Congress Discovers Peer-to-Peer Porn 287
imipak writes: "The
BBC report that a Congressional Report on file sharing software has wheeled in that trusty old warhorse that always seems to turn up in government attempts to restrict freedom: children and pr0n. Apparently, "search for the word 'porn' on BearShare results in more than 25,000 entries, many of them video files." Who'd a'thunk it?" Don't miss the actual report, which makes for amusing reading, especially the carefully blotted-out screenshots.
Perhaps a ploy by MPAA/RIAA? (Score:2)
Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Britney Spears (Score:2)
Kiddy Porn (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps a ploy by MPAA/RIAA? (Score:4)
But there are a lot of people that don't want their ten-year-olds exposed to explicit sex acts, especially of the degrading types which are prevalent in pornography. And there are valid concerns there.
So before everyone on
So either present compelling evidence that ten-year-olds seeing some underage and probably illegally compelled porn acress getting anally raped by twenty guys isn't damaging his/her attitudes towards themselves and the opposite sex. And have that evidence be compelling enough to persuade some typical suburban parents.
Or present a compelling solution to the problem, since censorware is so universally reviled, and generally ineffective anyway. And no, neither "watch your kids 24 hours a day" or "teach your children about sex and pornography at an early age" are compelling enough. 24-hour surveillance is never possible with kids (especially since they'll probably be far more competent on the computer than their parents) and no matter how much you teach them, their views on the world will still be influences by the world around them.
Or make the consequences of shutting them down be so horrible that it's worth having a nation of sex perverts. 'Cause right now, most people assume that the conquences are no more free porn and free music, which don't really sound all that terrible to most people.
Otherwise, those in charge are going to feel perfectly justified in shutting things like this down, and it will be hard to blame them. And the more people come up with workarounds around the issues, the more the noose will be tightened.
Actually... (Score:2)
It's a good reason for parents to watch what the hell their kids are doing if they don't want them finding such things.
Re:Wrong. and Soooooo right (Score:2)
Or, the ranting raving (almost ALWAYS American) lunatic ends up looking like an uptight fool that can't handle a little harmless sexual content and needs to resort to idle straw men arguements equating thong to throng... bah... silly puritantical unsupported nonsenses. The null hypothesis here is that sex is normal and that your argument (if you can call it that) is unsupported emotional clap trap. Prove your point that someone cruising sexual content is worthy of Ad Hominem retorts and you'll be making a point. Otherwise, you're just blowing hot air.
You know, in many countries, sex is actually considered a wonderfully healthy thing that people should be attracted to. I know it might now be the case where you live, but many people know it to be the case. Sex is not a bad thing.
What is it with nitwits that think sex is bad/immoral/evil/dirty/demeaning? Did those folks ever stop to consider that sex is normal and that people should be interested in it if not down right modivated by sex? (Where did we all come from without sex?) Its the uptight puritanical nitwits that should be made fun of. Those people have serious problems that they need to see a therapist about, and because of their emotional and psychological problems, they choose to make themselves feel better by attacking others (as you have suggested, for SHAME sir!). Sex is part of the normal process of being alive. Bah... why bother trying to explain. If you honestly think sex is something bad, you need professional help anyway and there is no reasoning with you.
Python
Re:Meta-data problem (Score:2)
Furthermore, having your porn site pop up when congressmen search for "britney spears" is almost certain not to help the industry in general or you in particular.
You can't trust people to rate their own content on merit or accuracy or things like that, but the providers have no sensible motive to lie about pornographic content.
Meta-data problem (Score:4)
Furthermore, people generally don't want to stick their porn in other people's faces; they want to let people get it, and may even care more about availablity than avoidability, but the only people who get anything out of unwilling parties seeing sex are flashers. So it follows that, so long as it is not blocked from people who should be able to see it, providers want porn marked as such, and consumers want to only get porn if they're looking for it.
Perhaps the standard clients should insert into the query "and not 'porn'" unless 'porn' is in the query, and porn should have that keyword.
veering horribly off-topic (Score:2)
What you don't think we 0wn things beside j00!!! (Score:2)
so take responsibilty for raising your OWN KIDS (Score:2)
And if the raise your own kids and be responsible argument is "NOT COMPELLING ENOUGH" then you should be sterilized and your kids given to an "ADULT" who can handle the responsibility.
A search engine can only search for (Score:2)
sort off (Score:2)
Okay so my sterilization comment WAS (Score:2)
As to morals by legislature it IS that way but only because "we the people" have become apathetic and uncaring for anything beyond the scope of our small little world.
Well, enough is enough, see you all in SF tomorrow at Free Dmitry rally.
Re:I'm gonna veer off the party line here... (Score:2)
What's your conclusion, then? If the repulsive and disgusting are the "dominant thoughts," then what does that say about the human psyche, or normal human behaviour?
Can they truly be eccentricities or fetishes, if they're the dominant, most popular search terms?
It's an interesting, if frightening, line of thought. My own conclusion is that the human race has always been hell-bent on self-destruction, but somehow continues to manage to dodge the bullet of evolution...
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Wrong. (Score:2)
I am likely to agree with an argument based on civil liberties and free speech, but not one based on your fallacy.
Re:Parents' responsibility (Score:2)
Would somehow like to explain how either of these two scenarios is going to cause permanent physical or psychological harm to that twelve-year-old?
Go you big red fire engine!
Darn NSA!!! (Score:2)
The NSA must have been advising the consultants who wrote the report: the screen shot censorship blotches are a part of the screenshot bitmaps instead of being applied over the bitmaps via the PDF, like that spy informant report leaked on cryptome [cryptome.org] some months ago...
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What the fuck? (Score:2)
I mean, fuck, all this goddamn noise makes it hard to find good, wholesome, all-american, 21-25 year old pr0n chicks.
You know, chicks that have b00b1ez?
Aside from that, I almost shat myself when I saw the top 3 search expressions:
DiVX
Porn
(and of course)
Star Trek
Can you say NNNNNNEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDSSS?!
C-X C-X
Re:The four horsemen of the infocalypse ride again (Score:2)
Let me rephrase that. The candidate that I am most nearly in favor of almost always looses. One of the exceptions that I can think of changed affiliation soon after getting elected, so that's almost the same. Only when there has been an overwhelming popular feeling on some candidate, perceptible even without listening to the press, has this not been true.
Remember how everyone voted for Johnson, so that we wouldn't get into a war in Viet Nam? That was a nice educational experience. The classical example of just how much one can believe campaign promisses.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:The report is correct (Score:2)
You overestimate the average parent. The competent ones already have a handle on what their kids are doing and aren't worried about the computer, any more than they're worried about their kid getting their hands on magazines they shouldn't. The majority of parents, though, don't want to have to actually work at raising their kids. They want somebody else to guarantee their kid never sees anything they wouldn't approve of. That way they won't have to go through the embarrassment of explaining to their kid why this kind of stuff is bad, and why they shouldn't be into Daddy's stash of it.
Re:Who would search for 'f--k' ? (Score:2)
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Re:No Parents On Slashdot? (Score:2)
The only flaw in your otherwise brilliant plan is that no one can agree on who the "regulators" are and what the limits of "regulation" are.
People in Europe regularly spend family vacations on beaches where everyone is naked. If you post pictures of your family trip to the sea shore will you be subject to "regulation"?
The Catholics (and other extreme conservatives) consider ANYTHING and EVERYTHING offensive! Do you let them regulate the children's Internet? Who gets to decide what is moral and what is not moral? Goat sex is immoral.... but, is sex education immoral? What about fine art that contains nudity? Where do you draw the line? And, more importantly.... WHO decides this sort of stuff?
If you want to try to regulate a children's Internet -- more power to you! The Catholics will excommunicate you. The Baptists will send you to hell, and the Mormons will try to save you. And, don't forget the Jehovah's Witnesses who will show up on your front porch to explain the evil of your ways to you.
We don't need a children's Internet. We need parents who are involved in their kid's lives. If you are a parent and your son is downloading goat porn on BearShare -- I would have to say that you are neglecting you responsibilities as a parent! Little Jonny doesn't go from "Game Zone" to hard-core-porn without a few warning signs. Stop expecting the government, or the public to raise your children for you! You are the parent! You produced offspring! Now do your job and raise them the way you feel they should be raised! Don't blame society for your kid's problems... point the finger at yourself for a change.
Re:But what about BearShare? (Score:3)
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ [lavasoftusa.com]
Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:2)
Congress Discovers Peer-to-Peer Porn.... (Score:2)
Re:Oh woe is me... (Score:2)
--
'Loosers' (Score:2)
Re:Bearshare filter, missing data (Score:2)
Yes, obviously I haven't installed 2.2.6 (I have 2.2.5), but it doesn't change my statement "filters don't work". All major filters I've seen can easily be circumvented, and I don't see the point of a filter that calls itself family filter and can be easily turned off. This is just useful for adult users who want less false hits if they're searching for something other than pornography. But then the filter is badly-named.
Bearshare filter, missing data (Score:5)
Interesting fact from the PDF (page ii): The number of children using file sharing programs is unknown but believed to be high. Great! For a study on children's access to file sharing, couldn't they at least have tried to collect some data on this?
Finally! (Score:4)
Re:The four horsemen of the infocalypse ride again (Score:4)
< David Spade voice >
It's called punctuation. Look into it.
<
Secondly, looking at your comment, I count the word they 3 times. (4 if you meant to say they in the first sentence, instead of the)
The truly sad part about this discussion is that the majority of people informed on technological issues view the government that way. As some entity, totally separate from themselves, which they have no control over.
What you say has merit. The same excuses are used over and over to limit freedoms. It is not limited to technological matters, though. The phrase "Think of the children!" has been used throughout history as a way of reducing freedoms. The beauty of the US government system is that if enough people can be convinced that the argument is just BS, the people using it will have to stop. Or get tossed out of govt altogether.
All I am saying is that in the US the government still directly answers to the voters, at least once every two years. We need to not view these laws as things being made in a void, by people we have no control over. We need instead to actually put our money where are mouth is, so to speak, and actually vote.
I would guess that a large portion of /. readers did not vote in the last national election. (A large portion of those who were legally able to vote, I mean) The government continues to make laws targetted to please those who are middle income and above. More often than not, the laws are targetted at parents in that group. Why? Because that demographic has a very high voter turnout.
If we truly want anything to be done about this parade of misinformation spewing forth from Washinton, we need to vote every chance we get, for the most informed representative we can get.
Re:so take responsibilty for raising your OWN KIDS (Score:2)
And a black market will spring up, and people will probably get killed in gun battles over picture of nekkid people. Yee-haw.
Prohibition doesn't work - be it drugs, guns, gambling, prostitution, unapproved religious beliefs and practices (or abstention from same), information, "dirty" pictures, whatever. It always causes more problems then it solves.
And those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:The four horsemen of the infocalypse ride again (Score:2)
Yes, that's pretty much the case. Any candidate that I would care to vote for is weeded out of the system by the monied interests long before I go to the polls. Someone else in this thread already provided the appropriate Bill Hicks quote.
Sometimes I wonder if the only "control" I'll end up with over the government is to decide whether to shoot it out and try and take as many mindless stormtroopers as I can with me when they come to drag me away for my various crimes against cultural conformity and corporate profits, or go for non-violent resistance and slowly starve myself in a hunger strike as I rot away in a jail cell somewhere. I hope it doesn't come to that...but I wouldn't bet against it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:Wrong. (Score:5)
No, it doesn't, because people misunderstand what it is that they want to prevent from happening.
Prohibitionist thinking runs something like this: "Alcohol abuse is bad. If we ban drinking, there will be less drinking. Therefore there will be less alcohol abuse." True, true, and false.
For all x, prohibition of x just about eliminates responsible use of x - and the social structures that support that responsible use - and does jack shit to prevent abuse of x - and leads to economic and social structures that support that abuse. (For example, we're still dealing with the social after-effects of the way Prohibition brought alcohol use home.)
Then, outside of the effects of x abuse, come the violent effects of the black market in x, and the abuse of police power in the effort to stomp out that black market.
It takes a very twisted defintion to consider these results as "working".
Considering the duration of a crack high vs. that of a good drunk, as well as their completely different effects on the central nervous system, you're comparing pharmacological apples and oranges.
A more relevant question is: is one more likely to be shot in a gun battle between crack dealers or liquor store owners?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The report will soon be gnutella's highest DL (Score:5)
One hour later, the report has been downloaded 14 times. I wonder if those lusers knew what they were getting just by grabbing a random 1.7Mb pdf file with the word PORN in the title.
Its late, enough fucking with pornmeister's minds for the moment.
the AC
hahaha (Score:2)
long live porn!
Re:ask the 770,000+ IT workers... (Score:2)
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:2)
Try the Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.dk] (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ ). The author gets paid, the public gets what they want, no draconian copyright laws needed.
Voyager??? (Score:2)
WTF? In this government study on the content of Gnutella files, look at the list of top matches:
divx
porn
star trek voyager
sex
xxx
teen
Ok, maybe I am assuming things wrong, but WHY would there be more searches for Voyager than sex? WTF is that?
Re:I'm gonna veer off the party line here... (Score:2)
Among many other possible responses to this comment I'm going to take the angle of statistical bias. Thing is, while searches for "abnormal" porn acts do make it into the top 20 list, they still add up to a very small percentage of all Gnutella searches, generally < 1%. The thing to remember here is that these search statistics are skewed because if you're looking for porn you tend to use one of a few generic search terms.
Just as a first approximation, I'd guess that 80% of porn searches go out under only about 20 search topics: a few very generic ones, like "porn" and "xxx"; about 10 or so specific fetishes or sex acts including the ones you're so concerned about, and another 5 or so for the very small number of porn stars who might be searched for by name. On the other hand, non-porn searches tend to be very specific: searches for a particular music band, or more likely for a particular song or movie. These searches are much more common on Gnutella, but because they are spread across thousands of different search topics they don't make it into the top 20 list.
Thing is, when you're looking for music or a movie, you know exactly what you want; when you're looking for porn, you're usually just looking for anything to get off. If people used search terms like "music" or "sound" or "movie", or even "guitar" or "rock and roll" or "drama", then those would move all the porn stuff out of the top 20. But because porn occupies a more generic role than most other entertainment, this is reflected in both how people search for it and how they name their porn files.
Prove to me that its bad! (Score:3)
Where X can be everything from seat belts to parts-per-trillion of arsenic in drinking water. The most that can be said is that it has no known negative effects. (but, a any imaginable number of potential effects.)
Such questions are asked to make a statement, to push forward a point of view. They cannot be answered.
By that same token, there is not and can be no proof that playing quake is safe, or even that reading is safe.
Whether or not it was done on purpose, your request ``So either present compelling evidence that ten-year-olds seeing
What can be proven is the opposite, that it is harmful. Take a bunch of kids and show them those images and see what they say and do.
Amusingly enough, I'd claim that there's far more evidence about the harmful effects of religion than porn. I know personally and have heard of many people who have had religion destroy their lives, from Heavens Gate, to destruction of their self esteem.
Given that there's no way to show that either of them is safe, IE, not harmful. Well, we have our culture curbing porn, but allowing religions, when the evidence shows that the reverse would be better.
I'll let you have the job of convincing suburbian parents that they have to look at the problem logically, not emotionally, and realize that some things can never be known for certain.
Re:The next poll! (Score:2)
If it is, it's subtle (Score:5)
Did you actually read through the report and Rep. Waxman's statement? There is no real focus on the legality of file sharing or copyright violations. If anything, the reports seem to have carefully avoided the subject because it would distract from their main point. Further I could find no recommendations for the use of legislation to control the technology, the usual congressional reaction to this sort of thing.
Instead they provided tips to parents on how to protect their children and pointed out the flaws in content filtering software. Isn't this the sort of thing
Granted, the whole thing could just be a small part of a vast plan to sweep in apocalyptic thought control to the Internet, carefully disguised as recommendations and information for parents, but I think that would be giving the US government too much credit.
Re:Parents' responsibility (Score:2)
That's not really a fair comparison. As the House report says, most web-based porn requires a credit card; while some adolescent males may search through those 8,120,000 sites for the few that are free, they are the committed ones: most will just give up and start complaining about how Congress restricts free speech, man.
The House report is more concerned with young people coming upon porn by accident. If I search for "xxx" or "porn" or "pr0n", chances are I'm actually looking for it. Some twelve year old girl looking for Britney Spears? Maybe the government should tell parents to just go out and buy her the CD so that she doesn't go online looking for the mp3.
Re:Parents' responsibility (Score:2)
While children do bounce back from a dizzying array of adversities, that hardly seems a good reason to be nonchalant about subjecting them to pornography. Or, alternatively, while some may not care that their child is exposed to porn, it is most certainly the right of other parents to be so concerned. Especially since, to use an earlier metaphor [slashdot.org], this report says that there's porn in that there treehouse, and so maybe you don't want little Timmy to go play there...
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
The internet is a file sharing ecosystem. The addage is true: it sees censorship as damage and routes around it.
Dear Jessy Christo, please save me from puritans! (Score:2)
Get this -- people, logical, rational people -- like porn, sex, even double anal penetration!. They like their `divx porn,` their `preteen saving private Ryan,` their `stays crunchy (even steely Dan, citizen steely)` -- and especially their `Rage against the Gina Wild`!
Although I don't see fuck anywhere, maybe these people are developing a secret code `f--k` and `a--l` that will be deployed against US Congress(too bad it was caught)?
What's next? Licences to use a p2p client? Do you yankees like living in Stalin's Russia? How about typewriter licences because people write (horrors) sex stories?
People will get exactly what they want by hook or by crook. Try what you might to marginalize it, I bet all the people is the US congress jerked off to Daddy's pinups in the 1940s!
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Re:Mandatory license for computer use (Score:2)
But this is not that a person's security affects everyone else, as in the case of your licence. It's that peer to peer is essentially like life -- you filter on the client side, and don't get your panties in a knot about what other people do.
The point I was making is that the US government, because of their puritan background, seems to like the idea of dictating what may or may not happen between two consulting adults in a private bedroom, among other things.
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Re:Number 11 query? (Score:2)
Number 11 query? (Score:5)
And "Steely Dan" beating "Rage Against The" ?? Wow, I never would have guessed...
interesting (Score:2)
Jon
An E-Mail I'd Love To See (Score:2)
To: Henry Waxman
cc: Steve Largent
Subj.: A Commendation For Your Efforts
I, Hilly Rosebud, president of the PIAA (Pornographic Industry Association of America) would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of all of our membership, to thank you for your diligence and leadership in this situation.
Our membership has been suffering a disturbing downturn in sales and revenues for the past five years in comparison to the amount of pornographic material currently possessed by the public. Currently, pornography in the United States is only an eight billion dollar per year industry [usnews.com]. With recent studies of public possession, we now estimate that 80% to 90% of current distribution is though illegal means, either through peer-to-peer sharing on the internet, tape-duplication, treehouses, or other means.
Now, due to recent legislation and this investigation, the pornographic industry may finally be in a position to collect the revenues it is entitled to. Not only will elimination of peer-to-peer trading in pornography force consumers to pay for the right to view it, but the wisely written DMCA, which has just been given its first test of legal power, will allow our members to move to the new EBoink standard within one year. Printed or videotaped pornography will be eliminated, and all pornography will only be available in secure electronic formats, either on DVD discs, or paid for on the internet, locked to the machines it is downloaded on, and illegal to decrypt or remove the protections from. Extrapolating from the amount of our material that is circulating illegally, we expect that our revenues will increase by 500% to 1000%, from five to ten times their current amount.
Our membership will then earn from forty to eighty billion dollars in revenue annually. Pornography will become one of the largest industrial groups in the country, comparable in earnings to that of the construction sector.
We therefore take great pride in announcing that you have both shared in the annual awarding of this year's Pornographer Of The Year award. As well as being enshrined for eternity as a great contributor to the pornographic industry in the Pornography Hall Of Fame, invitations bearing your titles as Pornographer Of The Year have been sent out to you so that you may attend our award ceremony, at our annual convention in Las Vegas which will take place less than a month from now. Mr. Waxman's wife has already indicated that she has received his invitation in a telephone call to us, and it was touching how much she was like the typical lady winner of a contest the way she screamed and screamed.
We look forward to your continuing support of our industry in the future. With our profits increasing to five or ten times their current levels, our political contributions will be increased similarly to ensure that America is always a good place for pornographers to do business. Unfortunately, due to your party's statements on pornography, those millions will have to be directed to the Democrats and the Libertarians, but we thank you for your support regardless and will ensure that you are rewarded.
Sincerely,
Hilly Rosebud, President
Pornographic Industry Association Of America
What This Would Have Been Forty Years Ago (Score:5)
Recent studies have shown that some unsure high percentage (but we know that it's high) of U.S. homes have trees in their backyards. With the decline of the "Drugstore Soda Fountain", young people trying to escape the authority of their parents are constructing said "treehouses" in their backyards. These "treehouses" unfortunately have no centralized controls in place.
Children, especially male children approaching adolescence, can be exposed the peer-to-peer sharing of pornographic materials in these "treehouses." Even a simple querying of the peers to see if they want to play the card games "Poker" or "Go Fish!" can result in the display of pornographic material.
As well, these "treehouses" operate in a subdomain space removed from parental control. Sophisticated access control measures such as "the Secret Knock" or "pulling up the ladder" or saying "Careful, your old man's approaching!" effectively allow unrestricted trading and viewing of uncensored pornographic material. Even a restrictive active filtering system such as the Tattle-Tale Sister will not stop peer-to-peer sharing in these domains as this system is restricted by the security controls in this subdomain. The pornographic material is also hidden from an outside search by an obfuscation system known as "the hidden box under the loose panel in the floor."
As a parent, and a grandparent, and a great-grandparent, and a complete old fart, I am deeply jealous that the young people of today may have access to things that they enjoy that I was denied. The "treehouse" was used for... er... intellectual conversation... when I was young, and for peer-pressuring colleagues into smoking cigarettes.
Parental Tips
- Don't permit "the hidden box under the floor panel"
- Enforce access of Tattle-Tale Sister to all subdomains
- Root access is not good enough. "Treehouses" are never built at the roots. Ladders should be permanently affixed.
Internet Being Used to Distribute Porn (Score:2)
What did they think people were using the Internet for? Talking about church? HA!
Is porn so bad??? (Score:2)
I had a really interesting conversation with my aunt tonight. We were talking about what was wrong with children today. Funny, but porn didn't figure into that conversation. What did is that parents these days seem to refuse to take responsability for the actions of their children. That, really, is the main problem. It's not T.V., it's not the music, and it's not porn. It's that parents seem to think that they aren't responsible for their children shooting people or even for the simple things such as going to school.
I remember watching a thing on T.V. about how in L.A., they were putting parents on "trial" for their children being delinquent in school. One woman was told she had to go to school for 2 weeks with her child. Her response: "I wasn't the one skipping school. I don't see how this is my fault."
The fact is, none of this stuff that people make a big deal about is important. What is important is that people aren't taking responsibility for their children. Why isn't anyone making a big deal about this. This is a major problem and nobody seems to be addressing it, and really, honestly, I don't know how one goes about fixing something that is so ingrained in our sociology and psychology.
You see, I grew up in a really close family. The people who "care" for me include my mother, my step-mother, my father, my cousins, my uncles, my aunts. That's a community. Many of my friends don't know who their first cousins are. There's something wrong with that, in my opinion.
I also had the advantage of living for a few years in Mexico, where raising a child isn't a single person's responsibility, but a community responsibility. Everyone was involved.
Let's fix this problem, and stop wasting our time with stupid crap like porn and heavy metal music, rap, movies, and all this other shit that doesn't make a difference. Let's concentrate on what really matters: Taking responsibility for the children we raise.
If I sound like a Republican or a conservative, sorry. I'm neither. I just recognize where the problem is. I don't know the answer. There isn't an easy one, I'm sure, otherwise, someone would have implemented it.
But I could be wrong. Maybe porn is the devil's work.
Re:Meta-data problem (Score:2)
Web searches will never be worth much until it's the viewers that rate the content and not the content deliverers rating themselves.
funny :) (Score:2)
and now the main page of the NYTimes (Score:2)
The story is on the main page of the NYTimes website... http://www.NYTimes.com/2001/07/28/technology/28SW
Taken from the Times article...
Mr. Largent said in his letter to the attorney general. He also wrote: "The Lord has blessed us both immensely, and I am willing to stand with you in any way you feel necessary to begin eliminating this scourge from our nation's soul. I believe that Jesus asks no less of us."
There you have it... Gnutella makes Jesus cry.
Not always (Score:5)
____________________
I wonder if it block the #1 file on my hit list... (Score:2)
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Blotched out Pictures are Hilarious (Score:5)
Ha, ha, ha, ha...Those pictures are absolutely hilarious
1. Young Lolita ---- in the --- by huge ---- 78M
1. Young Lolita hugged in the bus station by huge father before she leaves for college ? 78M
Yup, I didn't see any porn in those pictures at all
What a Great Job (Score:2)
Re:Number 11 query? (Score:2)
Re: Congress Discovers Peer-to-Peer Porn (Score:2)
It's government's role to screw people. They don't want the competition.
Re:Oh woe is me... (Score:2)
Re:Remember the Rimm Job (Score:2)
God, what have we wrought. Listen, I don't have cable, and I don't listen to talk radio, and I never will again. You and people like you are whipping the fires of partisan insanity.
In no way does having an affair, or hiding it, make you a murderer, no matter what Ann Coulter says on FOX NEWS. The repetition of such crap has degraded the entirety of cable and radio news. It is innuendo, it is slander, it is reprehensible. Affair != Murder.
CBS News is the only, ONLY outlet not to jump on the rumor-n-ratings bandwagon a la Clinton and Monica. Thank god for the last of a dying breed: news organizations not run for maximum profit.
I remember watching MS-NBC back in the day, 3 years ago, when it was the MonicaStain-NBC network. It was in the middle of the day, and it was a few minutes short of the hour, and inadvertently a 13 year old kid made it through with, gawd help us, a criticism of the 24/7 Monica Sex Watch. I don't remember off-hand the name of the talking head, but he's moved on to his rightful home, FOX News I understand. The exchange between the kid and dimbulb went something like this:
KID: I have to say that I think that it is a disgrace, the way you have beaten this to death for months now. Have you no shame?
DIMBULB SOON-TO-BE-FOX apparatchik: Kid, kid, hold it right there. Tell me something. Do you watch this program? Since you are, you are causing us to cover it.
KID: I... I..
RIGHT-WINGNUT: As long as you viewers tune in to watch this, we will show it. This is a BUSINESS, and someday you'll understand it. We have to make a profit.
KID (Flustered): I..
IDIOT (smugly smiling): We have to go now. Stay tuned for yet another look of Monica hugging the President.
All right, I fubbed in that last comment. But it was true. As long as profit rules news, and right-wing businessmen choose the managers and talking heads of their networks, the Gary Condits of the world will constantly be prone to slander and defamation, often for partisan politcal ends.
We constantly criticize politicians, but frankly, who the hell would want to be one? Unless they are Repubs; they tend to get away with anything (see Newt Gingrich...). They are open to the most vicious rumor-implantation in the New Media, and can be accused of just about any crime, without recourse. And their accusers can create a cottage industry of personal destruction for YEARS.
Again: who the hell would ever want to work for The People when they can be annihilated at anytime by appeals to the basest prejudices of the mob? As L. Ron Hubbard once said, (paraphrasing): to destroy enemies, feed the press "evidence" of lurid sex crimes... if possible, destroy them utterly.
He was such a nice guy. Good to see our entire political process is now a gleaming example of such evil.
Having an affair is not murder. It isn't illegal. And I'd have to state that if the secret lives of all those smiling apes on FOX and CNN slandering their political enemies were to be brought to light, and judged by their own standards, there would nothing on cable but Mr. Ed reruns.
Re:Prove to me that its bad! (Score:2)
Well, if it is never possible to prove that something is not harmful, then anything, anytime, can be assumed harmful, and prohibited.
To descend into the silly, I'll dredge up the long-ago days of the early seventies. The issue: Saturday morning cartoons, the eagerly-awaited joys of my youth.
In church basements around the country, serious parents watched the 'toons, and toted up the number of punches, anvil-drops, nose-squishings, well, you get the idea. They sent their "studies" of violence in children's cartoons to each other, and formented boycotts and congressional hysterial about the destruction of our nation's youth. Result: the bland pap of the seventies and eighties in children's programming, alleviated at last by the Cartoon Network in recent years.
NO ONE I have EVER heard of went psychotically violent because of Bugs Bunny cartoons or Three Stooges shorts. None. But the "studies" of "violent TV" have stood up as tho gospel for decades now. No proof necessary, nor is it possible, that cartoons caused violence. Actually, we deprived children for generations of the gorgeous artwork of the Warner Brothers studios, for instance. I grew up without ever seeing a Ted Avery cartoon.
Funny, even tho "violence" was expunged from TV, even in prime time, the violent crime stats for the country were soaring. If one uses the "proof" of selective statistics, banning cartoon violence cause the larges explosion of street violence in U.S. history.
The foregoing is nonsense of course. The crime stats were up because the nation had a historic surge of teenagers, born during the Baby Boom, and where teenagers go, a certain amount of mayhem follows.
Now about porn. There is NO PROOF at all that naked women and men involved in sexual acts destroys the warp and woof of a child's soul. Studies that purport to show this are highly suspect, for several reasons.
How are the studies structured? What kids are you sampling? Young white kids from the 'burbs? How do you set up the control group? Do you put a group of 12 year old boys in one room for a year, feeding them Disney channel fare, and another group in a different room seeing Vanessa del Rio classics? Do you then measure rape stats for each group for the next several years? Or... do you interview them, looking for signs of disrespect for women, disregarding of course that these are 12 year-olds, and of course treat girls like alien beings? How do you "measure" damage -- questions and answers? Ink blots? Nonsense.
Just the fact that a researcher wants to conduct such an impossible study is a red flag, since it signals that the researcher believes that such damage is actually happening, and of course will set out to find it -- without control groups, metrics of any objective sort, and with the unspoken but clear assumption that erotica is bad, bad, bad, hence necessitating the study.
America has been steered by prudes for a couple of centuries now. Now we have an Attorney General who won't dance, because God tells him that it leads to fornication and sin, determined to launch a campaign to stamp out "smut" on the 'net at all costs... and it will cost us plenty, believe it, in censorship, legal costs, and our precious freedom.
All because of the children...
Really?? I remember people who grew up in the '50's. I read diaries from that era, novels, articles... kids got hold of nudie mags, cheap porn, breathless romance novels. The read Masters and Johnson, eventually Nancy Friday, you name it, they read it.
You know what? Those kids didn't grow up to be drooling sex maniacs. Or anything particularly frightening. So I have to ask, what exactly is decontructing the Internet to Save the Children supposed to give us as a benefit?
For decades now, hysterical parents have tried to block their children's eyes from seeing Evil Porn, with the result of course that the kids went somewhere else to see it, and grew up with a sexual imagination slightly better for it. Kids that parents successfully prohibit from growing up to be.. well, I guess... hysterical censors of the next generation of kids, I guess.
Let's cut to the chase. It ain't about the kids, it's about the censors themselves. They don't want people to see erotica. It is evil to them. And since it is an ultimate evil, they want everyone safe from seeing it.
OF course, taking kids into the forest to blow away animals, playing with knives, watching movies in which hundreds are killed without conscience -- this is fine.
It depends entirely on what is important to the individual. Of course, Saving the Kids is a damned hard standard to fight against, in a sound bite CNN/Fox News culture, but it is a canard that must be fought, lest we lose that incredible freedom the Internet gives us... not that it's going away anyway.
Re:It's protect the children season again... (Score:2)
Americans swallowed copyright police; swallowing ultimate censorship to Save Johnny from Porn will be even easier. The problem is, since we are now the only world power left, we will drag the rest of the planet into our pious, fatuous madness.
Re:Won't somebody please think about the children? (Score:2)
I think the people who are searching for it, are first, not finding it, and secondly, not expecting to find it either. I think they are just trying to be as wicked as they can in the privacy of their little heads, without really expecting to find anything. Just nihilistic impulses.
Real sickos use the U.S. mail and UPS, just like always.
Re:Bearshare filter, missing data (Score:2)
It's all assumptions, never to be challenged.
It's About Time! (Score:5)
I feel it is my right as a citizen of the US to have my pirated net porn delivered in a fast and reliable manner. Every time I use BearShare to snag a 50 or 100 meg pr0n video, it takes at least 5 or 10 tries, and often at slower speeds than my connection should be getting.
I hope you're listening, Senators and Representatives! I demand that you improve the quality and accessibility of my free internet pr0n!!
Why who ever knew... (Score:2)
Hahahahahahahaha..... ummm and her normal productions aren't sexual or "explicit" at all are they? Hit me one more time indeed...
Number 11 favorite search phrase is.... (Score:2)
WTF! Is the house selling advertising space in its reports?
Re:good (Score:2)
I don't care if some porn star starts my girlfriend's engine as long as I get to drive the car.
Offtopic ST (Score:2)
Its gotta be ST. It will always be ST.
Oh woe is me... (Score:2)
As for file sharing...sigh. I think this means yet ANOTHER law banning yet ANOTHER activity that most children will not do unless their parents allowed them to in the first place.
*Puts on his magic prediction hat*
A new law in about 2 years, similar in nature to COPA, but specifically targetting file sharing utilities, the users, their ISPs, and the authors with big fat huge fines. No prison time though, congress doesn't want to look heartless, they just want more of your money.
mrgoat
Re:so take responsibilty for raising your OWN KIDS (Score:2)
Re:Number 11 query? (Score:2)
Re:I'm gonna veer off the party line here... (Score:2)
Slowly, now.
Mainstream tastes are served via mainstream channels.
Fringe tastes are served via fringe channels.
Gnutella is a fringe channel.
Nobody needs to bother with Gnutella when they're looking for pictures of sailboats or flowers, they can find them with Altavista.
Hope that makes things clearer for you.
Re:I'm gonna veer off the party line here... (Score:2)
I'm gonna veer off the party line here... (Score:2)
That said, I have to wonder if I can be part of a community whose most popular searches include "lolita", "preteen", "rape", and "incest".
These are most definitely not the values I subscribe to. Furthermore, I don't particularly have much respect for the rights of those who solicit such material.
So call me an asshole, mod me down, whatever. I just wish there was a way to support the freedoms I believe in without having to associate or be associated with these pervs.
Intelligence: Finding an error in a Knuth text.
Re:I'm gonna veer off the party line here... (Score:2)
And, its really disturbing if these are the dominant thoughts in society - drowning out true art and culture. Picture America as a giant trailer park and the view of the rest of the world is that you are trash for living in it. There's nothing I can do, but I did have higher hopes for our society. I can be proud of my ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War or who were the pioneers of their time. Will my descendants view me and my culture with the same pride?
Intelligence: Finding an error in a Knuth text.
Things have changed in the last decade or so... (Score:2)
I myself have recently spawned, and I am having some philosophical considerations about this issue...
My first reaction was (and still kind of is) 'Anything goes! let them go nuts! I'll teach them enough for them to realize the difference'. I was very free when I was a kid, I had access to a lot of stuff that for my times was pretty rough at an early age, and I came up OK, didn't I? I mean, I am now a respected professional yadda-yadda-yadda-you-know-what-I-mean.
On the other hand, thruth be told, the most 'shocking' stuff I had access then was pretty different to what's out there now. I am almost 30 now, as a reference, and some of my big 'sins' were watching 'Caligula' (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0080491) when I was about 14 y.o., browsing through playboy (and, if I was lucky, Hustler), downloading some gifs (or similar) 50x100 pixel pics of Samantha Fox and XuXa. That's only covering 'sex', one of the areas of concern, let's not even begin about violence, gore, racism, nazism, politics, censorship (for crying out loud!), guns-and-ammo, and a dozen other categories to be aware of in the discussion.
Nowadays, my child would be able to right now (not to say in the three more years it'll take him to learn to read, type and click), to download a five-minute mpeg clip of a dog fucking a girl, a lady sucking a horse's dick, a guy roasting and eating the corpse of a baby (thanks rotten.com), goatse.cx, fecaljapan.com (or whatever that stream of shit is called), simulated snuff and rape films (maybe even not simulated - haven't looked that hard), escort services for his area code, and so on and on and on... All that without even a creditcard (not that it would be too hard for him to figure *that* part out when the time comes).
I trust I will teach him right. I will be supervising him, I know he's smart (already), and I don't want the US government to tell me how to raise him (moreso since I'm not American nor live in the US). I am not really against him downloading Pamela Anderson and whats-his-face video and jerking his brains off when he's 13, but I'm not really confortable with the penis-piercings and eunuch pages (not unix, eunuchs!) at http://www.bmezine.com/extreme/free/index.html, just to name one of many.
So, what to do? Nobody said that parenting was easy! They don't come with an 800 support number (I know, I've checked!) and the user manual is pretty sketchy (sorta "if (poo) change_diaper();"). I guess I'll rough it and try to stay on top of it.
But, to the point of the article, the
As it was said before: "Kids! An hour of joy, twenty years of misery". Oh well...
Wolfe.
(Disclaimer - I posted something like this to an old discussion, and was pretty much the last message of the thread, so I don't think anyone read it, maybe this time it can spark a conversation).
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Re:Number 11 query? (Score:2)
- divx
- porn
- star trek voyager
Divx and porn I can understand, but Star Trek Voyager???? Couldn't they at least try to find stuff from a good series of Star Trek [startrek.com]? Oh wait, I forgot about Seven of Nine [iwarp.com].Re:Filter available... (Score:2)
Damn censors!!!
Re:Perhaps a ploy by MPAA/RIAA? (Score:2)
When your children are born, it is time to take active responsibility in the raising, training, and education of the child. You start by never exposing them to the television for at least the first 6-8 years of their life. That means that it is never on, ideally never seen (hidden in a deep, dark corner of the den somewhere), and rarely discussed. This is the primary step in keeping the dangerous influences of the outside world from them. You are their outside world; they never go to daycare, because one parent is always there with them; they never see videos, instead you read them classic and/or wholesome children's stories. At first, they don't even have other children to play with. This is not because you are cruel, this is because unless you can trust that the parent of the other kid has the same values as you, you will keep control of your child's environment. When the outside world does enter into their little world, you will be there to help them interpret and process the information. You read stories, scary and otherwise, to them, enriching their imaginations without bombarding their little brains with seizure-inducing flashing images. You indoctrinate them and inculcate them with your beliefs and values. And you don't let them down in this; you prepare them for the world.
This is your Big Chance to influence them. Don't blow it. After age 8 or 9 they begin to explore, but you have already started them on the path by training them in how to think. Believe me, this sort of brainwashing is wonderful when administered by a caring parent! As opposed to whatever random messages they will get from the media.
By the time they have reached the age of 12 or so, you have basically done all you can, and your failings and successes will be measured constantly as you watch them and their behavior.
Now, I'm not saying that I know everything about raising children, nor am I here to condemn those who think differently. What I am saying is that if you love your children you will keep the evil influences from their early lives and replace them with positive influences (it's amazing how good classical can sound versus, say, Metallica, when a little toddler is crawling the floor in front of the speaker).
I never, never, never worry about what my children download or look at on the internet. I have surreptitiously looked in the Netscape cache from time to time, and I have found the occasional questionable site, but I think that a certain curiosity is fine; however, to replace the ideal of sex within a loving relationship with Springer-like titillation is foolhardy. The thing I told my kids when they got older and I lost total control of their lives is "You may find yourself doing wrong in your life from time to time, but I have given you the knowledge to Know when you are doing wrong, so you will at least be aware of yourself."
So I don't need no ex-QB, bible-thumping, how-many-dollars-didja-get-from-Disney-types Senator protecting my children. I'm right there protecting them myself, thank you. Get your mitts offa My Peer2Peer...
The four horsemen of the infocalypse ride again (Score:3)
Dust off those old usenet servers. (Score:2)
With some sort of ssh-type login subscription control and encrypted pipes, usenet servers could very well serve for distributing files on a veeeery wide basis. It's been a while since I've touched INN or CNEWS, so I don't know if that sort of thing has been worked into the old favorite protocols, but some like Sendmail [sendmail.net] are starting to move towards providing for closed encrypted networks. Of course, this could be used for both good and bad, so it's probably going to cause a ruckus and some people dopey enough to let someone not deeply in their web of trust access to whatever information (files? music? movies? pics?) is stored there are likely to make it short-lived.
The report is correct (Score:5)
I opened up the page with the report fully expecting to read another congressional report about how The Internet/Rap/Movies/TV is Corrupting Our Children. I had expected to find a diatribe about how government regulation was necessary to control the new "scourge of our children".
Boy, was I surprised at what I found instead.
This report is completely factually correct.
While most Slashdot readers probably know precisely how the P2P filesharing scene has changed over the past year, the fact is that most people outside our little clique don't have a clue about this stuff. All this report does is take the knowledge that we already have about these technologies and translate it into a form accessible to non-techies. And it does that extremely well by basically setting out the facts that every parent should probably know about file sharing software before allowing their kid to go online.
In summary, the report says:
(a) Since Napster's demise, new filesharing technologies have taken its place.
(b) Most of these new technologies are decentralized, unlike Napster.
(c) The technologies are not limited to music files.
(d) Porn is one of the top items searched for and is highly available on the systems.
(e) Parental control software is not incredibly effective for these new P2P systems.
(f) Because of the logistics of these systems, don't expect legislation to solve problems for parents; the parents should be more proactive.
While all the above seems obvious to us, if you were a parent who felt overwhelmed by your kid's computer knowledge, wouldn't you minimally want to have this information? Most of the posters here take the libertarian point of view that government should stay out of the regulation business. Making parents aware of their own responsibility to be aware of their children's internet activities seems the best way to deal with this.
Waxman is PISSED because... (Score:2)
to do a search on "Henry Waxman" + "laid" yielded
0 documents found.
yeah, and? (Score:2)
Apple Computer - Make your time! (Score:2)
Please Mod Up Post #69. (Score:2)
I've never done this before, and I hope it is not counter-productive, but could a moderator please mod up post #69? It raises many of the concerns parents (and thus legislators) reasonably have, and which many on Slashdot either don't think of or, worse, conveniently ignore.
Thank you.
Re: Congress Discovers Peer-to-Peer Porn (Score:5)
Peer-to-peer porn? I always thought that when porn was peer-to-peer, it was called "intercourse".
And how does congress fit into all this?
Hmmmm...
good (Score:5)
1) They'll learn about anatomy, and will do better in class in their older years.
2) They'll learn geometry, by trying to figure out what kind of body parts can fit into the goats' ear.
3) They'll learn organizational skills, by creating a collection of celbrity porn, indexed by type of celebrity, last name, and real or fake.
and it just goes on....
i knew it, the government just doesn't want us to learn. Let's go on strike!
Re:Number 11 query? (Score:3)
According to them the current top queries are 1. "neuroticfish no instruments" 2. "lester flatt, earl scruggs &" and 3. "divx"
Most notible is that the top searches garner a whole .3 percent of the queries.
Find ? Dont you mean Admit!?@? (Score:3)
The Lottery: