdot response column.