German Member of Parliament Joins Pirate Party 246
Political Observer writes "Jörg Tauss, a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), left the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is part of the coalition government, and announced that he is joining the German Pirate Party (Google translation; original German article). Tauss resigned from the SPD after all but four of the party's members voted for a new censorship law, which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at reducing child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS-based content blocking and is the subject of major criticism from Internet users. In March 2009 Tauss became the subject of investigations by the German police for possession of child pornographic material. He said he had this material only for research as part of his role as a member of parliament. Investigations are still continuing."
Re:Well done Germany (Score:5, Informative)
It was invented here. We invented it 2 millenia before *your* country existed. I'm not claiming europe is more democratic that 'you', but suggesting democracy is something europe is 'starting to get good at' as if it's something we learned from you kinda shows your ignorance. A lot.
I'm assuming you're american since only an american could have such a completely wrong image of their own country as some kind of beacon of democracy to the rest of the world.
Hello flaimbait moderations.
Re:kiddie porn "research" (Score:5, Informative)
The whole thing is a joke. It was his job to handle child pornography cases. He left, because he was disgusted with the way it is handled now.
And another group of politicians made his special rights vanish in the blink of an eye, so that he could not react, and they had a window for suing him. It was all staged.
Interestingly, that very group is known from the "Sachsen-Affäre". A large-scale scandal, where it is proven that they took private advantages, bribes (while in office), did illegal spying, human trafficking, child prostitution and drug dealing. And guess what happened to them. Exactly. Nothing.
So the wolf is the shepherd here, and I guess you can pretty much bet, that the point of this law (at least partially) is to protect them.
UPDATE: Good news: The Pirate Party accepted his membership. So now we have a Pirate in parliament!. Yay!
Re:kiddie porn "research" (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, I accidentally stumbled upon the R@yG0ld keyword on WinMX many years ago. I found what I thought was a completely legal set of images(if she was under 18, I definitely couldn't tell) so I selected *everything* the user had. Within a few minutes I realized that the keyword didn't mean "barely 18" and damn near vomited when I saw the first image that was clearly not legal; didn't take long for me to wipe it all since I had no way(or determination) to sift through all of them to determine if any of them might be legal. Now I hear that's all that's left on the WinMX network.
Though what's worse is the naming convention on Usenet where the uploaders think it'll be chic of them to name a pic of an obviously legal girl "15 yrs old.jpg" cause I also used to batch download images from there and about shit myself when I saw filenames like that. Now, I just stick to the obviously legal sites AND if they show a "cougar" then I'm usually sure I'm quite safe..heh
Re:kiddie porn "research" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:kiddie porn "research" (Score:1, Informative)
In Germany 14-17 year olds count as "youth" rather than "children", under current law, so I suppose the accusation is that this legislator possesses illegal images of people under the age of 14. Otherwise he would actually be facing charges of "youth porn".
Germany made erotically posed nudes of children illegal again in November 2008, so in fact not all of that material depicts molestation. Those images were fully legal in Germany in 2006-2008 because of a high court case that said they were not sexual abuse so they could not be considered illegal under the former law. I didn't hear about a spike in the number of German child molestations during that time, did you? So it means suggestive images do not necessarily cause molestations, as some people claim.
People need to be able to independently research claims that there's a "billion dollar" industry that creates these images, and that it's all really as abusive as they claim. These claims were used to make the laws harsher. If you can't verify the claims, what you get is one-sided propaganda. I agree with the suggestion that it should remain illegal to buy the images but legal to view them.
Re:Well done Germany (Score:2, Informative)
*cough* Greek democracy came first...
And the Romans weren't that different, really. You were a citizen, you got a vote. And their tribus system for voting (you vote in your district, then the district gives one collective vote) is no different from the current US system. The only real difference I can see is that voting rights weren't universal, but when you think that Switzerland didn't allow women to vote until well into the 1970s, that's not that "unmodern" either. Personal wealth as a factor of how much your vote counts for was still around in the 1900s too.
The constitution worked as well for them. They had the mos maiorum, and enough of a legal system that laws were well published, could be changed and abolished. In the late republic, legal representation was available too, and while bribes were involved, it also worked along the principles of proof. There's a reason why Roman Law is the basis of European legal systems. They had the senate to function as a parliament, the consuls, praetors etc. as the elected government, and the tribunes of the plebs as the checks and balance system who could even call all citizens in to vote for major issues.
The Romans actually had a very modern approach to elections, too. You could buy votes, bribe other candidates, lobby your way into getting the support of parts of the elite, spread rumours, marry a woman of an influential family... and if it all didn't help, you claimed a god told you it was okay. You tell me where that's different from what happens in modern democracies.
Re:Ninja party for the win (Score:3, Informative)
that's a samurai thing
Re:No one here's buying it. (Score:2, Informative)
Illegal in germany.
Re:kiddie porn "research" (Score:1, Informative)
Not to mention the fact that it's nearly impossible to browse certain high-visibility sites (4chan) without some dumb-witted idiot posting a 8 year old child getting molested.
As a prestigious member of 4chan [seriously if you go check the site out, you'll see I have the vast majority of posts there] I'd like to point out how wrong you are. 4chan only occasionally gets child porn posted on any of its boards, perhaps only as often as a few times a month on /b/. Usually it's gone within minutes as the mods and janitors are quick to delete it.
/b/ you'll probably never see anything worse than shitting dick-nipples.
Honestly if you just stay away from
why you need to see child porn (Score:1, Informative)
Using bold because the new slashdot script is completely retarded and won't interpret line breaks or p-tags normally!
You need to see child porn because you need to know what the war against child porn is about. The official line is that this war is a just war against the violent rape of children. The images are said to be primarily (a) violent, and/or (b) involving tiny children and babies. A question anyone concerned with the ever increasing power of supposedly democratic states over the Internet and all communications is what these images actually depict. If they indeed depict primarily tiny children being violently raped, then this war against child pornography is in line with its own rhetoric. If the images are not violent, and do not depict primarily toddlers and babies, then the rhetoric is out of line. A cursory investigation into these images may suggest the rhetoric is well out of line, that our current conceptions of child sexuality, and pedophile sexual behavior, is inadequate, ideological, and dangerous. Unfortunately, the adequate investigation of such materials is not something most citizens dare to do, and for good reason. The simple viewing of these materials is a crime many declare is "worse than murder" -a declaration made in absence of evidence, of course.
Debbie Nathan made a good case for viewing child pornography in a series of articles that trashed Kurt Eichenwald after his New York Times articles on Justin Berry, an apparently willing teenaged cam-whore. Her basic argument is that without an ability to independently assess the contents of child pornography, journalists (and any researcher whatever) cannot make judgements independent of police institutions. In effect, research becomes an arm of policing, rather than informing policing, or going beyond policing. And so shoddy research that reinforces the status quo interpretation of child pornography attains the status of legitimacy, is well funded, and makes careers. Detailed, thoughtful research into the matter is impossible, reviled, rejected. The dangerous game of child pornography investigation was underlined by the exchanges by Nathan and Eichenwald. When Nation accused Eichenwald of *illegally* looking at child pornography. Eichenwald brought out the NYTimes lawyer-dogs to threaten Nathan's article off (cowardly) Salon.com, arguing that by law Eichenwald was able to view 3 images of child pornography legally, as long as he reported this to the police afterwards. This, of course, was nonsense as far as the articles were concerned, because Eichenwald, by his own admissions in the peices, looked at far more than 3 images. But being in the back pocket of the U.S. Dept. of Justice meant Eichenwald, unlike other investigators, was beyond the law. But in the end Eichenwald self-destructed. Nathan continued to pursue the case, and uncovered private messages that made Eichenwald appear to be sexually interested in Justin Berry, and a rapacious consumer of his hardcore images. Instead of cracking the case, Eichenwald was trying to escape the consequences of his actions by appearing as a child advocate, saving children from child pornographers. His career was left in shambles.
THESE ARE THE DANGERS OF RESEARCH INTO CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.
If this is the case, if a man who had all the protections of the police, practical immunity from prosecution due to his participation in "nabbing the bad guys," why would anyone think the research into child pornography was (a) comprehensive, (b) adequate, (c) independent of law enforcement, (d) independent of a stifling, choking status quo? If the pro-police contingent of child porno researchers can get burned to death, what about people who question?
It is a well trod line that one of the significant shifts that mark our emergence into modernism is an ability, a desire, and a need to question authority, to see for ourselves. This is what is called enlightenment. It is not my argument that child pornography IS enlightenmen
Re:Well done (Score:1, Informative)
Well, let's look at how the main stream media report on that event:
* JÃrg Tauss leaves the SPD
* because of the enactment of an anti-child-porn law (like that, no background why this is wrong)
* there are investigations by public prosecution going on, because he consumed (???) child porn
And I mean, that was only what the reputable ÂTagesschau evening news broadcasted. I don't want to know how the reaction was like in news shows that are less reserved
And well yeah, the Pirate Party was not mentioned. But maybe that is better that way. In order to let it be Âthe filesharing party in public opinion instead of Âthe paedophile partyÂ.
Re:No one here's buying it. (Score:2, Informative)
He says that he needed the material to gain the trust of child porn vendors. This happened in 2007, but he hasn't thrown away what he got. See: http://daten.tauss.de/StellungnahmeTauss110309.pdf [tauss.de]
Re:why not go for the liberal party? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well done Germany (Score:3, Informative)
"In a democracy EVERYBODY gets to vote, not just those that are playing by the current laws."
Not true. In a democracy every *citizen* gets to vote. And then the political definition of "citizen" is not a fixed one and changes from place to place and from time to time. Some places, some times, women are not considered "citizen", or black men, or resident foreigners, or below 18 year-old, or below 21 year-old, or in jail, or...
Re:Well done Germany (Score:2, Informative)
While the Pirate Party in Sweden got 7.1% of the votes at the European election, the German Pirate Party only gained 0.9%. It was the first European election where the German Pirate Party participated.
Translation of Tauss' speech (Score:4, Informative)
I've translated a German transcript [wordpress.com] of his speech [youtube.com].
Re:Why chase pedofiles and not child molesters? (Score:1, Informative)
Umm, that's an incredibly bad idea. CP readily found on the web is virtually guaranteed to be sting material. The FBI in particular are known for operating IP-collection honeypots of this nature.