Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight 529
A bill that could allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years to combat those who trade in child pornography has been unanimously approved by a Senate panel. "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote. [...] An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
> "Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act.
Revenge? (Score:4, Insightful)
alteration illegal?? (Score:5, Insightful)
As repugnant as child pornography is, this seems to be overstepping the realm of protecting children. Why should the alteration of an image, even to a repugnant end, be illegal? Possession of child porn is illegal, so it's in the interest of the "alterer" not to create fake child porn. I know we find it morally reprehensible, but there is no harm coming to anyone in and of the act of alteration itself. This seems a tad intrusive, and an undesirable precedent if nothing else.
Uhuh... (Score:5, Insightful)
back in the 80s its like all they talked about was satan worshipers and commies... now its kiddy diddlers and terrorists.
Meanwhile, the people who aren't doing anything wrong get no attention AT ALL, when we could actually use a thing or two to get done around here, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO... they'll just take our money to go fight Russian criminals through the inner-tubes.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:2, Insightful)
And of course, they will have to have the convictions to justify their budgets. And when a bureaucrat's budget is in jeopardy, his scruples become, let's say, flexible.
whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa there. Photoshopping up child porn is going to be a crime, even if no child abuse occurs?
I could see if *distributing* such an image was a crime (because of the use of a kid's likeness), but producing it in the first place? If the law says what TFA says it does, this is constitutionally VERY shaky.
more punishment for victimless crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, 17 year old highschool kids flashing their boobs on webcams or bored people modifying photos will now have their lives destroyed by these witchunts and blacklists even though they haven't abused anyone at all. Brilliant progress our society is making in the 21st century.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is no abuse, and, indeed, no actual children involved, then what the hell is the justification?
Not to mention the whole, "Whoops I clicked on a non-descriptive link, and my browser cached the imagine and now I'm in jail for kiddie porn" issue.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
This one makes it illegal and throws money at various corporations and government departments, the last one just made it illegal.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:4, Insightful)
For the children (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
1 BILLION DOLLARS??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:more punishment for victimless crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
We've always gotta have an enemy, don't you know? And damned if the real one isn't almost always ourselves.
This is really whacked...typical of Congress (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's say there 10,000. We could simply off $100,000 and amnesty (only for viewing not creating or abusing children) for them to turn themselves in to receive help.
Okay, so maybe there are more than 10,000 in the USA. Let's say there are a 100,000. In which case we could offer them all $10,000.
Heck, even if there were 1,000,000 we could offer them a $1,000 each. Of course, realize if there are that many in the USA we have a problem because that means 1 in 250 of us are the targets of this.
***
War on Drugs
War on Terror
War on Transfats
War on Child Porn
Not saying child porn is not insidiously evil. But it seems to be an extremely high ticket price. I'd really like to know how thought out this is.
Now if this is supposed to be against global child porn. Are we ready to invade Thailand and the rest of Asia in order to stop the child porn industries over there?
Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Altering a picture digitally to show a crime being perpetrated on someone is protected under the first amendment - Ask Hollywood. Although some shoot-em-up movies are crimes against taste.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
If it becomes a matter for the courts, then it's something that can be dragged on for years, repeatedly used as a diversion, and perhaps even used in a campaign. And when it fails, they can try again and again paint themselves as Tireless Protectors of the Children.
Re:Not illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but AFAIK there's no law against transmitting footage of a crime being committed. Though, in most jurisdictions I'm aware of, if you didn't report it to the proper authorities you'd become an accessory after the fact.
My guess is they're tacking this on so there's no dispute about going in and seizing all the equipment used in the production and broadcast of the video even if the actual owner of the that equipment wasn't involved in the crime.
Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Others will argue that the porn creates its own market, and might give people creepy sexual appetites that they wouldn't otherwise have.
Of course this is controversial, but a decent rhetorician should at least be able to argue the former point without sounding like a kiddy fiddler.
Maybe I'm giving legislators way too much credit.
ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, these people aren't just being put into prison because they might abuse children, they're actively supporting and distributing these acts to other people. Putting someone in jail for kiddie porn is completely reasonable to me, although I do think the process is emotionally charged to the point that it's hard for justice to be done in these cases. It ends up smelling like more of a witch hunt than anything, but, as CS Lewis said, witch hunts are completely reasonable if witches exist.
their example seems a little off to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines.
It doesn't seem like someone would name a file "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" if they were really trying to share child pornography on a P2P network, especially if they were planning on not getting caught. I mean, that file name tells you nothing about the file other than that it's illegal and involves children. It doesn't even actually mention sex, although I guess it kind of implies it. Although I definitely don't have any first hand experience, I would imagine that pedophiles, like other people, would have specific preferences in their pornography and would want to know at least a little bit about the content before they download a file. I mean, I'm not going to download a file that's simply called "hardcore adult.mpg" when I'm looking for porn. What if it's two dudes? What if it's 2 girls 1 cup? Anyway, the example file name they gave sounds more like a file shared by someone who is trying to catch pedophiles than an actual pedophile trying to share child pornography.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
The constitution does not give rights, it limits the power of government.
Which constitutional power gives the government the ability to decide what someone can and cannot do with Photoshop?
While we're at it, who decides whether the result is "sexual" or "explicit", and are we going to get a comprehensive and exhaustive list ahead of time, or is it going to be another blatantly unconstitutional position of "I know it when I see it and can decide that it's illegal after the fact".
What else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:3, Insightful)
What a waste of money (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming there's a thousand of these illegal acts performed this year, that's a million dollars per act. This is nearly 7000 houses that could be bought outright and then given away in my neighborhood.
What a waste of money. It's nearly $3.32 of every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A (from 2007 population estimates). Somehow I don't think child pornography is so widespread that it requires this kind of money.
Sure, there will be people saying it's worth $3.32 to know that no child is being molested, but that's not what we're buying here. At best we're buying that people will fight children being exploited; something that we've been paying for already.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:3, Insightful)
What is porn? Shes a witch? shes made of wood! (Score:5, Insightful)
A witch hunt is generally defined, in it's normal emotive context, by the prosecution and identification of witches with a complete and utter lack of regard for any standards of evidence, justice, fairness or internal consistency.
It reminds me of the old monty python skit.
(I paraphrase from memory)
She's a witch!
how do you know?
Because she burns!
What else do we burn?
Wood!
So she is made of wood!
Yes, and wood floats!
aha! what else floats?
ducks!
Yes! Therefore witches are lighter than ducks!
(puts the witch on a broken scale which shows she is lighter than a duck)
Burn her!!!
What is child porn exactly?
Most attorneys will tell you that in most US states, that question is nonsensical when you approach the "border line".
It used to be defined (the first child porn laws came about in 1976, before which it was entirely legal in every way).... that child porn was a child "engaged in sexual contact". That was very shortly later amended to "or showing obvious arousal".
That's a pretty simple definition and the border-cases are rare.
But today, child porn in most states is defined as
"any image of a child, or someone appearing to be a child (or fictionally created to represent a child) which is viewed with the intent to cause arousal or sexual satisfaction"
There are a number of men in prison for things like.... owning a collection of boys underwear catalogs. Or taking photos of girls in bathing suits.
What it comes down to, and the issue that I have with these laws, is that it is impossible to know whether you are possessing child pornography BEFORE the jury reaches a verdict.
In fact, a given image can both be simultaneously porn and not-porn depending on who is looking at it.
In fact, the jury is instructed to divine the "intent" of the viewer of the image, often years after the actual "viewing" took place.
Obviously, there are plenty of cases with dudes downloading videos of 5 year olds being penetrated and I guess there's no argument in that case, but the cultural climate which allows laws that allow statements to enter a US court room such as "jury divined intent", "illegal fiction" and "simultaneous porn and not-porn" are the sort of things that lead us hand-in-hand toward the collapse of our fundamental structures of justice and freedom.
The fact that laws are allowed with these sorts of phrases are a travesty to our judicial and government systems and represent a black-eye to the framing of the constitution and modern law.
That's just my opinion, but I'm sticking to it.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
Child Pron... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm all for fighting child pornography, as I have a child myself. However, these unanimous approvals of such HUGE amounts of money ALWAYS end up lining some corrupt politicians pockets. Please, fight child porn! Just make sure this money isn't going to end up paying for some guys Ferrari.
Honestly, what do they need to make something like this happen in reality? Or is it even possible? How do they expect to control the flow of millions upon billions of images floating around the internet and filter out only child porn? Let alone investigate and prosecute every single instance that they find? No amount of money is going to make this any more effective than it already is or can be, with the funding they already have, in my opinion.
If they are going to be allocating funding like this based on their own personal feelings on the topic, then they need to make sure that the agencies using this money aren't paying 10 times more for equipment that would otherwise be much cheaper in the real world.
Am I implying corruption?? Why yes, yes I am, because I have worked for the Government before and I have seen it happen. The agency that worked on the floor right below my office got in trouble for similar reasons. Millions of dollars were allocated to improve safety across the state, but instead went to buy things like "company cars" that cost twice as much as they should, and computer equipment that never even made it out in to the field and disappeared immediately upon delivery.
The only reason I rant is because that is a BILLION freakin dollars! Most people cant even fathom that amount of money. And the senate is just throwing it around like our hard earned, reluctantly paid taxes simply fall out of the sky. And yet, somehow, they still cant seem to find money for more simple and obvious necessities.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't pretend there is no difference in relative incomes. And don't pull statistical bullshit to cover your prejudice.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:4, Insightful)
There are certain crimes which are so emotionally charged people will vehemently support lawmakers going to any length to prevent them. Going back to the speeding - What percentage of speeders are in fatal collisions? I don't remember exactly, but it's less than 1, yet still it's probably the most prosecuted crime in the US.
What percentage of people who possess child porn actually paid for it, thus supporting the child-pr0n industry? What percentage of those in possession of child porn eventually decide to go out and abuse children? I'm hypothesizing it's not a great number, but I would appreciate it if anybody with hard facts on the issue could confirm or disprove. Even so, many parents appear to feel it's the biggest threat their children face and no price is too high if it reduces the risk one iota.
This will lead to false accusations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevertheless you are right that I'm from Europe. I have to remind everyone that
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:4, Insightful)
If there is no abuse, and, indeed, no actual children involved, then what the hell is the justification?
Well there are actual children involved, the ones whose photos are used to create the faux-porn. Instead of the child being directly abused, it's their image that is being abused. We already have laws regarding using someone's likeness without their consent, your face is considered something you own and its unwelcomed use a violation of our privacy, and that's for adults. 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.
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.
The question is: while I agree in some ways with the intent of the law, can I expect that it will actually be sanely written? Or is this simply going to broaden the brush with which the color "sex offender" is painted? I don't know, haven't read the law, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the latter.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this prove? Well, it may prove one of two things:
1) African american people are inherently evil
or
2) WASP america is still terribly discriminative and consistently violates the human rights of black people.
or
3) As black (or latinos, why dont we throw em in as well), are generally poorer people than WASPs, that may explain their extra proneness to violate the law as there just arent any jobs they can do cause they dont have enough dough to get the same education and fill the same economic niches as white people.
or
4) Man, im getting tired, but i could put a 100 bullets theorizing on numbers that PROVE NO CAUSALITY AT ALL!|
Just an Excuse for Spying on Everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like the RICO act was used to prosecute pro-life protesters and the Patriot Act has primarily resulted in arrests unrelated to terrorism, this funding will be used to dig up any manner of crime, not just child porn.
The real title of this bill should be "$1bln to scour the internet for whatever we want and prosecute whatever turns up." Whenever the government says its "for the children," beware.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Justification: nobody likes creepy people (Score:5, Insightful)
This is most frequently used when discussing "real" (obvious) child porn.
They state that the viewing of porn (even child porn made back when it was legal to make without distribution of any kind) constitutes a "re-victimization" of the person in the image.
This is so they can get around the shady and un-proven idea that porn somehow leads to rape (or child porn leads to child rape), which is the original justification behind the laws.... but that nobody can admit because it's a flawed, emotive argument.
In fact, the real reason for these laws is that most people find pedophiles iicky and it makes their skin crawl to think that someone get a boner while thinking about their kid. Frankly, it's that personal discomfort that causes people to applaud when our legislator seek out new and creative ways to ensure they aren't allowed to continue being creepy (by thinking those creepy thoughts).
That is the REAL basis of these laws.
Re:thought crime (Score:4, Insightful)
I kinda feel like it's the exact same reasoning that goes "violent videogames lead to violent people"... which isn't exactly true.
Re:This is really whacked...typical of Congress (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
The safety bit is FUD, rhetoric meant to manufacture consent with the revenue stream.
I'd send them to a shrink, give 'em a stern lecture about the consequences of one's actions in real life, but I wouldn't cage someone for something they have only thought about doing.
I've thought about committing many atrocities to people who don't use their turn signals, but I shouldn't be jailed unless I actually give in to road rage, even if I watch Deathproof or Carrie or any other car-murder movies in my spare time.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't the reasoning behind the prohibition on possession. We don't jail people because of statistical likelihoods. Possession is illegal because it is considered a continuation and extension of the original crime of sexual abuse, and because (like with drugs) the thought is that if you cut off demand, the suppliers will necessarily abuse fewer children. The legal reasoning has had to show some connection between possession and the actual abuse of children in order to be upheld in most countries with a guarantee of free expression.
The previous laws were outlawing pornography involving adults that only pretended or appeared to be underage, and of completely virtual child porn. The law here is about creating virtual child pornography, but using a real minor's identifiable likeness to do so. It's an interesting legal situation since there is no direct sexual abuse anywhere in the chain.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, being a revenue stream for the city doesn't hurt, either.
Keep in mind that people, in general, are stupid. They are often incapable of overriding emotional response with rational thought. It's sad, but even if you came out with hard statistics that showed no causation, parents would probably still riot in the streets if politicians went soft on child porn.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't tire yourself out. The whole point of the race example was that no causality has been proven.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt that anyone seeked out being a pedophile, either. What you're attracted to is just as much a part of you than your skin color; perhaps even more, since skin color is skin deep, while attraction is part of your mental makeup - your soul, to risk a religious flamewar.
Actually, no. Speeding is a cause of accidents, while collecting kiddy porn and molesting children are both caused - at least in some cases - by pedophilia. It is like the old example about ice cream consumption causing drowning deaths, because they both spike in the same days (when it's hot).
They are distributing pictures of said acts - assuming we're talking about hardcore child porn, rather than softcore which could simply depict kids in swimwear by the pool - not the acts themselves. They may or may not support said activites; I've seen people draw or render pictures of some pretty fucked up fantasies and upload them on the Net, but that doesn't mean that they support acting said fantasies out in real life.
I assume you meant "for distributing kiddie porn". Please further specify what categories do you mean: photographs, photomanipulated photographs, computer-generated images, drawn images, written stories, spoken stories, audio recordings, manipulated audio recordings, computer-generated audio recordings (voice synthesizer etc.), computer games, some combination of the previous ?
And, for that matter, should I go to jail because by listing these categories I might have induced a Slashdot-reading pedophile to think of a dating sim with underage characters, and he might get a hardon from that, so the listing could be considered pornographic in nature ?
The process of killing random people who are accused of being witches doesn't become any more reasonable even if one assumes that such things might actually exist. There are also some minor problems even if the accused by some miracle actually happens to be a witch, such as determining what, exactly speaking, has she done and what, if any, punishment does she deserve.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why on earth would that be true? Why go to the trouble of kidnapping/seducing a child and have a huge risk of jailtime and physical harm when you can make the fake stuff easier and with less risk? As photoshopping becomes easier and easier, I would imagine the demand and production of real child porn will actually go down as long as it is a lesser crime.
And FSM save the dumb bastard that eventually takes that as a sign that the fake stuff needs to be made a worse crime than actual child porn, because he'll have just encouraged the victimization of real children.
Re:thought crime (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the next election when absolutely no congressmen want to face ads that say "Senator X voted AGAINST a bill to stop child pornography". Based on that alone, this bill could be 100% pure pork-barrel with an extra one billion in earmarks added on and it would still pass.
Re:This will not stop child porn. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you've missed their objectives.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Irreversible mental anguish, seems kinda strong for what amounts to an embarrassing picture. (that very few people will ever see and those that do will not advertise the fact) Embarrassing stuff happens to kids, then they get over it. I got pants-ed on the playground in fourth grade, and had to put up with "Adam Bair, has no hair, even in his underwear" being sung to me for most of the rest of the year. I remember that it happened but it hasn't scarred me for life. By junior high everyone, including me, had pretty much forgotten it. I figure that's about the same level of embarrassment and "mental anguish" as getting photoshopped into a porn photo. The real damage done to real children is by people producing real child porn, namely because they are abusing the child in question. Prosecute the abuse, not the byproduct.
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
How is altering an innocent image so it becomes sexual in nature actively supporting child abuse? This is explicitly made illegal with this new law.
It seems rather clear to me that due to the strong feelings about the subject, we are not targetting the abusers, but anyone with a desire. That, I feel is completely wrong on many levels. Not the least because what you are sexually attracted to isn't something you control, whether it's BDSM, dwarfs, well-hung goats, grandmothers in chain mail, or young teens. As long as you don't actually harm anyone, why should the possibility that you might make you eligible for punishment?
If you really want to reduce the risk of children being abused, the most effective way would be to make it illegal for fathers to be alone with their children. All of them. There's a much higher risk of a child being abused by its father than a paedophile stranger.
Re:What I vaguely remember (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess we can't see movies any more like Fast Times At Ridgemont High [wikipedia.org] since they portray onscreen underage sex.....well, at least we got to see Phoebe Cates back in the good old days....
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting aside any arguments about the "war on drugs", drug laws are - as a matter of fact - very heavily tilted against people with brown skin.
Further, I don't know where this 80% number came from... There are [census.gov] 35.5 million people living below the poverty level. 16 million claim to be "white alone, not hispanic". That's about 46%.
And while we're talking statistics and you bring up "robbery". From this article [usdoj.gov]:
likely to be serving time for a property offense (27%),
compared to blacks (18%)and Hispanics (17%).
So why so many blacks in prison?
quarter of black State inmates (24%) and Hispanic inmates
(23%) were drug offenders, compared to a seventh of white
inmates (14%).
Of course, I'm having a bit of fun with statistics here, and everything is more complicated than prison stats... but you guys are both arguing over false data.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'm going to man up and not post AC... (Score:3, Insightful)
"child porn spam" != child porn. You can't say that X is widespread if your only evidence is that there's a lot of spam email that refers to X.
I see a lot of spam advertising cheap pills that will make my penis 12 inches long and enable me to shoot a bucket of semen every 15 minutes. Somehow I'm not sure that it's genuine.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad.
Re:thought crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Ding ding ding! Now you're getting the picture. Congress passes a bill that can't possibly do any good, all so that they can throw truckloads of money at their friends in the name of "protecting children". This is a prime example of why we need the federal budget process to be a lot more transparent and need laws that limit the ability to attach riders to legislation.
Frankly, this bill appears to be up to its neck in bullshit. When laws were about protecting children, those were okay, and most people wouldn't disagree with them. This bill, though, crosses a lot of lines. First, they start going after fake porn that includes pictures of children. Okay, I suppose you could argue that this protects children from having their pictures used and being humiliated when other people see them and believe that they were abused. Certainly not nearly as bad as actually being abused, but I can still see that as reasonable to protect against. That said, this screams "civil lawsuit" to me if it is really bad enough to warrant it. It certainly does not seem "ten years in jail" serious or whatever.
Perhaps more importantly, the first time they go after somebody who took an old childhood picture of a consenting adult and modified it in that way, the law suddenly and clearly crosses a legal line from protecting children to protecting the idea of children. That's where the law crosses the line from merely being questionable right into crackpot pork barrel bullshit territory.
And even in the case of pictures of children "altered", the big question that arises is where you draw the line. Does every teenager who does a pasteup of an underage girl's head on a naked model's body go to jail? Technically speaking, that violates the description I've seen of this law. What about the kid who draws red nipples onto a girl wearing a white cotton T-shirt as though they were showing through and then posts that picture on the wall at school? It is clearly an altered photo of a child that has been converted into pornography, so obviously the kid who posted it must be a sexual deviant who should spend twenty years behind bars.... Crackpot bullshit territory again. Why don't we just arrest everyone who has ever drawn a moustache on a girl's photo and posted it. After all, that's equally humiliating. Let's just legislate morality and proper manners. If a kid can't behave like a proper adult, we should lock them up for life. Why not? Perhaps because this, too, is crackpot bullshit?
As for the so-called open question of whether profiting from a live webcam broadcast of child abuse is legal, no it isn't an open question. You cannot profit from a crime, and child abuse is a crime. Every case where someone was not allowed to profit from books about a crime should be ample proof of that. The legality of a live webcam of child abuse is about as much of an open question as whether the sky is blue or the sun is yellow. If you want to get really pedantic, you might argue that the sky is clear and merely scatters light unevenly, or that the sun consists of a broad range of light frequencies, but in practical terms, your argument either way is nothing more than a bunch of hot air.
We don't need more laws on the book that declare things that are already illegal to be illegal. We have orders of magnitude too many laws on the books already. The way I see it, if God thought ten were enough, we sure don't need hundreds of thousands. :-) We need to get rid of archaic laws, not add lots more useless ones that just clutter the books and waste the courts' time and energy. We should save the courts for extraordinary problems, not use them as the first resort for every little minor infraction, and in my assessment, the latter is much more likely to occur than the former if such a foolhardy law passes.
Senator Biden, quit wasting everyone's time with this crackpot bullshit and spend that money to actually help the children---reducing our national deficit so our children don't ha
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Reckless government spending (Score:4, Insightful)
Then there's the government. It is supposed to work the same way, as an organization that could have its ass handed to it at any moment by its "investors", so it had better do well. Especially since it has WAY more money, and WAY more "shareholders".
Instead, the government has no fear. It can write a check for a billion dollars, without anywhere near as much scrutiny as a company applies to a stupid plane ticket. You know the people in government haven't done the homework, a billion dollars is just a "nice round number" to make politicians look tough on crime. And if anyone were to stand up and protest this spending, they'd probably be labelled a pornographer themselves and bashed into oblivion. (That reminds me of the equal bull of committing "treason" for opposing any and all military spending.)
Companies like to encourage employees to help them save, to nickel and dime things, acting "like it's your own money". And ridiculously, I've seen people who put real effort into helping their stupid company, on a scale that is insignificant compared to government spending; while those same people have never lifted a finger to question the government. They give a huge percentage of their money away and don't care what happens to it. What's wrong here?
Re:What a waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)
Accepting this as a legal definition of "coercion" would result in legal wonders such as me claiming that Coca-cola advertising combined with social engineering by this corporation coerced me to drink Coke. I'll sue for $10 Bazillion.
Or are you perhaps going to apply some creative double standards and define your "coercion" as only applicable against children? You can't have it both ways you know, if such subtle coercion exists as a valid "abuse" to be prosecuted, then all of the worlds advertising companies, high-schools (peer pressure), Internet and pretty much anything that can be construed as "manipulating someone's priorities" is fair game.
Again, this is so nebulous as to be used as a mumbo-jumbo excuse for pretty much everything that a person does you do not agree with. "Oh, sure, she swears up and down that it was her choice but she is out of her mind, clearly she had to be 'systematically debased', poor thing, let's ignore all she says because we just know better ...."
This very dangerous line of illogic has lead to persecutions of whole bunch of people for "satanic abuse" of poor-little-children back in the 80s. With a wee help from "therapists" looking for "systematic debasement"....
I hope you realize that this nonsense you are trying to conjure here has only one purpose: to be the "silly putty of prosecution" whereby one can custom shape the "abuse" to whatever "perpetrator" happens to be the hapless target of the prosecutors zeal. It is the equivalent of reading tea-leaves and chicken entrails and making life-and-death judicial decisions upon them.
Which leads to marvelously imbecilic conundrums like having 17 year old kids rotting in jail for making "child porn" (of themselves) and "child abuse" (the child being the "perpetrator"), complete with life-long listing in a "child molester" databases. I assume you also wholeheartedly agree with these because they are a straightforward logical outcome of these insane laws. Not to mention that the "child", oh so abused sexually, is quite old enough to enlist in the Army and go meet exciting people abroad and kill them. Brainless religious nitwits who make these laws will be the end of us all.
Sure, once your arguments are shown as illogical, why not move onto trying some personal attacks? Pedophile? Anti-Semite? "Islamofascist"? Terrorist? I have been accused of all of these and many more. You would have to get creative not to bore me.
For your information, I defend these hated by the frothing-at-their-snouts mob positions precisely because other people are intimidated by this sort of thuggery. I am not. Do not bother trying it.
Re:thought crime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:thought crime (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You're being rather shallow (Score:2, Insightful)
You have missed my point and twisted my words. I am arguing that the possession of child pornography should be legal, but that the purchase of "pornographic child pornography" should be illegal. I have not said that people should go out and start distributing child pornography.
My point is this:
Making the possession of child pornography legal - while criminalising the purchasing of it - would likely persuade most people who purchase child pornography to view only free material, in order to avoid prosecution. At present, people who purchase it are breaking the law regardless of whether they pay, and due to the fact that there are a number of people who think that even adults having sex with children is acceptable, there is currently no incentive for many interested persons to not pay for child pornography.
Another person (who is clearly not a paedophile) understood the argument and expanded it, here [slashdot.org].
If Windows were illegal to purchase but free copies were legal, free copies would be used almost exclusively and Microsoft would go out of business. The same applies to the child pornography industry.
I don't fantasise about children being harmed. I know that they would be harmed if I actually did have sex with them, but in my fantasies I imagine them enjoying whatever happens in my fantasy, and I obviously don't fantasise about the negative feelings which would occur afterwards. I am also turned off by the idea of children crying, etc.
I'm sure that there are some women whom you would like to have sex with, who would not consent to having sex with you. When you fantasise about having sex with them, you are fantasising about doing something which would actually harm them if it were done. So you are suppressing your urges. You are suppressing an urge to rape.
Re:Uhuh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anger -You are somewhere between here
Bargaining -and here
Depression
Acceptance
Wouldn't it be easier just to move to the acceptance phase and bypass all that useless crap in the middle?
Of course I understand that. I thought it was pretty obvious. If you think we require 50 years of increased prices, logically we should have been increasing taxes on oil steadily from 50 years ago, i.e. in 1958. We didn't, so we are paying for it now. We have needed to have replacement technologies (most of which involves increasing efficiency at the expense of aesthetics or labor or discipline or thought) make rational business sense, which means a relatively high IRR or NPV or payback period. We are getting that now, and of course, a lot of people are feeling pain.This is symptomatic of the way in which cheap oil has infected our thinking. I remember reading business books from the 1980s that spoke of efficiency versus effectiveness. According to such books, the best managers were effective, and efficiency was irrelevant. The idea being that if you can make X amount of money, the effective manager made that money ASAP, efficiency be damned. The naturally efficient person who might make a fraction of X in the same time because he insisted on running a more lean operation (which inherently takes more time) was an inferior manager. And this had its own logic that made sense - the effective manager who just earned X could reinvest it and get a higher return, enriching the company he worked for at the greatest rate.
Of course, it was temporary cheap oil and cheap energy that made this feasible. High rates of return on projects and high rates of growth of economies encourages people to ignore projects that do have longer payback periods and smaller rates of return, or are harder. e.g. solar power, efficiency audits, insulation, etc. Long term, this is indeed a very stupid way of looking at things. Given a government that panders to the average greedy and stupid person (IOW democracy), we didn't think it necessary to put the necessary fetters on capitalism to cause it to make long-term sense, i.e. high taxes on finite resources from the very beginning. Waaaaa! That would slow down our economy!
Of course it isn't. However, the supply is relatively inelastic, and limited. Given that demand has grown we are seeing higher prices as a result. If you were to ration fuel, it would still have a very similar effect - widespread hardship. And there would be a gray/black market popping up to sell fuel from those who were poor to those who were rich at a real price, and probably higher than current prices because of all the work involved in evading police etc.The underlying problem is the supply limitation - everyone has to make do with less. No, scratch that. The underlying problem is that we have allowed ourselves to use finite energy resources for things that do not provide lasting benefit. Worse than that, we have configured our societies so that they are highly dependent on finite energy. It might be ok if we just needed cheap oil to take a holiday. But most of us need it just to get to work! That was profoundly stupid.