Posts by richard
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Quoth Paul:
Am I the only one round here who used Internet in the 'eighties? When I went up to Nottingham University in 1983, I met Janet - the Joint Academic Network. Strictly speaking, she wasn't Internet but a private network of universities which plugged their Crays into one another.
I was there in the late 80s, and must post a suitably heartwarming story to this thread when I get the chance.
Although at a guess Janet was more likely VAXes (or VAXen to be geeky) than Crays. Used them both, and it is scary to think that an 80s vintage CRAY is roughly competitive with a Macbook Air :-)
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I must admit I also have fairly grim memories of school -- the grimmest of which all relate to places where my parents spent good money to send me. I can still remember the music teacher from when I was maybe ten sitting at the piano, leading the class in a song she had made up about one boy (I remember the words, from which I deduce his offense was nose-picking).
And the cane-happy chaplain who did more to convince me of the correctness of my atheistical views than any other person I have encountered in my life. I sometimes wonder if he was a double agent.
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If you want to complain about media manipulation, the poor woman who broke her back in a rehearsal would be a good candidate. She is apparently well known in China, it was clearly newsworthy (both because of the Olympics, and because the woman in well known in her own right), and it is on a different level from some lip-synching or "improved" video.
I don't think we've had a games like this since 1936 :-)
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I would add for Craig's benefit that the US Supreme Court has reversed itself, and has effectively struck down laws regarding private, consensual behavior between adults.
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__I quite agree there is a difference, but it is a difference of degree, rather than one of kind.__
Seriously? Wow. You don't see any difference in kind between writing a fictional story that involves child abuse, even if the depiction of it is entirely negative, and actually abusing a child in order to get pictures of that abuse to distribute?
This is not the question you asked. Yes, anything whose production necessarily involves the actual abuse of actual children is clearly in a different category. But you question did not make that distinction. Talk about words in mouth.
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But neither the US and New Zealand gives text an absolute exemption, although Emma seems to be arguing that it should.
Ah, the taste of words being pushed into my mouth.
Sorry, I drew an inference, but was trying to avoid imputing opinions to you that you do not actually hold.
- there is a harm difference between text porn, and photographic or filmic porn, both in production and in accidental viewing, and
I quite agree there is a difference, but it is a difference of degree, rather than one of kind. Consequently, I have no a priori concerns about the idea of text based obscenity being prosecuted. The level at which any such prosecution would seem justified is certainly high, but this woman's ouvre (as you described it) is such that I do feel no discomfort about it in her case.
- it is not possible to effectively police net porn.
Well, in this case, it apparently was.
Richard, can I ask you a couple of questions? Do you think that sending this woman to prison is just?
Given the pitiful number of people who actually signed up, prison may indeed be overdoing it... But a spot of googling reveals that she apparently has a plea bargain, and will probably be sentenced to home detention. (Which, if I can say this without being unkind, has the whiff of the briar patch about it for a reclusive agoraphobe). And the same googling reveals that this will set no actual precedent, and it certainly does sound as if she had the misfortune to run into an exceptionally and perhaps excessively zealous federal prosecutor.
And what would have to get banned for it to bother you, where's your line?
I guess I'll know it when I see it. But material that involves sexual violence towards children is certainly on the wrong side of it.
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Come again, richard. This women isn't a convicted pedophile.
She was writing fictional stories about childhood sexual abuse, for her own personal reasons. Would it make any difference if the story's were factual?I didn't say she was a convicted pedophile. And she has not been charged with writing the stories, but distributing them. And if she had only shared them with other members of an abuse survivors' support group, my guess is that the FBI would not have knocked on her door -- but instead she sold them for money, to anyone who had a valid credit card number.
Personally, I think Emma has jumbled up several different issues. On the one hand there is the question of "where to draw the line", and then there are the "mitigating circumstances" that apply to this particular woman.
On the "where to draw the line" issue I doubt that Emma and I would have significant disagreement. Emma claims "Text has always been treated differently" but that does not amount to "there are no rules at all" (and "always" is a long time) and any line is going to be fuzzy. Emma is of course free to argue that text should not be regulated in any way, but that is not the wording of the current law.
However, given that the current legal tests can find obscenity in purely textual material, does it really make a difference if the person providing that material is themselves a survivor of abuse? My point was not that this woman was a pedophile, but that if the "abuse excuse" works for her, does it also work for any crime committed by a survivor of abuse?
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richard from New England...how strange! You're from a nation that has a legal death penalty, espouses legally-protected torture,
Actually, I am FROM New Zealand but am located in New England. Sorry for the confusion. And I certainly agree that torture is a bad thing, and the death penalty likewise.
and actually has much more stringent laws as reguards censorship (speaking as one who served on our Indecency Tribunal for 5 years) than exist here.
Well, according to the internal affairs website, "Advanced Techniques of Clandestine Psychedelic & Amphetamine Manufacture" was banned in New Zealand, but can be purchased legally on Amazon.
So far as I can see, the Tribunal might provide a measure of protection, in that you could submit a work for classification, whereas in the US these decisions seem to be largely made by criminal prosecutions, rather than some standing authority. But many Americans (and perhaps rightly) would regard even the existence of an "Official Censor" as being inimical to free speech.
And you're advocating for-as I read you- further repressive legislation.
Far from it. The law in question was already on the books and has been for some time. The argument seems to be entirely about whether textual material gets some special exemption, and as a matter of practice (rather than one of law), most obscenity prosecutions in the US have apparently related to images, rather than words. But neither the US and New Zealand gives text an absolute exemption, although Emma seems to be arguing that it should.
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I'm also pretty horrified by the idea of an ex-victim getting an obscenity conviction which results in them being put on a sex offender register with actual paedophiles.
Well, actual pedophiles seem to fairly regularly (and this is not something I have made a careful study of) try to mitigate their own crimes by claiming (honestly or otherwise) that they were themselves abused as children. You are certainly free to argue that this action was not criminal (or even that it was, but to prosecute this one case when so many others slide by is capricious and unjust), but if the "abuse excuse" does not earn pedophiles a free pass, it is hard to see why it should get this woman off the hook.
Likewise, putting material on a for-pay password protected site does not necessarily seem to form a compelling set of mitigating circumstances. If she is charging for access, then one can hardly be blamed for thinking that profit may have been at least part of the motive. Imagine a P-dealer standing before the judge and saying, "Well your honour, it's not like I was giving the stuff away to just anyone -- you had to pay for it!"
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You don't feel any particular concern that there are moves afoot to prosecute people for obscenity based on what they write and post on the internet in password-protected groups?
None whatsoever.
No matter what you think of the content - and it would certainly trip my squick-meter - it's the principle that is at stake here.
There is no principle at stake here. The first amendment does not give an absolute right to publish and never did, the obscenity laws are not new, and the idea that text is somehow sacrosanct seems naive at best. There is a fuzzy line and it has moved back an iota or two. But I do not find myself hyperventilating about the "Imminent Death of the Net".
I am struck by the irony of a group of New Zealanders (by and large) worrying about a decision is a distant jurisdiction, when the US has far more liberal laws regarding speech than New Zealand -- with regard to defamation and libel, court reporting, and (so far as I can tell by the existence of an official censor with the power to ban material from New Zealand) with pornography.
If you want to feel outrage about something in the United States, check out stories about banks who have sold unaffordable mortgages to many (relatively low income) Americans, who now stand to lose their houses -- just at the same time as these same institutions have successfully lobbied to tighten the bankruptcy laws. In addition to the perhaps millions of people whose lives have been blighted by this, the resulting US recession stands a good chance of doing real damage to the global economy.