If We Can Ban Terrorism Campaign, then Why Can't We Ban Porn?

[pnewton]

I think child porn is under different category because child porn related to “predatorism”. If one own child porn he is a suspect predator. Therefore investigation towards him will go into his private emails, chat, harddrives.

I don’t think illegalizing porn will get the police to snoop and search people’s privacy. Whatever people have in their privacy is not porn until they publish it/ distribute it publicly.

Only if you own child porn then you should worry that police will tap you into your privacy.

Or if they suspect that you own it.

huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/24/unsecured-wifi-child-pornography-innocent_n_852996.html

wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001457.html

 

[francisca]

That is a good point. However, let us remember when before we think we could never slide that far that the precedents are already in place to allow this if some judge ever decides to connect the dots. Parents have the right to consent for children in many areas already. Just look at child actors. Parents agree to allow them to perform for money and they are allowed to do so. We say on one hand that children are not allowed to consent to sex, yet then we do allow them to consent to sex in some situations.

This is why I wish we would have maintained the same public decency standards that once prohibited the sale of “Men’s” magazines and just expanded it to new media.

Public decency standard (community standard) can be exercised, it needs new 'tools" for the new media in order that it can be exercised. This tool is not provided (yet), probably because internet community is rather different in zoning and whether location is important and if not how many is considered majority. These are the things to be discussed I guess if we push for/ desire it.

As for parents who concent for their own children to act for $$$, yes it is very sad. Public decency standard (community standard) may dissuade parents in doing so for their children. Many people just live pragmatically, it is important to remind them that what they do to their children is wrong.

 

[iohannes13]

I don’t understand this line of reasoning.

You say:

“Since millions of Americans did not obey these laws, it made criminals just the same. The laws caused many people and govt officials to become corrupt. So eventually the prohibition laws were repealed and things calmed down.”

Then how come drugs and prostitution are illegal? Many seem to be doing both. Should something be legal just because many are engaging in the practice?

Is it so right that prohibition was abolished? Think of all the auto accidents and deaths every year caused by drunk driving. It would be sufficient to not drink and drive, but man is so woefully lacking in good reasoning powers or hardly any laws at all would be necessary.

I lived through the supreme court trying to come to a definition of “obscenity”. Many of us thought it was pretty funny. You know: I can’t explain obscenity but I know it when I see it.

Man gets adjusted to each increase in gradation and that’s why things are just getting worse and worse. I used to think that moral control would bring us to 1984, but what’s going on now is not going to bring us to anything desireable either.

Fran

I found a very good article. Skip to the counsequences section at the bottom. The Prohibition laws were hastening the apocalypse. Just kidding. I think that the total disregard for these laws and the corruption and crimes that were happening would have a domino affect and people could eventually start disregarding other laws one after the other. Maybe there was a risk of society collapsing. Yes, it’s that serious if people have no respect of the laws and law enforcement are in the same boat.

pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences/

I understand what you mean about the drunk driving accidents. But I blame the idiots that weren’t MAN ENOUGH to drink within their limits and stop drinking when they reached the limit. How are we going to stop stupidity? The prohibition laws wouldn’t stop it.

Who says that we are not headed towards 1984 anymore? We are. We are still in the THEY LIVE epoch. But we’ll be 1984 in some future time.

 

[iohannes13]

You are kidding right? The US didnt learn anything from prohibition, they have the failing war on drugs going on for decades now, same thing with drug prohibition, but they cant recognize its failing, when they really should have years ago, so…??

You are right about morality though, funny though, websites like Youtube, seem to think morality is very important, in that they strictly do not allow any type of porn, not even nudity!!! and this is the secular internet…??? Same thing with network TV, they are VERY VERY strict about even very trivial curse words, even on after hours tv, especially since many other nations allow some degree of nudity on network tv…yet the US has strict laws against it…again, I have to ask…what is going on? Do morals factor into laws or not?

I thought that we lost the war on drugs ages ago? Well I heard a conspiracy theory that the illegality of drugs has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with money.

The war on drugs did not cause the wide spread mayhem that Prohibition did. I think that is the difference between the two. Check out the documentary on Prohibition by Ken Burns if you can. You’ll see the difference when he explains it.

I think laws are weighted more heavily on the wellbeing of citizens. I don’t remember my civics courses anymore lol. I imagine that the attitude is 'If you want to sin, and your sin doesn’t hurt anyone but you, who are we to stop you?"

 

[Trident_H]

That is a good point. However, let us remember when before we think we could never slide that far that the precedents are already in place to allow this if some judge ever decides to connect the dots. Parents have the right to consent for children in many areas already. Just look at child actors. Parents agree to allow them to perform for money and they are allowed to do so. We say on one hand that children are not allowed to consent to sex, yet then we do allow them to consent to sex in some situations.

This is why I wish we would have maintained the same public decency standards that once prohibited the sale of “Men’s” magazines and just expanded it to new media.

Yeah. I agree with that. I mean you and I are on the same side on this. I might just be complaining about one bit of it and you might be pointing to another bit. But in the end we’re in agreement here. Yet at the same time I remember the early days of the web. And I remember child porn being really easy to get. There were no police checking and hunting it down like now. So now it went underground. It’s harder to accidentally trip over. At least that’s one positive move. One move in the right direction.

 

[frangiuliano115]

I thought that we lost the war on drugs ages ago? Well I heard a conspiracy theory that the illegality of drugs has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with money.

The war on drugs did not cause the wide spread mayhem that Prohibition did. I think that is the difference between the two. Check out the documentary on Prohibition by Ken Burns if you can. You’ll see the difference when he explains it.

I think laws are weighted more heavily on the wellbeing of citizens. I don’t remember my civics courses anymore lol. I imagine that the attitude is 'If you want to sin, and your sin doesn’t hurt anyone but you, who are we to stop you?"

Sin always hurts everyone. That’s why God made us know sin; to avoid it.

Don’t have time today but will answer your post to me. I don’t only think we’re headed for 1984 - I think it’s here. I only meant that I thought it was moral laws that would bring us there. Have you heard any doublespeak lately?!

I feel like this is important stuff.

Fran

 

[iohannes13]

Sin always hurts everyone. That’s why God made us know sin; to avoid it.

Don’t have time today but will answer your post to me. I don’t only think we’re headed for 1984 - I think it’s here. I only meant that I thought it was moral laws that would bring us there. Have you heard any doublespeak lately?!

I feel like this is important stuff.

Fran

What do you mean by double speak? Oh ok, I see that I misread what you meant about 1984.

 

[francisca]

Or if they suspect that you own it.

huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/24/unsecured-wifi-child-pornography-innocent_n_852996.html

wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001457.html

OK, so, we should define the offence (for non-child porn) only for those who publish/ distribute porn material and not those who keep/ download/ buy it (non-CP). It will still be effective coz so long publishers lessen in number then porn will be limited/ decrease in number too.
In this way people’s privacy will not be infiltrated by the law. So if they suspect a man own child porn but turns out he only own adult porn, and he’s not a publisher, then he should walk free, just similar to now, no change. The change should only for those who publish it.

 

[pnewton]

OK, so, we should define the offence (for non-child porn) only for those who publish/ distribute porn material and not those who keep/ download/ buy it (non-CP). It will still be effective coz so long publishers lessen in number then porn will be limited/ decrease in number too.
In this way people’s privacy will not be infiltrated by the law. So if they suspect a man own child porn but turns out he only own adult porn, and he’s not a publisher, then he should walk free, just similar to now, no change. The change should only for those who publish it.

I would be happy if it was just illegal. I do not think it needs to be criminalized. Simply have it in the law so ISP’s do not have to link it or download it, that it will become less socially acceptable and so that profits from it can be seized. It is not like we can stop it anyway. We should strive to just make it less prevalent.

It is irrelevant though. Like has been said earlier, too many people want it to ever stop it.

 

[frangiuliano115]

You are kidding right? The US didnt learn anything from prohibition, they have the failing war on drugs going on for decades now, same thing with drug prohibition, but they cant recognize its failing, when they really should have years ago, so…??

You are right about morality though, funny though, websites like Youtube, seem to think morality is very important, in that they strictly do not allow any type of porn, not even nudity!!! and this is the secular internet…??? Same thing with network TV, they are VERY VERY strict about even very trivial curse words, even on after hours tv, especially since many other nations allow some degree of nudity on network tv…yet the US has strict laws against it…again, I have to ask…what is going on? Do morals factor into laws or not?

You were raised catholic. That doesn’t tell me anything.

“Catholic” should stand for something.

Are you upset with youtube because it IS moral?

I would agree that morality really cannot be enforced legally since it is a matter of the heart and not of the mind, and who could see a person’s heart?

However, Francisca does have a point which a couple of posters don’t understand, re the terrorism analogy. She’s simply saying that it seems that we are able to get done what we wish to get done - so why are we so unable to get porn out of our society?

Not that it could just disappear for all the reasons stated. But could it, maybe, not be so ACCEPTED by everyone with just a shrug of the shoulder? Is it not important at all?

Fran

 

[frangiuliano115]

I would be happy if it was just illegal. I do not think it needs to be criminalized. Simply have it in the law so ISP’s do not have to link it or download it, that it will become less socially acceptable and so that profits from it can be seized. It is not like we can stop it anyway. We should strive to just make it less prevalent.

It is irrelevant though. Like has been said earlier, too many people want it to ever stop it.

I don’t understand the workings of the internet. I do know what an IP address is, but that’s about it.

So if there’s a way to stop this stuff, Francisca’s whole point is: Why isn’t it being done?

Used to be that one had to go out and look for this stuff. I remember that Times Square was chock full of anything you wanted. And you had to pay for movies to come into the home. Now these same movies are avx on normal stations, for ALL to see.

I guess I’m saying that I resent that this stuff should be coming into my living room without my consent. And please don’t give me the “You don’t have to watch it” bit. I’m an older person and lived through that phase and look where’s it’s gotten us. To where we are today. Because people become accustomed to things a bit at a time and they don’t even realize what’s happening most of the time.

Fran

 

[mikekle]

Well maybe. Except for the one about them doing it voluntarily for pay instead of secretly by force. Because that would just never be right. So in a way it’s still a bit different. I don’t know. I’m just glad that society hasn’t slid that far. Not yet.

Peace.

-Trident

Oh, dont worry, it wont be long until we do slide that far, look at how bad things are today compared to years past…its pretty clear things are much worse, thats the nature of sin, it progresses into other, more serious sin. Its not really possible to say " well, we are OK with this level of sin, but definitely wont go any further", instead minds are changed over time, people get more and more desensitized to it, and come to accept it eventually, well, not really accept it, more of they get to a point where they realize majority of society has reached this point, (kind of like where we are with hard core porn right now).

I dont think we are too far from a time when people start fighting for their right to have child porn, just like other areas, they will say they are being held back, being discriminated against for something they enjoy, they will ask why every other kind of sexual sin is accepted yet theirs is still taboo.

Furthermore, I dont think our society is in any position to resist this, just look at society today, many people stand up and fight for their right to literally rip organs out of a fetus, so they can sell them and hope to buy an Italian supercar…how in the world can this be the same society that is against child porn? LOL

 

[frangiuliano115]

I found a very good article. Skip to the counsequences section at the bottom. The Prohibition laws were hastening the apocalypse. Just kidding. I think that the total disregard for these laws and the corruption and crimes that were happening would have a domino affect and people could eventually start disregarding other laws one after the other. Maybe there was a risk of society collapsing. Yes, it’s that serious if people have no respect of the laws and law enforcement are in the same boat.

pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences/

I understand what you mean about the drunk driving accidents. But I blame the idiots that weren’t MAN ENOUGH to drink within their limits and stop drinking when they reached the limit. How are we going to stop stupidity? The prohibition laws wouldn’t stop it.

Who says that we are not headed towards 1984 anymore? We are. We are still in the THEY LIVE epoch. But we’ll be 1984 in some future time.

Hi,

No you didn’t understand about doublespeak. This is how they spoke in 1984. The govt, or Big Brother, was always telling you a positive to impose a negative. You know, like when the govt is telling you that they’re going to pass a law for your own good and then you find out that your privacy has just been abolished.

I read the article you linked re prohibition. I used to be liberal when I was younger, up until about 30’ish I’d say, and I was all for legalizing drugs and prostitution. For many of the reasons that the article speaks about and I also thought it would cut down on crime - stealing to buy drugs.

I’m older now and I feel like society needs a lot of help because we just don’t know how to do the right thing. So we need laws to protect us. But then why is alcohol legal and why is porn running rampant? This does confuse me.

It IS too bad we’re not smart enough to know when to just stop drinking, but truth is, we’re not. The sin nature is infused into us and it’s difficult to deal with it at times.

So, yeah, where’s that boundary line between when we’re being helped and when we’re being oppressed??

Fran
Not that I really expect you to know the answer, just a thought.

 

[frangiuliano115]

Oh, dont worry, it wont be long until we do slide that far, look at how bad things are today compared to years past…its pretty clear things are much worse, thats the nature of sin, it progresses into other, more serious sin. Its not really possible to say " well, we are OK with this level of sin, but definitely wont go any further", instead minds are changed over time, people get more and more desensitized to it, and come to accept it eventually, well, not really accept it, more of they get to a point where they realize majority of society has reached this point, (kind of like where we are with hard core porn right now).

I dont think we are too far from a time when people start fighting for their right to have child porn, just like other areas, they will say they are being held back, being discriminated against for something they enjoy, they will ask why every other kind of sexual sin is accepted yet theirs is still taboo.

Furthermore, I dont think our society is in any position to resist this, just look at society today, many people stand up and fight for their right to literally rip organs out of a fetus, so they can sell them and hope to buy an Italian supercar…how in the world can this be the same society that is against child porn? LOL

Oops. Just wrote you a post regarding the above, sent off mine and the above came in.

Looks like we agree.

Fran

 

[Trident_H]

Oh, dont worry, it wont be long until we do slide that far, look at how bad things are today compared to years past…its pretty clear things are much worse, thats the nature of sin, it progresses into other, more serious sin. Its not really possible to say " well, we are OK with this level of sin, but definitely wont go any further", instead minds are changed over time, people get more and more desensitized to it, and come to accept it eventually, well, not really accept it, more of they get to a point where they realize majority of society has reached this point, (kind of like where we are with hard core porn right now).

I dont think we are too far from a time when people start fighting for their right to have child porn, just like other areas, they will say they are being held back, being discriminated against for something they enjoy, they will ask why every other kind of sexual sin is accepted yet theirs is still taboo.

Furthermore, I dont think our society is in any position to resist this, just look at society today, many people stand up and fight for their right to literally rip organs out of a fetus, so they can sell them and hope to buy an Italian supercar…how in the world can this be the same society that is against child porn? LOL

Well you have some good points here. Some good thoughts. The only thing I can really say about child porn is that it used to be easy to get online. Like out in the open. And then society got mad and it went underground. So I think there might be two possibilities with this. But you’re probably right. I mean human nature is about looking for new, uh, pleasures(?). So as each frontier falls a new one gets found. But I don’t know. I think a lot of us would get pretty mad with this level of exploitation. Just like we’re mad about the fetus thing. But this is different in a way. There is a difference in knowing that the kid up the street is being approached by oily guys who are trying to sign him up for this. I think some of us would get some pretty big sticks to chase them away. I don’t know. Please don’t tell me we’d all be apathetic by then. Because there are some fights worth having. Out in the street if you have to. Or whatever.

Peace.

-Trident

 

[francisca]

Wanting religion to coerce the state into forcibly censoring porn is a horrible idea for numerous reasons.

I’m revisiting your post coz I was trying to understand what you said.

I do agree on your above comment in a way. I think porn is not exclusively catholic mission to go against. many people from other religion or even atheists who gets addicted, they want out too if they can. So I don’t think this is only a catholic mission against the whole world in which everyone else disagaree. I think there are other people/ humanity in general to be represented here, although not everyone agree on the existance of any “humanity deepest cry” against porn. Bottom line there are other people who agree with us. So yeah wiser to say it’s the people’s problem in general.

]**

1. How would you censor Internet porn?**

You could force companies to censor their Domain Name Servers, what DNS do, is take a name of a website, such as Google.com, and pair it with its IP address, so instead of having to type 198.252.206.16, something which is hard remember, you type its a name and DNS will correctly match it to its IP address. If they were censored typing in a porn site would only take you too a error page.

However this is a bad way to implement state censorship. This is because you can still access websites just by using their IP address, also websites can easily change their name, hundreds, if not thousands of slightly different porn site names would have to be blacklisted each day, not only that, people can use what are known as proxies to access blocked data, proxies are essentially computers located in a nation that does not have totalitarian laws, this proxy then sends data, in this case porn, to the user located in the totalitarian state, because the data transfer is encrypted it is impossible to be censored using this method.

This is why freedom loving nations such as China and North Korea, use what is known as deep packet inspection.

What is deep packet inspection? Why is the absence of privacy!*** The destruction of web encryption! ***No nasty SSL to block the government from looking in at all your browsing habits. It is the equivalent of the government opening all your mail. Unfettered access to every detail of your online life available at any moment to the government.

I’d like to add your comment above.

Censorship like above blocking information in between google and the user is against freedom of speech principle, because in doing so, other information can get censored too, meaning if I have authority to block porn, I will be able to block whatever you’re searching, so that whatever you find is whatever I decide for you. Like you said, this is what happens to people in many places of the world where gov decides what you can read/ watch and what you can’t.

So I guess the best way to regulate porn is through google, facebook, instagram, these big guys can manage their content without abuse of power against other content. Besides these big companies do not make their money from porn. So I guess its no big deal for them. But they do need gov regulation to remove porn. Even google will be sued for being unfair if they can remove certain content from their search as however they’re pleased. This is the freedom of speech protection: google and friends need to be fair to everyone and not doing any censor as however they please (unless like youtube have announced since begining that it will remove any pornographic/ nudity content, thus fair for everyone since begining). Anyway, nowadays google has “local google”. This local google will favor local content, which basically sensored-search from other countries depend on how agressive the local gov want the censorship to be set . Totalitarian gov use porn-censorship-cum-morality excuse to censor other content they do not want their citizen to read/ watch.

 

[francisca]

And even then. Even if this hellish 1984 type scenario were to happen in my beloved nation. It still would not stop porn from spreading. As people would just simply transfer existing porn stashes that they have on hard drives via USB. Unless you want to install government spyware on people’s computers. Which I’m going to give everyone here the benefit of the doubt in saying that no one here would want that, right?

2. You would have to destroy the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

I think law against porn will never go so far into snooping into people’s privacy. Such a law is impossible to implement because first it is in conflict with people’s privacy, second, there will be too many offenders to arrest. I thing law makers know this and will never try to implement such an impossible law.

Snooping and tapping only necessary for child porn investigation. Whatever people have in their adult privacy is not porn unless they publish it publicly.

I think most people would agree that a good definition for porn whether it’s a video, image or story, is something that exists solely for sexual gratification.

So you ban porn. Great. Now what do you do when people start using regular movies as pornography? Are we going to have to burn all copies of Titanic, because of that one boob scene? Or James Bond movies? Troy? Twilight? Basic instinct? All of these movies are not porn. But could be used as such.

Whatever people do in their privacy is their privacy. Ilegalizing porn is to go against an act of publishing porn into public exposure.

3. What would the punishment be for having porn?
Would it be a fine? Or maybe 2 years in jail? Perhaps you would like to give a 14-year-old a criminal record thus ruining his or her chances of employment, all because they committed a victimless “sex crime”.

If the definition is illegalizing against publishers only, then simply own a porn will not affect anyone, until he publish/ distribute it.

If the definiton is illegalizing own/ download/ buy, or even watch, then ofcourse many people will be arrested and this will be impossible number for police to handle. Besides making this kind of law will not lessen the number of porn in circulation.

Illegalizing possession only necessary in child porn cases because they’re suspect predators.

**
4. The government has a lousy track record of legislating morality.**
Prohibition and the war on drugs is pretty good proof.

5. Why stop at porn?
Lets go full on theocratic and make all premarital sex illegal. After all it would be silly to ban porn but not the real thing right? That’s like banning drug paraphernalia but not drugs themselves.

 

[francisca]

I would be happy if it was just illegal. I do not think it needs to be criminalized. Simply have it in the law so ISP’s do not have to link it or download it, that it will become less socially acceptable and so that profits from it can be seized. It is not like we can stop it anyway. We should strive to just make it less prevalent.

It is irrelevant though. Like has been said earlier, too many people want it to ever stop it.

Tapping content from ISP is violation of freedom of speech principle. If they are given authority to remove porn from our search, they will be able to remove other contents from our search too. In fact we should have a law against anyone tapping in between content providers and users in order that freedom of speech will not be violated.

We do have child (age) restriction. Restriction is decided by owner of handphone/gadget, so it is not in violation of freedom of speech.

 

[exnihilo]

We can ban porn but the powers that be don’t want to. We live in a very evil age.

Even if porn where not banned the government could regulate it in a way to make it less available. It could for instance require all porn to be on a ‘.xxx’ rather than any other domain like ‘.com’. They could require that ISPs block this domain unless opted into to. They could require search engines to not display porn search results.

These would be easy to implement. Right now the US government is more than happy to spend time and money protecting the NFL and music and video producers from copyright infringement. I order foreign made tobacco from overseas. The US government is able to get these products to have an English language warning on them. The US government was able to crack Swiss bank secrecy. The US government can and will act to protect its power, its revenue and the same for corporate interests.

 

[edwest2]

It can be banned and the government has the tools to keep it off the internet - removing 80% or more internet content. Go ahead - talk politics, talk religion, but get rid of the greatest exploitation of women, and some men, in human history.

Human Dignity begins with Human Decency. Those aren’t just body parts. Each prostitute or sexual pervert is a person and some of them desire things that are sick.

Ed