Iceland Considers Internet Porn Ban 684
Onymous Hero writes "With the printing and distribution of pornography already banned in Iceland, further measures to stop internet porn are being considered by Iceland's Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson. From the article: "Iceland is taking a very progressive approach that no other democratic country has tried," said Professor Gail Dines, an expert on pornography and speaker at a recent conference at Reykjavik University. "It is looking a pornography from a new position — from the perspective of the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights.""
Re:I'm doubtful of that so called expert... (Score:5, Informative)
How exactly did this gentleman become an expert on pornography?
Prof. Gail Dines is actually a she, but her credentials on pornography are suspect at best. Do a Google search for "Gail Dines" "Penn and Teller Bullshit."
Violent is the key word here, not porn (Score:5, Informative)
Just a quick FYI, people:
This ban is aimed at violent porn, not porn (as in naked people having sex). So, just to be clear, images depicting naked people having sex will be a-ok, whereas images depicting, say, women being raped or abused would not. It's the consenting adults principle, if you will.
How do I know this? Well, first of all, it's in the article: " "We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime," he said. " The "he" here is Ögmundur Jónasson, the Interior Minister. Also, he's discussed this on his homepage (which is in Icelandic, but here's the link: http://www.ogmundur.is/fra-lesendum/nr/6571/ [ogmundur.is]) where he specified that his concern is violent porn, NOT porn itself.
That said, I'm pretty skeptical about this being possible in practice, but I'd love to hear Slashdot's opinion about if people here think it is.
Re:Get with the program! (Score:5, Informative)
The article says this is a "very progressive approach".........which means it can only be for your own good.
It's a rather strange statement, because it is not progressive at all. The people I know who are most opposed to porn and would like it to go away, might shoot someone if they were called progressive.
Not a new battle, and not clear-cut feminism (Score:4, Informative)
Even among feminists, there's significant disagreement about whether porn is inherently exploitative of women, or whether it's fine if all the performers have consented to participate (if they haven't then it's sexual assault at least). And this debate has been going on for several decades at least, with some (e.g. Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem) taking the anti-porn side, while others (e.g. Ellen Willis and Susie Bright) taking the view that women should be able to express their sexuality on film if they want. The key problem: There's no scientific data to support any position on the subject, so it's come down to gut feelings with various rationalizations on both sides.
My own take: I'm not going to support passing laws to deal with purely theoretical problems. If the anti-porn side can demonstrate some actual documented harm, then I'll change my mind.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Moral panic (Score:2, Informative)
That's what we call Tyranny of the Majority. It might be legal, but it's never acceptable. It's nothing more than sheer thuggery.
If there is no absolute sovereign, there is no tyranny. The word comes from antiquity, it is derived from the greek word Tyrannos, and it refers specifically to consolidation of power into the hands of a single individual who rules capriciously and without codified laws. "Tyranny of the Majority" is a nonsense phrase used by people who do not wish to be bound by democracy, but to bind it so it doesn't interfere with their selfish choices.
Also, thuggery refers to violence outside the bounds of law. When the people democratically create a law, and only then use violence after people have been made aware of the law, that is the diametric opposite of thuggery.
You believe there are conditions where the minority should rule over the majority? Then you don't believe in democracy. End of story.
Election in 2-3 months and he needs votes (Score:2, Informative)
Im Icelandic so straight from the hourses mouth.
Seriously nothing to see here...
There was a poll where if i remember correctly (citation needed) 80 % were against it, men and women alike.
His party the left green coalition was really down in the dump at that point and had gone below 10%.
This was a "huge one man" public stunt that happened over a week ago and most people over here have already forgotten about it.
No ideas came forth as to how he intended to manage this, with what methods or laws and without much congressional support to boot.
The same congressman/minister has come with crazy ideas of a moral internet police regularly for the past 10 years, and always been left standing alone even by his own party members.
But then again it is one way of trying to grab that minority vote.
Re:Get with the program! (Score:4, Informative)
Gail Dines was on Q&A last night and the first thing she said was just plain wrong. She repeated the tired complaint that the fad of the Brazilian wax was due to pornography. [novelactivist.com]
Why Iceland is consulting this insane woman about sexual media is beyond me.
Re:fuck you iceland. (Score:4, Informative)
Which is precisely why f=ma says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of free will. Free will is a concept in philosophy, and a pretty vague one even there; trying to contrast it with the physical concept of determinism leads to absurd results because they simply have nothing to do with each other.
Besides, it's questionable whether the whole concept of determinism even makes sense. No system can ever occur truly deterministic to you, because observing its initial stage requires interaction which makes you part of the system, at which point your internal model of the system is also part of the system and must thus sacrifice detail to fit inside just a part of the system (you), which in turn leads to inaccuracies. So if it's logically impossible to observe a fully deterministic systems even in principle, doesn't that make the whole concept of determinism itself self-contradictory?