Supreme Court Rules Against Anti-Porn Law 975
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "From Fox News/AP, the Supreme Court has ruled that the COPA (Child Online Protection Act), passed in 1998 ostensibly to shield kids from Web porn, is probably an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech. This is not quite like 'striking the law down' because the court simply said a lower court was correct to block the law from taking effect, since it likely violates the First Amendment, and sent the law back to a lower court for trial. The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics of the antipornography law said that it would restrict far too much material that adults may legally see and buy, the court said."
Re:Fox News' stellar unbiased reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fox News' stellar unbiased reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fox News' stellar unbiased reporting (Score:5, Informative)
That's from the AP. You know, the Associated Press. Also quoted on CNN. Sorry, no Fox bias here.
The actual court finding: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oblig. Simpsons Quote (Score:3, Informative)
How are they going to stop it all? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:this law stinks (Score:3, Informative)
To expand your supermarket / www analogy, imagine if your son bought a candy bar and found it really contained cigarettes. That is the state of porn content on the web.
Dan East
Re:Surprising.. (Score:3, Informative)
You do realise that this was signed into law in 1998? Who was president then?
Re:Oblig. Simpsons Quote (Score:1, Informative)
Link To Decision (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Just media wide bias... (Score:3, Informative)
That's why, according to the Pew Research Group, members of the press are five times more likely to be liberal than conservative. Also in 1992, 7% of the members of the press voted for Bush Sr. as opposed to 37% of the general populace.
Also interesting from that studay was the absolute inablility of liberal members of the press to identify a "liberal" news org. Almost 3/4ths of them could not. You may debate the merrits of the belief that the press in general is left slanted, but their are clearly plenty of orginizations that are.
Also, a recent UCLA/University of Chicago study showed that
"Our results show a very significant liberal bias,"
They also found that the Drudge Report and Fox News Special Report were pretty much at the true center of the political spectrum.
And we all know how the UCLA is far far right-wing, right? You can read the study here [harvard.edu] (warning, PDF).
Re:What happens when children look at themselves? (Score:1, Informative)
You were looking RIGHT AT HIS FUCKING USER NAME AND YOU MISSPELL IT? WHAT THE FUCK?
It's "hamster". H-A-M-S-T-E-R. There's no fucking P in there anywhere. Fucking learn how to fucking spell, for fuck's sake.
Re:The children be danmed (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not going to bother reading the court opinion this time, but I can pretty much guess the four judges come from this group:
Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Kennedy.
They were appointed by Republican presidents (surprise). The same group of people, more or less, have voted to:
* throw out the recent case regarding 'under god' in the pledge.
* allow the government to hold indefinitely foreigners without any legal recourse.
* decide that a 75-year copyright wasn't against the intent of the framers of the constitution.
* tell Florida to vote for Bush in the 2000 elections.
In each of these cases, I believe 3-5 of these justices have voted the way I described. There are many other examples as well.
Re:Fox News' stellar unbiased reporting (Score:2, Informative)
In my experience, NPR is better at reporting the facts in a story
---
That tells me a lot. When was the last time you heard NPR discuss the improved economic condition in Iraq? When was the last time you heard NPR discuss the faked Paletstinian funerals?
Where is the NPR leading story on the propaganda piece Moore just put out with a list of all the factual errors Moore made?
Where is the NPR story on the scandal of awarding an Academy award to Bowling for Columbine when it had been shown that Moore deliberatey pulled quotes out of context, and spliced speeched from two different times nearly a year apart and presented them as happening at the same time?
These are not opinions, they are facts. Facts NOT reported by NPR. So, tell me again how NPR reports facts so well?
Re:Just media wide bias... (Score:5, Informative)
Ummmm, this seems to be a significant problem with the study. The "true center" as compared to what? How did they measure that? Sure, if you think Drudge report is "centrist" then of course everything else seems "liberal."
In general, members of the mass media are not guided primarily by being "liberal" or "conservative" but rather by doing what they perceive to be their jobs. Whether reporters vote for Bush or not is hardly an indication of how they will report the news. Here are some articles [buzzflash.com] refuting the myth of the liberal media. And here's a study [fair.org] that specifically counters the studies you quote.
Re:this law stinks (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, other posters here have talked about how porn isn't really damaging to kids or something, but wtf do you tell a 9 year old when he sees a dog fucking a woman? And what do you do when he starts eyeing Fido? I'd rather not have to deal with that.
Re:The children be danmed (Score:4, Informative)
And yet you're "informative"? I guess in the sense that you're "informing" people about your wild-ass guesses, maybe...
Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Kennedy.
They were appointed by Republican presidents (surprise)
FYI, the five justices voting to uphold the injunction were Kennedy (Republican), Stevens (Republican), Souter (Republican), Thomas (Republican), and Ginsburg (Democrat). The four who voted against the injunction were Rehnquist (Republican), Scalia (Republican), O'Connor (Republican), and Breyer (Democrat). Breyer wrote a dissent that Rehnquist and O'Connor signed on to, as a matter of fact. Next time, dump the crystal ball and try actually reading the thing before shooting from the hip like that.
Re:Fox News' stellar unbiased reporting (Score:3, Informative)
Fahrenheit 911 was indeed full of lies, half-truths, distortions, and factual errors. Every time someone from the Bush Administration appeared onscreen, I could count on hearing at least one.
Were there any others I missed?
Re:Just media wide bias... (Score:3, Informative)
Now, if you want to know where journalists and the public stand relative to one another on policy questions, why not ask them [fair.org]? The results are surprising, though admittedly, these biases may not carry over into their reporting. I do have to commend the Groseclose & Milyo study for focusing on that rather than yet again analyzing the journalists themselves. (You do realize that this is the work of two individual professors, not of their institutions, right? Bringing up the politics of UCLA is a red herring. Find out what sort of politics Groseclose & Milyo have and we can talk.)
Re:Oblig. Simpsons Quote (Score:2, Informative)
Pornographic Attitude in everyday life. - Anecdotal. Not a shred of science in there.
See the section on "Dehumanization of Women towrds the bottom - A link to links?
Edward Donnerstein, 1983 - I can't even think where to begin with this. Irresponsible bullshit. Saying that porn makes men want to rape women is so disgusting as to not need a response.
Men and porn - A blog? You linked to a blog?
The Surgeon Generals report on Pornography and Public Health - Ok. I read through as much of that as I could but I am guessing you didn't read much. There is not much in the way of concrete results in there. The only thing they concluded really is that you should teach young men to respect women and that helps counter any ill effects that may occur. I could have told you that.
Female Objects of Semantic Dehumanization and Violence - Has little to do with porn and more about the history of the dehumanization of women which was a lot worse BEFORE porn even existed. If anything this goes against your point.
Watchtower Destruction - Another blog.
Where is the scientific evidence? Keep trying.
Re:Just media wide bias... (Score:3, Informative)
That is from the Pew Research Group study. So it does exist. None of the groups (Liberal, Moderate, Conservative) from the survey had any real problem naming a conservative news source. And how does that show that then that the "press is much more representative of the political spectrum"? What it may truly shows is that many in the press are blind to their own biases. If we were to reverse those results, and 75% of the conservative members of the press could not name a conservative news outlet, what would you think then? I mean, come on.
This may not be the case. In a country where many people call themselves independent, voting for a person does not imply political leaning.
If a group or a person consistantly votes a certain way, you can typically infer their true politcal leanings. Many people may like to call themselves "independent" but truly aren't.
However, most us know that public universities do not tend to overly discriminate on political issues, being rather more concerned with the professors ability to get money and write articles
Professors get tenured and then get to keep their job for life as long as they don't break the law. Companies give money to universities to do research that the companies then profit off of. I'm sorry, but to suggest that the majority of public university professors don't have a left leaning bias is just plain ridiculous. I really don't think most people who even entertain the idea of making that argument. The only argument most people make is whether or not it's a good thing.
School
% of Professors Registered to Parties of the Left
Penn State University
85.5 percent
San Diego State University
87.9 percent
State U. of New York at Binghamton
97.2 percent
Syracuse University
96.2 percent
U.C. Berkeley
89.4 percent
U.C.L.A.
94.0 percent
U.C. San Diego
94.3 percent
U.C. Santa Barbara
98.6 percent
U. Colorado at Boulder
95.9 percent
U. of Houston
76.3 percent
U. of Maryland
85.5 percent
UNLV
91.0 percent
U. Texas at Austin
86.2 percent
More as well... just do a google search to find them. Now... where are the major public universities that do not have such a heavy leaning left? But, of course, stats are stupid so here's a quote:
"It's completely accurate that, compared to the larger population, universities are far, far to the left," Michael Munger, chair of the political science department at Duke University.
Of course, what does the chair of the Poli-Sci department at Duke know about politics?
Re:Just media wide bias... (Score:1, Informative)
Hitler's party was the National Socialists, but their opponents were the Socialist Democrats. It's not the name that matters, but the actions they take, and the Nazis' actions were decidedly right wing.
The political terms left and right date from some seating arrangement in some French assembly around the time of the Revolution, when the humanist idealists were seated on the left and the pro-monarchy elitists were seated on the right. Anarchists are at the extreme of the left wing, and statists are at the extreme of the right, and they had a hell of a fight in Spain in the '30s. Some say the ends wrap around, fit together with a wad of Stupid[tm] brand bubblegum, and people at the ends go back and forth between ultra-left and ultra-right ideas. Others say the whole thing's bollox and use the 2-axis spectrum or don't even bother trying to fit ideas into categories.
Libertarians are usually considered right-wing because many leading Libertarians want to be the oppressive government, doing whatever they want to whomever they want with whatever power they can get their hands on, with no humanist moral conscience and nobody stopping them. You can also look at the vast majority of the Web's loudest self-described Libertarians who strongly support the USA Patriot Act and jailing people without charge and such. Libertarianism doesn't really fit into the left-right spectrum, though. There are many aspects of Libertarianism that could be considered more left wing than right.
Ever since World War 2, Hitler has always been held up as the epitome of the extreme right wing, while the extreme left wing is generally represented by Marx or Mao. It is only in the past ten years, and only from the United States, that I have ever seen anyone try to claim that Hitler was anything other than right wing.