Been around for a while, that one.

Yes, and despite all technological, ideological and social advances, it persists. It draws it's bow furthest in times of fear. Exploiting that fear, to subjugate followers, according to it's continually rejigged mandate. And with every election the christians win, their mandate to impose…

christianity

Been around for a while, that one.

what's behind this growth in moralism when we're supposed to be becoming more liberal

christianity.

Which is because these laws are enforced by elected prosecutors. People who can get votes out of being 'tough on crime' can also directly prosecute offenders.

In light of that, it's hugely ironic that Australia, and in particular the Australian Labor Party, which has made a big issue of the…

My partner and I were discussing this a couple of nights ago: what's behind this growth in moralism when we're supposed to be…

are-you-out-of-your-freaking-mind-you-morons

Very much my reaction too (on reading a report in last Sunday's Japan Times ). I mean, it's so batshit crazy on so many different levels:
(i) the Kafkaesque insanity of attempting to try her as an adult , for child pornography of herself (surely at least one of these…

I watched this last week. Sapolsky is a brilliant guy; I loved his books, and it was nice to see that he's a good speaker too

I was relieved when he stopped stepping between those two safety 'fixed positions' at the beginnng. Enjoyed that Stephen. Thanks.

I watched this last week. Sapolsky is a brilliant guy; I loved his books, and it was nice to see that he's a good speaker too.

Anyway: from his POV, sex and aggression are intimately related in the brain (to extract, summarize and brutally…

Classic censorial behaviour from prosecutors in the US taking an "educational" approach to teen sxting:

Yikes. Here's the suit filed against Mr Skumanick, the district attorney by the girls and their mothers.

He appears to be a censurious nutbar who doesn't like teenagers. Girls especially.

But when MaryJo Miller protested to Skumanick that the photo portraying her daughter and Kelly couldn't possibly be considered child porn, he replied that the girls were posed "provocatively," according to the lawsuit.
...

But Skumanick…

What can I say about an image that we can't safely look at.

Censorship, pretty much by its definition, stops us from talking about things. It curtails freedom of speech, that's it's job.

I have found myself in quite surreal situations as a result, and I totally get where steven…

I know there are studies that show that individuals who view large amounts of porn (ie more than six hours a week, which is about four movies) are more likely... to have poor attitudes to women,

So Paul Henry...

If somebody wanted to stop me producing something because other people consuming it would cause harm, my first response would be 'prove it'.

Fair points.

I'd imagine there is anecdotal evidence on both sides. Some people might have access to the stuff and it prevents them doing anything further. Others…

What can I say about an image that we can't safely look at.

Emma checked with me, and my view was that it would be reckless to link to images that have been defined as "child pornography" by a court.

Personally, I think the decision in that case was nutty,…

Someone sent me a link to an image to check whether it was okay to link to from here. In order to determine that, I went and looked at it.

That means I've 'downloaded' it. I've committed just as much of a crime as…

The French documentary on these trends in the US, Outlawing Indecency , is out there on the wires, and highly recommended. I was shouting at the television by the end of it.

I was sitting with my head in my hands thinking 'I wish I was more surprised by any…

The latest teenage girl in America to be charged with child pornography offences after sending her boyfriend nude pics of herself with her mobile phone.

If she is convicted, she will spend the rest of her life on a public sex offenders' register. Does nobody involved…

Is it a different story if the experience wasn't portrayed negatively? Like if rape or other abuse of someone was presented as positive? Not just for you, but "OK for someone else to do because it's fiction and freedom of speech"?

I have this really big space between 'things I…

I've been criticised for writing scenes that involved rape, even though experience was portrayed extremely negatively, showed real and horrendous consequences, and the writing left me shaking and in tears.

Is it a different story if the experience wasn't portrayed negatively? Like if rape or other abuse of someone was…

My line is that if it involves obvious pre-pubescent children, and it is showing sexual activity, it should not be permitted. Sure, things like Simpson porn will be caught up in that, but frankly I don't care.

See, I disagree. No real people were harmed by the production of that…

Where do you draw the line?

My line is…

"to reject all methods of communicating and understanding the atrocities of war,"

that's really the crux what is needed for significant social…

And the Australian Classification Board's website has been hacked.

had a laugh...blame China...

I'd not ever be in favour of using real children to produce pornography in any way, no matter how manipulated the images were, for the reasons Sam stated:

Even the tamest softcore including actual adults is predicated upon the consent of the adults appearing. Minors by definition can't give that…

(I haven't seen it & have no wish to see it, but cartoon characters, ffs, = 'kiddie porn'...?)

I'd not ever be in favour of using real children to produce pornography in any way, no matter how manipulated the images were, for the reasons Sam stated:

Even the tamest softcore including actual adults is predicated upon the consent of the…

I can't work out what I did that was good,so now you've got me worried... :)

You didn't accusatorially question my motives.

might leave this one for the night I think. :)

yeah, fair dos.

Thanks Sam F

I can't work out what I did that was good, so now you've got me worried... :) Sorry if that post seemed too shrill or I seemed to be jumping down your throat at times. I was writing and posting way too slow and missed a whole…

It'd be incredibly tricky to determine if, say, a film clip featuring a man appearing to be strangled was real or simulated, consensual or non-con. But I don't think that means that you take the easy way out like the British have and ban and prosecute simulation…

I've had a think about that, knowing full well that there probably are pornographic images of myself as a child out there, or in a shoe box somewhere. I'd imagine the psychological ramifications would be that I would feel angry,

My apologies Steven if I seem crass in my writing,…

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:16:08 +1300 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100610#post100610 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100610#post100610 I am asking you mark taslov-

and the technology was there in 1995 too-

the next load of nothing doesnt need to be responded to:

"I am an art history major"

-whoop de doo: I'm a poet.

Frankly, art – of all kinds- DOESNT receive "far too much blame for…

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:47:32 +1300 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100606#post100606 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100606#post100606

Does mark taslov actually *know* what child pornography is?

who are you asking Islander?

It aint photos of naked kids.
It is photos/video streams of raped and otherwise molestested – frequently tortured(as tho' rape wasnt torture enough) – kids.

It is photos Islander
and it is movies

And this…

BUT

the areas that child pornography are concerned with – including those that arouse paedophiles- are very different indeed.

And art stuff – o, and counselling? After conviction…

Thank you Sam. I have been huffing nothing.

Didn't mean to offend – I didn't actually realise that was a position you yourself gave some credence to, rather than a devil's advocate-type argument that someone else could potentially distort out of what Emma said.

Producing naked photos of children, whether…

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:07:31 +1300 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100602#post100602 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100602#post100602 I don't think what I'm saying is not that dissimilar from Emma's manifesto;

Producers of child pornography are aggressively prosecuted. (That's actual child pornography that involves harm to actual children, not fiction or drawings.)

Bearing in mind (as any journalism course will iterate) that photographs are no longer indisputable evidence…

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:06:57 +1300 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100601#post100601 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100601#post100601 Does mark taslov actually *know* what child pornography is?

It aint photos of naked kids.
It is photos/video streams of raped and otherwise molestested – frequently tortured(as tho' rape wasnt torture enough) – kids.

I spent 5 years of my life on the Indecent Publications Tribunal, and we did have…

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:45:22 +1300 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100596#post100596 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/up-front-making-a-list-not-bothering-to-check/?p=100596#post100596

I'm going to break the deafening silence: given that producing this stuff is by definition harmful to children, who would be seriously making such a case and what would they have been huffing?

Thank you Sam. I have been huffing nothing. Producing naked photos of children, whether by means of…

Based on that though, a case could be made though for compiling a selection of produced in a way not harmful to children.

I'm going to break the deafening silence: given that producing this stuff is by definition harmful to children, who would be seriously making such a case and…

your saying we shouldn't...

no Kyle.
I'm not

will use child pornography to... ease the urge,

Has been observed to be a common misuse of all genres of porno.

has been produced by harming children, it's hardly keeping children safe overall, is it?

In agreement with you Emma. Based on…

*goes back to sitting on hands*

So you blacklist all child porn sites, offer absolutely no dedicated counseling for people who are into looking at child porn, it really leaves the potential pedophile no recourse but to leave the house and find a child...

You're saying that we shouldn't prosecute people who put child pornography on…

So you blacklist all child porn sites, offer absolutely no dedicated counseling for people who are into looking at child porn, it really leaves the potential pedophile no recourse but to leave the house and find a child...

I see I did leave out any suggestion of what to do…

They say, 'yes – R18, M' etc. So there has to be subjectivity to achieve that, unless someone is going to make an incredibly unuseful list of what is and isn't allowed at each level, which then becomes time stamped…

I presume that the censors office is governed by legislation (the er... can't remember what the Act is called now), and is largely at arms length from the government in terms of their decisions as a result.

The current legislation (by far not just in NZ but pretty much everywhere)…

Which would seem to me to be how you'd want this to work…

Funding for the ACMA-like body, any heinously complicated process is going to cost money to administer, where is it from?

Well, any kind of monitoring or policing body is going to cost. I feel that if you're policing for less it should be cheaper, but I strongly suspect that's not…

Location of the ACMA-like body in government? Is it an independant body like PCE, not independant but seperate like the Electricity Commission, part of the Ministry for Odds and Sods (sorry – Internal Affairs), a division of the Police? How will this choice affect its operations?

I would suggest that…

Funding for the ACMA-like body, any heinously complicated process is going to cost money to administer, where is it from? Modem tax, levy on ISPs based on traffic volumes, from the general tax fund, wave a magic wand?

Location of the ACMA-like body in government? Is…

My impression of the Emma System would be that illegal sites would be targeted by the law. So the list should stay pretty short over a long period of time (possibly places that are illegal in one country but not in another?).

Indeed. Sites should come off it because they're…

How do you manage this, investigate everyone?

Not arguing, just kicking the idea around a bit...

Exactly what I'm after, dude.

This is what the ACMA does: investigates sites it receives complaints about. Anyone can lay a complaint, including an employee of the ACMA. But instead of black-listing the site,…

Legal would be 'legal to view in the country of the filtering software company'.

Illegal would be... well not legal.

Sorry, I was unclear, how do you know that what a filtering company has put on their illegal list is in fact illegal?
I thought Emma's plan was to have…

But parents don't have sex in the house or anywhere else--do they???

I believe that rule only applies if they're married. Parents living in sin... well, probably sin I guess.

how do you define a legal versus an illeagal site?

Legal would be 'legal to view in the country of…

All filtering software companies, however, must produce annual public lists of all the legal sites they block.

how do you define a legal versus an illeagal site? Eg filering company defines a site as illeagal, so not on the list up for inspection.…

(Sounds like you're suggesting that they limit themselves to single-child…

I suspect that that demographic will still be shrill in their demands for the whole thing to be sanitised & steam-cleaned.

And you know what really doesn't go down well? Suggesting that if they don't want their kids to ever encounter sex the first thing they should do is stop having…

Working meaning all 'bad' sites blocked, all 'good' sites not blocked and a well managed process around the whole thing that allows for updates and doesn't annoy people.

Is the best thing we can hope…

Is it just me, or is "clearly implying" sex what 15-year old boys do? "Yeah, we totally did it last night, man. Like, with the sex and everything. Yeah."

More like "I'd sure engage in brief and unsatisfying sexual relations with her, if you know what I mean."

And Australians are prepared to put up with that?

Lots of 'em are really quite angry about it. Nobody much seems to really want it. But they just had an election, so what are you going to do?

So is a couple appearing with offspring "a scene which is cut so that it is clearly implied that two of the characters had sex"

Better filter out all those Brokeback to the Future YouTube mashups then...

'Clearly implied' is a wonderful phrase too.

I heart Stephen Fry
Although sometimes I think it is unfair that one person can be so clever and talented :)

It hasn't all been easy for him

Fry has been diagnosed with cyclothymia, a mild form of bipolar disorder.[40] He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1995 while appearing in…

about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, [and] Christian sites

So most of…

There's an AU$11 000 fine for linking to a site on the banned list.

The daily fine is a risk once you've been informed that you're linking to banned material, and fail to remove the link. It's still a stonking great sum of money, but it's not quite as ridiculous…

Although sometimes I think it is unfair that one person can be so clever and talented :)

it means a scene which is cut so that it is clearly implied that two of the characters had sex, even though you didn't see them do it.

So any of the episodes of the early X Files, cos Mulder and Scully were like, totally doing it? And the same…

implied as opposed to actual ... this is a completely meaningless standard, so of course it produces bizarrely erratic results.

Really? I'd have thought most stuff (well much of it anyway) didn't involve actual sexual activity, drug use or violence. You see people having sex, or doing drugs in a…

So, what does being on the blacklist mean?

Does canteens.com.au get any Australian traffic? Or is it something less insidious?

Currently, it means that anyone using filtering software on their PC can't access the site. Also if the site is hosted in Australia, the ACMA can issue fines and take-downs.…

So, what does being on the blacklist mean?

Does canteens.com.au get any Australian traffic? Or is it something less insidious?

That's pretty much what it means, yes – Australian ISPs are supposed to block traffic from their subscribers to all the sites on the blacklist.

I'm off to re-read Kafka's 'The Trial'.

If memory serves, Josef K ends up completely exonerated and marries the judges daughter after a humerous interlude in court involving ladies underwear, strangely-shaped vegetables and trousers that keep falling down.

That should cheer me up.

and what about images of humourously shaped vegetables? clearly morally dangerous.

To quote Baldrick: "it is if you sit on one".

implied as opposed to actual ... this is a completely meaningless standard, so of course it produces bizarrely erratic results.

Really? I'd have thought most stuff (well much of it anyway) didn't involve actual sexual activity, drug use or violence. You see people having sex, or doing drugs in a…

We have a list of suspect sites
We must protect the public from suspect sites
Ergo, we cannot show the public the list of suspect sites 'cos the great unwashed will want…

Does canteens.com.au get any Australian traffic? Or is it something less insidious?

...implied sexual activity, drug use or violence...

implied as opposed to actual.
well you know the slopes of the North Otago Hills are quite suggestive of female curves. surely that listing should include any online reproductions of McCahon paintings. quite a few landscape images imply sexual activity come to think…