Campaigners For SESTA See It As A First Step To Stomping Out Porn
from the good-luck-with-that dept
There are obviously a lot of mixed motivations behind the push for SESTA -- the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act -- with many of those motivations based on good intentions of actually stopping sex trafficking. Of course, we've explained in great detail how SESTA isn't likely to help at all, and is quite likely to make the problem worse. It also seems clear that many of those lining up in support of the bill see it as a wedge -- a way to slowly dismantle intermediary liability protections for platforms on the internet. And thus, some just see it as a way to attack Google and Facebook out of a general dislike for those companies -- without realizing (or without caring) just how much damage it will do to free speech online and the platforms that enable such speech. We've also been perplexed by SESTA supporters using completely bogus stats to insist the problem of sex trafficking is much larger than it truly is. As we noted, sex trafficking is both very real and an absolute tragedy for those caught up in it and their families. But we should be realistic about the actual scope of the problem -- and many SESTA supporters aren't actually able to do that.
But perhaps the motivation behind some SESTA supporters is... even more absurd. An email popped up in my inbox recently with a bunch of really strong language supporting SESTA, coming from a group calling itself the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE). They run the website "End Sexual Exploitation" and are strong supporters of SESTA. But what caught my eye is that the end of the email noted the true mission of NCSE isn't to end sex trafficking... but to rid the world of the "public health crisis of pornography."
You see, NCSE began its life in 1962 as Morality in Media, and was a reaction to a ridiculous moral panic over "pornographic material" being left outside of a school. NCSE appears to believe that all porn is pure evil and must be eradicated. The group has insisted that porn is a "public health crisis" and has worked to get states to declare it as such. It also posts a Dirty Dozen list of organizations that it needs to shame for "perpetuating sexual exploitation."
Want to know how totally fucked up the list is? They include the American Library Association and Amnesty International on this year's list. Really. They completely misrepresent the ALA's opposition to mandatory internet filters to claim that libraries have been turned into "a XXX space that fosters child sexual abuse." It put Amnesty on the list because Amnesty dares to call sex workers "sex workers" rather than prostitutes. They also list the Justice Department as an honorable mention for failing to enforce obscenity laws, which NCOSE wants to use to basically criminalize pornography. In other words, NCSE supports pretty blatant censorship.
Now people can certainly differ on their beliefs about prostitution and pornography, but having groups like this at the forefront of destructive, counterproductive bills like SESTA -- which will do nothing to stop actual sex trafficking, and plenty to harm free speech online -- raises some serious questions about what really are the goals of SESTA. NCSE certainly seems to think it's part of the plan to wipe out all pornography. Considering that other SESTA supporters insist (incorrectly) that SESTA won't have any impact on speech online, they might want to consider why one of their major coalition partners seems to be eagerly looking for ways to censor the internet.
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Filed Under: porn, sesta
Companies: morality in media, ncse
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Obvious Truths
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My morality is more moral than your morality
Apparently SESTA supporters that wish to end pornography are having difficulty comprehending the 1st Amendment.
Even the Supreme Court has a better understanding.
Different morals for different people. Some societies are not embarrassed by the sight of a female breast, but the religious fanatics in the US are. They forget that the founding fathers did not want one religion in the US, they wanted all religions to be able to flourish. Yet some keep trying to impose their standards on the rest of us.
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Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
*>>> raises some serious questions about what really are the goals of SESTA. -- No, it doesn't. All the serious questions involve why mega-corporations are allowed to openly operate past the margins of civil society.
By the way, noticed the "Funniest Of Week", so clarified for the netwits: We non-criminals don't allow KNOWN criminal bases, even if on our highways. -- Sheesh. And that empty contradiction is taken as funny here. It's why I rarely read comments, the feebleness just depresses.
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Stamping out porn?
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Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
@ having groups like this at the forefront -- That's some nice ad hom ya made up there. It's what sites "like this" use instead of reason.
@ of destructive, counterproductive bills like SESTA -- It's not.
@ which will do nothing to stop actual sex trafficking, -- Hmm, first, why the "actual"? 2nd, so YOU predict. 3rd, why are you supporting "imagined" or "virtual" or whatever kind of other than "actual" sex trafficking?
@ and plenty to harm free speech online -- Your usual predictive assertion. Your accuracy for predicting disaster has to be under 1%, out of literally thousands.
@ raises some serious questions about what really are the goals of SESTA. -- No, it doesn't. All the serious questions involve why mega-corporations are allowed to openly operate past the margins of civil society. Here's interesting bit on lowering "quality" and blames piracy too: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/11/why-porn-has-gotten-so-rough.html By the way, noticed made "Funniest Of Week" yet again, so clarify for netwits: We non-criminals don't allow KNOWN criminal bases, even if on our highways. -- Sheesh. And that pointless contradiction is taken as funny here. It's why I rarely read comments, the feebleness just depresses.After EIGHT attempts, clearly back to the bad old days for dissent here. I've noticed lack of other dissent.
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We have R's across the country trying to pass laws banning pornography, groups like this explaining how everything is porn, & somehow the belief that porn will end the world if left unstopped.
The American people are some of the dumbest fucking people on the planet.
Oh you molested little kids, thats okay we'll keep you in office because you promised to end abortion.
Oh you pocketed millions in kickbacks, but you promised to protect me from having to make a homos cake so we'll keep you.
Oh you left your wife for your assistant who was 20 years younger, we'll keep you because you promised to uphold family values.
Porn does not cause rape. (I know shocking)
Video games do not cause shooting sprees.
We know for a fact that many of the champions of ending porn enjoy it themselves in private.
Morality should not be legislated. Declaring that X causes Y, with the tiniest supporting flawed study gets them funding.
We have some people pimping out kids, we need to stop them.
We do not need to try and assemble a series of events that lead to this so some holier than thou person can claim this unrelated bad thing should be banned because it caused it.
Kid gets trafficked.
Porn didn't do it, movies didn't do it, rap music didn't do it, swear words didn't do it.
An adult gave the kid unfettered access to the internet, did not check on what they were doing, or pay any attention to them. Adults have been trained that society has laws to protect their kids, & the village will do the work. You can be your kids friend & not their adult.
We love slapping labels on things & declaring the issues settled.
Backpage DID NOT CREATE PIMPING OUT LITTLE KIDS, even if they never existed you would find another company to blame for failures of parents & society.
The biggest problem we face is those "good people" who insist their pet crusade holds the key to fixing an ill in society. It gets repeated as gospel, it gets sound bites & media time... but its not true.
Evidence based decisions is what we need.
We need to have data gathered by people who don't have their own motivations clouding it.
We need to tell people just because you dislike it, doesn't mean its wrong.
If you don't like booze, don't drink.
Don't fight to ban booze for everyone.
All sex workers aren't abused slaves, stop thinking they are.
Lets accept that some people want to provide & use these services.
Let them do what they want in the privacy of their lives.
Why waste resources on harassing consenting adults?
If we stopped chasing these morality panics & relied on facts we'd be better off.
Lets learn from the history of allowing the morality police run the show & screwing everything up & try something new.
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Re: Stamping out porn?
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Re:
You'd never have left Europe.
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Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
Maybe that's because intelligent people wouldn't disagree with this article.
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Re: Obvious Truths
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Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
The argument about their behaviors renders the "ad hom" not an argumentum ad hominem whatsoever. Stepping back further, the arguments have already long been made why the bill is bad. Pointing out who supports it, and why, is perfectly valid. It's good to know about all these things, not just the bill itself, as they are all about either violating the first amendment or other rights, or promoting a bad idea that won't help.
SESTA is completely counterproductive and destructive. There, have a counterargument equal to your initial argument on that point.
"Actual" as opposed to fining someone we don't like because they didn't remove something arbitrarily fast enough for us, while the ad will just move somewhere else, whether or not the offer involved someone trafficking another human being. (Note that the definition of "sex trafficking" changes between narrow and broad constructions depending on to whom they are trying to sell their bad idea / line of bullshit). They will stop no trafficking by doing this. On the other hand, they could easily watch for ads and go after the people posting them...
@@ - citation needed.
If the goal of SESTA is to reign in corporations, someone may want to introduce a valid bill on that matter and not lie about what it is for. And stop destroying the minimal regulations we did have for some of the egregious corporate behaviors, maybe.
I frequently notice the lack of dissent of any quality myself. Well that isn't really true. Make that "completely contrarian opposition dissent". I see plenty of dissent on particulars.
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Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
It is—or, rather, it will be if and when it is signed into law. The entire point of SESTA is to make websites/services legally liable for a criminal act if they so much as “know” about illegal user-generated content, even if they report that content to law enforcement. If a site like Backpage wants to decrease its potential liability, it will do one of two things: Cut off the user-generated content part of the site or refuse to even look at that content—in any context—so it cannot “know” about it. The broad wording of the bill, the conflation of opposing this bill with supporting human trafficking, and the whole “we must be seen doing something” mindset have all let to this moment. If passed, SESTA will stifle free speech and drive actual criminals further underground—all so lawmakers can have their “we thought of the children” moment for their campaigns.
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"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for porn and prostitution to be extinguished."
Or something like that.
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Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
You linked the Daily Beast. No seriously, it's a waste of time to come with any facts or the truth. You are immune to those.
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Re: My morality is more moral than your morality
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Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
If you have read any SESTA coverage, his point has been made pretty loud and clear.
Also, knowing who is backing things helps give context. For example... when the NSA was found pushing specific security standards to RSA AND THEN PAYING THEM TO MAKE A DEFAULT.... that is a pretty big neon sign of 'hey... this is probably a bad idea'. Too bad it took Snowden's leaks to expose that.
"@ of destructive, counterproductive bills like SESTA -- It's not."
I'm not sure how forcing every website (including this one) to monitor their site for 'possible' sex trafficking is not destructive to the economy and small business. It is, by definition counterproductive. Remember, Backpage and Craigslist do not have any 'adult' ads on their platform anymore and... newsflash... there is still sex trafficking...
"@ raises some serious questions about what really are the goals of SESTA. -- No, it doesn't. All the serious questions involve why mega-corporations are allowed to openly operate past the margins of civil society"
Actually, I didn't even think about the possibility to use this to curtail the adult entertainment business, but it does have some pretty big ramifications. There isn't much of a logical leap between 'sex trafficking', the act of a person being forced into a sexual act by another, and 'sex trafficking' saying that the man/woman in the film was doing it against their will which means SESTA would apply... Which, wow... talk about impossible to police. See a pornographic image on the internet? Was that person being FORCED to take that picture? Probably better use SESTA to shut it down... just in case....
That is playing into what NCSE sees as a 'wedge'. They don't care about 'freedoms' or 'rights'... just what they think is right.... so they can be free from the 'evils' of alternative viewpoints.
FYI: you can dissent on here and not be a jerk. I don't agree with everything on the authors say and will make my position heard in a coherent and logical way.
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Re: Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
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Re: Obvious Truths
Moe: Good, 'cause I got a hot date tonight
[LIE DETECTOR BEEPS - FALSE]
Moe: A date.
[LIE DETECTOR BEEPS - FALSE]
Moe: Dinner with friends.
[LIE DETECTOR BEEPS - FALSE]
Moe: Dinner alone.
[LIE DETECTOR BEEPS - FALSE]
Moe: Alright. I'm gonna sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria's Secret catalogue.
[LIE DETECTOR BEEPS - FALSE]
Moe: ... Sears catalogue.
[LIE DETECTOR CHIMES - TRUE]
Moe: Now, will you unhook me please? I don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment!
[LIE DETECTOR BEEPS - FALSE]
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They won't stop it
This won't stamp out pr0n. But it will stamp out internet freedom. This slippery slope will be used to stop other things less and less objectionable until eventually it is used to shut down web sites that refuse to delete an account that called someone an orange clown.
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Re: Stamping out porn?
There's that carving in the sidewalk of an ancient Roman city that seems to have been part of a sign pointing the way to the nearest brothel. The foot size was a "only bother coming here if you're old enough that your foot is big enough to fill this carving" kind of message.
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Re: Obvious Truths
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Re: Re: Stamping out porn?
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Re: Re: Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
SESTA is also worded so broadly that looking at user-generated content under any context—even to moderate it or report it to authorities—creates “knowledge” of the content and opens a site/service to legal liability.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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Re:
A person can despise both Google and SESTA simultaneously.
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Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
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bEEN IN THIS WORLD TO LONG..
1. this only DRIVES things under the RADAR..
2. I would LOVE the idea that ALL text in a latter be VISIBLE/legible.. AND as with phone calls, at the TOP of the conversation of WHO THEY ARE, and WHAT THEY WANT..
3. a DF(Dumb F##) indicator.. TRUTH in what a person is SAYING or 10 people to acknowledge WHAT a person is saying with Common Since..
4. AND.. A stated written point of the AMOUNT of money KEPT/GIVEN for any charity or service..
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Re: Re: Stamping out porn?
Guard: 2.
*Teen hands 2 gold coins to the guard*
Guard: Oh look, that's the biggest foot I've ever seen, go ahead.
Profit!
Modern version
Site: You must be over 18 to proceed.
Teen: *clicks I am over 18* then checks his torrent client for the porn that was downloading while the page loads.
Profit!
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Re:
That's some mighty fine projection AC, why not share with the rest of us who's paying you to post here? I mean someone clearly is if it's impossible to have a position on the topic without being paid, so who's signing your checks?
If repeating the same tired accusations are the best you've got you might as well state flat out that you don't have anything to counter the arguments presented.
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Re: bEEN IN THIS WORLD TO LONG..
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"I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
Purity fanatics like this really need to just disconnect from the internet, or (horror of horrors), don't go looking for porn if they find it that offensive.
So long as the porn in question involves consenting adults(or pixels on a screen in the case of entirely fictional porn, which I'd guess they're also against given their extreme position) it's none of their damn business who makes it, who stars in it, and who watches it, and they have no right to go around demanding other people follow their sense of morality.
Because if 'It offends me, therefore it needs to be taken down' is the route they want to take, then using a 'Turnabout is fair play' argument their calls for mass censorship offends me, and therefore their speech needs to be removed.
Can't have anyone being offended, this is the internet after all!
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Re: Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
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Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
That was ... disconcerting. These days (well, assuming that there has not been much change in recent years), the smut has been pushed astonishingly far down in the search results even without Safe Search (which can be helpful under similar circumstances, though it then only tends to cut down the smut to manageable rather than invisible amounts: definitely no "parenting" filter if you are that kind of parent).
I consider that a feat in its own right.
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Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
Because every person who played Doom became a mass shooter and every person who liked some 2D pixel art became a sex offender, of course.
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Plain brown enevelops in the mail.
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Thankfully, in the US anyway, non-obscene porn is generally considered protected speech. Every attempt to shut it down or block it has ended in failure for simple first amendment issues. Even when draped in the "for the children" mantra, it fails because the courts can clearly see the problems.
Attempts by the politicians to enforce stricter record keeping laws and make it almost impossible to run a porn business in the US failed (COPA, and COPA II).
So yes, there will be exceptional groups who will try to turn the new law into something else. Don't let their puny voices against legal activity get in the way of dealing with the illegal activities of prostitution and pimping.
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Being an intelligent, mature and well spoken teenage pervert, we spent about 20-ish minutes talking about how different forms of pornography apply to the churches views on coveting the form of another and their incredibly broad definition of adultery.
As you can imagine he had a very easy time arguing the churches views on things like playboy magazine, a strip club or a sleezy movie. But this raised the question for me... what of erotic illustrations that involved no real person? What og erotic fiction? Sex dolls, wet dreams, comics, animals... I even brought up the possibility of sexual attraction to inanimate objects like cars and the like. I made it clear that I was genuinely interested on the churches stance on each thing, whether it applied to me or not.
Of course, everything wound up being taboo in the end and I respectfully informed him I would not do well in an organization unwilling to compromise.
BUT!
I left that conversation with a good deal of respect for that priest. Most shocking to me in that whole conversation was when I ptrsented an argument that seemingly went along with the stated philosophy, such as a strip club effectively de-humanizing the dancers into little more tjan objects to be coveted, while still enabling access to porn, auch as fantasizing about fictional individuals, he actually STOPPED AND THOUGHT IT OVER instead of haphazardly regurgitating talking points or becoming disrespectful to my questions.
It was honestly a fascinating discussion and I believe we both left respecting one another despite our disagreement. Hell, he basically agreed to disagree with me and complimented me for taking time to actually think the other side through.
If a horny teenager and a chaste priest can have this discussion calmly, peacefully and respectfully... the hell is everyone elses* excuse?
NOTE : By everyone else, I mean the political and purity pusher groups trying to take advantage of this situation to push their agenda and people furiously rushing to spew equal amounts of hostile and unconstructive vitriol from the other side.
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Re:
The real question is who on any side of this debate do you actually trust to determine a legal definition for 'non obscene porn'
Cause some people will let kama sutra instructional dvds at convenience stores slide, others may consider sears underwear sections of their catalogs to be showing way too much stomach and knee to be considered decent...
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Re: Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
Suffice to say it was hillarious!
Im still waiting to see what square enix does for final fantasy 30
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Re: Re: Obvious Truths
And no, I am not making any particular comment on your circle of fuckbuddies. Just in general... its gonna happen.
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This is all Dee Schneider's fault.
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Re: Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
One is a consentual display of love, the other a psychopath brutally murdering and traumatising victems, both arguably just as fictional ._.
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Trafficking is Mostly Fake News
The Puritan anti-sex people behind this act have successfully characterized prostitution as sex trafficking. Regular prostitution--practiced by women and some men voluntarily--is now called sex trafficking.
In study after study, it has been shown that the amount of acdtual sex trafficking is extremely small. You are far, far, far more likely to be trafficked into a factory job for no pay forced to work long hours your id or passport kept in escrow, than you are to be trafficked for prostition of some kind.
But dressing up the pig of prostituion prohibition with the lipstick of "trafficking" has fueled this movement. The attack on Backpage is nothing more than an attack on prostitutes. Kamala Harris knew that or should have and continued on.
That people do not like prostitution is clear. That it is illegal in most parts of the United States is true. Nevertheless, it goes on and it will always go on.
Banning Backpage or limiting the entire internet so as to get to prostitution (and porn) is not the way to deal with prostitution.
Either is calling it sex trafficking.
Derailing this name change campaign, might also derail the SESTA campaign, because it would at least notch down to a great degree the hysterical push to pass the measure. This fact (prostitution is not trafficking) should be a key part of all articles written about this draconian measure.
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The most useful yardstick at the moment is Reno v. ACLU - in that case, obscenity laws written for the internet were stuck down. They were pretty light rules all considered, and the court struck them down. Nobody has even suggested to take a swing at that again, Conservative types certain fear having the court rule against any anti-obscenity law, as it would confirm the legality of the products. They much prefer the current stew of indecision.
It should be noted that USC 18 section 2256 and 2257 apply to the production of adult material. Decent record keeping, model releases, ID copies, and the like have made it much harder for anyone underage to slip into porn. The existence of section 2257 record keeping for production of porn essentially codifies porn into law - ie, the government cannot regulate what is not legal. In regulating porn, they have also defined it as legal.
So your basic shag film isn't going to even wiggle the needle on obscenity - it's long since been proven to be legal.
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If SESTA gets pushed on the moral superiority angle copyright fans might very well see one of their biggest assets chased underground.
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And before you say "Kim Dotcom", his mistake was that his servers were in the United States. If he had never had any servers in the United States, he would not have been subject to prosecution in America.
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However... any kind of community standards test for porn would likely screw (no pun intemded) a lot of peoples innoculous fetishes. As a completely (non)random example, say I am interested in illustrations of entirely fictional characters being magically transformedbinto literal , inanimate or semi animate sex paraphinalia and used vigorously. Show me the community that would get behind that openly.
When you have a culture tjat jas spent so long shaming creative fetishry and then turn and ask a community what tjey would consider acceptable porn, youll either need fully anonymous contributions or you are gonna get something embarassingly tame out of shame.
Im concerned because i have literally no interest in a 'basic shag film'. Even when I was new to porn those seemed painfully boring. I am a pervert, and I waited quite a while to be able to openly partake in my cornucopia of disney inspired fetishry (totally serious), Im not abput to put up with people old enough to be my grandpa at worst, father at best watering things down because tje community might not approve of harmless creative persuits in an entirely private and very individualistic field XD
I am certainly not trying to give a free pass to truely exploitive or rightfully illegal pornographic material but... I am not about to have 'community standards' kinkshame my harmless and victemless perversion XD
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That is why this one adult chat site operator is going to do it right, if he has to relocate. Both his business AND his server will relocate outside of the United States, where he will be beyond the reach of US laws.
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The Failed Enlightenment
Part of the problem is that the common American student isn't required to understand the problems suffered within our society that compelled us to develop modern-era morality. Case in point, even if our kids are expected to know the bill of rights (I hope they are), they are not required to understand the circumstances that merited enshrining these specific rights into national law.
No one seems to get the point of the fourth amendment, for example, until the police take their stuff.
(Says one who learned about the Social Contract only after playing Rise of Nations )
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Re: Re: Re: Stamping out porn?
I don't know of any torrent sites with age-gates.
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With the internet, the problem is defining community. It's not where you live, but where you go, I guess. There have only been a very few obscenity prosecutions in the last couple of decades, and that usually involve content that most people would find offensive. The two cases I can think of involved Max Hardcore (real name Paul Little) spent 4 years in jail for his gagging / choking videos, and Rob Black (Rob Zicari) and his wife got nailed for "horror porn". Otherwise, the mainstream, middle of the road stuff has been ignored on the level of obscenity.
The fact that straight porn is legal and acceptable in the US means that any prosecution has to be for the very edges of things, and few producers seem to make that stuff in the US. Online delivery means that most of those who do make it are generally able to avoid prosecution so far.
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Re: Re:
Back then many that came to the colonies for religious reasons came because their ideals were suppressed. They wished to worship as they pleased and were not able to do so.
However Many also came for the financial opportunity of lands previously unknown to europe. It was a time period of conquest, many countries and people wishing to claim what was to be had.
Some were sent across as punishment. The land was new territory and with it came new dangers. At the time some in europe considered willingly going to the colonies a fool's errand.
There are moral problems to be seen in all of those scenarios. That being said, the moral problems that came down the road are more likely to be seen as a moral panic. Namely the english king's refusal to follow the magna carta, something that was already law.
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Re: Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
I HATE prostitution and pornography but censorship is not the answer since these are demand-side issues; people WANT to access and act in porn and people WANT to buy and sell sex. Call me what you like but as long as you keep it out of my way I don't give a rat's as to what consenting adults get up to behind closed doors. It's none of my business.
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Re: Re: Assertions so silly call for quote-and-contradict:
I have no problem with the Daily Beast as such. To be fair there is no such thing as a perfectly neutral media platform and the Beast is a decent conservative one.
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Re: They won't stop it
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Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
But then those who want to get rid of porn would have to go and look at something else that offends their sensibilities, so that they have something to rail at society about.
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Re: Re: Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
It's more like a mindless sport humping and cosmetics display event designed for pushing the spectators' buttons (which actually is what cosmetics are about). It's actually quite effective at that, like old deep fry fat smell will work for letting your mouth water.
And it does become annoying when some stupidly coined euphemism means that your actual search results will be buried underneath endless pages of copulating bodies.
I mean, try figuring out the gender of young cats by doing image searches. Good luck finding the sex of your kittens.
That's where "Safe Search" helps. Thanks, puritans, for this blinders-on option.
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Sears catalogue?
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Re: Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
I think it's more that all those persons talking about the ultimate evil and killing sprees and the best weapons aren't talking in a vacuum. They create an atmosphere making it possible for others to start thinking in those terms outside of gaming contexts.
Countering that effect would be more the job of stigmatization rather than criminalization, but where is the fun in that?
Also, looking for weak correlations like "several in his class played violent video games though he didn't himself" is the road to witch hunts.
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The Black Death was a blast, but after the Dark Ages and all of the effort I put into preserving knowledge & you hairless apes still learned nothing... of course I left.
(Yes this is my new thing, I'm a sociopathic immortal watching you stupid hairless apes repeating the same mistakes over and over, hoping that a smart one might emerge again... I miss Leonardo.)
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Re: Plain brown enevelops in the mail.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: "I don't want to see it, and you're not allowed to either!"
And maybe this is just me.... but the only time I ever really come across porn in search results is when I'm LOOKING for porn. Hell even in the example I gave of the XXX movie (The action film not a porno), I found the website in about 5 seconds after my mother let me try.
Also, you are looking up pictures of kitten genitals and you wonder why you are getting porn ._.;;
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The future of legal pornography will cease in the near future because Christian Republicans and Feminist Democrats hold hands on this particular issue. Debates over nude art, erotic literature and their role in a Christian society have emerged throughout centuries. The anti-obscenity movement flourished after Regina v. Hicklin declared erotica was not necessarily punishable by law in Great Britain in 1868. Anthony Comstock was a United States Postal Inspector who managed to stake an anti-obscenity stance in the Republican party.The Liberal Republican Party was a short-lived pro-civil liberties political party that splintered off in May 1872 to oppose the anti-obscenity faction. Federal and local anti-obscenity laws emerged in 1872 and was largely due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock. The Forty-second Congress had Republican majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives. The Post Office Act (17 Stat. 283, enacted June 8, 1872) ratified §148 which made it a federal crime to send obscene materials through the mail. The Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use Act was passed on March 3, 1873.
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The war on porn
The advocates of decency in the war on porn have always fought with such hubris as to overstep their bounds, not only seeking to criminalize media clearly in the realm of decency. To this day, the Vatican has to explain its embarrassment of fig-leaved or castrated art pieces, many of Raphael's or Michelangelo's, the result of the offended sensibilities of many a cleric and a few popes.
But were our anti-pornographers to have their way, countless novels and comic books, many of which have little to do with sex, or in which sex is not dwelled on overmuch would be censored as to protect the delicate sensibilities of our children. Sometimes we expunge books from the library or burn them in the streets, only to regret the culture permanently lost a decade later. So it is with Plato's transcripts of Socrates, annihilated for Socrates' impiety. The Hellenists of the modern age still regret that one.
We tire of censors who think they know what the society needs and, no, they really don't. Our movies and video games have to adhere to weird rules to suit the MPAA or ESRB already. Specifically so as not to upset the individuals on the committee. Bargaining is done and egregious scenes are inserted so they can be used to haggle with the ratings committees, and ultimately our moral guardians who are demonstrated to be an ugly farce, a bureaucracy that serves only to fuel its own continuity.
And on the opposite side of the swing, we have The Stripping Years, the cinematic era of Spain after the rise of the democracy and shattering of the strict censorship laws of the dictatorship. Every movie features sex and controversy, often incidental to story. And then there's People v. Freeman during which California district attorneys tried to use pandering laws meant to apply to prostitution instead to apply for porn talent. In the end it became explicitly legal to pay someone to fuck someone else so long as the event is being recorded. California is now the porn capital of the US (though Russian porn has replaced Swedish porn on the international scene, thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union.)
Ultimately, though, concerns regarding treatment of the talent is going to come to its own resolution: Porn is going to be computer rendered not just because it will become cheaper to not have to deal with talent, but also because then we can create super-normal models (that is, media that provides a super-normal erotic experience) against which ordinary erotic content will not be able to compete.
Maybe, by then, we can actually teach our kids about human sexuality, instead of avoiding having real conversations and letting porn do the talking for us (#MakeLoveNotPorn) because it's not going to go away, no matter how much the anti-sex / anti-porn folk scream about it.
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