asbestosman wrote:Of course they have. They're also well-aware of how easy it is for teens to get around (boot off a thumb drive / DVD, install a rootkit and sniff out parental passwords, connect wirelessly to neighbors, etc. etc.).
I know this will sound completely insane, but I guess this means parents will have to take a more active role in parenting their children. No program or piece of equipment will ever be half as effective as a parent that takes an active role in their child's activities.
They have. They were resonding to a question a less tech-savy step-dad who was looking for a easy solution.
See the above. I know, I'm full of crazy talk today.
Well, maybe you're right about 2g1c. I got that idea while reading about the prohibition of bestiality and various obscenity clauses including defecation from some site about keeping kids safe,
protectkids:
Obscenity- Obscenity is graphic material that is obsessed with sex and/or sexual violence and is, therefore, prurient, patently offensive, and lacking in serious value. It is often referred to as hard-core pornography and includes close-ups of graphic sex acts and deviant activities, such as penetration, group sex, bestiality, torture, incest, and excretory functions.. . .
Note: (Production, transmission, and distribution of obscenity are felonies, yet possession of obscenity in one's home is not a crime. However, use of a phone line or online service to transmit obscenity is a federal crime under current law. Therefore, it is a felony to either upload (transmit from your personal computer to the Internet) or download (copy from the Internet onto your personal computer) Internet obscenity. Also note that the wiki article on 2g1c states that the company that made it got into trouble in the US:
Fiorito contends his films are legal in Brazil, but authorities in the United States have branded some of his films as obscene and filed charges against Danilo Croce, a Brazilian lawyer living in Florida, listed as an officer of a company distributing Fiorito's films in the United States
And you'll notice that I already covered how this works. Obscenity laws vary from city to city and state to state. The problem with trying to apply obscenity laws to the internet isn't even really about free speech once you get down to the technical aspects of it. I mean, you could make a law saying "I't illegal to download and look at X", but as we keep seeing with child porn, perverts will find their kink no matter what laws are in existence. Barring a People's Republic of China Great Firewall style system, it'd be impossible to enforce an internet based anti-obscenity law. Hell, even with massive ISP side support of such a program it's still insanely difficult to make it work and it can be worked around very easily with the use of proxies servers.
Point is, why bother expending resources on trying to regulate what people can and cannot see when it can't be done. Instead why not take a more proactive role in parenting to protect child (if that's what you're after).
But what, pray tell, does porn have to do with free speech? I don't see it as speech so much as freedom of debauchery. It's more like freedom to fornicate than it is the freedom to spread ideas. And even then, we put limits on publishing ideas such as, oh, publishing information on bomb-making.
What doesn't it have to do with free speech? You're advocating regulating peoples rights to freely choose what they can and cannot see, read, or hear. If what they want to look at, read offends you then don't look at, read, or listen to it. As long as no one is harmed (and by harmed I mean criminally harmed under applicable laws), who cares if you personally think it's wrong. I'm sure if we were to talk, after a while things you support and condone that I don't approve of would pop up, but you don't hear me advocating legislating away your right to do, say, or think as you will with in reason and law.
More than that though, we're talking felony. That's pretty a rough gamble for trying to exercise free speech.
What is a fellony? Looking at two brazilian women eating poo? I mean, it could be considered obscene, but that would depend on who you ask, and that's the huge bone of contention I have with "obscenity laws". They're all based on subjective interpretation without any objectivity. Someone or some group arbitrarily decides that X is "obscene" in one township, yet in the next county over it's perfectly fine (viewed in private of course). The only hard and fast legal exceptions to this are type of pornography where someone is actually victimized, like child porn, snuff, or actual rape. Everything else is open to interpretation, which is where you'll end up having people trying to legislate their personal morality into the lives of others.
Because the truth is that nobody really likes free speech. All they really want is the freedom to personally speak freely while limiting speech they find either too offensive or somehow dangerous whether it's about prohibitin obscenity of hate speech, or whatever.
You hit the naiul on the head there, AM. All attempts to limit free speech that do not involve trying to protect a group or individual from actual harm are basically BS. It's just one group trying to impose their morals on others. So you come back to why free speech must be protected, because if it can be denied to some, for whatever reason, it can be denied to all.
