The UK's War On Porn: Turning ISPs Into Parents 231
New submitter SMABSA writes: With British Prime Minister David Cameron announcing plans for porn users to be required to register their bank account/debit card as a means of age verification, Spiked-Online writer Stephen Beard explores the privacy implications, technical feasibility and motivations of such a plan. Here's an excerpt that gives a feel for Beard's take: Not only are the plans to regulate porn sites intrusive, they are also technically infeasible (as are many bright ideas that come from central government). In the amount of time, for example, it would take to identify a site not complying with the new rules, that site could be mirrored multiple times. Such ineffectiveness has been evident in the government’s futile attempts to censor torrent tracker Pirate Bay.
The posturing about protecting children is irksome, too. To pretend that children in decades past haven’t been sneaking a look at mucky images, albeit in magazines and newspapers, is naive at best.
It's Not About Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
It's definitely about money, not outcome -- but it's not the fines they're after. That's chump change to government. It's the adminstration costs, which will not only dwarf the revenue from fines, but set a precedent for the next round of government expansions.
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Re:It's Not About Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK government, as do many others around the world, is just playing to a particular enclave of their supporters to gain political capital at the expense of others.
All this will do is kill a certain proportion of UK porn websites and enthusiasts (ahem) will look elsewhere; abroad.
That pesky international internet, eh?
Never mind, though, some dopey true-blue grannies will tell the bridge club what a good job the Tories are doing protecting their grand children. Even though they're not.
Re:It's Not About Porn (Score:4, Insightful)
All this will do is kill a certain proportion of UK porn websites...
My point is that shutting down porn sites (following the rules or otherwise) isn't the goal. In fact, if I'm right about it being more about revenue than anything else, shutting down these sites runs contrary to the actual goal - because a shut down site can't pay a fine. Crusades like this never produce real results - there may be an "example" or two made in the beginning, but that's just more about continuing the program and keeping a few thousand overpaid bureaucrats in a job - i.e., making sure the funding keeps on coming. Fines and tax revenue make sure that gravy train never stops - so in the end, it's just tool for channeling all real money to the ruling class. Jerk off to your silly porn all you want, peasant.
If the government really cared about shutting down porn sites, they'd just shut them down, and no, it wouldn't be impossible. If GHCQ and the NSA can record and archive every single voice call in the developed world, and build a search engine for finding single phrases in those calls at will, then they know damn well what you're watching online and whether or not it's "legit" or not. Similarly, making porn impossible (or so difficult as to be utterly impractical for all but the most die-hard) to obtain would be relatively trivial.
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It's actually quite oppressive. For example, porn showing the female orgasm with ejaculation is now illegal. A perfectly natural, enjoyable and pleasurable experience that there is nothing perverted or harmful about. It's just an attempt to control people's sexuality, and force misguided immorality on us.
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It's pee. It's been tested in a lab.
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Such laws create a black market. It's so obvious it makes me wonder if the creation of the black market doesn't somehow benefit those creating the law (see: war on drugs, prison corporations).
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The UK government, as do many others around the world, is just playing to a particular enclave of their supporters to gain political capital at the expense of others.
All this will do is kill a certain proportion of UK porn websites and enthusiasts (ahem) will look elsewhere; abroad.
That pesky international internet, eh?
Never mind, though, some dopey true-blue grannies will tell the bridge club what a good job the Tories are doing protecting their grand children. Even though they're not.
You mean, the UK wants to look big on cracking down on child porn while their Government is big on molesting children.
Re:It's Not About Porn (Score:5, Interesting)
This is about conservative social values and the political power of "think of the children". Since pornography is pervasive but still taboo in Western society, it's an easy political stranglehold because there simply aren't enough people willing to stand up and say, "It's my right to was two consenting adults go at it online." It's too publicly shameful. "Oh, look at him! He's probably a paedo! I would never look at that filth! Shame him! SHAME HIM!"
Since no one can publicly admit to it without such extreme shaming, no one's going to stand up and protect it. Thus someone supporting said conservative values will get the support of nearly everyone because "If you don't support it, then you likely should be shamed because you, too, are probably a paedo!"
This is completely a social and political tactic. Not financial.
Re:It's Not About Porn (Score:4, Informative)
And once the censorship infrastructure is in place it's easy to leverage it to censor other things as well. "Oops, I guess we shouldn't have blacklisted that corruption-exposing website. Purely accidental. Don't worry we'll fix the mistake just as soon as these distracting elections are over. Or you know, sometime after that."
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The next step I expect would be a system for blocking websites that infringe copyright. Possibly by a streamlined court order process.
Re:It's Not About Porn (Score:4, Interesting)
On the contrary - the average person doesn't really care what you watch online in private, as they likely watch plenty of the same stuff themselves (or both). I don't have statistics in front of me and I'm too lazy to go looking for them at the moment, but I believe it's estimated that something like 60% of 12 year olds in the US are already hooked. It's safe to say most people watch porn or have at some point - if that's true, then any "taboo" is artificial.
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...so you would be comfortable discussing your porn viewing preferences with your boss? Or your parents? Or just anyone that might be paying attention to your Facebook feed?
I would be quite surprised if the answer to any of those was yes.
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what you look is private - taboo to talk about to other people.
that it's taboo doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or be easily available.
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With respect, pornography isn't taboo in the UK. We have had pornographic magazines available in most newsagents for generations. We have had national newspapers who sell 10s of millions of copies each day and feature a topless women on the 3rd page. Softcore pornography is available in every single magazine and is used to advertise everything from cars to cucumbers.
In short the average Brit is exposed to a huge amount of pornography over the course of their lifetime and there's nothing wrong with it.
As a c
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With respect, pornography isn't taboo in the UK. We have had pornographic magazines available in most newsagents for generations. We have had national newspapers who sell 10s of millions of copies each day and feature a topless women on the 3rd page. Softcore pornography is available in every single magazine and is used to advertise everything from cars to cucumbers.
Yes, but this is pornography on the Internet!
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(2) While porno is everywhere and easily accessible, anyone found with porno, or publicly admitting to watching/reading/etc. porno is going to be shamed. And that's what I mean by it being pervasive in society but still publicly taboo. If it was in no way publicly taboo, then where's
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if it was in no way publicly taboo, then where's the UK porno-lovers group standing up for porno rights?
Porn lovers have never had it so good. If they didn't stand up before they aren't going to now.
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if it was in no way publicly taboo, then where's the UK porno-lovers group standing up for porno rights?
Porn lovers have never had it so good. If they didn't stand up before they aren't going to now.
psst... they can't stand up for a while, they have a humongous hard-on.
Wait a few moments - there's a good fellow.
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no one's going to stand up and protect it.
Why do you think they always pick ridiculous schemes that are guaranteed to fail? If that's not a mildly hidden attempt at preserving it, I don't know how they could be any less subtle. But at the same time, they get to tell (some) people what they want to hear.
It's about control. (Score:5, Insightful)
The government knows damn well that ideas like this are unenforceable. It's not about banning porn anymore than it's about protecting children (as if the government gives a shit about your kids safety). It's about revenue.
No, it's about control.
This gives them the camel's nose into the tent on controlling content. Chipping away at some basic rightalways starts with going after some unpopular behavior - pornography, child molestation, incest, etc. - and setting a precedent that the right isn't absolute. Once this is done, and the right converted to a privilege, there is the matter of setting the line defining what behavior is still allowed - a subset that steadily shrinks. Anyone who calls them on it, of course, can be labelled a supporter of pornography, child molestation, incest, etc., helping them get the initial precedent set.
Meanwhile, when the "protective measures" don't work, the government will use the failure as an excuse to impose progressively more, and more draconian, interventions. So they both increase the amount of behavior they claim to "legitimately" prohibit and the tools they claim to "legitimately" use to enforce the prohibitions.
Of course it isn't the pornographers, child molesters, and such that they're after. Its their political opposition. (Money too, of course, and anyone doing anything that interferes with their wishes.)
The harder it is to follow the law, the better! If nobody can actually be compliant, then everyone pays a fine.
More importantly: When nobody can follow the law they can bust anybody at their whim. The rule of law is replaced by the rule of the police - the definition of a "police state".
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I suspect it's more about a mechanism for stopping this sort of news:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/... [express.co.uk]
, i.e. the repeated 'news' stories that UK members of parliament are pretty heavy consumers of porn themselves.
Re:It's Not About Porn (Score:5, Funny)
You were not terribly resourceful as a kid, were you?
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Oooooh, you must have missed out on all the ways you could get it! Finding dad's magazines, interesting findings in paper put out for recycling, school-mates that have something to show off, etc. No, you cannot prevent it.
Page 3 wasn't enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
British kids have had Page 3 girls forever. Why weren't people blaming that for the collapse of society?
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Indeed. My dad used to get the Sun and the Star and the Sunday Sport (which is basically a porn-newspaper with some bullshit stories made up as a pretence that it's anything else), and I used to rub one out regularly.
I found it very hard to buy porn magazines in the era that I did such things, I was always fairly embarrassed about it. Internet porn might have been a bit blocky in those days and not as convenient to use, but it was far less embarrassing to obtain.
What the internet HAS done is caused the coll
Gotta love the idiocy of the British Government (Score:2)
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What I don't get is how the Cameron government assumes people are stupid. With VPN services so easy to access, unless they wanted to play a cat and mouse game with blocking anything that remotely even looks like an encrypted IP tunnel, these pornography laws are pointless. Of course, with Draconian laws will come the blowback. The UK hasn't had the folly of the US's Prohibition and War on Drugs, and I hope their government is smart enough to not fall into that trap.
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Or alternatively, a teen that is able to download the Tor browser bundle, or burn a Tails CD. Who wants British porn anyways?
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As a Brit it never fails to amaze me how stupid our Government has become, now this crap about needing a CC or Debit card to provide proof of age, Like there isn't a teen with an IQ of 60 or over that will work out that dads CC works just fine while he sleeps, takes a bath or whatever. Seriously this is as stupid as looking for terrorists on social media. Idiots, the lot of them.
This is what happens when you elect conservatives.
Take note America, you've got the next election (sadly Australia wont have a chance to rid itself of the abysmal Abbott govt until 2017).
But seriously, is this even going to affect kids looking for porn? This will only affect legitimate porn sites hosted or incorporated in the UK, all they'll need to do is go to "dasboobs.de" and they're instantly around it... or do what they've always done to get off and go to pornhub.
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I believe what the AC is talking about is the propaganda photos where they forget to remove the metadata from the picture where it has coordinates from the phone's GPS, thereby giving the Air Force a target for a bomb. This has happened a couple of times, and it is pretty funny when ISIS's main recruiting tactic is being used to target them for some energetic gifts.
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So ISIS just need to upload a photo with the appropriate GPS co-ordinates inserted, and they can get the British government to bomb the opposition for them?
Sounds like a great money-saver for them.
UK Big Brother (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought the UK had left the Mary Whitehouse times behind? Apparently the UK government needs another bogeyman to distract people from the issues it's not like they haven't forced UK ISPs to have a family friendly filter turned ON by default. Guessing that didn't work the way they wanted to but hey ... politicians wont admit failure.
Anything for the children (Score:2)
As others have noted, just about anything can be pushed through wrapped in a cloak of concern for kids. Is pornography too prevalent? Probably. Is it appropriate to circumvent basic freedoms and liberties to address what is, truly, a minor concern? No.
But for those losing their minds: Conservative thought is usually defensive, by definition. Further, it usually supports whatever is perceived as protection of property or home. The inexorable result of this focus is a moral police state based on knee-jerk rea
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Contrary to popular belief there there are a limited number of free on demand sites that provide a usable "service".
Pretty much not. TPB has a porn section as do plenty of other torrent sites. Those have proven pretty much impossible to suppress and there's serious money behind the would-be suppressors.
With those gone one has to look elsewhere which likely requires more time and effort (torrent downloads etc.).
One of the reasons TPB has been popular is it's just do damn easy to use. Go to site. Click on se
Screw them. (Score:3)
I have retroshare. I have porn. I will share.
The unquestionable assumption. (Score:3)
It is always taken as true that children need to be 'protected.' There is an assumption that seeing pornography is destructive - and if you ask many, supremely destructive, to the point that it is compared to cocaine. No-one dares even raise the possibility that this assumption is false for fear of bring branded a pedophile-enabler.
Yet I've never actually seem some good evidence to support this assumption - no dependable studies that link moderate levels of porn exposure or viewing by minors (either 18, or actual children) to any form of psychological harm. You can find plenty of anecdotes, yes, but those are worthless.
The young adults of today grew up with the internet. They had ready access to porn - they could see it any time they wanted, and most will have seen a bit unintentionally. If pornography was one-tenth as destructive as some people claim then the public health implications would be clear right now, possibly in the form of daily porn-fueled orgies in the street.
if you want some amusing reading, try the website for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. They used to be known as Morality in Media, but they rebranded a while ago because their previous name was a laughing stock and this new name sounds more respectable and politically-neutral. The name change is only superficial - the agenda and arguments haven't changed a bit, and they still spew a stream of hyperbole and scare tactics. Their current approach is to argue that viewing pornography fuels sex trafficking and violence against children. Somehow. They illustrate very nicely arguments of the modern anti-pornography movement.
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So if kids watch porn, that fuels sex trafficking and violence against children? Yeah, that makes sense.
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As the NCSE says, "Science and research now show a wide range of harm caused by pornography, including direct links to increased demand for sex trafficking, child sexual exploitation and violence against women."
I am not inclined to trust in whatever research they refer to. I'd have to trawl through a lot of presentations to find an actual paper citation, but I suspect it will be from the type of organisation that has a statement of faith on their website.
Why banks? (Score:2)
In addition to raising issues of privacy and government overreach, shouldn't we be concerned that private, for-profit, and criminal [wikipedia.org] banks have become de facto government agencies for age verification?
Parliment (Score:2)
There have been some serious problems with members of Parliment and other high officials involved in paedophilia [wikipedia.org]. Rather than engage in some introspection as to the linkage between power, leadership and sexual deviancy*, the British have gone on a campagin of, "Hur, dur. Porn made me diddle children."
*To their credit, at least the British collected some statistics. But both in the USA and UK, the investigations started out by looking at the Catholic Church (politically an outsider in both countries) and it
You get the government you deserve (Score:2)
When the voters repeatedly demand that the government protect them from the consequences of their own decisions, that's what the government will do. Insist that the government protect you from 'hate speech' or 'racism' or 'sexism' or anything that makes you sad, the government will then ask for tools to do so. If you give them these tools, you can hardly be surprised when they then use these tools to follow some other majority-agenda that you might not be comfortable with.
And governments have never been n
Puritanical Bullshit... (Score:3)
And here I thought the UK had had the good sense of shipping all the Puritans to the New World.
Perfect Plan (Score:2)
I see nothing that could possibly go wrong with this brilliant plan.
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We get it. The new rulers of /. are Republicans and hate us.
You do realize that Republicans (at least publicly) are generally the ones that are the most against porn right?
I swear I wish I could found the "Hands off" party with the simple goal of not messing with people.
Guns? It's a constitutional right - don't mess with them.
Porn? Same. Leave it alone.
Video games? It's not turning kids into murderers. Leave them alone too.
Weed? Doesn't harm anyone else. Legalize it.
Prostitution? As long as its between consenting adults (and if it's not its rape, not prostit
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Re:More stupid CONservative posts (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if that is your feeling, you should call a constitutional convention to have the constitution amended to correct the error of our forefathers. Either that or shut the fuck up and stop trying to take other's rights away from them because you don't agree with them.
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When the text of the amendment reads as such:
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
it really makes you wonder when people then try to claim it is perfectly acceptable to infringe on the rights of gun owners. How would you feel if I was campegning to take away the right of everyone to speak out against the federal government? After all, many countries today feel it is perfectly acceptable to take this right from their people, so it must be the one and only path to true enlightenment.
Feel free to call the constitutional convention, just don't b
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When the text of the amendment reads as such:
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
You missed a whole lot of that :
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
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You have to understand my reasoning - I'm against laws against things because of potential domino effects.
For example, a lot of people "justify" outlawing drugs or prostitution because if it's legal it will "cause other crimes" just by their very nature.
My viewpoint is always that only things that are already bad - in and of themselves - should be illegal. Rape? Already bad. Illegal. Murder? Same. Theft? Yep, that's bad, it should be illegal.
HOWEVER, simply owning a gun does not harm anyone. Even i
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My viewpoint is always that only things that are already bad - in and of themselves - should be illegal. Rape? Already bad. Illegal. Murder? Same. Theft? Yep, that's bad, it should be illegal.
HOWEVER, simply owning a gun does not harm anyone. Even if you completely set the constitutional angle aside, guns are only "bad" to people worrying about ancillary crimes that they might "cause".
By this logic, we shouldn't outlaw speeding or drunk driving, only murder and damage to other's property.
We also shouldn't outlaw bringing a bomb in an airplane, as there is already a law against murder.
Your over-simplistic logic is ridiculous.
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I actually have no issue with speeding. People tend to drive at a speed they're comfortable with anyways and all "speeding" typically does is act a revenue generator by making a crime to drive above a speed usually ~10 MPH under what is actually safe for an area.
Drunk driving I attribute to reckless endangerment, which is bad. Owning the gun is equitable with being able to get drunk in the first place - no problem. Driving drunk would be the equivalent of walking outside and pointing it at your neighbors
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at a speed they're comfortable with anyways
Plenty of people drive around me at a speed that I'm not comfortable with. I don't think that it's safe just because it's fine with them.
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People tend to drive at a speed they're comfortable with anyways
Some people drive faster than that and kill innocents. I am not talking about going 10 km/h too fast.
Drunk driving I attribute to reckless endangerment, which is bad
Why? Some people will drive slowly just fine. Some other will kill only themselves and won't harm anyone else. Why remove this freedom? You are a statist.
Bringing a bomb on an airplane I think shouldn't be a crime (because I actually have no issues with people owning them in general), but against airline regulations to carry one aboard on your person, and willful violation of a contract should be a crime
Uh? Willful violation of a contract should be a crime? So you should go to jail if you don't pay your cell phone bill? Reselling your airline ticket is also a violation of the contract.
Violating the airline contract should never be a crime. It's a civil mat
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Actually, treating auto homicide as simple homicide is redundant and only seems to serve to reduce the punitive effect of more specialized laws. If you are danger to yourself and others on the road, it really shouldn't matter what the "root cause" is. Any of the other traffic violations would do.
You could even distill it down to a small list of things that almost mirror the common law crimes.
Redundant laws add complexity that may serve no useful purpose.
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So I take it that you think that drunk driving should be legalized? Maybe protected as a right in the constitution too?
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shooting randomly in public places being illegal is a different "ancillary" crime from shooting directly at someone who is a target. both illegal.
the car isn't illegal.
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In recorded history, not a single person has died directly from the use of cannabis. This is contrasted with the legal and accepted drugs tobacco and alcohol, which kill multiple people EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Bring
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While I think the constitution probably isn't the right place for cannabis law
But is it for a gun law?
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In recorded history, not a single person has died directly from the use of cannabis
Why is jumping out a window while out of your mind somehow better than hitting an LD50 threshold? You end up dead either way. Just an odd place to draw the line is all.
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If people had access to valid information about how to use cannabis safely, and had the ability to obtain it in a legal manner, that would be very unlikely.
Since Colorado legalized cannabis in 2012, traffic fatalities have declined [washingtonpost.com] each year.
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http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
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But the point is your fixation on direct toxicity.
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maybe you don't know many countries. plenty of countries where guns are a constitutional right.
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I agree. A large percentage (0.185%) of the two-hundred-fifty million guns in this country (the USA) are used in crimes, including murder, and shootings! Watching the news on television makes it clear that these shootings are quite common. It is clear from the numbers that guns have no legitimate use, and should be banned. It's worked with drugs and alcohol, so let us proceed with confidence in this endeavor. Indeed, there are many other things which I disapprove of, and which ought to be banned.
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Removing that right from the constitution doesn't mean banning all guns.
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Yes, it is exactly what I said.
No to mention despotism... (Score:2)
The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns.
So you're in favor of rape, armed robbery, assault, battery, murder, genocide, and war?
Not to mention totalitarianism (both despotism and other forms), which is why it IS a constitutional right.
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Yes, all countries without this right in the constitution are totalitarian regimes.
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I know that it won't fit into your binary viewpoint, but they both still scores better than the USA according to Reporters Without Borders: https://index.rsf.org/ [rsf.org]
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Of course poorer countries such as Brazil tend to have more problems and violence. But when you compare Colorado to Scotland, it is you who are cherry picking data. If you look at the whole picture, and that is all developed countries (not only the 3 you named), there is a strong correlation between guns "freedom" and murders.
In fact the US is by far the developed country with the highest murder rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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*WOOSH*
No, I wasn't cherry picking data.
You did exactly that with Colorado and Scotland.
You picked one of the single example which could prove your point while any larger picture (such as comparing whole of US against whole UK) would have proven you wrong. That's the very definition of cherry picking.
You are failing to mention all the European countries which have high gun ownership rates (is it Switzerland where gun ownership is mandatory) yet murder rates don't track.
First, gun ownership isn't mandatory in Switzerland, you are just showing your ignorance on the subject.
Second, not all guns are equal. Hunting long guns are not associated with murders as much as hand guns. That's the problem in the US.
Third, you ar
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> The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns.
There is a nice change control method built into the document in question. All you have to do is to get enough people to agree with you.
Some people find that too difficult apparently. Then they pretend that they could just magically confiscate guns from all of the law abiding types that they disagree with. Never mind the criminals.
There's plenty of stuff like this on both sides. Measures that are clearly more difficult than adv
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Would you have the same rational for tanks or jet fighters? Nukes?
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As long as Barney Fife is armed, smarter gangsters will always have a ready source of guns. One of our recent mass shooters even managed to steal the rifle he used from the local rent-a-goon.
Plus there's a recent escalation in the militarization of our police that needs to be undone before any thought of disarming the citizenry can even be considered.
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My point was that other countries have different levels of gun control. All this without the need to be in the constitution. The right to have a car isn't in the constitution either.
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The right to have a car isn't in the constitution either.
No, it's not. Probably because cars, or even the internal combustion engine, wouldn't be invented for another 100+ years. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that citizens do have the freedom of movement.
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Yes I did. I pointed the fact that I didn't use the fallacy you are accusing me of.
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I pointed the fact that I didn't use the fallacy you are accusing me of.
You did use the fallacy, and you did point out the "fact" that you didnt use it.
See the problem? You used a fallacy, and when that failed you then started lying. if you had some sort of valid argument anywhere you wouldnt need to do either of these things. But instead, you are just a fucking lying asshole that fails at logic.
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That's mere hypocrisy ... but the Republicans are far more likely to be ye olde "family values" types.
Often the ones screeching the loudest about the sins of others are just as likely to get caught doing the same thing.
Like that "wide stance" guy in the airport a few years back.
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No, actually it isn't. Do some research. Google "republican Larry King". He was (is) a child pimp, sadist, and homosexual pedophile - among whose many rich and powerful "clients" included many republican party members. It's all about blackmail. You should read "The Franklin Cover-Up". It is one of the most important books ever written.
But that's not to say that all republicans are involved in this sort of activity. In fact, Sen. Loran Schmidt, along with Sen. John DeCamp -
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How do you clean up the environmental problems caused by the central government?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/... [cnn.com]
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Mr. Clean.
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That's nice and sensational but that still probably doesn't add up to all of the damage that's being done by all of the fracking going on. That stuff just happens under the radar or gets suppressed if anyone tries to bring it up.
Fracking is so bad that even Texas municipalities have started banning it.
You know it's bad when...
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You are all cows. ...
Where were you when the Lenovo persistent malware [slashdot.org] discussion drifted into the "administrative" backdoor, clandestine control channel, phone-home-capable, UNDER the OS, "features" built into modern Intel and AMD processors?
I, and a handful of others, have been bringing this up for YEARS, but somehow the discussions just die out, as if nobody was any more interested in this than your metaphorical herd of cows.
I actually looked for your rant but didn't find it - even modded to have-to-dig-
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The majority of home computer users want the computer to work ... And there are a lot more of them than there are of you. And they have their wallets out.
I'm aware of that. And (unfortunately) a similar fraction of business executives think similarly - and haven't yet had enough companies killed out from under them by corporate espionage to change their minds (although we're getting there).
But I'm not talking about the majority making a choice. I'm talking about nearly all the people on Slashdot - MANY o
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Sort answer no.
When you target people "yankin it" you are targeting the significant majority (yes women do it too, they may not be "yankin it" but they use other methods). The only way I can see stopping is if everyone can have sex with whoever they want whenever they want, ain't going to happen. The desire for sex is a fundamental part of human nature, you are fooling yourself if you believe you can just ban it.
Drugs have been around for a long time, from wikipedia, at least 10,000 years, if you are being
Re: (Score:3)
At a guess : Murdoch.
Porn produced by small producers and sold independently over the internet is media he doesn't control. That both gives money to people other than Murdoch, and draws eyes away from his media networks.
He doesn't like that. So he has his cronies in government oppose it.
Re: (Score:2)
As far as I know, the only possible harm is feelings of inadequacy. You fix that by explaining to the kids that porn is not recorded in one take and that the performers are athletes and hence the whole thing is about as real as a superhero action movie.